PPR421: Comparative Defence Policy

Objectives

Defence policy-making concerns the formulation, acquisition and application of the use of 'force' to pursue national and allied policy goals. Thus, defence policies are usually formulated around answers to questions like:

• how do governments perceive threats to national interests?
• On which branch of the military should greater emphasis be laid and why?
• What kind of alliances exist and how can they be furthered and/ or supplemented and at what cost?
• What is and should be the focus and magnitude of emphasis that is placed upon the continuation of an indigenous defence manufacturing base and why?

This course is intended to focus broadly upon contemporary issues in defence policy. 'Force transformation' is one such contemporary and critical issue by which global militaries are responding to the opportunities/ threats created by the Information Age and this is reflected in the defence policies that guide and shape them.

This course will examine the defence policies of a number of nation-states and will broadly chart the 'transformation of force' that is currently underway in some of the most powerful militaries of the world.

This course will look at the transformations in the perspectives, assumptions and hardware that have taken place in the making of defence policy since the 'Second Cold War' period of the 1980s, that is to say, in the Information Age. In essence, therefore, we will look at 'the transformation of force' in defence issues reflecting local, regional, international and technological relations.

Select Bibliography

Booth, K (ed), New Thinking About Strategy and International Security, (London: HarperCollins Academic, 1991)

Buzan, B., An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations, (Basingstoke: Macmillan/ International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1987)

Gray, C., Modern Strategy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Dillon. G. M., Defence Policy Making: A Comparative Analysis, (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1988)

Roherty, J.,Defense Policy Formation: Towards Comparative Analysis, (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1980)

Horton, Rogerson, Warner, Comparative Defence Policy, (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974)

Murray & Viotti (Ed.), The Defence Policies of Nations: A Comparative Study, 3rd Edition, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)

Howorth & Menon (Ed.), The European Union and National Defence Policy, State and the European Union Series, (London: Routledge, 1997)

Hunter, R. E., The European Security and Defense Policy: NATO's Companion - or Competitor? (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2002

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