1 See for example Adler, Emanuel and Haas, Peter, ‘Epistemic Communities, International Cooperation and World Order: Creating a Reflective Research Program’, International Organization, 46:2 (1992), p. 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Rathburn, Brian, ‘Uncertain about Uncertainty: Understanding the multiple meaning of a crucial concept in International Relations Theory’, International Studies Quarterly, 51:3 (2007), pp. 533–557CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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3 As one passage reads: ‘Groups or individuals … must be, and usually are, concerned about their security from being attacked, subjected, dominated, or annihilated by other groups and individuals. Striving to attain security from such attack, they are driven to acquire more and more power in order to escape the impact of the power of others. This, in turn, renders the others more insecure and compels them to prepare for the worst. Since none can ever feel entirely secure in such a world of competing unity, power competition ensues, and the vicious circle of security and power accumulation is on.’ Herz, J., ‘Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, 2:2 (1950), pp. 157–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For a deeper discussion on uncertainty and security dilemma, see Montogmery, E. B., ‘Breaking out of the Security Dilemma, Realism, Reassurance and the Problem of Uncertainty’, International Security, 31:2 (2006), p. 155 ffGoogle Scholar . See Jervis, Robert, ‘Cooperating under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, 30:2 (1978), pp. 167–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

4 Emanuel Adler and Peter Haas, ‘Epistemic Communities’, p. 367.

5 Synder, G. H., ‘The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics’, World Politics, 26:4 (1984), pp. 461–495CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Glaser, C. L., ‘The Security Dilemma Revisited’, World Politics, 50:1 (1997), pp. 171–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Taliaferro, J. W., ‘Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited’, International Security, 25:3 (2000–1), pp. 128–161CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also, Jervis, Robert, ‘Variation, Change and Transitions in International Politics’, Review of International Studies, 27 (2001), pp. 281–295CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

6 Of course one could argue that standard game theory hardly represents state-of-the art theorising. But even in newer contributions based on contract theory (or mechanism design), the semantic relation between uncertainty and risk is still constitutive for further analysis. See Koremenos, B., Lipson, C. and Snidal, D., ‘The Rational Design of International Institutions’, International Organization, 55:4 (2001), pp. 761–799CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 For a really fascinating discussion, see Harsanyi, John C., ‘Games with Incomplete Information Played by “Bayesian Players I-III.” Part I. The Basic Model’, Management Science, 14:3 (1968), pp. 159–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 For a further discussion see Kessler, O., Die Internationale Politische Okonomie des Risikos (Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2008), chap. 4Google Scholar .

9 For a longer discussion see Kessler, Oliver and Daase, Christopher, ‘From Insecurity to Uncertainty: risk and the paradox of security policy’, Alternatives, 33:2 (2008), pp. 211–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

10 See in particular the contributions of Tanja E. Aalberts and Wouter Werner as well as of Anna Leander to this Special Section.

11 For other attempts to analyse uncertainty in IR see Best, Jaqueline, ‘Ambiguity, Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Indeterminacy’, International Political Sociology, 2:4 (2008), pp. 355–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Rathbun, Brian, ‘Uncertain about Uncertainty: Understanding the Multiple Meanings of a crucial concept in International Relations Theory’,International Studies Quarterly, 51:3 (2007), pp. 533–557CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also Kessler, ‘Uncertainty’, pp. 501–23.

12 Of course, the systemic shift identified in part two has more implications and affects diverse fields from aesthetics, ethics, design, art, competition, and collaboration between military companies that this contributions unfortunately cannot talk about. For a discussion see for example Lacy, Mark, ‘Designer Security: Control Society and MoMA's SAFE: Design Takes On Risk’, Security Dialogue, 39:2–3 (2008), pp. 333–357CrossRefGoogle Scholar . For an analysis of the ‘ethics of risk’ see Peter Burgess, Ethics of Risk, unpublished manuscript, and Peter Burgess, Anthony Amicelle, Khalid Koser, Keith Krause, Oscar Salemink, Edien Bartels, Rocco Bellanova, Alfio Cerami, Erik Eggum, Gunhild Hoogensen, Sonja Kittelsen, Kim Knibbe and Martijn de Koning, Promoting Human Security: Ethical, Normative and Educational Frameworks in Western Europe (Paris: UNESCO, 2007).

