فصلنامه مطالعات راهبردی
سال هشتم شماره 4 (پیاپی 30، زمستان 1384)

Time and spatial contexts do not always conform to religious teachings; so, the question of their contradiction and the possibility of the rise of conflict within society has been subject to historical debates. From this perspective religion has not merely a security-generating function and its conflictual dimensions should be also taken into consideration. This writing deals with the second aspect of the issue and tries to identify the security-generating functions and objectives in the event of the rise of a conflict. For this purpose, it chooses the concept of the arena of reform as an enormous intra-religious concept and re-interprets major jurisprudential rules concerning the quality of conflict settlement. The author concludes that there are two types of positive and negative reforms. The positive form refers to the apriori management of conditions in order to prevent the appearance of conflict. The negative form also includes apriori management of conflicts and their resolution with minimum degree of controversy. Hence, the unpeaceful management of conflicts pattern is derived from these two patterns.

Neo-idealism is among the salient and influential schools in the analysis of international security and relations. This school is distinguished from neo-realism because of its emphasis on the idea of limited state and trans-state community-based outlook. The school lacks the liberal's weakness and optimism given its sophistication and comprehensiveness. Neo-idealism seeks to extrapolate power relations and develop ideas for changing them so that all world inhabitants enjoy desirable security. Democratic governance, priority of absolute achievements and subjugation of security to sustainable public welfare constitute the foundations of this school. Neo-idealist scholars provoked hopes by developing such statements; but with the lapse of time and appearance of neo-idealist capacities, it became apparent that this outlook suffers from weaknesses in spite of significant innovations. Due to their propensity to rationalism, neo-idealists are no immune to mental biases and pre-judgments, they underestimate the reality of the state and hard power in shaping group's identities and even in the drawing and repairing norms, and they tend to suffice to provide general and simplistic ideas in explaining the factors of changes.

The relationship between security, politics and strategy has frequently been subject to academic debates and the demarcation of boundaries among these concepts and the contours of their study areas are the result of such academic debates and contentions. In this article, the author examines the historical grounds of change in the aforementioned concepts and analyzes their mutual relationship according to four traditional, meta-traditional, modern and postmodern discourses in order to explain part of ambiguities and complexities of the concept of security. Indeed, dependence of the security concept on concepts of politics and strategy and the overlapping of security studies area with areas of political and strategic studies – as the fundamental assumption in the existing literature of security studies – is challenged in the writing. In answering the question of what relationship exists between the concept of security and concepts of politics and strategy in terms of time sequence, the author tests the hypothesis that there is no time sequence between the concepts of security, politics and strategy and that historical-discursive change in such concepts indicates their coincidence.

This article makes attempts to study and explore the reference of security in Imam Khomeini’s opinions and thinking. The author proposes three indicators for identifying the reference of security including the threat parameter, factors of acquiring security, and security goals and policy-making. Furthermore, five references in the national security literature including individual, regime, society, state and the world. Considering these parameters, this article holds that the reference of security is combined and multiple in Imam Khomeini’s viewpoint involving society, state and regime which have an interactive and dialectical relationship. In the heart of the society’s reference, two factors, Islam and people play a crucial part. In a nutshell, it can be indicated that without people’s satisfaction and their support for their government and state, the foundations of national security remain fragile. Therefore, in his attitude, the reference of society involving two paramount parameters of Islam and people takes precedence over the two other references.

Achieving social justice as the most paramount objective and slogan of the new cabinet in the Islamic Republic of Iran is derived from the ideals of the glorious Islamic Revolution. In constructive interaction with the world economy and in line with the Iran’s 20-Year Vision Document, this goal is conditional upon fundamental reforms and adjustment in most of economic policies and executive directives including the role and function of the state in order to accelerate, expand and institutionalize sustainable economic development. This article addresses trade, productive and investment areas in the production and service sectors on the one hand, and the amendment of policies and the role and place of the state in economic realm as the strategic foundation of reforming economic development policies. It also deals with certain challenges in social realms and the consequences of economic development policies. The writing’s explanatory-analytical approach is based upon international political economy and refers to interaction between economics and politics in domestic and international areas.

Human security is one of the concepts which have been developed in order to go beyond the traditional sense of security and national security. With respect to human security, there is relative consensus on a fairly comprehensive definition that includes the maintenance of the critical mass of all human kinds vis-à-vis the prevailing threats, consistent with long-term human fulfillment and flourishing. This writing examines the difference of human security from related concepts such as individual security, human development, human rights and sustainable development and then describes strategies for the realization of human security, that is conservation strategy and empowerment. To propose and explain the idea of human security is of importance both theoretically and in policy-making terms. From a theoretical point of view, developing human security is considerable in a more comprehensive and complete view toward the category of security. In terms of decision-making, human security can also help design strategy, (re)formulate priorities and replace some of them, give priority to software elements along with hardware ones, boost civil society and institutions and pay attention to fairer distribution of resources.

Those Palestinians who remained in their homeland with the establishment of the Zionist regime in 1948 are called '1948 Arabs'. Despite their suffering from difficulties and discriminations they refused to leave their homeland. The title 'Arab' for them refers to the fact that they possess a secondary position (second-degree citizen); a position that is recognized by the Palestine Liberation Movement (PLO) and it views only the immigrants and inhabitants of the 1967 Occupied Territories as Palestinians. It is the case while such events as the first Intifada and Al-Quds Intifada led the 1948 Arabs to pursue shared destiny and identity with the immigrants and inhabitants of the Occupied Territories rather than identify themselves as Israeli citizens. On this ground, this article seeks to highlight the effects of the First Intifada and Al-Quds Intifada on the social identity and status of the 1948 Arabs. This study demonstrates that the 1948 Arabs live a suspended and dual life following the aforementioned events. They no longer consider themselves as Israeli Arabs on the one hand, and these Palestinians are not recognized as Palestinians on the other.