Stimulus

Adapted from Beyond the Drone Strike: Rethinking Counter-Terrorism by Yusuf Al-Amin (2022), published in the Review of Security Studies.

States confronting violent extremism rely on two broad strategies. 'Hard counter-terrorism' uses force and coercion: military strikes, drone operations, special forces raids, arrests and surveillance aimed at killing or capturing militants and dismantling their networks. Its promise is immediate disruption; its danger is that civilian casualties and mass detention can feed the grievances that recruit the next generation.

'Countering violent extremism', by contrast, works upstream on the conditions that produce radicalisation: education, employment, community engagement, counter-messaging and reintegration of former fighters. It is slower and harder to measure, and it cannot stop an imminent attack, but it aims to shrink the pool from which armed groups draw rather than merely thinning their ranks.

Stimulus

Adapted from The Bomb and the Bargain: Nuclear Order in a Divided World by Reiko Tanaka (2020), published in the Journal of Strategic Affairs.

Two logics compete over how to keep nuclear weapons from being used. 'Deterrence' argues that safety comes from the weapons themselves: if any attacker would face unacceptable retaliation, no rational state will strike first, so a stable balance of terror preserves the peace. On this view, arsenals are a source of security and disarmament is dangerous.

'Disarmament' rejects this bargain as a permanent gamble. It holds that as long as weapons exist they may be used by accident, miscalculation or malice, and that real security lies in their verified reduction and eventual elimination. Where deterrence trusts the threat of annihilation to prevent war, disarmament trusts binding treaties and inspection to remove the threat itself.

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "In March 2022, after a weekend in which gangs killed dozens of people, El Salvador's government declared a state of exception, suspending certain rights and launching mass arrests. Within two years more than 75,000 people had been detained, many held in a vast new prison, and the homicide rate had fallen to among the lowest in the Americas. The president's approval soared. Human-rights groups documented arbitrary detention, disappearances and deaths in custody, and warned that emergency powers had become permanent. Supporters answered that ordinary Salvadorans could finally walk the streets in safety, and that critics abroad had never lived under gang rule."

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "In 2015 more than a million people, many fleeing the war in Syria, reached the European Union in a single year. Some leaders welcomed them; Germany's chancellor declared 'we can manage this'. Others declared a security emergency, built fences and framed arrivals as a threat to public order, jobs and national culture. In 2021 the government of Belarus deliberately funnelled migrants to the Polish border to pressure the EU, showing how movement of people can be used as a weapon. Scholars note that calling migration a 'security threat' is itself a political choice: it can justify walls and emergency powers, or it can be reframed as a humanitarian and economic challenge to be managed."

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "For two decades Europe treated cheap Russian gas as a bargain and, some argued, a peace-builder: trade would tie Moscow into good behaviour. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and then throttled and cut pipeline supplies, that assumption collapsed. Prices spiked, factories idled and governments scrambled for alternatives; in September 2022 the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged. What had looked like mutually beneficial interdependence turned out to be a lever one side could pull. Realists said this proved the point: relying on a rival for a vital resource is not security but exposure. Liberals replied that the answer is not less connection but smarter, more diversified connection."