Security in the Contemporary WorldClass 12 Contemporary World Politics Notes

Overview

When we discuss world politics, the terms security or national security often come up. These terms are frequently used to imply that a topic is too important, secret, or dangerous for public debate, making it seem like something only governments and experts should handle. However, in a democracy, citizens need to understand what security means. This chapter explores two different ways of looking at security—traditional and non-traditional—and explains how our understanding of security depends on different situations and contexts.

The 1994 UNDP Human Development Report highlighted that the concept of security has been too narrowly focused on nation-states rather than on the "legitimate concerns of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives."

What is Security?

At its most basic level, security means freedom from threats. However, life is full of threats, and not every threat can be considered a security issue. If we viewed every potential danger as a security threat, our world would be overwhelmed.

Therefore, security studies focus on threats that endanger core values to such an extent that these values would be damaged beyond repair if nothing were done.

The idea of security is not fixed. Conceptions of security change over time and differ between societies. To understand these variations, we can group the different notions of security into two main categories: traditional and non-traditional.

Traditional Notions: External

The traditional concept of security, often called national security, primarily focuses on military threats.

• The Greatest Danger: The main threat to a country is seen as military action from another country.
• Core Values at Risk: Such an attack endangers a country's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity. It also threatens the lives of ordinary citizens, who are often targeted in wars to weaken a country's morale.

In response to the threat of war, a government has three main choices:

1. To surrender. This is a choice a government might make during a war, but it is never advertised as an official policy.
2. To prevent war (Deterrence). This involves convincing an attacker that the costs of war would be unacceptably high.
3. To defend itself (Defence). This means fighting to deny the attacking country its goals and to defeat its forces if a war breaks out.

Traditional security policy includes two other key components:

Balance of Power

Governments constantly assess the power of other countries, especially their neighbors. A country that is much more powerful could become a threat in the future, even if it shows no aggressive intent now. To counter this, governments work to maintain a favorable balance of power. This is often achieved by building up military strength, but economic and technological power are also crucial as they form the foundation of military power.

Alliance Building

An alliance is a coalition of states that work together to deter or defend against a military attack.

• Alliances are typically formalized in written treaties.
• They are formed to increase the collective power of member states against a potential threat.
• They are based on national interests and can change when those interests change.

In the traditional view, the international system is a brutal place with no central authority to control the behavior of states. Each country must therefore be responsible for its own security.

Traditional Notions: Internal

Traditional security also includes internal security, which deals with threats from within a country's borders. For a country to be able to defend itself from external threats, it must first have internal peace and order.

After the Second World War, internal security seemed less important for the world's most powerful countries, like the US and the Soviet Union, as they were internally united. Western European nations also faced few serious threats from within. As a result, they focused primarily on external threats, particularly the Cold War rivalry between the US-led and Soviet-led alliances.

However, for the newly-independent countries of Asia and Africa, the security challenges were different and more complex:

• External Threats: They faced military conflicts with neighboring countries over borders, territory, or control of populations.
• Internal Threats: They worried about separatist movements that wanted to form new, independent countries.
• Merged Threats: Often, external and internal threats combined. A neighboring country might support a separatist movement within another nation, creating tension between the two states.

Traditional Security and Cooperation

Even within the traditional, military-focused view of security, there is room for cooperation to limit violence. This cooperation focuses on both the reasons for going to war and the methods used.

• Justification for War: It is now widely accepted that countries should only go to war for the right reasons, such as self-defence or to protect people from genocide.
• Conduct in War: Armies are expected to avoid harming non-combatants and unarmed soldiers. Violence should not be excessive, and force should only be used as a last resort.

Other forms of cooperation in traditional security include:

• Disarmament: This requires all states to give up certain types of weapons.
  • The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) banned the production and possession of these weapons.
• Arms Control: This regulates the development or acquisition of weapons. The superpowers, the US and Soviet Union, pursued arms control for nuclear weapons instead of disarmament.
  • The Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972 limited the deployment of defensive missile systems.
  • The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 limited the number of countries that could have nuclear weapons. It allowed countries that had tested them before 1967 to keep them but prevented others from acquiring them.
• Confidence Building: This is a process where rival countries share information about their military intentions and plans to show they are not planning a surprise attack. This helps prevent war due to misunderstanding or misperception.

Non-Traditional Notions

Non-traditional notions of security expand the concept beyond military threats to include a wide range of dangers that affect human existence. This approach questions the traditional focus of security.

