Tarak Barkawi, Mark Laffey
6 min
Barkawi and Laffey argue that the field of security studies, as it has developed since World War II, is deeply rooted in Eurocentric historical geographies. These geographies assume that world politics is primarily a struggle between great powers located in the West, treating the global South as either a derivative site of these struggles or a source of peripheral threats. By framing history this way, the field systematically ignores the agency of non-Western actors and the integral role they play in shaping global security.
The authors contend that the West and the non-West are mutually constituted; they cannot be understood in isolation. Using the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they demonstrate how standard accounts erase Cuban agency, treating the island as a mere pawn of the Soviet Union. Similarly, they argue that the Holocaust and other instances of mass violence are often 'othered' from Western history to preserve the myth of the West as an ethical, progressive actor. In reality, the authors suggest, the West's development and its security practices have always been inextricably linked to its imperial encounters with the global South.
This critique is not merely academic; it has profound implications for how we understand contemporary conflicts, such as the War on Terror. By labeling Southern resistance as 'terrorism' or 'barbarism,' Western security studies delegitimates the grievances of the weak and obscures the long history of imperial interaction that produced these movements. The authors argue for a 'non-Eurocentric' security studies that acknowledges the agency of the weak and treats the global North and South as a single, interconnected analytic field. This shift is essential for developing more accurate explanations of global security and for recognizing the political interests served by current academic and policy frameworks.
In this article, we critique the Eurocentric character of security studies as it has developed since World War II. The taken-for-granted historical geographies that underpin security studies systematically misrepresent the role of the global South in security relations and lead to a distorted view of Europe and the West in world politics. Understanding security relations, past and present, requires acknowledging the mutual constitution of European and non-European worlds and their joint role in making history. The politics of Eurocentric security studies, those of the powerful, prevent adequate understanding of the nature or legitimacy of the armed resistance of the weak. Through analysis of the explanatory and political problems Eurocentrism generates, this article lays the groundwork for the development of a non-Eurocentric security studies.
Alex: [deliberate, teaching mode] It asks you to see it as a modern, hybrid creation rather than an alien fundamentalism. You analyze how it was produced through hierarchical interactions with Western power, including past support for resistance movements. Its cellular structure and use of modern communications are then not a rejection of modernity. They are a particular way of being modern.
Sam: [thoughtful, pressing] The implication seems to be that the blind spot is itself a security risk.
Alex: [nodding in voice] That's the authors' implication. If you misdiagnose a threat as purely irrational or alien, you miss the feedback loops you helped create. You may then design policies that crystallize the very resistance you are trying to suppress. They describe this as the cost of the field's Athenian perspective, which treats the powerful as the only real historical actors. [[RP_SECTION:methodological-limitations|Methodological Limitations]]
Sam: [analytical, skeptical] As a referee, I'd ask about method. This is a conceptual critique, not a tested model. What would count as evidence that the relational view outperforms the state-centric one?
Alex: [measured, candid] The paper doesn't offer that. It calls for a contrapuntal analysis, reading North and South together, but the authors acknowledge they haven't operationalized it as a step-by-step methodology. The support is interpretive and illustrative. It is a diagnostic framework, not a research design you could preregister.
Sam: [probing] There's also the risk of a binary reversal, where you swap hero and villain and keep the same two-sided structure.
Alex: [slower, for clarity] That's a fair critique, and the paper doesn't fully resolve the risk of essentialism. What it offers is a call for a more pluralistic research agenda that takes the agency of the weak seriously. It is not a finished, plug-and-play method. Its value is in showing what the state-centric frame leaves out, and the work of making that measurable remains open.
Sam: [sitting back, closing] If you want the figures, the specific historical cases, and the methodological caveats we skipped, you can generate a deep dive of this paper. The paper has the rest either way.
Alex: [warm, professional] Thanks for listening.