Welcome to Deutsch Security Square, a research centre at the Department of International Relations, Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University in Prague. The Centre aims to engage in collective research of security in the best tradition of the scholarship of Karl Deutsch seeking, in his words, "more knowledge for greater competence and more compassion."
Here are our latest news:
Forget Hobbes
DATE: 07/03/2016
The discipline of International Relations suffers from 'Hobsession' and should forget Hobbes to open space for rethinking its foundations, the Square's Ondrej Ditrych argues for International Politics. In a just published article, he first criticises the instrumentalisation of intellectual history in international relations (IR) that clouds issues of contemporary politics rather than illuminating them. Second, benefiting from the recent advances in Hobbes’ studies in the field of political theory and emphasising the importance of both textual plausibility and authorial intentions for preserving the ‘horizon’ of the possible interpretations, he suggests that ‘IR’ were of no particular concern to Hobbes, and the few scattered remarks on the ‘superpolitical’ state of the many governments interacting with each other are functionally subservient to the purpose of demonstrating the reality of the state of nature. Third, by pointing to the ‘security continuum’ of various states present in his political theory, he challenges the reading of Hobbes as authoring the discipline’s foundational inside/outside difference.
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Read the article here. |
Exchange: The Future of European Astropolitics
DATE: 30/11/2015
In a pioneering conversation opening a new series of Deutsch Security Square occasional exchanges on topical security issues of the day, Nikola Schmidt and Bohumil Dobos, both with the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, discuss the future of European astropolitics. In the course of the conversation, Schmidt challenges Dobos’ case for desirability of ‘colonising’ the Moon to prevent access denial of space exploration by potentially hostile actors by pointing to several political, legal and technical issues that problematise this position. This leads to dialectical development of Dobos’ argument and situating it in a broader context of EU’s strategy.
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Read the exchange here. |
Security Brief: Securing Cities after Paris
DATE: 20/11/2015
The terrorist attacks committed in Paris sent shockwaves throughout Europe and the world. In this brief, Katarina Svitkova proposes what can be done by European cities and their inhabitants to counter this form of terrorist threat. She argues that a part of the strategy to reduce the risks associated with the political violence Europe now faces should be, in particular, adopting resilience thinking in governing urban security, designing specific contingency plans for cities, maintaining psychological resilience for immediate response, pursuing resilience by design in urban planning, and supporting long-term and city-specific public awareness.
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Read the brief here. |
Security Brief: United Nations Peacekeeping
DATE: 18/11/2015
The UN has recently celebrated its seventieth anniversary. Next year will mark six decades of its engagement in international peacekeeping operations, the future of which was debated by leaders of more than fifty states in New York this September. In the Square's new brief, Dagmar Rychnovska with Jan Daniel argue that UN peacekeeping operations do have a role in helping to mitigate and stabilize armed conflicts but should not be seen as a universal solution to political and military crises. To be effective, partnerships with regional organizations must be further developed together with the engagement of local communities on the principles of equality and transparency. The peacekeepers, they conclude, must also be ready to familiarize themselves with the established and functioning practices of the local communities.
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Read the brief here. |
Event: Managing Global Security through a New Concert?
DATE: 13/10/2015
Is power diffusion in contemporary world to result in ever more global turbulence? Can the rise in such turbulence be mitigated by a “concert” of powers as a global security management institution inspired by the concert created at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) which rebuilt the European order shattered to pieces in French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars? Harald Müller, head of research at Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and one of the most influential German expert voices on international politics, argued to that end in a recent D.SQ conversation. He was joined on stage by Patrick Morgan, Tierney Chair in Peace and Conflict and University of California Irvine and a foremost U.S. expert on strategic approaches to international politics and global security management.
Event: Nuclear Weapons and Security Community
DATE: 30/09/2015
The Square hosted a public lecture by Dr. Jan Ruzicka, Director of the David Davies Memorial Institute at Aberystwyth University and Deutsch Security Square advisory board member, titled The Problem of Nuclear Weapons: Security Community as an Alternative Solution? In the lecture, Dr. Ruzicka argued that nuclear weapons were an important factor in the genesis of Deutsch's thinking about (security) community. Furthermore, drawing on Deutsch's criticism of the concepts of world state on one hand and deterrence on the other, he explored whether security community might offer an alternative solution to the problem of nuclear weapons.
