ANU

APLN Senior Research Adviser Van Jackson will give a lecture at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs on August 29th. He will discuss how examining the contradictions in the concept of national interest and reassessing some of the most cherished strategic constructs in international security studies can serve as a starting point for constructing more durable forms of security.

Department of International Relations 75th Anniversary Public Lecture Series

The “national interest” concept has become an underappreciated source of global insecurity.  Not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with people having interests that must be preserved, promoted, or protected.  Rather, the “national interest” as such obscures whose interests are served (and harmed) by the efforts of policy elites to secure the state.  Governments routinely use the language of the national interest to justify a politics of violence, secrecy, and exclusion while bracketing off explicit questions of morality and justice.  And, national frameworks for mobilising resources and collective action are logically mismatched against global threats like climate change.  But rather than wishing away the modern nation-state or simply suggesting changes to the words that governing elites use, this lecture will argue that addressing the contradictions in the national interest—as well as some of international security studies’ most cherished strategic constructs—is a start point for constructing more durable forms of security.

You can find more information here.