The Security Webs Framework
Isaac M. Castellano · 2025
This chapter introduces the Security Web Framework, and details how to apply it to specific actors. The chapter starts by detailing the core principals of the framework, which include, uniting the findings security studies contributions under one framework, utilizing a multi-vel approach to theorizing about security, broadening the definition of security beyond existential threats to the state, and moving beyond linear expectations when evaluating cause and effect relationships. The chapter moves on to discuss the kinds of relationships that exist between actors, utilizing core findings from Ecology and the concept of Food Webs. The chapter additional details how to apply the framework and build out a security inventory of given actor, which includes four steps. The first step is to identify the security-web the actor inhabits, including the threats facing the actor in question. Second, to identify the strategies the actor pursues to generate security. Third, to identify the reaction the primary adversarial actors engage in. And fourth, to identify the non-security consequences actor security strategies may result in. The chapter concludes by applying the framework to the case of Egypt.