Security, as conceived by mainstream International Relations theorists, is also a biased concept when seen from a feminist perspective and as such may not bring much actual security to women and men. Rather, security, as conventionally defined by conventional International Relations, amounts to a situation of stability provided by militaristic states whose nuclear proliferation, ironically, is seen to prevent total war, if not the many limited wars fought on proxy territory. Security is examined only in the context of the presence and absence of war, because the threat of war is considered endemic to the sovereign state system. Logically, then, this reactive notion of security is zero-sum and by definition"national'. It presupposes what Peterson(1992a: 47 terms a"sovereignty contract' established between states. According to this imaginary contract the use of military force is a necessary evil to prevent the outside difference, irrationality, anarchy and potential conflict from conquering the inside of homogeneous, rational and orderly states. States, in this feminist analysis, are a kind of'protection racket" that by their very existence as bully protectors create threats outside and charge for the insecurity that they bring to their protected population inside'. In the name of protection, states demand the