This book analyses some of the key problems explored in Paul Virilio's theorising on war and security. Virilio is one of the most challenging and provocative critics of technology, war and globalization. While many commentators focus on the new possibilities for mobility and communication in an interconnected world, Virilio constantly reminds us of the role militarization and security play continue to play in liberal democracies and in our everyday lives. Rather than focusing on geopolitical questions, Virilio is interested in the role that technology and security play in the shaping of our bodies and how we come to see the world -- what he terms the 'logistics of perception'. Many political thinkers and social theorists are not concerned with the politics of bodies and perception. Virilio suggests the way war and the desire for security impact on how bodies and logistics of perception makes it vital area of concern for students of politics. Following in a line of thinkers that includes Heidegger, Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty, and Arendt, Virilio begins to ask disturbing questions about war, security and politics that take us into a series of problems that are rarely explored in the study of security and society: What will the militarization of urban space do to our sense of living with others? How will the proliferation of surveillance devices and cameras change global politics and the practices of international politics? How will the use of blogs and new modes of communication change our experience of war? Do video games militarize vision in liberal democracies? Each chapter begins with an example from popular culture -- from video games, on-lines graphic novels to films from around the world - that begins to introduce the specific question and proceeds to develop a critical engagement with his work. One of the key themes that emerges through the chapters is the importance of the idea of 'disappearance' -- the aesthetics of disappearance

This edited volume examines the political, social, and cultural insecurities that the United States is faced with in the aftermath of its post-9/11 foreign policy and military ventures. The contributors critically detail the new strategies and ideologies of control, governance, and hegemony America has devised as a response to these new security threats. The essays explore three primary areas. First, they interrogate the responses to 9/11 that resulted in an attempt at geopolitical mastery by the United States. Second, they examine how the US response to 9/11 led to attempts to secure and control populations inside and outside the United States, resulting in situations that quickly started to escape its control, such as Abu Ghraib and Katrina. Lastly, the chapters investigate links between contemporary regimes of state control and recently recognized threats, arguing that the conduct of everyday life is increasingly conditioned by state-mobilized discourses of security. These discourses are, it is argued, ushering in a geopolitical future characterized by new insecurities and inevitable measures of biopolitical control and governance.

This new book explains why the international community has responded with a sense of fatalistic passivity to climate change.

It presents a distinct critique of realism through the study of this topic, commonly overlooked in international relations. The author argues that the realist view rests on a dangerous contradiction; far from delivering security it serves to limit the way we think about the new generation of risks we face. The book also provides a detailed case study evaluating US climate politics under the Clinton and Bush administrations.

This new book explains why the international community has responded with a sense of fatalistic passivity to climate change.

It presents a distinct critique of realism through the study of this topic, commonly overlooked in international relations. The author argues that the realist view rests on a dangerous contradiction; far from delivering security it serves to limit the way we think about the new generation of risks we face. The book also provides a detailed case study evaluating US climate politics under the Clinton and Bush administrations.

This book analyses some of the key problems explored in Paul Virilio's theorising on war and security. Paul Virilio has developed a provocative series of writings on how modern societies have shaped the acceleration of military/security technologies - and how technologies of security and acceleration have transformed society, economy and politics. His examination of the connections between geopolitics, war, speed, technology and control are viewed as some of the most challenging and disturbing interventions on the politics of security in the twenty-first century, interventions that help us understand a world that confronts problems that increasingly emerge from the desire to make life safer, faster, networked and more efficient. Security, Technology and Global Politics examines some of the key concepts and concerns in Virilio's writings on security, society and technology: endo-colonization, fear and the war on terror; cities and panic; cinema and war; ecological security and integral accidents; universities and ideas of progress. Critics often point to an apocalyptic or fatalistic element to Virilio's writings on global politics, but this book challenges this apocalyptic reading of Virilio's work, suggesting that - while he doesn't provide us with easy solutions to the problems we face - the political force in Virilio's work comes from the questions he leaves us with about speed, security and global politics in times of crisis, terror and fear. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, political theory, sociology, political geography, cultural studies and IR in general.