Security in the Contemporary WorldClass 12 Contemporary World Politics NCERT Solutions
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Q1Questions
Match the terms with their meaning: i. Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) ii. Arms Control iii. Alliance iv. Disarmament a. Giving up certain types of weapons b. A process of exchanging information on defence matters between nations on a regular basis c. A coalition of nations meant to deter or defend against military attacks d. Regulates the acquisition or development of weapons
Solution
The correct matches are as follows:
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i. Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) - b. A process of exchanging information on defence matters between nations on a regular basis. CBMs are designed to ensure that rival countries do not go to war through misunderstanding by sharing information about military intentions and plans.
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ii. Arms Control - d. Regulates the acquisition or development of weapons. Arms control includes treaties like the Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which manage the development and spread of weapons without necessarily eliminating them.
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iii. Alliance - c. A coalition of nations meant to deter or defend against military attacks. An alliance is a formal coalition of states that coordinate their military actions to increase their collective power against a perceived threat.
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iv. Disarmament - a. Giving up certain types of weapons. Disarmament requires states to relinquish specific kinds of weapons, as seen in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Q2Questions
Which among the following would you consider as a traditional security concern / non-traditional security concern / not a threat? a. The spread of chikungunya / dengue fever b. Inflow of workers from a neighbouring nation c. Emergence of a group demanding nationhood for their region d. Emergence of a group demanding autonomy for their region e. A newspaper that is critical of the armed forces in the country
Solution
Based on the concepts of security discussed in the chapter, the items can be categorised as follows:
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a. The spread of chikungunya / dengue fever: This is a non-traditional security concern. Health epidemics are threats to human security that can spread across borders and affect large populations, requiring international cooperation to manage.
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b. Inflow of workers from a neighbouring nation: This is a non-traditional security concern. Large-scale migration, whether of migrants or refugees, can create international political frictions and is considered a non-traditional threat.
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c. Emergence of a group demanding nationhood for their region: This is a traditional security concern. Separatist movements pose a threat to the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of a country, which are core values protected under the traditional notion of internal security.
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d. Emergence of a group demanding autonomy for their region: This is a traditional security concern. While less severe than a separatist movement, a demand for autonomy is an internal political issue that can lead to conflict and instability, thus falling under the purview of internal security.
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e. A newspaper that is critical of the armed forces in the country: This is not a threat. In a democratic system, freedom of speech and a critical press are essential features. A newspaper criticising a state institution is an expression of political rights, not a security threat.
Q3Questions
What is the difference between traditional and non-traditional security? Which category would the creation and sustenance of alliances belong to?
Solution
The primary difference between traditional and non-traditional security lies in their referent, the scope of threats they consider, and their approaches.
Traditional Security:
- Referent: The state is the primary referent. Security is about protecting the state's core values: sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.
- Threats: The greatest dangers are military threats from other countries (external threats) and violent separatist movements (internal threats).
- Approach: The response to threats primarily involves the use of military force for deterrence and defence. It also includes strategies like balance of power and alliance building.
Non-Traditional Security:
- Referent: The referent is expanded beyond the state to include individuals, communities, and all of humankind. This is often termed 'human security' or 'global security'.
- Threats: It includes a wider range of threats beyond military ones, such as terrorism, human rights violations, global poverty, health epidemics (like AIDS and bird flu), and environmental degradation (like global warming).
- Approach: It emphasizes international cooperation over military confrontation. Solutions involve international organisations, NGOs, and collaborative strategies, with military force seen only as a last resort.
The creation and sustenance of alliances belong to the category of traditional security. Alliances are coalitions of states formed to build collective military power to deter or defend against military attacks from other states, which is a central component of traditional national security policy.
Q4Questions
What are the differences in the threats that people in the Third World face and those living in the First World face?
Solution
The security threats faced by people in the Third World (newly-independent countries of Asia and Africa) are significantly different from those faced by people in the First World (powerful, developed countries), especially in the context of the post-Second World War era.
