ABSTRACT
At the end of the Cold War security was rethought in numerous ways and the policy debates suggested that states were no longer the only referent objects in need of securing. Indeed given the threats many states posed to their own populations and those of surrounding states in some cases it was clear that states, and in particular their nuclear arsenals were the threat that needed to be tackled. Disasters at Chernobyl and Bhopal in the mid 1980s had pointed to the technological hazards of industrial systems, adding to the arguments concerning nuclear winter as a potential danger that made nonsense of claims that warfare between major industrial states was a viable policy option. The larger human predicament in terms of environmental dangers and the pressing necessities to alleviate poverty through development were simultaneously being addressed by discussions of sustainable development.1
