Globalization and the National Security State, by Norrin M. Ripsman and T.V. Paul
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702014564664 |
| Author | Jorge Heine |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Norrin M. Ripsman and T.V. Paul
Globalization and the National Security State
New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 296 pp. $ 29.95 (paper)
ISBN 978–0–19–539391–0
Reviewed by: Jorge Heine, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University
Globalization is a defining factor of our time. Although the literature about it is
extensive, generalizations about globalization are often made in a somewhat cava-
lier fashion. Efforts to treat it with theoretical and methodological rigour are thus
welcome. This is what Norrin Ripsman, a young and upcoming scholar at
Concordia University, and T.V. Paul, a respected senior IR scholar at McGill
University, do in this fine book.
An important corollary of the rise of globalization, or so it has been argued, is
the decline of the nation state. Yet, is this the case?
Ripsman and Paul carve out a particular dimension of the nation state—na-
tional security—and proceed to test the hypothesis implied in that corollary thor-
oughly and systematically. On the face of it, this is an overly ambitious and almost
unmanageable task. With some 200 countries in the world, how does one go about
it convincingly, while keeping a measure of parsimony and conceptual elegance?
By organizing their units of analysis into manageable categories—the global
security environment, on the one hand, and the major powers, states in stable
regions, states in regions of enduring rivalry, and weak and failing states, on the
other—they solve this particular challenge. A culling of the literature on ‘‘globali-
zation-as-the-demise-of-the state,’’ with a special focus on security, leads them to
four key propositions at the global level, and 10 at the state level. At the global
level, they are: 1) interstate conflict should decline; 2) worldwide defence spending
and military manpower should be declining; 3) multilateral regional and global
institutions should be increasingly important in the provision of security; and 4)
the incidence of global terrorism should have increased dramatically.
Space does not allow a full listing of the 10 propositions they set forth at the
state level, but they are along the same lines: a shift from military doctrines favour-
ing offence to those espousing defence/deterrence; another from hard to soft bal-
ancing; a third, having military establishments changing from war fighters to police
forces; with all of these topped by the privatizing of security and the pursuance of
security through regional institutions.
The authors then proceed to test these propositions in each of their categories, in
which they pick certain countries. This testing is done with actual data wherever
possible, as well as with military doctrines and ‘‘defense white papers,’’ which
presumably show actual threat assessments and thus changing perspectives on
national security in a globalizing world.
Ripsman and Paul ask a monumental and significant question—arguably
among the most important in the field of international relations (IR) today—and
are remarkably sure-footed in their detailed discussion of how it plays out around
the world, thus giving strong empirical foundations to the overall gist of their
Book Reviews 177
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