WHAT IS SECURITY? Alan Collins, Contemporary Security Studies, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010) Chapter 1: Introduction Why Security Matters? 1) It is not an exclusive issue to statesmen and politicians; but also an important issue to ordinary people in their daily life. - Everyday, people somewhere in the world are killed, starved, tortured, raped, impoverished, imprisoned, displaced, or denied education in the name of security. - Newspaper columns and TV news programs are full of headlines related to security. - The Libyan people are strongly protests to ouster Gadhapi: regime security - Sinking of Chun-an warship by the North Korean torpedo attack: military security - Economic sanctions on Iran: state security - Global financial crisis and economic recession: economic security - The growing damage to human health and lives due to climate change (ex: unprecedented climate such as brutal heat and cold, typhoon, hurricane, etc): environmental security - hunger, disease, and poverty issues in some Asian-African states: human security - spine flu: health security - The images of security and insecurity flash across our TV screens and on the Internet almost constantly. - All this makes security a fascinating, often deadly, but always important topic, “security.” - Impossible to understand world politics without reference to it. 2) It is the most important concept in the IR discipline - The sub-discipline of International Relations. - The study of security lies at the heart of IR: - The massacre of WWI and WWII and the desire to avoid its horrors gave birth to the discipline of IR, focusing on international law and international organization. - IR students also focus their research on finding the origin of war and solutions for international peace. 1 - No other concept in IR is more important than the concept of “security.” - Security is the survival of agents: - For much of the IR discipline, the agent has meant “sovereign states.” - Traditionally, the “state” has been the thing to be secured, known as the “referent object.”(안보대상) Security Studies during the Cold War - For much of the Cold War period, the idea of national (state) security has dominated the security thinking in the IR. - Consequently, Security Studies in the past is to do with threats to survival of the states. - War and the threat to use force are generally accepted as the main threats. - National security is therefore usually defined in terms of military power. - Study on the inter-state armed conflict so dominated the discipline during the Cold War. - Military security became synonymous with Security Studies; known as Strategic Studies (the term “National Security Studies” was preferred in the USA). - The state security (the survival of states) has been the dominant explanatory tool for understanding state behaviour in the international relations: state-centric security (national security). - “State security” was regarded as a matter of high-politics; central to government debates and foreign policy-making. 2 Various Definitions of Security: What Does It Mean to Be Secure? - Security (安保; 安全保障) - Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, security is a highly ‘contested’ concept: - A general consensus (among security scholars) that it means “freedom from threats to core values, that is, survival of the agent” (which could be the state, societal group or individuals). - However, a major disagreement about whether the main focus of enquiry should be on individual, societal, national (state), or international/global security. 3 Broadening and Deepening of Security Concept Since the End of the Cold War - In the contemporary world, the concept of security is far reaching and broadening after the following global events: 1) The End of the Cold War - With the Cold War over, many security scholars began to rethink of the concept of security in the changing context of world politics. - To many states, non-traditional security issues, economy, environment, energy, etc., have become as much important as traditional security issues, i.e., military security. - A security is no longer the “traditional” military security, but has economic, environmental, and human dimensions as well (separately known as economic security, environmental security, and human security). - The concept of “comprehensive security” (포괄안보) has become popular in the changing context of world politics after the end of the Cold War: - “To protect a country (state) against the threats coming not only from the (traditional) military dimension, but from (non-traditional) economic, societal, ecological, and energy dimensions.” - The effect was the broadening of security sectors. 2) Globalization - The globalization process1 has also made a major impact on the contemporary SS. ○,1 As products, cultures, capital, and people began to travel more freely than before around the world crossing national borders, the globalization process has also significantly “weakened the sovereignty and territorial boundaries of the state” that has been the center of traditional state-centered security thinking. - The effect was the broadening of the referent objects: People as individuals and groups, societal, ethnic groups, and global community. ○,2 Globalization has also led to internal issues becoming externalised and external Globalization can be defined as “a series of complex processes of stretching, intensifying and accelerating worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of human relations and transactions—economic, social, cultural, environmental, political, diplomatic, and security— such that events, decisions, and activities in one part of the world have immediate consequences for individuals, groups, and states in other parts of the world.” 