Threats in the First World:
- After World War II, the most powerful countries like the US and those in Western Europe faced primarily external threats. Their main concern was a military attack from the rival superpower bloc during the Cold War.
- Internal security was largely assured. These nations were mostly united, stable, and did not face serious threats from separatist movements or large-scale internal violence.
- While some European powers faced violence in their colonies, the primary threat to their home territories was external.
Threats in the Third World:
- The newly-independent countries faced a combination of external and internal threats.
- External threats often came from neighbouring countries over disputes concerning borders, territory, or populations. They also feared attacks from their former colonial rulers.
- Internal threats were a major challenge. These countries worried about separatist movements seeking to form independent states. Internal wars and civil conflicts became far more common in the Third World, making up over 95 per cent of all armed conflicts fought globally. Between 1946 and 1991, the number of civil wars saw a twelve-fold increase, mostly in these nations.
- Furthermore, people in the Third World face severe non-traditional threats like poverty, disease, and large-scale migration due to conflict and lack of economic opportunity, which are less acute in the First World.
Q5Questions
Is terrorism a traditional or non-traditional threat to security?
Solution
Terrorism is considered a non-traditional threat to security.
The traditional notion of security is primarily concerned with military threats from other states. The source of danger is another country, and the response is usually military action.
Terrorism, in contrast, fits the non-traditional framework for several reasons:
- It often involves non-state actors, not the military of another country.
- It refers to political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately to terrorise the public, which differs from conventional warfare's focus on military targets.
- International terrorism involves the citizens or territory of more than one country, making it a transnational problem that cannot be contained within state borders.
- The response to terrorism requires a broad range of strategies beyond just military force, including international cooperation, intelligence sharing, and addressing root causes like political grievances. Military force alone is often insufficient or can even be counterproductive.
Therefore, by expanding the scope of threats beyond state-centric military conflict, terrorism is clearly classified as a non-traditional security threat.
Q6Questions
What are the choices available to a state when its security is threatened, according to the traditional security perspective?
Solution
According to the traditional security perspective, when a state's security is threatened by a military attack from another country, its government has three basic choices:
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To Surrender: The government can choose to give in to the demands of the attacking country. However, states will not advertise this as their official policy, as it implies a failure to protect sovereignty.
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To Prevent Attack through Deterrence: This is a key component of security policy. It involves preventing the other side from attacking by promising to raise the costs of war to an unacceptable level. This is achieved by building up sufficient military capability to signal that any aggression will be met with powerful retaliation.
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To Defend Itself: If war breaks out, the state can choose to defend its territory and population. The objective of defence is to repel the attack, deny the attacking country its objectives, and ultimately defeat its forces. This involves using military power to limit or end the war on favourable terms.
Q7Questions
What is 'Balance of Power'? How could a state achieve this?
Solution
Balance of Power is a key concept in traditional security policy. It refers to a situation where a country ensures that its military, economic, and technological power is in a favourable balance with that of other countries, especially potential adversaries. Governments are highly sensitive to this balance because a significant power imbalance could tempt a stronger neighbouring country to become aggressive in the future.
A state could achieve and maintain a favourable balance of power through two primary methods:
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Building up National Power:
- Military Power: A state can increase its own military strength by expanding its army, acquiring advanced weaponry, and improving its defence infrastructure. This is the most direct way to alter the power balance.
- Economic and Technological Power: Since military power is built upon a strong economy and advanced technology, a state must also focus on its economic growth and technological innovation. A robust economy can sustain a large and modern military.
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Alliance Building:
- A state can form an alliance, which is a coalition of states that coordinate their actions to deter or defend against an attack. By joining forces, countries can increase their effective power relative to a stronger adversary or a rival alliance. Alliances are based on national interests and can shift as those interests change.
Q8Questions
What are the objectives of military alliances? Give an example of a functioning military alliance with its specific objectives.
