THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR NON TRADITIONAL MARITIME SECUIRTY

The discussion that arose around the Security Studies study area following the conclusion of the Cold War provides a useful foundation for understanding this intellectual tradition. “Military power is the central focus of the field,” according to Stephen Walt, who was merely restating the discipline’s conventional wisdom. Walt contended that despite efforts to broaden the definition of security, the subject would not benefit from losing its “intellectual coherence,” given its sensitivity to the internal reasoning behind the field’s development. His warning to scholars in the domain to furnish the prerequisites of the scientific canon demonstrated his devotion to science as a philosophical approach to study political life. This was seen as a call for “public documentation of theoretical and empirical claims, unbiased measurement of critical concepts, and careful and consistent use of terms.”[1] Thus, the demands of Security Studies were understood to expressly legitimise a pragmatic instrumental social engineering tendency. Since state survival was ultimately what mattered, the national security issue remained at the centre of the endeavour. Walt thought that people who oppose constrictive security measures should likewise direct their investigation towards this goal, rather than only those in positions of authority. In order to grasp his perspective on this issue, it is helpful to note that ‘[t]he steadfast conviction that those opposed to war ought not to research Comparing national security to trying to treat cancer by not studying medicine and letting tobacco firms be the only ones conducting research on the illness. Walt effectively indicates that it is worthwhile to investigate other perspectives on security, but he ultimately returns to his main concern of “under what conditions should states employ military force and for what purposes?”