13 This section is a further development of Kessler, Oliver, ‘Risk’, in Burgess, Peter(eds), Handbook of New Security Studies (London: Routledge), Chapter 3Google Scholar .

14 Beck, Ulrich, ‘The Terrorist Threat: World Risk Society Revisited’, Theory, Culture & Society, 19:4 (2002), pp. 39–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Beck, Ulrich, ‘The Silence of Words: On Terror and War’, Security Dialogue, 34:3 (2003), pp. 255–267CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Beck, Ulrich, Die Weltrisikogesellschaft (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2007)Google Scholar .

15 Aradau, C. and Munster, R. van, ‘Governing terrorism through risk: Taking precautions, (un)knowing the future’, European Journal of International Relations, 13:1 (2007), pp. 89–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Lobo-Guerrero, L., ‘Biopolitics of specialist risk: Kidnap and ransom insurance’, Security Dialogue, 38:3 (2007), pp. 315–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Lobo-Guerrero, L., ‘Pirates, Stewards, and the securitisation of global circulation’, International Political Sociology, 2:3 (2008), pp. 219–235CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Neal, A., ‘Cutting off the King's head: Foucault's Society Must Be Defended and the Problem of Sovereignty’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 29:4 (2004), pp. 373–398CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

16 Daase, C. and Kessler, Oliver, ‘Known and Unknowns and the Political Construction of Danger’, Security Dialogue, 38:4 (2007), pp. 411–434CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Kessler, Oliver and Werner, W., ‘Extra juridical killing as risk management: the breakdown of legal rationalities in the fight against terrorism’, Security Dialogue, 39:2 (2008), pp. 299–322Google Scholar ; Petersen, K. L., ‘When Risk Meets Security’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 33:2 (2008), pp. 173–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Petersen, K. L., ‘Risk, responsibility and roles redefined: Is counter-terrorism a corporate responsibility?’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21:3 (2008), pp. 403–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

17 In this section, I will not discuss the various applications and avenues of these approaches, but rather focus on the theoretical arguments instead. A full discussion of the impact of these literatures on IR would require a different article and distract from the key argument concerning the role of uncertainty.

18 Beck, Ulrich, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992)Google Scholar .

19 Beck, Ulrich, ‘Living in a Risk Society’, Economy and Society, 35:3 (2006), p. 332Google Scholar .

20 Ibid., p. 330.

21 Beck, , Die Weltrisikogesellschaft, pp. 29, 62Google Scholar .

22 Beck, , Risk Society, p. 14Google Scholar

23 Beck, ‘Living in a Risk Society’, p. 330.

24 Beck, , Risk Society, p. 230Google Scholar .

25 Ibid., p. 231.

26 Ibid., pp. 83, 85.

27 Unfortunately, this is not the place to engage with the promises and pitfalls of governmentality itself. See Neumann, I. B. and Sending, O., ‘The International as Governmentality’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 35:3, pp. 677–701CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Leander, A. and Munster, R. van, ‘Private Security Contractors in the Debate about Darfour: Reflecting and Reinforcing Neo-Liberal Governmentality’, International Relations, 21:2 (2007), pp. 201–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

28 Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Routledge 2001)Google Scholar , in original Les Mots et Les Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966)Google Scholar .

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30 Foucault, Michel, ‘Knowledge/Power’, in Gordon, Colin and Foucault, Michel (eds), Power/Knowledge: selected interview and other writings 1972–1977 (Panthon Books, 1980), p. 97Google Scholar .

31 ‘By the word, I do not mean the mass of text which have been collected at a given period, or chanced to have survived oblivion from this period. I mean the set of rules which at a given period and for a definite society defined the limits and forms of expressability, the limits and the forms of conversation, the limits and the forms of memory and the limits and the forms of reactivation.’ Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge. (London: Pantheon, 1972), pp. 14–15Google Scholar .

