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Let us think first of all about how to survive, thereafter about everything else
John Herz (1962)
Introduction
This paper engages a seemingly trivial question: what is the meaning of survival in
international politics? What does it mean for a state to “die”? How does it satisfy its will to
survive? By seeking to address these questions (focusing on the first but inevitably involving
the latter two), the paper starts from the premise that it is important to have clarity about
fundamental ends states pursue, such as survival, before trying to understand choices of
means, such as investing in international security institutions.
Rethinking the meaning of survival is closely linked to the still ongoing debate about the
meaning of security following the end of the Cold War (and now, at least in the US, after
9/11).
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While survival describes the more fundamental aim, as one seeks security in order to
survive, the analytical difference all but disappears when following Weaver et al. (1993) in
breaking down security studies into an analysis of ‘reference object’ and ‘threat’. If a
distinction needs to be made, then one could say that thinking about the meaning of survival
puts more emphasis on the reference object, whereas a security analysis is primarily about
identifying threats. In either case, both dimensions have to be addressed. A random pick of
two books with ‘survival’ in the title shows that this is mainly done from a global perspective
(Halle 1958; North 1990). While not providing much assistance for conducting a conceptual
inquiry, the authors share a concern with the survival of humanity as such and a fear of the
nuclear destruction of ‘the planet’, aiming at providing strategies to avert such disaster.
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While this is of course a valid perspective (and probably the most appropriate one from an
ethical point of view), this study is limited to the still dominant unit of analysis in the
discipline of International Relations (IR), the state. It follows those who deduct state behavior
and dispositional attributes from assumptions about human nature and argues, basically, that
the states’ will to survive is intimately linked to its desire for status.
Though this point is made from a social-constructivist perspective, focusing on identity-
influenced behavior, in some respect this study is very traditional. It is not about ‘widening’
or ‘deepening’ in the sense of bringing additional sectors and actors under the security
umbrella, neither does it look at the political impact of ‘securitization’. Furthermore, the paper
does not attempt to provide an exhaustive conceptual analysis, or to unearth anything like the
meaning of survival in international relations. Discarding the assumption that there is
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Buzan (1991); Buzan et al. (1998); Waever et al. (1993); Lipschutz (1995); Katzenstein (1996);
Krause and Williams (1996); Campbell (1998); Adler and Barnett (1998); Weldes et al. (1999).
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Since the 1980s, this global-level fear of nuclear destruction is usually complemented by concerns
about environmental degradation and climate change.
Convention