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This paper investigates the long‐term ties between security, development, and fear in Guatemala. I argue that as the development apparatus in Guatemala has long been structured around violence and security concerns, development encounters in the contemporary era continue to be shaped by fear. The confluence of multiple mechanisms of fear, including the legacies of violence, surveillance, and coercion, structure development encounters in profound ways. Drawing on semistructured interviews with development practitioners, I examine their perceptions of fear's impact on development encounters at the local level to highlight the problematic culture of fear rhetoric, which serves to obscure practices through which lived experiences of fear are reproduced. Emphases on social cohesion, solidarity, and behaviors which "better contribute" to development work to mask the racialized elements of these discourses and ultimately serve to silence and delegitimize indigenous demands for structural change and justice in the country [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of unauthorized tunnels discovered through the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically since the mid-1990s. These tunnels are problematic for the state because the subterranean border is both less visible and more difficult to monitor and control than is the surface border. In this era of heighten security, the debate on secure borders has intensified. As a result, the need to demonstrate security success at both the national and the agency level has risen. Efforts to make tunnel discoveries (and security) visible are made within border-security agencies and within national discourse and legislation. These efforts spatially fix tunnels to the border in ways that obscure fuller a understanding of drug trafficking in general. This paper employs archival research, content analysis, and informal interviews with security-enforcement agents to consider the material presence of tunnels within border landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

March 2002 George W. Bush announced that the new Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) would increase US development assistance by $5 billion per annum. The MCA's goal of 'reducing poverty through growth' was highlighted in the November 2002 National Security Strategy, which elevated development to join defence and diplomacy as one of the three pillars of the 'war on terror'. This paper critiques the crude and dogmatic alignments that the NSS and the MCA draw between neoliberal economic policies, poverty reduction and security. Drawing on an analysis of the first five MCA 'Compacts' with Cape Verde, Honduras, Madagascar, Nicaragua and Georgia, I argue that the newly invigorated security-development paradigm is being used to legitimate more spending on 'development' programmes which are primarily intended to serve the interests of US consumers, manufacturers and investors. Despite the rhetoric, poverty reduction is at best a secondary objective. The paradox of American empire is that its pursuit of economic hegemony through the extension and ever-deepening penetration of neoliberal capitalism (in which the MCA is one small vehicle) precisely undermines the conditions for sustainable profitability, as well as social justice. This analysis suggests that like its military and diplomatic counterparts, the developmental 'pillar' of national security will contribute to the erosion of human and political security for the United States and the rest of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With East Asian international relations in flux since the end of the Cold War, Japan's security role is critical in influencing the region's future. In this article, the author examines Japanese opinion leaders' attitudes toward relations with Asian countries, the U.S.-Japan security alliance, the role of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, and Japan's culpability for the Fifteen-Year War of 1931-45. The four major contemporary security strands in Japan—pacifism, mercantilism, normalism, and nationalism—are analyzed. The author argues that normalism continues to rise in the post-Cold War era as the rightist conservatives (normalists) gradually gain predominance over the moderate conservatives (mercantilists). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary International Relations theory, there exists a sharp distinction between international political economy and security studies. However, this is largely a false distinction, a product of peculiar circumstances associated with the cold war, and one which is becoming increasingly anachronistic in the post-cold war era. In order to understand international relations in this era, a reintegration of the discipline is necessary. This article considers three sets of issue areas in which appeals to themes normally associated with political economy are necessary to understand national security concerns. It explains how the cold war temporarily allowed the salience of these issues to recede, and why they are likely to be of increasing importance in contemporary international politics. It concludes with a brief survey of how these influences are likely to affect the national security of a variety of states in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]