Security Brief: The Captivating Visual Utopias of Sunni Jihadism
DATE: 10/09/2015
In the Square's new security brief, Petr Spelda provides an overview of reality-suppression strategies in the visual propaganda of the Islamic State Group that are employed to build "alluring utopias", or compositions of virtual post-apocalyptic sociopolitical orders. He argues that as reactive counterpropaganda is doomed to be ineffective, we need positive programs, erecting utopias of our own that conceive of liberal democratic arrangements not as routines but tenous systems which, when maintained properly, empower anybody regardless of their background. In addition, he outlines ways of improving software toolsets capable of effectively assisting law enforcement agencies in producing sound empirical assessments.
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Read the brief here. |
The Strategic Significance of Ethical Imperatives
DATE: 10/09/2015
The theoretical discourse in civil–military relations tends to perpetuate the notion that efficiency of military organizations is often negatively affected by the influence of domestic ideological factors. In this article published by Armed Forces and Society journal, the Square's Tomas Kucera questions this notion and argues that an effective form of military organization can be produced by incorporating ethical norms of domestic society into its defense organization. To understand the role of societal ethical imperatives in defense policy, he introduces the Kantian model of societal–military relations; a model that emphasises the normative character of military missions and suggests that its effective fulfillment requires an institutional culture consistent with such a mission. This is then demonstrated in the case studies of West German rearmament and the post–Cold War transformation of the Bundeswehr.
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Read the article here. |
Internship Call: Research Assistants
DATE: 27/08/2015
The Square is opening a call for positions of research assistants. The internship, offered for a period of three months, will consist in providing research support to the Square's fellows, conducting individual supervised research and assisting with administrative agenda. Applications are welcome until September 18, 2015.
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You will find more information here. |
Partnership: The Square Becomes a Member of the EU Nonproliferation Network
DATE: 03/07/2015
The Square is thrilled to be joining the EU Nonproliferation Consortium network, founded by the Council of the EU to bring together foreign policy institutions and research centres from across the EU to encourage political and security-related dialogue and the longterm discussion of measures to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems. The main aim of the network is to foster discussion of measures to combat proliferation within civil society, particularly among experts, researchers and academics. The Consortium works through the organisation of expert meetings, international conferences, ad hoc seminars, through the development of a dedicated website and through a family of publications.
Security Brief: The European Union at the NPT Review Conference
DATE: 03/07/2015
In the Square's new security brief, Michal Smetana makes an assessment of the EU performance at the 2015 NPT Review Conference. Although not a party to the treaty itself, the EU has long striven for a greater visibility in the area of nuclear non-proliferation, but its ambition in this area remains unfulfilled. As an actor, the brief concludes, the EU will not be able to produce a coherent common position and play a more significant role in the NPT review process unless there is a fundamental change in the position towards nuclear disarmament on one or the other side of the opinion spectrum occupied by the member states.
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Read the brief here. |
Partnership: The Square Affiliates to IRSEC Hub
DATE: 30/06/2015
The Square is proud to be extending its partnership network and joining today the IRSEC Hub or International Relations and Security Affairs Resource Hub, created by the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI). The main goal of this initiative is to facilitate an online information platform that seeks to foster a more active and interconnected international relations and security affairs community within Visegrad countries and beyond. It aims at supporting cooperation and information exchange within and between participating countries, elevate the level of public education in the region and attract greater attention to regional projects, events and research. The Square becomes the IRSEC Hub's twenty-eighth member.
