Examining possibilities of mitigating and escaping the security dilemma.

A PhD project with Professor Wheeler will address contemporary debates around the concept of security dilemma, focusing on any aspects related to intra/interstate conflicts. It will particularly examine possibilities of mitigating and escaping the security dilemma.

All human societies have to live with uncertainty, the challenge of which is particularly significant in world politics. Governments face dilemmas of interpretation and response about the motives and intentions of others, such that the accumulation of weapons van be understood by one set of decision-makers as a reasonable act of self-protection, but by others as threatening attack or coercion. From this security dilemma flows the pervasiveness of fear, the fragility of cooperation and the elusiveness of trust. The security dilemma is a critically important idea in understanding key challenges to global security in the twenty-first century.

The project builds on work Professor Wheeler has conducted over several years on the security dilemma, cooperation and trust. Professor Wheeler would welcome proposals which explore the ways in which the idea of the security dilemma is relevant for world politics in the twenty-first century.

For information about the University of Birmingham’s Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security (ICCS), please visit:
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/conflict-cooperation-security/index.aspx

To find out more about Professor Wheeler’s work in the ICCS, and the experiences of one of the doctoral researchers whose work he supervises, please visit:
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/students/visit/Our-Postgraduate-Profiles-Josh-Baker-and-Nicholas-Wheeler.aspx