The key question is, "Security for who?" This is known as the referent of security.

• Traditional View: The referent is the state, its territory, and its government.
• Non-Traditional View: The referent is expanded to include individuals, communities, or all of humanity.

These broader views are often called human security or global security.

Human Security

Human security is about protecting people, not just states. A secure state does not automatically mean its people are secure. In fact, over the last 100 years, more people have been killed by their own governments than by foreign armies.

There are two main concepts of human security:

• The 'Narrow' Concept: Focuses on protecting individuals and communities from internal violence.
• The 'Broad' Concept: Argues that the threat agenda should also include hunger, disease, and natural disasters, as these kill far more people than war, terrorism, and genocide combined. This view stresses "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear."

Global Security

The idea of global security emerged in the 1990s to address threats that are global in nature, such as global warming, international terrorism, and health epidemics like AIDS and bird flu. No single country can solve these problems alone, and international cooperation is essential.

New Sources of Threats

Non-traditional security focuses on new and different types of threats.

Terrorism

Terrorism is political violence that deliberately and indiscriminately targets civilians. Terrorist groups use force or the threat of force to change a political situation they dislike. Civilian targets are chosen to create terror and use public unhappiness as a weapon against governments.

Human Rights

Human rights are generally classified into three types:

1. Political rights (e.g., freedom of speech and assembly).
2. Economic and social rights.
3. Rights of colonised people or minorities.

There is disagreement about which rights are universal and what the international community should do when they are violated. Some argue the UN should intervene with force to stop abuses, while others believe powerful states will only act when it serves their national interests.

Global Poverty

The world's population is growing, with most of that growth occurring in six countries: India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. High population growth and low incomes in poor countries make them poorer, while low population growth and high incomes make rich countries richer. This gap between the global North (rich countries) and South (poor countries) is a source of insecurity. Most armed conflicts now occur in sub-Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region.

Migration

Poverty in the South has led to large-scale migration to the North in search of better economic opportunities, creating political friction.

• Migrants are people who voluntarily leave their home countries. States are not required to accept them.
• Refugees are people who flee from war, natural disaster, or political persecution. States are generally supposed to accept them.
• Internally displaced people are those who have fled their homes but remain within their own country's borders. The Kashmiri Pandits who fled violence in the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s are an example.

Health Epidemics

Diseases like HIV-AIDS, bird flu, and SARS have spread rapidly across borders through migration, business, and tourism. By 2003, an estimated 4 crore people were infected with HIV-AIDS worldwide, mostly in Africa and South Asia. While new treatments are available in rich countries, they are too expensive for poor regions, where diseases like HIV-AIDS are driving communities deeper into poverty.

Cooperative Security

Dealing with these non-traditional threats requires international cooperation rather than military force. Using military force to solve poverty, manage migration, or control epidemics would likely make things worse.

Cooperative security involves strategies of international cooperation, which can be bilateral, regional, or global. It involves a wide range of actors:

• International Organizations: The UN, World Health Organisation, World Bank, etc.
• Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs): Amnesty International, the Red Cross.
• Other Players: Businesses, charities, and influential individuals like Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela.

Cooperative security may involve the use of force as a last resort, but only when sanctioned and applied collectively by the international community, for example, to stop a government from killing its own people or to act against international terrorists.

India's Security Strategy

India faces both traditional (military) and non-traditional threats from both inside and outside its borders. Its security strategy has four main components:

1. Strengthening Military Capabilities: India has been involved in conflicts with its neighbors, including Pakistan (1947-48, 1965, 1971, 1999) and China (1962). To safeguard national security in a region with nuclear-armed countries, the Indian government conducted nuclear tests, first in 1974 and again in 1998.

2. Strengthening International Norms and Institutions: India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promoted Asian solidarity, decolonisation, disarmament, and the UN. India has advocated for a fair international economic order and used non-alignment to create a peaceful space outside the Cold War power blocs. India is also part of initiatives like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to address global warming and contributes troops to UN peacekeeping missions.

3. Meeting Internal Security Challenges: India has faced challenges from militant groups in regions like Nagaland, Mizoram, Punjab, and Kashmir who have sought to break away. To preserve national unity, India has used a democratic political system that allows different groups to voice their grievances and share political power.

4. Developing the Economy: India has tried to develop its economy to lift citizens out of poverty and reduce massive economic inequalities. A democratic government is under pressure to combine economic growth with human development, which provides greater security for its people.