National Security: Paradigmatic Fundamentals of Research Practices

The article analyzes paradigmatic fundamentals of national security studies and shows that methodologically these fundamentals are unilateral and do not allow to consider the national security as a holistic phenomenon. The authors argue that the development of the multi-dimensional methodological constructs of national security studies within the neoclassical model of research is a prerequisite for overcoming the methodological unilateralism of the “paradigm of interests” and the “paradigm of values”. This model for studying the national security is based on the synthetic use of the methodological capacity of various paradigmatic fundamentals of its research, supplemented with heuristic capabilities of the “soft power” theory, which is considered to induce others to do what is required by the government, without direct violence. In the context of globalization, “soft power” is an important tool for protecting the national security. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s4p26