Article of the Day: Revisiting the Security Dilemma

Does Anyone Still Understand the ‘Security Dilemma’? — Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, 7/29/2022

Stephen M. Walt has been around for a long time. He has been in International Affairs academics since the 1980s. He has taught or led at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Chicago. He is currently the Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University. Highly recognized and acclaimed in the sphere of International Affairs, Relations, and Studies.

He also currently writes for Foreign Policy among other regular publications. He is a must read.

(Stephen Walt is not to be confused with Kenneth Waltz, who according to Wikipedia: “was an American political scientist who was a member of the faculty at both the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University and one of the most prominent scholars in the field of international relations.”)

Not only is Walt a must-read, but whenever I see an article on the Security Dilemma, I read it. It is one of the best made theories in social science. I am not sure where I learned it. Hopefully in one of my International Affairs classes. As Walt writes,

“If you’ve taken a basic international relations class in college and didn’t learn about this concept, you may want to contact your registrar and ask for a refund.”

For those unaware, the Security Dilemma is a non-solvable paradox wrapped in an enigma, twisted in a paradigm, squeezed in a conundrum, baked in an issue, and marinated in a problem. It explains our human condition while revealing why world peace is so damn difficult.

Walt defines the dilemma as,

“how the actions that one state takes to make itself more secure — building armaments, putting military forces on alert, forming new alliances — tend to make other states less secure and lead them to respond in kind. The result is a tightening spiral of hostility that leaves neither side better off than before.”

This happens a lot. It happened throughout the Cold War. It is happening now in between Russia and NATO, the US and Iran, and the US and China as Walt points out in the article.

“in some circumstances the dilemma can be…