Security studies

NOTOC Security studies, also known as international security studies, is an academic sub-field within the wider discipline of international relations that studies organized violence, military conflict, national security, and international security. While the field (much like its parent field of international relations) is often meant to educate students who aspire to professional careers in think tanks, consulting, defense contractors, human rights NGOs or in government service positions focused on diplomacy, foreign policy, conflict resolution and prevention, emergency and disaster management, intelligence, and defense, it can also be tailored to students seeking to professionally conduct academic research within academia, or as public intellectuals, pundits or journalists writing about security policy. The origin of the modern field of security studies has been traced to the period between World War I and World War II. Quincy Wright's 1942 book, Study of War, was the culmination of a major collaborative research project dating back to 1926. Scholars such as William T. R. Fox, Bernard Brodie, Harold Lasswell, Eugene Staley, Jacob Viner, and Vernon Van Dyke were involved in the project. Security studies courses were introduced at Columbia University, Princeton, the University of North Carolina, Northwestern, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania in the 1940s. Think tanks, such as the RAND Corporation, played an influential role in post-WWII security studies in the United States. The field rapidly developed within international relations during the Cold War, examples from the era including the academic works of mid-20th century realist political scientists such as Thomas Schelling and Henry Kissinger, who focused primarily on nuclear deterrence. Some scholars have called for expanding security studies to include topics such as economic security, environmental security and public health. Stephen Walt has argued against this expansion, saying it would undermine the field's intellectual coherence.