Description
In this panel, we invite reflection on the UK’s security strategies and narratives. The Integrated Review in 2021, and the ‘Refresh’ in 2023 have provided a framework for UK national security thinking. But, we can identify a tension within them, between their occasional embrace of a broader security terminology (noting, for instance, the need to tackle ‘the priority issues – health, security, economic well-being and the environment – that matter most to our citizens in their everyday lives’ (IR, 2021: 12), and the ‘conventional’ approach – focussing primarily on state security and the use of military force – on which they ultimately fall back.
This invites discussion of the extent to which debates on ‘widening’ and ‘deepening’ security can contribute to rethinking security in policy and practice, and demands we ask: Whose security does UK national security privilege? What framings and understandings of security are foregrounded within UK national security? And how might other conceptualisations of security produce alternative visions for UK national security policy and practice?
