Abstract
It is probably true to say that ‘security’ is one of the most commonly used words in the English language today. Certainly in the realm of international relations, debates about the meaning and scope of security feature prominently in the academic literature of the 1990s in much the same way as deterrence dominated the agenda of the 1950s and 1960s, interdependence that of the 1970s, and peace, or peace studies, that of the 1980s. Given the widespread penetration and usage of the concept, one would imagine that there would be a correspondingly widespread understanding and consensus about what security means. In fact, the opposite is the case. Security, or national security as it is most commonly known, is arguably one of the least understood and most contested concepts to enter the lexicon and discourse of international relations. This ambiguity, it should be noted, is not confined to the modern era. In the early 1960s, the British historian, Michael Howard, bemoaned ‘the appallingly crude conceptual standards’1 which applied to national security, while a decade earlier, the American academic, Arnold Wolfers, thought that the concept might ‘not have any precise meaning at all’.2 Others have compared the difficulty of defining national security with attempting to encapsulate a human emotion like anger — it is an ‘uncertain quality: it is relative not absolute: it is largely subjective and takes countless forms’.3 It is instructive to analyse why security has proved to be such an elusive concept, because the answer to this question sheds light on the contentious and important issue of how security should be perceived in the world of the 1990s and beyond.
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Notes
Michael Howard, ‘Military Power and International Order’, International Affairs, vol. 40, no. 3, 1964, p.407.
Arnold Wolfers, ‘National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol’, Political Science Quarterly, vol. LXVII, no. 4, December 1952, p.481.
Robert Osgood cited in E. Azar and Chung In Moon (eds), National Security in the Third World: The Management of Internal and External Threats, (University Press, Cambridge, 1988), p.279.
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, (Macmillan Press, Melbourne, 1977), p.18.
Barry Buzan lists over a dozen definitions of security in his authoritative book on international security studies. See Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, (Wheatsheaf Books, Sussex, 1983), pp.16–17.
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1994, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994), pp.22–3.
Joseph A. Camilleri, ‘Security: Old Dilemmas and New Challenges in the Post-Cold War Environment’, Geojournal, vol. 34, no. 2, October 1994, p.131.
See, for example, The Human Development Report 1994, p.22, and former Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Senator Gareth Evans in ‘Cooperative Security and Intra State Conflict’, Foreign Policy, no. 96, Fall 1994, pp.6–11. Mel Gurtov uses the term ‘global humanism’ as an alternative perspective of international relations which focuses on ‘global human needs’. Mel Gurtov, Global Politics In The Human Interest, (Lynne Reinner Publishers, Boulder, Colorado, 1991), p.4.
Richard Ullman, ‘Redefining Security’, International Security, vol .8, no. 1, Summer 1983, p.133.
See Kal Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory, (Allen and Unwin, Boston, 1985) chapter 2, for a succinct analysis of post-Westphalian paradigms of international relations.
Anarchy, in the sense that there is no supranational body or organisation which can impose its will over the state. Sovereign, in the sense that national governments exercise exclusive jurisdiction ‘over all matters, foreign and domestic, affecting the people within its boundaries.’ See Kenneth Waltz, ‘Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory’, Journal of International Affairs, Summer 1990, p.29, and Robert Scalapino in Bunn Nagara and Balakrishnan(eds), The Making of a Security Community in the Asia-Pacific, Proceedings of the Seventh Asia-Pacific Roundtable, Kuala Lumpur, June 6–9, 1993, Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia, 1994, p.45.
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, (Alfred Knopf, New York, 5th edition, 1973), p.5.
There is a considerable degree of ambiguity associated with the use of the term balance-of-power, but it normally connotes the distribution of power among states in a zero-sum sense. That is, the accretion of power by one state, or group of states, brings about a proportional decrease in the power of others. See Richard Betts, ‘Wealth, Power and Instability’, International Security, vol. 18, no. 3, Winter 1993/94, p.35, and Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, p.24.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence, (Scott, Foresman and Company, Glenview, Illinois, 1989), pp.24–5.
