Risk, Uncertainty & The Future of National Security

08 May 2008

Professor Michael Wesley

Officially we are still fighting a "War on Terror", but few people in Australia would say we are still living in an "Age of Terror". Oil prices have quadrupled, but we have not seen the same panicked queuing at petrol stations as when this last occurred. This lecture launches an important new book, Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives , by discussing how risk and uncertainty inform the democratic politics of national security; and more specifically, how the management of national security is framed by the changing ways in which society assesses uncertainty and risk. It explores the emotion of fear in individual and social contexts, and examines how different security fears lead to different structures of national security.

At this lecture, Professor Wesley launched Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives edited by ANU Professors Gabriele Bammer and Michael Smithson.

Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Earthscan 2008), is a wide-ranging volume drawing perspectives from art history, complexity science, economics, emergency management, futures, history, intelligence, law, law enforcement, music, philosophy, physics, policy, politics, psychology, statistics and theology. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty.

Broad Topics: Arts and Social Sciences

Sub-topics: Law, Justice & Law Enforcement, Policy & Political Science

Areas: ANU College of Medicine and Health Sciences

Michael Wesley is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. He is also a Program Leader and Chief Investigator of the newly established ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, as well as being chair of the panel on “Australia’s Future in the World” at the 2020 Summit. Prior to joining Griffith University in July 2004, he was the Assistant Director-General for Transnational Issues at the Office of National Assessments.

Part of the 2008 Toyota-ANU Public Lecture Series