Introduction

This book is an argument about the political limits to critical and emancipatory approaches to contemporary international relations. In particular I focus upon critical and emancipatory approaches to security and conflict although the argument is applicable more broadly. For critical and emancipatory theorists, the Cold War state-based security framework is both archaic and immoral. It is archaic because sovereign states can no longer resolve contemporary security problems which spread across state borders (new types of conflict for example) and it is immoral because under the cover of sovereignty governments have been permitted to treat their populations as badly as they wish to.