The renaissance of security studies in the 1980s and 1990s had the scholarly horizons over the concept of security widened and deepened and impacted a similar trend in real world politics. On this millennium, official security agendas include non-state threats by default and most states or international organisations address, often in a form of complimentary strategies, concerns to individuals’ security. My PhD inquires how this rise of non-state threats on security agendas has changed the way in which state security is produced. This paper, which forms part of the theoretical framework for my research, aims to theorize the process of security production. I suggest that the efforts to produce security – whether we examined individual vs. individual, state vs. state or individual vs. state relations or a relationship between state and an external non-state actor – fundamentally divide into four approaches: One can produce security 1) by offence, an act which seeks to eliminate, weaken or subjugate the other party, 2) by strengthening one’s defence capability, 3) by building relations and cooperation with the other based on mutual interests or values, or 4) by assimilating the other party to meet one’s own interests and values or being assimilated. Drawing from the old and newer canon of Security Studies (Sun-Tzu, Hobbes, Kant, Clausewitz, Waltz, Walt, Buzan, Adler etc.) as well as from historical and contemporary examples, I investigate rationales behind these approaches and consider their implications.