4 1 issues internalised: ex: - internationalization of domestic politics: - future domestic political structure of Iraq - deforestation in the Amazon - Domestic politicization of international politics: - economic sanction on Iran for its nuclear brinkmanship - As a result, the role of domestic agents and domestic policy concerns appear prominently on global agendas. - The effect: the broadening of actors of security and insecurity. ③ Globalization has also produced new threats, that is, global issues such as environmental degradation, pandemics, poverty, hunger, human rights abuse, genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc. - The effect is the broadening of the scope of threats to the security of agents. 5 Reconceptualization of Security - Against this backdrop, we need to re-conceptualize “security” in this changing context of world politics. - To build a conceptual framework in the security studies, scholars often refer to such criteria as; (1) Referent object(안보대상), (objects to be secured) (2) Threats to the referent object (위협), (3) Actors(행위자) which attempt to achieve the security of its referent object, and (4) Means (수단) by which the actors attempt to protect the referent object from threats. National(State) Security (Traditional) Referent Object Human Security (Non-Traditional) State State People as individuals and social groups external military aggression Not only military but Non-military threats: Economic crisis, social and political disorder, environmental degradation, scarce energy State, international organizations (external aggression), environmental pollution, infectious diseases, human rights abuse, economic deprivation Non-Military means for non-traditional securities Empowering people and societies as a means of security Threats State Actor(s) Means Comprehensive Security Military means: military capabilities, armament races, alliances, other strategic arrangements 6 (the state), regional and international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, local communities, citizens Security Studies in the Contemporary World - Because of these impacts on security studies, SS is now undergoing great change as it questions its past assumptions, deepens its understanding of referent object, threats and dangers, and means of security. - Consequently, alternative approaches to security began to receive a spotlight. - They offer different referent objects, different means of achieving security beyond the state ① They argues for different referent objects including people as individuals and collectives (societal groups) and global community. - Some of them even argue that the state, which has been the center of security studies in the past, far from enhancing security, is simply the cause of insecurity (Deepening security agendas). ② They encompass threats raging from pandemics, such as HIV/AIDs, avian flu, new (spine) flu, poverty, human right violations and environmental degradation through the more readily associated security concerns of direct violence, such as terrorism and inter-state armed conflicts. ③ Non-state actors (비국가행위자) such as local and international NGOs and transnational and regional organizations are emphasized as the main actor in contemporary security studies. - Broadening: Referent objects and the means to security beyond the state - Deepening: Questioning past assumptions as a possible cause of insecurity - The lines between International Relations, Political Science, and Security Studies have been blurred 7 Different Approaches to Security Studies 1) Traditional Approaches: Realism and Liberalism - Underpinned security studies for much of our thinking during the previous century. - Still remain hugely influential. - “Traditional” does not mean that they have been replaced by more recent security thinking. - State-centric approach - However, alternative (new) approaches are challenging the dominance of the traditional insights offered by R and L. 2) Peace Studies - Originated in the Western and Northern Europe in the post-1945 period. - Johan Galtung’s “Negative vs. Positive Peace”: - Galtung introduced the concept that peace may be more than just the absence of overt violent conflict (war) (negative peace), and include the absence of “structural violence” (positive peace). - Broad-based and inter-disciplinary, both in the nature of threats that the field covers and also its approaches to finding solutions. - Academics working in Peace Studies come not just from politics and IR but other 8 disciplines in the Social Sciences, notably anthropologists and sociologists and the Natural Sciences, such as physics and mathematics; a truly interdisciplinary field. - Although initially concerned with nuclear weapons, Peace Studies, long before the postCW era, it was noting the security implication of environmental degradation and poverty. 3) Critical Security Studies (CSS) - CSS first arrived on the scene in 1994. - Main argument: SS should shift its focus from the state to humans (people as individuals and group): very critical of state-centrism. - State is a rather provider of insecurity. 