ABSTRACT
The expansion of security studies that accelerated after the fall of the Soviet Union has proven to be more than a passing fad. This chapter explores the securitization fray by reviewing key aspects of the post-Cold War expansion of security studies, which underwrite on-traditional security (NTS) and assessing critiques that continue to challenge expansionary security thinking and policies. It argues that the NTS discourse should avoid shirking difficult questions for the sake of promoting wide-ranging agendas and instead continually engage with securitization problematics in order to enhance the subfield's analytical coherence and further clarify its value for policy making and international peace and stability. The security expansion conundrum is that traditional models rigorously focus on military matters and thus run the risk of overlooking security threats emanating from non-traditional, nonmilitary sources. Expansive security concepts, conversely, address this problem by becoming more inclusive but in doing so, risk becoming substantively and analytically ineffectual.
