Impulse Note n°1:“National security” as an ambiguous symbol, Arnold Wolfers

● Arnold Wolfers is considered as one of the founders of the realist school of thought
in International Relations. However he can’t only be defined in such a way as some of
his work cannot be included in a realist paradigm, especially his works on ethics in
International Relations.
● The main thesis of the author relies upon the analysis of the construction of
“national security” as a concept. Wolfers identifies the changing dynamic in concerns
regarding priorities of governments: they are more interested by their “national
security” than by their economic/welfare interests. Through this change, he explains
the birth of the realist paradigm-> described as a sort of paranoia of states regarding
one another. He criticizes some aspects for various reasons while accepting the main
idea of it.
● The shortcoming of the work lies mostly in its tendency to try to install a perfect and
radical system by criticizing another. Indeed, through its denial of the concept of
“survival” for instance he exposes his thesis to the passage of time and has been
proven wrong many times until today: the Korean conflict, the Iraqi-Kuwait war, the
conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, in which annihilation of the enemy was
researched by the country.
● However Wolfers’s work embodies a specificity in the history of ideas in the field of
International Relations as he identifies in 1952 (being way ahead of its time) already
some core aspects of the changes in the world of the time. Mainly, the changes in the
conception of “national security” according to a state. Those changes, which he
predicts, have direct influence over the way states behave on the International scene
as their conception of “national security” both define the way to insure it and what
you are supposed to insure.
● The dynamic he identified, especially, the idea that the defence of the core values of
the nation as a definition of the “national security” can be extended when the defense
of shared core values of other states. This is very relevant when we consider the
strategic choices of the USA and to a lesser extent Western European countries
throughout the second part of the XXth century (mainly the intervention in Vietnam,
in Korea or in the first Gulf War).