Event: Russia's Foreign Policy and Ukraine
DATE: 17/06/2015
The Square hosted a public lecture by Maria Raquel Freire of the University of Coimbra titled Russian Foreign Policy in the Context of the Crisis in Ukraine: Lines of (Dis)Continuity. In the lecture, Dr. Freire elaborated on the basic principles of Russian foreign policy, arguing that Russia is more of a pragmatic and realist player than an ideological one on the international stage. She explained how these principles, such as international law or sovereignty, are interpreted in different ways in different situations, and thus indicate a significant discrepancy between discourses and practices of Russian foreign policy which is currently very difficult to predict. That, in her view, makes the future of Russia's "near abroad" highly uncertain.
Security Brief: City as a Battleground
DATE: 26/05/2015
Cities always were and continue to be strategic sites for military engagement. In this brief, Katarina Svitkova explores recent developments in strategy and tactics of urban operations. She concludes that while military-technological edge is imperative to achieve tactical success, securing cities in a long term requires maintaining healthy circulations that keep urban systems going, something that is beyond the capacities of even today's most advanced militaries, and in the future, police and military functions are going to be increasingly intertwined.
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Read the brief here. |
Security Brief: Israel and Lawfare
DATE: 11/05/2015
Jakub Zahora argues in this new security brief that following the election late in March, Israel is likely to face ever increasing threat of "lawfare" and will continue to alienate even traditional allies in the international community, including the United States. The case of Iran's nuclear programme highlights how Israel's international image and its security and military policies are inseparable. While this is being realised in Israel, the brief concludes, the response against these efforts may turn futile and even counterproductive, eventually influencing Israeli leaders to contemplate actual change in their policies.
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Read the brief here. |
Security Brief: Disarmament Politics and Biotechnologies
DATE: 06/05/2015
In another addition to our security briefs series, Dagmar Rychnovska takes a look at how the debate on novel biotechnologies enters the realm of disarmament politics. She focuses on the current development related to the Biological Weapons Convention and points out the problems of linking biological disarmament to a broader scope of societal risks posed by modern life sciences. The brief concludes by arguing for more inclusive and balanced debate on governing biotechnologies that would not be restricted by the language of security and institutions of disarmament and that would allow more complex understanding of the problem and its potential solutions.
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Read the brief here. |
The More the Merrier
DATE: 06/05/2015
At three minutes to midnight on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’s Doomsday Clock, the time has come to consider constructive steps on the multilateralization of nuclear arms control negotiations that lead toward disarmament, the Centre's Michal Smetana and Ondrej Ditrych argue in the Bulletin's newest issue. After explaining the context of and existing obstacles to such a multilateral turn, they propose constructive but realistic steps: first, initiating a debate on a reduction-cum-freeze deal that would include unilaterally declared moratoria on new nuclear weapons by lesser nuclear-armed states alongside further arsenal reductions by the United States and Russia; and second, preparing the institutional ground by moving forward with debates over arms control terminology, trust-building, and development of verification measures, not only by the nuclear weapon states but by non-nuclear weapon states and civil society organizations as well.
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Read the article here. |
Security Brief: Cyber Threats
DATE: 27/04/2015
In the first of Deutsch Security Square security briefs, short policy analyses on current security issues, Nikola Schmidt seeks to straighten the perspective that is used in assessing new cyber security environment. He argues against overestimating the threat which leads to over-reaction in terms of strenghtening current or developing new institutions to tackle cyber threats, and for engaging in striving to better understand what the cyber threat in fact is; how does it develop; change in time; how the cyber capabilities are detectable and thus predictable; and why we are wasting time by drawing doomsday scenarios that might never fulfill.
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Read the brief here. |
Introducing Karl Deutsch, by Richard Ned Lebow
DATE: 27/04/2015
We are proud to present an exclusive essay introducing Karl Deutsch and his intellectual heritage by Richard Ned Lebow, Professor of International Political Theory at King's College, London and chairman of the advisory board of Deutsch Security Square.
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Read the essay here. |
Welcome to the Square
DATE: 27/04/2015
We are pleased to announce today the launch of the Deutsch Security Square website. Explore the website to learn more about our new research centre, its mission, team, and projects and publications. We also invite you to read more about the Centre's core mission in an introductory essay by Ondrej Ditrych, Deutsch Security Square coordinator.