STUDI INTERNAZIONALI

The course focuses on the most important aspects that security has assumed in the international system since the end of the Second World War. In adopting a historical approach, it intends to offer the students a general survey and understanding of a process that becomes the effect and the producer of frames of political action. The end of the Second World War has been selected as the starting point of analysis, first because it marked the beginning of the era of security studies in the United States and the Western world. As field of studies security studies developed after the failure of the attempt made at that time to establish an effective collective security within the United Nations. That failure coincided with the beginning of the nuclear era and the Cold War. To the time period of bipolar confrontation is devoted a good deal of the course with the related dynamics concerning nuclear deterrence and proliferation. Despite the end of the Cold War, the security discourse is still looming large in the contemporary international system, not only for the growing risk of nuclear proliferation, but also for the so-called securitization process concerning many international issues, like environment, migration and access to resources. The course, therefore, aims at helping the students historicize the notion of international security and familiarize with the main components of the contemporary international security agenda.