فصلنامه مطالعات راهبردی
سال ششم شماره 3 (پیاپی 21، پاییز 1382)

The notion that the state is in the center of national security equations, though has been occasionally criticized, still enjoys prominent validity; thus a large number of analysts and decision-makers in the field of security issues have consensus over the unique place of the state in the definition and identification of the secure situation. However, the acceptance of the important place of the state in the process of security building cannot be taken as evidence for the centrality of this institution in the formation of the meaning of security. In the light of this aspect of the issue, this article proposes the question of the secure situation in the following way: “Are the states able to create the same meaning of the secure situation envisaged by them as the desirable norm in the minds of their audiences – i.e. people? The author’s semiotic analysis derived from the analyses found in the linguistic field indicates that the state is identified with four features in the area: expression, decision, conduct and feedback. In other words, the meaning of security is not merely inferred from the state expression; so one can expect that in many cases the implication of security affected by other signs – such as decision, conduct and most importantly feedback – finds an implication entirely different from one envisaged by the state. The author attracts the attention of the power holders to the important point that the implication of security is largely influenced by the states’ decisions and the feedback thereof.

This article examines methodological bases of the idealist school. The author maintains that idealist explanations of national security observe methods mostly and originally considered by Emanuel Kant. As the influential founder of idealism, Kant offered a new perception of human duties, the nature and mission of the state and the possibility of peaceful conduct on the part of political actors. Such perception, in contrast to the realist viewpoints, suggests a new order. The author initially explains the main claims of idealism and notes that the major claims of idealism include the belief in the desirable role of the environment in determining human behavior, utmost importance of public conscience and judgment, the reason’s efficient leadership, the priority of ethical aspiration over rational thinking, perfectionism, possible and necessary coordination of national interests of the national units, and international rights-duties. What is considerable in these claims from a methodological perspective involves the acceptance of the capability of reason and ethics in evaluating behaviors. In today’s world, mere reliance on the possibility and necessity of moralism is unable to eradicate insecurity and to secure national interests. Perhaps for this reason, idealist criteria are largely taken into account in the stage of making slogans and claims, because this outlook has a very rudimentary approach to power and casts doubt on the achievements and capabilities of the modernity.

In the analysis of security questions and challenges in multi-ethnic countries like Iran, ethnic inconsistency and national fragmentation are considered as the main causes of political insecurity and instability, and security strategies are designed and suggested accordingly. Criticizing this viewpoint, this research holds that ethnic diversity and national incoherence cannot be eliminated with a reductionist approach and while recognizing and respecting differentiation and discrepancies among the Iranian ethnicities, they should be integrated under a legitimate political system. What helps to consolidate and stabilize the political systems in Iran is not the negation of distinct ethnic identities but the emergence of legitimate political structure. In other words, if political systems acquire sufficient legitimacy in the society, ethnic diversity will not be able to interrupt their continuity and stabilization. In verifying this hypothesis, reference can be made to the effects of the Pahlavi regime’s legitimacy on the degree of national cohesion and indicated that how ethnic questions and their appearance are conditional on the legitimization or illegitimization of the political system rather than otherwise would be correct. In other words, the activation of ethnic conflicts and low level of national cohesion result from the low level of confidence in the political system and its legitimacy.

Because of the structural transformations in social relations and cultural beliefs (notably in large cities), the Iranian society has entered the condition of modernity thus making it necessary to study the situation of new social movements in our country. Indeed social movements represent one of the manifestations of the modern world and the scholars regard their appearance and influence as a result of the interaction between structural changes and identities. It means that widespread cultural and social changes at the structural level as the independent variable can reproduce social movements as the dependent variable. On this basis, the author seeks to examine the formation of identity conflicts and informal networks around those conflicts with presenting a statistical overview of the cultural and structural changes in contemporary Iran based on the Mariodiani theory. These grounds may be observed in the challenges and issues such as women’s questions, student movements, ethnic problems, seeking democracy, new life styles and generation gap.

This article aims to explore the place of ethnicity and ethnocentrism as a security variable in the national security studies in multi-ethnic societies. In this respect, the study of the approach adopted by the modernization theorists and the Marxist theoreticians during the Cold War demonstrated that they lacked a realist conception of the political and security importance of ethnic nationalism and the considerations related to ethnic diversity. With the intensification of ethnic conflicts in the last decade of the Cold War particularly following the collapse of the East Bloc and the extensive security impact of such domestic and regional conflicts, the status of ethnic nationalism has gained further prominence in national security studies and, as a factor explaining the national security issues of the Third World Countries was included among the major crises like political legitimacy and the capacity of policy-making. Finally, the study of the views expressed by the national security theorists in the Third World countries demonstrated that ethnic nationalism could be one of the most important sources of political and social threats posed to weak states.

Speculation on the social security approach aiming at the explanation of the theoretical relationship between security and identity has been among the recent approaches adopted by Europeans particularly in the field of security studies. This has assisted neo-realists like Barry Buzan and the Copenhagen School’s scholars to explain security enigmas at the both intra- and interstate levels. Barry Buzan was the first to use the term social security in his work “People, States and Fear” and viewed it as threats that endanger the societal identity. On this basis, the main assumption of the social security approach implies that the survival and persistence of any society depends on the preservation of its identity. Such characteristic is more apparent regarding those societies which lack the statehood position and their reactions to the threats that are posed to them are more important in political and security terms. These threats may involve the ban on the use of an identity community’s language, particular name and clothing, the closure of educational and religious places, or the expulsion and extermination of the members of the community in a way that would make their expression of the identity impossible. On this basis, this article seeks to operationalize the concept of security enigma at the intrastate level and to reflect the distinct identities of the self and the other in social relationships.