Solution
The primary objective of a military alliance is to increase the effective power of its member states relative to another country or alliance. As defined in traditional security, an alliance is a coalition of states that coordinate their actions to deter or defend against military attack. By pooling their resources and committing to mutual defence, member countries enhance their collective security.
Key objectives include:
- Deterrence: To discourage a potential aggressor from attacking any member of the alliance by presenting a credible threat of a collective response.
- Defence: To defend member states against an attack if deterrence fails, by combining their military forces.
- Balancing Power: To match or exceed the power of a rival state or alliance, thereby maintaining a balance of power in the international system.
Example of a functioning military alliance:
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a prominent example of a functioning military alliance.
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Formation and Original Objective: NATO was formed in 1949 during the Cold War. Its primary objective, as stated in Article 5 of its treaty, was collective defence: an attack against one member would be considered an attack against all. This was specifically aimed at deterring a potential military attack from the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact.
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Contemporary Objectives: After the end of the Cold War, NATO's objectives have evolved. While collective defence remains its core purpose, its mission has expanded to include crisis management, cooperative security operations, and addressing new threats like terrorism and cyber-attacks. It has also engaged in peacekeeping and peace-enforcement missions in regions like the Balkans and Afghanistan.
Q9Questions
Rapid environmental degradation is causing a serious threat to security. Do you agree with the statement? Substantiate your arguments.
Solution
Yes, I agree with the statement that rapid environmental degradation is causing a serious threat to security. This perspective is central to the non-traditional concept of 'global security', which recognizes that certain threats are global in nature and can endanger the well-being of humankind.
My arguments are substantiated by the following points from the chapter:
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Threat to State Existence: Environmental degradation, particularly global warming, poses an existential threat to some nations. The chapter provides the example that a sea-level rise of 1.5-2.0 meters due to global warming would flood 20 percent of Bangladesh and inundate most of the Maldives. This directly threatens the territorial integrity and existence of these states, which is a fundamental security concern.
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Impact on Human Security: Such environmental changes threaten the lives and livelihoods of vast populations. For instance, the chapter mentions that nearly half the population of Thailand would be threatened by rising sea levels. This can lead to food shortages, loss of homes, and displacement, creating a massive human security crisis.
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Source of Conflict and Migration: Environmental degradation can lead to scarcity of resources like water and fertile land, which can in turn trigger conflicts within and between states. It also forces people to migrate, creating 'environmental refugees' and causing political friction between countries.
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Global and Cooperative Nature: These threats are global in nature, meaning no single country can resolve them alone. The effects of environmental degradation in one part of the world are felt across the globe. This necessitates international cooperation, a key element of the non-traditional security approach. The problem's scale is so large that it challenges the security of the entire international community.
Q10Questions
Nuclear weapons as deterrence or defence have limited usage against contemporary security threats to states. Explain the statement.
Solution
The statement is correct because nuclear weapons, while powerful tools of deterrence in a traditional security context, have very limited utility against the diverse, non-traditional threats that states face today.
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Ineffectiveness against Non-State Actors: Contemporary security threats are often posed by non-state actors like terrorist groups. Nuclear weapons are designed for deterrence between states. They are completely ineffective against terrorist networks that have no specific territory or population to hold at risk. Using a nuclear weapon against a terrorist group would be militarily useless and cause catastrophic, indiscriminate destruction.
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Irrelevance for Non-Traditional Threats: The non-traditional security agenda includes threats like global poverty, health epidemics (HIV-AIDS, bird flu), large-scale migration, and human rights abuses. Nuclear weapons can do nothing to solve these problems. A nuclear bomb cannot alleviate poverty, cure a disease, or manage refugee movements. In most of these cases, the use of any military force, let alone nuclear force, would be irrelevant or make matters worse.
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Limited Role in Combating Terrorism: As the chapter notes, military force has a limited role to play in combating terrorism. The fight against terrorism requires intelligence sharing, police work, and international cooperation, not weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear weapons are too blunt an instrument for such a precise and complex challenge.
