International relations in theory and practice Essay

International relations in theory and practice - Essay Example Its attributes, the population, the territory ("the very foundation of principality and sovereignty" (Foucault, 1991, p93) and the authority of the government exercised upon its subjects, demanded that a dominant role be played by the nation state. Social and economic development were key factors for two seemingly antagonistic phenomena: on the one hand, there was the strengthening of the state power, and on the other hand, once World War I came to an end, the international system was faced with new actors exercising power of decision-making; the globalisation of political, economic, social and cultural relations gave rise to international actors, multinational companies, international organizations (the League of Nations, and then, the United Nations), integrating organisation (process which automatically implies a delegation of sovereignty to a higher level); among non-state actors, especially after 9/11 one can also mention terrorist organisations and "the new form of trans-national terrorism which is far more complex and difficult to monitor, analyse, and combat ()some claim that this 'new' terrorism is displacing the older forms of terrorism and has now become the major threat" (Wilkinson, 2001). This multiplication is regarded, by some analysts as being a shift in orientation from the "nation state" as the dominant actor on the international scene towards other types of actors; the motivation for such claims resides in the apparent loss of substance which the state has suffered, especially from the perspective of the integrationist process; furthermore, the arguments consider that this diminution in sovereignty is transferred to the other actors, in such a way as to legitimize their position on the international scene. Thus, the position of the state as a principal actor represents one of the most controversial aspects of IR theory. On order to present the debates surrounding the issue, the arguments and its opponents, it is important to first analyse the realist perspective on the concept of "state" and the arguments supporting its central role in the international structure of the XXI century. Seen from the perspective of the international relations, the political realism considers that if the behaviour of the states, as it had been shown up until then, cannot be reformed, it can at least be controlled. The realist tradition can be traced back to Thucydides and Hobbes, although it rose to great heights as the dominant paradigm in American policymaking during the Cold War (Roggeveen, 2001).Even so, the first valuable theory writings belong to XX st century. The classic realist theorists start their argumentation from the clear premises stated by Morgenthau who acknowledges "the nation state as the ultimate point of reference of contemporary foreign policy" (Morgenthau, 1978); moreover, as one of the leading theoreticians of realism, Morgenthau pointed out a second principle that defined the goals of politics "The main signpost that helps political realism to find its way through the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power". When correlating the two ideas, the conclusion is that the nation state regards the practice of foreign policy as a means to

Network Security Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Network Security - Essay Example In order to prevent such attacks in the future the following measures should be thoroughly applied. The employs should be enforced with strict regulation when it comes to dealing with spam mail. The employees should be educated on how to avoid suspicious emails (Minimizing the impact of the RSA SecurID breach, 2011). Security monitoring technologies should be used to monitor changes in user privileges and also add manual approvals to critical infrastructure and software (Minimizing the impact of the RSA SecurID breach, 2011). Also the infrastructure hosting critical software should be hardened and they should be monitored closely for remote and physical access. Help desks activities and any other activities that may result in information leakage should also be examined (Minimizing the impact of the RSA SecurID breach, 2011). Since the attack has taken place recently the full damage is too early to be predicted. According to RSA’s FAQ for the customers the threat of direct attack to the customers have been denied since the information stolen is useless, without the information held by individual customers (Inc.). Because of that RSA is confident there no immediate reason to call back any products. The local user should apply them selves with strict rules handling any type of spam mail or downloading attachments from unknown sources. Also they should avoid sharing their important credentials (usernames, passwords) with strangers. Even though the company effort and training to avoid spam based attack has not paid off. It is a good lesson to everyone (Litan, 2011). By utilizing the thousands of computers in DC++ file sharing service network this DoS have been launched against 40 companies over the last three months (Reimer, 2007). If such attack is launched using a single computer the attacker is easy traceable. So overcoming this barrier, using DC++ network’s