Globalisation and regionalisation in international security

The course addresses current trends in international security with a focus on their geopolitical dimension. During the Cold War, competition between the two superpowers contributed to a high degree of security integration across different regions in the world. After the end of the Cold War, the lack of an equally powerful driver of strategic integration triggered a process of spatial fragmentation, with the emergence of increasingly disconnected regional security complexes. More recently, however, intensified great power competition seems to be contributing to a process of re-globalisation of international security. Traditional regional security complexes are being reshaped and expanded, as is the case in the so-called "Indo-Pacific", while new securitization agendas are working toward the re-integration of security in Europe and East Asia. The course will focus on this contradictory picture of regionalisation and (re)globalisation in international security, thus contributing to the learning objectives of the curriculum on "International Security and Regional Dynamics".

By the end of the course, students will be able to: i. critically engage with different concepts of security; i. identify current trends in the regionalisation vs. (re)globalisation of international security; iii. locate these trends within the broader historical evolution of international security; iv. apply the conceptual and theoretical tools presented in the course to study specific regional security complexes and their transformations.