32 See Foucault, Michel, Security, Territory, Population (Basingtoke: Palgrave, 2007)Google Scholar .

33 Foucault, Michel, ‘In the Flesh’, in Gordon, Colin (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (New York: Pantheon, 1977a), pp. 194–228, 194Google Scholar .

34 Aradau/ van Munster, ‘Governing terrorism through risk’, p. 97.

35 Neal, ‘Cutting off the King's head’, pp. 373–98.

36 See van Munster and Leander, ‘Private Security Contractors’, p. 204.

37 C. Aradau and R. van Munster, ‘Governing terrorism through risk’, pp. 89–115; Aradau, C., Lobo-Guerrero, L. and Munster, R. van (eds), ‘Security, Technologies of Risk, and the Political’, Security Dialogue, 30:2–3 (2008), pp. 147–154CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

38 Ibid., p. 103; Lobo-Guerrero, ‘Pirates, Stewards, and the securitisation of global circulation’, pp. 219–35.

39 Ibid., p. 102. Also Daase and Kessler, ‘Known and Unknowns and the Political Construction of Danger’, pp. 411–34.

40 Ibid., p. 101.

41 Ibid., p. 102.

42 Niklas Luhmann's understanding of risk is best encapsulated in Luhmann, Niklas, Die Soziologie des Risikos (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991)Google Scholar . For an introduction to his systems theory see Luhmann, Niklas, Social Systems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar . Unfortunately, I cannot go into detail about the promises of the notion of autopoiesis for overcoming many dead ends of traditional systems theory.

43 For an equivalent formulation see Derrida, Jacques, ‘Signature, event, context’, in Limited Inc (Vienna: Passagen, 2001)Google Scholar .

44 Foucault, Michel, ‘Réspone à une question’, Esprit, 371 (May 1968), pp. 850–874Google Scholar .

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48 Richard von Mises, ‘On the Foundations of Probability and Statistics’, Address delivered on 11 September 1940 at a meeting of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in Hanover 1940, p. 193.

49 Mises, Richard von, Wahrscheinlichkeit, Statistik und Wahrheit (Wien: Springer, 1928)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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51 Keynes, J. M., ‘The General Theory of Employment’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 51:2 (1937), pp. 209–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Knight, F., Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1921)Google Scholar .

52 For a further discussion of the underlying probability theory, see Kessler, Oliver, ‘Uncertainty, Rationality and the Study of Social Institutions’, Review of Social Economy, 66:4 (2008), pp. 501–522CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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56 Koskenniemi, Martti, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (Helsinki: Finnish Lawyers' Pub. Co, 1989)Google Scholar .

57 Koskenniemi, Martti, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870–1960 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar ; Kratochwil, Friedrich, ‘Sovereignty as Dominium’, in Lyons, G. and Mastanduno, M. (eds), Beyond Westphalia: State Sovereignty and Intervention (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1995), pp. 21–42Google Scholar .

58 This prominent conceptual position was shared by realists and liberal alike. Even natural law and the Radbruch formula cannot avoid this reference.

59 Koskenniemi, Martti, From Apology to Utopia, reprint (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 2005)Google Scholar .

60 The later article is Koskenniemi, Martti, The Politics of International Law, European Journal of International Law, 1:1, p. 8Google Scholar .

61 Kratochwil, Friedrich, Rules Norms and Decisions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

62 In Daase/Kessler, ‘Known and Unknowns and the Political Construction of Danger’, pp. 411–34; and Kessler, Oliver and Daase, C., ‘From insecurity to uncertainty: risk and the security paradox’, Alternatives, 33:2 (2008), pp. 211–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar . We tried to develop two typologies of the changing contours and interplay of knowledge and non-knowledge to give rise to different security practices in the War on Terror.

63 For a discussion see of course the other contributions to this Special Section. See also Oliver Kessler and Wouter Werner, ‘Targeted Killing’.