What is “security”? In the post-Cold War era the term has become vague. During the epic battle between the USSR and “The West” security was defined by the military policies of the great powers in a complex balancing equation of tanks, missiles and submarines. After the fall of the Wall security began to take on new meanings beyond the military dimension. Economic, environmental and now human security are words commonly found in political writings. Even the military dimension itself has changed, taking on new roles in peace-keeping and enforcement. Furthermore, the number of security actors has increased. The State — the primary actor of the Cold War — is now joined by inter-governmental organizations, sub-national political groups (including guerillas and terrorists), transnational corporations right down to the individual. With the expanding spectrum of security “dimensions” and increasing scale of “actors” how do we avoid diluting the term “security” and maintain focus in a dangerous world?
This is the most recent conceptual bundle of string of I have been working on as I try and decipher Japan’s energy security policy. Helping me which ends to pull is the ground-breaking book Security: A New Framework for Analysis by Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde. This book offers a framework for analyzing how Actors are faced with Issues across various security Sectors, and use their Capabilities to develop Approaches for their overall security agenda. Though it is a giant for those of you out there doing a IR theory, I also think it is useful as an analytical tool for developing threat assessment matrices with many overlapping issues. I highly recommend it. To get a taste of what Buzan is about I have uploaded a couple of short videos I found on the DFAIT website.
Semi-related: Buzan’s thinking reminded me of another man from LSE, Professor Christopher Coker who spoke on European attitudes towards the Long War, and perceptions of risk. I would love to spend a semester or two at the LSE.
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Comments to this entry
Mark
July 25, 2007
2:12 pm
Adrian
July 25, 2007
6:02 pm
Roland Paris' article "Human Security - Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?" is good. I flip back and forth on this issue of broadening the definition of security. One the one hand, just because something is important doesn't mean its security, and like Kent's Imperative said about intel, if everything is security, the definition becomes meaningless. On the other hand, keeping the definition narrow allows our bloated DoD to suck up billions of dollars focusing on what it's good at, at the expense of what is actually important in today's world.
purpleslog
July 25, 2007
10:45 pm
Just to clarify...you see the source of insecurity in the world as US actions?
Phil (Pacific Empire)
July 25, 2007
11:40 pm
andres kahar
July 26, 2007
10:42 pm
This concept can help us cut to the heart of the 'What is security?' debate. In other words, security ends up being different things to different peoples. Yup, that's inconvenient from an academic or policymaking perspective. And I take the point that if anything and everything can become a security threat, then "security" as a concept becomes rather nebulous and meaningless.
But we can scrutinize how policymakers define security certain ways -- creating an "emergency condition" -- in order to crowd out other policy issues. (Let's say, Neocons and the so-called "War on Terror" -- war on a metaphor if ever there was.) We might appreciate how, to natives of darfur, security is very basic indeed: to be safe from murder, rape and starvation. For some historically threatened nations (ethno-culturally defined), security might mean safety for the ethnos, culture and language. (Let's say, the Baltic nation-states, who passed post-Soviet language and citizenship laws to protect the ethno-cultural nations. Once upon a time, I dubbed this "ethno-security.")
Security -- ever an intriguing subject.
I wonder, how might natives of northwest Pakistan define "security" if one were to ever ask...?
My contribution to the reading list would be Bill McSweeney's impressive and well-written tome, Security Identity & Interests: A Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999). Great overview of security theory. Ticklish and original proposals about how we might rethink security.