Review on "Losing Control, Global Security in the 21st Century, 3rd Edition”



Critique on Paul Rogers "Losing Control, Global Security in the 21st Century, 3rd Edition (2010)

The book is written on the topic of international relations. It further discusses the perspective of international security with the critique of realist or power paradigm and control orientation in international politics. The book is a plea to state officials of in the Middle East, the United States, Europe, Russia, transnational corporations, and international organizations to adopt attitudes conducive to justice. The book is expected to present an outline for the basic principles of international politics for the implementation of peace, justice, equality and stability. The book is divided into12 chapters presenting the overview of nature and extent of western domination, and how the western world has maintained it relation with the rest of the world.

The basic argument on the book was originally written 18 months before the world changing event of 9/11. The book was written on the traditional and more typical control method of political control through the projection of military power. The author of the book is against the military control and termed it as “the control paradigm” and argues that in increasingly changing environment, this type of control fail to address the issue. There are many forces that making the environment ever-changing and fragile and among these factors socio economic factors and global awareness is of prime importance. According to his review, the model of security based on the military security will turn out to be effective as it is unable to cater the issue of increasing socio economic divide and rising environmental changes. The writer while discussing military control states that it is unnecessary show of power and it will not impact in bringing positive changes to the world. He use the term “liddism” which he refers to keeping a lid on the problem or exerting power for to dominate the world. He used the term with the intension to change the mental approach of the world and taking their attention to more peaceful solution for the problem. He began to address the underlying problem which has created this insecurity.

Before preceding the review on the book, “Losing Control, Global Security in the 21st Century” the term “Liddism” need further detailed explanation. The term was first coined in late 1990s for the identification of post-Cold War's circumstances, where western governments have taken military measures to control the threats of international security. These steps were somehow taken with mental approach of being superior by the rest of the world in terms of financial resources and over all capabilities to control the world. These steps were taken without taking into account the nature of threats and addressing them at source. The analogy is with cooking utensils where you think that keeping a lid on the pot will solve the problem without turning down the heat. In his book he stated “trying toput the the lid on insecurity - liddism - without understanding ...