The current priority of the dominant security actors is maintaining international security through the vigorous use of military force combined with the development of both nuclear and conventional weapons systems. Post-Cold War nuclear developments involve the modernisation and proliferation of nuclear systems, with an increasing risk of limited nuclear-weapons use in warfare – breaking a threshold that has held for sixty years and seriously undermining multilateral attempts at disarmament. These dangerous trends will be exacerbated by developments in national missile defence, chemical and biological weapons and a race towards the weaponisation of space. The spread of deadly technology, in particular the materials and knowledge used to produce nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, constitutes a clear danger to civilians. Yet there must be a concerted effort to refocus efforts away from simply responding to today’s crises and towards addressing the underlying trends which produce these threats over the long-term.

Countering militarisation is about more than regulation and disarmament – it will require a change of mind-set to move away from dependence on militarised solutions to insecurity. The present combination of austerity and an increasingly complex global security environment presents an important opportunity to re-think defence and security policies. Major constraints on public spending have sharpened questions about how money is spent on national security objectives and what ‘national security’ means. At the same time, Western operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the so-called ‘war on terror’, responses to the ‘Arab uprisings’ in countries such as Libya and Syria, and the current focus on extremism in Sub-Saharan Africa, have all raised difficult issues to be addressed. In particular, the development of the phenomenon of ‘hybrid warfare’ (a potent mix of traditional conflict, terrorism and insurgency) presents an enormous challenge – one that demands new thinking and honest reflection as to the appropriateness of current security paradigms based on traditional ideas about the use of force.