Re-Visioning Security beyond the Realist Security Paradigm - A Case Study of Pakistan

Most remarkable development of post cold war era is a change in the concept of state based on the Weberian notion of legitimate monopoly of use of force. The year 1989 marked a turning point in World history marked by the end of the Cold War and perhaps more fundamentally a change in the European state system. What emerged after 1989 is not a re-arrangement of the old system but an entirely new system based on a new form of statehood, which Cooper calls the postmodern state. With the emergence of the postmodern state, we now live in an international system comprised of three parts: the pre-modern world (for example, Somalia, Afghanistan or Liberia) where the state has lost its legitimate monopoly on the use of force and chaos reigns; the modern world where the classical state system remains intact, and; the postmodern world where the state system is collapsing and a new system is being born. These three divergent worlds have different concepts of emancipation, freedom, security, fear and insecurity. There is a need to understand the realities of these three different worlds existing on the same globe through different theoretical lenses rather than a Eurocentric hegemonic realist position. The world after cold War needs a “Subaltern Realism”, in words of Mohammed Ayoob. Moreover there is a need to incorporate the experience of periphery in a discourse to redefine and rebuilding the conceptual archaeology of the world.