Referent Object: It is an object that is taken as the focus for analysis in security studies. As to this concept, there are two main approaches to the security: state-centric security (the state is the referent object) and human-centric approach (human is the referent object).

Traditional Security Studies: It refers to Realist, Liberal, Peace Studies and Strategic Studies perspectives in the study of security. All of them prioritize the state as the referent object of security and focus on military threats to the security of the state.

Broadening: The broadening security agenda refers to Barry Buzan’s sectoral analysis that the security agenda includes not only military sector issues but also political, economic, societal and environmental issues.

Deepening: The state is not only the referent object of security but it also includes human individuals, institutions and groups.

Positivism: It claims that social sciences can be built upon the same model as natural sciences. Scientific principles such as objectivity, verification/falsification, and generalization can adapt to the study of society.

Post-Positivism: It rejects the idea that it is possible to analyze the natural world and the social world in the same way. There is no objective view (Peoples and Vaughan-Williams, 2010:4).

Buzan distinguished five models of security due to newly emerging diversity of perceived threats:

1. Military security concerns itself with the two-level interplay of the armed offensive and defensive capabilities of states and state’s perceptions of each other’s intentions,

2. Political security focuses on the organizational stability of states, systems of government, and ideologies that give them legitimacy,

3. Economic security emphasizes on prioritizing access to resources, finance, and markets necessary to sustain acceptable levels of welfare and state power,

4. Societal security concerns itself with the ability of societies to reproduce their traditional patterns of language, culture, association, religious and national identities and customs within acceptable conditions for evolution,

5. Environmental security deals with the maintenance of local and planetary biosphere as well as space in order to ensure continued existence of all human beings.

Humanitarian intervention must lack the consent of the government of the target state. The answer is B.

Article 2/4 of the UN Charter is the main rule that regulates the use of force in international relations. The correct answer is D. 

5 permanent members of the UN Security Council are the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom. The correct answer is C. 

British scholar Susan Strange (1996) offers Structural Power Thoeory and defines it as “the power to decide how things shall be done, the power to shape frameworks within which states relate to one another, relate to people or relate to corporate enterprises”. She distinguishes between four primary power structures:
• The knowledge structure, which influences actor’s beliefs, ideas or perceptions;
• The financial structure, which controls access to credit or investment;
• The security structure, which shapes defence and strategic issues;
• The production structure, which affects economic development and prosperity.

Structural realism emphasizes four core elements of international politics:

• States are seen as rational actors and by far the most important actors in the international system.

• The international system is anarchic; there is no international authority that can prevent the use of force between states.

• Each state cannot take its security for granted and thus, is responsible for ensuring its own survival, most notably through the nurturing of material capabilities.

• The balance of power (the formation of alliances with certain states to counter the threat of other states) is the defining mechanism that regulates the international system and explains war and peace. 

“In the modern world, states, therefore, compete through trade rather than through the use of force. The realist understanding of hard power which encompasses both military and economic power is declined. Hard power is ‘command power’, the ability to change what others do through the use of inducements (carrots) or threats (sticks). By contrast, there has been a growth in soft power. Soft power is co-optive power; it rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others by attraction rather than coercion. Whereas hard power draws on resources such as force, sanctions, payments and bribes, soft power operates largely through culture, political ideals and foreign policies (especially when these are seen to be attractive, legitimate or to possess moral authority)” 

Private security has unforeseen impacts on international security. First, they present challenges in the structures of authority, legitimacy, international law, and global governance. Secondly, they erode the power of the state and threaten state authority inside and contemporary structures of governance. Thirdly, they lead to the emergence of “global security assemblages: public and private as well as local and global new security structures. Lastly, the geographical boundaries of the nation-state became less important. Private security practices in different parts of the world produce complex relations and different tensions on private-public and global-local relations Therefore, the correct option is C.

Conflict dynamic is related to the phasing of conflict, paradigmatic changes, and different phases in the course of violence/warfare:
1. Different periods of a conflict: Violence escalates and de-escalates and is sometimes interrupted by a period of peace.
2. Changes of intensity: The route of violence, strategies, and availability of weapons can be changed.
3. Paradigmatic changes: Objectives may change. New alliances, fall of the regime, and political shifts can happen
4. Cross-cultural and inter-cultural component: Conflict handling can be affected by high-context and low-context cultural environment (Scherrer, 2002: 13).

Having emerged in the 1980s, democratic peace theory is based on an assumption that there is an intrinsic link between peace and democracy; in particular, that democratic states do not go to war with one another.

Globalization and interdependence are the two central components that have changed the nature of power as well as our understanding of security in four major ways. First, the dynamics of international security have changed the power distribution across the board. Nowadays not only the United States but also the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the European Union are considered “big powers.” Second, the increase in the volume of global trade, international communication and travel as well as the emergence of the Industry 4.0 have created an integrated global economy and made it necessary to take into account some new actors, means, and perspectives for sustaining and promoting international security. Third, globalization and interdependence may lead to a butterfly effect in that local problems may turn into major international threats and challenges that would affect regional and global security. Finally, because there is no one institution that would act as a global government and create a just global system, globalization, in fact, functions in a way to increase international anarchy and complexity. This, in turn, heightens security concerns and calls for a creative problem-solving approach.

Offensive realism is a form of structural realism that portrays states as ‘power maximizers’, as there is no limit to their desire to control the international environment.