Security in the Contemporary World

Class 12 Political Science

At its most basic, security implies freedom from threats. Human existence and the life of a country are full of threats.

Traditional Notions: External

In the traditional conception of security, the greatest danger to a country is from military threats. The source of this danger is another country which by threatening military action endangers the core values of sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. Military action also endangers the lives of ordinary citizens. It is unlikely that in a war only soldiers will be hurt or killed. Quite often, ordinary men and women are made targets of war, to break their support of the war.

In responding to the threat of war, a government has three basic choices: to surrender; to prevent the other side from attacking by promising to raise the costs of war to an unacceptable level; and to defend itself when war actually breaks out so as to deny the attacking country its objectives and to turn back or defeat the attacking forces altogether.

Traditional security policy has a third component called balance of power. When countries look around them, they see that some countries are bigger and stronger. This is a clue to who might be a threat in the future. For instance, a neighbouring country may not say it is preparing for attack. There may be no obvious reason for attack. But the fact that this country is very powerful is a sign that at some point in the future it may choose to be aggressive.

A fourth and related component of traditional security policy is alliance building. An alliance is a coalition of states that coordinate their actions to deter or defend against military attack. Most alliances are formalised in written treaties and are based on a fairly clear identification of who constitutes the threat. Countries form alliances to increase their effective power relative to another country or alliance.

Traditional Notions: Internal

Traditional security must also concern itself with internal security. The reason it is not given so much importance is that after the Second World War it seemed that, for the most powerful countries on earth, internal security was more or less assured. After 1945, the US and the Soviet Union appeared to be united and could expect peace within their borders. Most of the European countries, particularly the powerful Western European countries, faced no serious threats from groups or communities living within those borders. Therefore, these countries focused primarily on threats from outside their borders.

As the colonies became free from the late 1940s onwards, their security concerns were often similar to that of the European powers. Some of the newly-independent countries, like the European powers, became members of the Cold War alliances. They, therefore, had to worry about the Cold War becoming a hot war and dragging them into hostilities - against neighbours who might have joined the other side in the Cold War, against the leaders of the alliances (the United States or Soviet Union), or against any of the other partners of the US and Soviet Union.

The security challenges facing the newly-independent countries of Asia and Africa were different from the challenges in Europe in two ways. For one thing, the new countries faced the prospect of military conflict with neighbouring countries. For another, they had to worry about internal military conflict. These countries faced threats not only from outside their borders, mostly from neighbours, but also from within. Many newly- independent countries came to fear their neighbours even more than they feared the US or Soviet Union or the former colonial powers. They quarrelled over borders and territories or control of people and populations or all of these simultaneously.

Traditional Security and Cooperation

In traditional security, there is a recognition that cooperation in limiting violence is possible. These limits relate both to the ends and the means of war. It is now an almost universally-accepted view that countries should only go to war for the right reasons, primarily self-defence or to protect other people from genocide. War must also be limited in terms of the means that are used. Armies must avoid killing or hurting non- combatants as well as unarmed and surrendering combatants. They should not be excessively violent. Force must in any case be used only after all the alternatives have failed.

The US and Soviet Union signed a number of arms control treaties including the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty II or SALT II and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 was an arms control treaty in the sense that it regulated the acquisition of nuclear weapons: those countries that had tested and manufactured nuclear weapons before 1967 were allowed to keep their weapons; and those that had not done so were to give up the right to acquire them. The NPT did not abolish nuclear weapons; rather, it limited the number of countries that could have them.

Non-Traditional Notions

Non-traditional notions of security go beyond military threats to include a wide range of threats and dangers affecting the conditions of human existence. Non- traditional views of security have been called ‘human security’ or ‘global security’.

Human security is about the protection of people more than the protection of states. Human security and state security should be the same thing. But secure states do not automatically mean secure peoples. Protecting citizens from foreign attack may be a necessary condition for the security of individuals, but it is certainly not a sufficient one.

The idea of global security emerged in the 1990s in response to the global nature of threats such as global warming, inter national terrorism, and health epidemics like AIDS and bird flu and so on. No country can resolve these problems alone. And, in some situations, one country may have to disproportionately bear the brunt of a global problem such as environmental degradation.

New Sources of Threats

Terrorism refers to political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately. International terrorism involves the citizens or territory of more than one country. The classic cases of terrorism involve hijacking planes or planting bombs in trains, cafes, markets and other crowded places.

Human rights have come to be classified into three types. The first type is political rights such as freedom of speech and assembly. The second type is economic and social rights. The third type is the rights of colonised people or ethnic and indigenous minorities.

Global poverty is another source of insecurity. High per capita income and low population growth make rich states or rich social groups get richer, whereas low incomes and high population growth reinforce each other to make poor states and poor groups get poorer.

Poverty in the South has also led to large-scale migration to seek a better life, especially better economic opportunities, in the North. This has created international political frictions.

Health epidemics such as HIV-AIDS, bird flu, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have rapidly spread across countries through migration, business, tourism and military operations. One country’s success or failure in limiting the spread of these diseases affects infections in other countries.