Security governance and networks: New theoretical perspectives in transatlantic security

The end of the Cold War has not only witnessed the rise of new transnational threats such as terrorism, crime, proliferation and civil war; it has also seen the growing role of non-state actors in the provision of security in Europe and North America. Two concepts in particular have been used to describe these transformations: security governance and networks. However, the differences and potential theoretical utility of these two concepts for the study of contemporary security have so far been under-examined. This article seeks to address this gap. It proposes that security governance can help to explain the transformation of Cold War security structures, whereas network analysis is particularly useful for understanding the relations and interactions between public and private actors in the making and implementation of national and international security policies

Scorched Atmospheres: The Violent Geographies of the Vietnam War and the Rise of Drone Warfare

This article explores the violent geographies of the Vietnam War. It argues that the conflict is crucial for understanding the security logics and spatialities of U.S. state violence in the war on terror. An overarching theme is that U.S. national security has inherited and intensified the atmospheric forms of power deployed across Southeast Asia, including ecological violence, the electronic battlefield, counterinsurgency (the Phoenix Program), and drone surveillance. All of these attempted to pacify and capture hostile circulations of life and place them within the secured and rationalized interiors of the U.S. war machine. The article thus expands on the concept of atmospheric warfare. This is defined as a biopolitical project of enclosure to surveil, secure, and destroy humans and nonhumans within a multidimensional warscape. Since modern state power is becoming ever more atmospheric—particularly with the rise of drone warfare—dissecting the origins of that violence in the Vietnam War is a vital task