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Proportionality and Legitimacy: Even in conflicts between states, the use of nuclear weapons is constrained by the principles of just war, which state that force must be proportional. The immense destructive power of nuclear weapons makes their use in almost any scenario disproportionate and morally indefensible, limiting their practical application even for defence.
Thus, while nuclear weapons may still deter a large-scale conventional or nuclear attack from another state, they are largely irrelevant for the most common contemporary security threats.
Q11Questions
Looking at the Indian scenario, what type of security has been given priority in India, traditional or non-traditional? What examples could you cite to substantiate the argument?
Solution
Looking at the Indian scenario as described in the chapter, India's security strategy has been a mix of both traditional and non-traditional approaches. However, traditional security has historically been given higher priority, primarily due to India's geopolitical context.
The four components of India's security strategy illustrate this balance:
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Priority on Traditional Security (Military):
- Strengthening Military Capabilities: The first component of India's strategy is strengthening its military. This is a direct response to traditional threats, evidenced by its involvement in conflicts with neighbours like Pakistan (1947-48, 1965, 1971, 1999) and China (1962). This focus on military preparedness is the cornerstone of traditional security.
- Nuclear Program: India's decision to conduct nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998 was justified by the government in terms of safeguarding national security against nuclear-armed neighbours. This nuclear deterrence policy is a classic element of traditional security.
- Internal Security Challenges: The third component focuses on meeting internal security challenges from militant groups in regions like Kashmir, Nagaland, and Punjab. Combating separatism to preserve national unity and territorial integrity is a core traditional security concern.
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Elements of Non-Traditional Security:
- International Norms and Institutions: The second component involves strengthening international institutions. Jawaharlal Nehru's support for decolonisation, disarmament, and non-alignment was an effort to create a more peaceful and cooperative international environment, which aligns with cooperative security approaches.
- Economic Development: The fourth component is the attempt to develop the economy to lift citizens out of poverty and reduce inequality. This directly addresses human security ('freedom from want') and is a key aspect of the non-traditional approach. The chapter notes that a democratic government is also a way to provide greater security by allowing people to articulate their needs.
- Cooperative Security: India's participation in UN peacekeeping missions and its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol to address global warming are examples of its engagement with cooperative security to tackle non-traditional threats.
In conclusion, while India actively engages with non-traditional security issues, its primary focus has been on traditional security due to immediate and persistent military threats, both external and internal.
Q12Questions
Read the cartoon below and write a short note in favour or against the connection between war and terrorism depicted in this cartoon.
Solution
The cartoon depicts a soldier saying, "We have to fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here!" to which a citizen replies, "But... by fighting them over there, aren't you creating more terrorists to fight over here?" This highlights a critical debate about the effectiveness of military intervention as a counter-terrorism strategy.
In Favour of the Connection Depicted:
The cartoon powerfully argues that war can be a counterproductive tool in the fight against terrorism. Military interventions in other countries, often framed as pre-emptive wars, can inadvertently fuel the very problem they aim to solve. This happens for several reasons:
- Creation of Grievances: Wars cause significant destruction and civilian casualties, creating deep-seated anger and resentment among the local population. These grievances can be exploited by extremist groups for recruitment, turning ordinary people into militants seeking revenge.
- Destabilisation: Military action can destabilize a region, leading to a power vacuum where terrorist groups can thrive. The collapse of state authority creates ungoverned spaces that serve as safe havens for terrorists to organize, train, and plan attacks.
- Radicalisation: The presence of foreign troops can be portrayed as an occupation, which is a powerful narrative for radicalising individuals both in the conflict zone and globally. This can inspire 'lone wolf' attacks or the formation of new terrorist cells far from the original battlefield.
Therefore, the cartoon's logic is sound from a non-traditional security perspective, which cautions that military force is often a blunt and ineffective instrument against complex threats like terrorism and can have unintended negative consequences.