How applicable is the revolution in military affairs for dealing with the contemporary security challenges?

 

• The essay should not be longer than 5000 words but more that 4900 words
• need to use theories international security
• The comments below are feedback from a previous essay and need them to be considered so as to get a better grade. thanks

 

Feedback

Comprehension

The essay consults a fair range of source material. A fair level of understanding is demonstrated but the essay suffers from a lack of critical analytical engagement. In this respect it is notable that the title was missing the first two words ‘Critically assess’.

Analysis

The essay invokes some basic concepts, with some effort to link these to the question. However, this is not done in a systematic way and as such the actual argument is underwhelming. The major limitation with the essay is that it failed to offer up an analytical framework through which to organise the empirical information and examples presented. For instance, there needed to be an opening section which interrogated the terms of the question – i.e. what is international peace and security (and for whom)? How is this understood in the UN? Are there competing understandings? The essay itself drifts between different conceptions that go unacknowledged. At the start the emphasis is on preventing conflict between states, whereas by the end it has drifted into debates about protecting human rights and humanitarian intervention. But this shift is not presented or explored analytically.

Critique

The result is that the essay is mainly descriptive and lacking sufficient critical exegesis. For instance, much is made of the P5’s veto powers, but there is no discussion with respect to the rationale for providing the P5 with the veto in the first place and only limited discussion as to what the use of the veto in respect of some of the cases identified might indicate in analytical terms useful to thinking about the terms of the question – the key issue here being debates about sovereignty and non-intervention vs rights and duties of intervention in cases of egregious human rights violations. Because of this the essay doesn’t provide the reader with a clear account as to the different understandings of what international peace and security means and requires that are in play.

Presentation

Presentation is ok. There are a few spelling mistakes, but overall spelling and syntax is satisfactory. You need to make sure that transitions from one paragraph to the next within sections are explained and justified in terms of how they build up the argument being made. Quite a few claims go unreferenced. E.g. p.8 ‘Evidence has…’ but no evidence or references are provided.

Overall Comments and Suggestions for Improvement

The essay gets bogged down in presenting/reporting lots of examples, especially in the final sections, but there is no framework provided in order to conceptually organise the argument and account for the nature of the issues raised by the examples. The result is that there is lots of information provided but no real sense as to what’s at stake and what constitutes the driving focus of the argument.