European Security and Defence Forum – Workshop One: Changing Concepts of Security and Defence

This is a summary of the European Security and Defence Forum workshop held at Chatham House on 10 June 2009.

When contemplating matters of security and defence, both policy-makers and academics find it increasingly difficult to explain what it means to be secure in the contemporary strategic environment. In the post-Cold War world, threats
which were once easily defined and categorised have now diffused into complex security challenges which are transnational in nature. The identifiable gap between theory and practice continues to be problematic.

While scholars and policy-makers seek to address the realities of security and defence there remains a clear impasse between real-world policy implementation on one hand, and academic concepts and theories on the other.

With a view toward transcending this divide, participants of the inaugural workshop of the European Security and Defence Forum gathered to debate in June 2009 the concepts and practice of security and defence. The mood of the day was one of pragmatism. Those in attendance - members of the government, policy-makers, academics, and individuals in the private sector - were by no means overly sanguine in their assessment of the contemporary strategic environment. There was also a significant amount of consensus regarding the nature of the security agenda, and our current understanding of security and defence.