4) Gender Security - Feminist approach to security studies. - Criticizing that the wider field of IR fails to appreciate the important insights that gender provides: - Two elements that gender issue can provide in our understanding of security: 1) Criticizing that women tend to be portrayed in a secondary, supporting role to men, whereas the reality is that, in many cases (rape, prostitution, breeders), women are victims and their plight has remained a silence in the study of security.(종군위안부 문제) 2) Arguing that there is the implicit link between militarism and masculinity: - It highlights how the notions of honor, nobleness and valor (heroism) are associated with masculinity and war, implicitly therefore leaving femininity out of Security Studies in specific and IR in general, which has such positive attributes as peace, endurance, embracement, and reconciliation. 5) Human Security - one of the new “buzz words” in the security literature. - shares much in common with critical approaches to security. - the most notable is a critique of the state-centrism of the traditional approach. - the referent object: humans. - close connection between development, poverty, human rights and security, - but brings many challenges to maintaining analytical rigor. 6) Securitization (안보화) 9 - introduced by scholars working at the Conflict and Peace Research Institute (COPRI) in Copenhagen, Denmark (Copenhagen School). - place primary importance on determining how an issue becomes a security issue, by how it is articulated. - For example, we think of something as a security issue because the elite, such as political leaders, have convinced us that it represents a threat to our very survival. - These scholars are interested in the “speech acts” that the elite use in order to convince an audience that in order to counter a threat they require emergency powers. - Thus, it is a subjective approach to determining what constitutes security: - A threat exists because audience has been convinced it exists by the elite and they have granted the elite the authority to use emergency powers to counter the threat. - The threat is not something that simply exists; it has to be articulated as a threat for it to become a matter of security. - The theoretical approach you take will determine the type of subjects you consider to constitute security. 10 The Broadening Security Agendas 1) Military Security - home or turf of traditional understanding of what constitute security. - the agenda for military security has been synonymous with “strategy” as a tool of statecraft. - securitization and constructivism are used to constitute military security. - they allows us to ask questions about what constitute the threat and how it is perceived. 2) Regime Security - Life in the developed world is far from indicative of that lived by most of the planet’s inhabitants: - The majority of people living in the developing world face a vast range of insecurities, - from half a million people dying each year from the use of light weapons to - 40,000 dying each day from hunger. - A profound disjuncture between the kinds of security enjoyed by a small group of developed nations and the kind of security environment inhabited by the majority of the world’s population. - Needs to understand the underlying causes of the developing world’s inherent insecurity and why it is that, far from being the provider of security, governing regimes become the main source of their peoples’ insecurity. 11 3) Societal Security - beyond a preoccupation with the state and military defense. - an alternative approach to the state, the individual is posited. - the notion of a collective of people becoming the thing to be secured. - In recent times, the term ‘ethnic’ has become a popular label for describing conflict between groups within states. - examining the dynamics behind those ethnic conflicts where “identity” lies at the conflict’s core. - focusing on non-military issues that can give rise to insecurity and thereby show how ambiguity in such seemingly non-threatening issues, such as education, can indeed become matters of great security concern. - the nexus between security and identity 4) Environmental Security - Since the 1990s, environmental change such as ozone depletion and global warming began to be thought of as a “new” security threat. - What makes environmental change a matter of security? - Humans are part of nature and dependent on ecosystem and the environment. - The environment is the essential support system on which all other human enterprises depend. - Without an inhabitable environment, discussions of all other referents are moot. 5) Economic Security - the connection between the economy and security. - Economic security should be distinguished from the term economic-security nexus. ① The economic-security nexus argument: A state’s economy and its access to resources are essential components in determining a state’s ability to protect itself in an anarchical self-help environment. - Case: China’s military build-up based on its rapidly growing economic power. ② However, the concept of economic security highlights that what is being secured is not just the economy but also its ability to provide prosperity in the future. - Economic security concerns promoting activities that enhance a state’s economic growth. - A case of economic security: East Asian Financial crisis of 1997-98. 12 Traditional and Non-Traditional Security Issues 1) Traditional: coercive diplomacy, the role of intelligence, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, defence trade 2) Non-Traditional: AIDS/HIV, transnational organised crime, children and war, poverty, hunger, religion, human rights, environmental change, women’s rights, etc. 13