There is no agreed definition of Common Security, but a comprehensive summation of its features can be found in Geoffrey Wiseman, ‘Common Security in the Asia-Pacific Region’, The Pacific Review, vol. 5, no. 1, 1989, pp.42–3, which remains the best analysis of the concept.
Gareth Evans, Cooperating for Peace: The Global Agenda for the 1990s and Beyond, (Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, NSW, 1993), p.15.
Muthiah Alagappa, ‘Comprehensive Security: Interpretations in ASEAN Countries’ in Robert Scalapino, et al. (eds), Asian Security Issues: Regional and Global, (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1988), p.55.
See Charles A. Beard, The Idea of National Interest: An Analytical Study in American Foreign Policy, (Macmillan, New York, 1934).
Kennedy focuses on the correlation between the productive and revenue-raising capacity of states and their military power. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall Of The Great Powers, (Fontana Press, London, 1989), p.xvi. Tai Ming Cheung’s otherwise excellent analysis of the relationship between economics and security in China is another case in point.
Tai Ming Cheung, ‘The Interaction Between Economics and Security for China’s External Relations’, in Christopher Twomey and Susan Shirk (eds), Power and Prosperity: Economic and Security Linkages in Asia-Pacific, (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1996), particularly p.119.
Richard Rosencrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World, (Basic Books, New York, 1986), pp.24–5. There is an opposing view, in which ‘protectionism and other beggar-thy-neighbour policies are seen as actually contributing to war and conflict’. The critical question is whether the web of expanding economic ties and dynamic economic growth will create a more stable security environment, or will new lines of fracture and cleavage develop which will exacerbate existing tensions and ‘define new lines of conflict?’. Zysman and Borrus, in Twomey and Shirk, Power and Prosperity Economics and Security Linkages in Asia-Pacific, p.77.
See also Paul Dibb, ‘Towards a New Balance of Power in Asia’, Adelphi Paper 295, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Oxford University Press, 1995, p.20. There is a third view — that there is no direct relationship between war and trade at all.
Edward Mansfield, Power, Trade and War, (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1994), pp.124 and 121.
See Richard Higgott, The Evolving World Economy: Some Alternative Security Questions for Australia, (Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 51, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 1989).
One of the earliest to consider the security aspects of environmental degradation was Richard Ullman. Other significant treatments of the subject include Jessica Tuchman Matthews, ‘Redefining Security’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 68, no. 2, Spring 1989; Michael Renner, National Security: The Economic and Environmental Dimensions, Worldwatch Paper No. 89, (Washington, D.C., Worldwatch Institute, 1989); and Norman Meyers, ‘Environmental Security’, Foreign Policy, no. 74, Spring 1989.
Robert Kaplan, ‘The Coming Anarchy’, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994. This article has become mandatory reading for national security staff in the Clinton Administration.
Ibid., p. 60. For a thought-provoking analysis on the probability of food scarcity in China, see Lester Brown, Who Will Feed China, (Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series, Earthscan Publications, London, 1995).
See also Vaclav Smil, China’s Environmental Crisis: An Inquiry into the Limits of National Development, (M.E. Sharp, Armonk, New York, 1993).
Noting that environmentally induced conflicts are likely to be more pervasive and acute in developing countries because of their greater political, social and economic vulnerabilities, Homer-Dixon predicts that environmental pressures, either singly or in concert, will have four ‘causally interrelated social effects’, which will lead to ‘scarcity disputes between countries, clashes between ethnic groups, and civil strife and insurgency’. The four main social effects nominated by Homer-Dixon are ‘reduced agricultural production, economic decline, population displacement, and disruption of regular and legitimized social relations’. See Thomas Homer-Dixon, ‘On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict’, International Security, vol. 16, no. 2, Fall 1991, p.78.
Myron Weiner, ‘Security, Stability and International Migration’, International Security, vol. 17, no. 3, Winter 1992/93, p.91.
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Senator Gareth Evans, Australia’s Regional Security, Ministerial statement, December 1989, p.35.
James Woolsey, ‘Global Organized Crime: Threats to U.S. and International Security’, in Linnea P. Raine and Frank J. Ciluffo (eds), Global Organized Crime: The New Empire of Evil, (The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C., 1994), p.137.
See John McFarlane, ‘Transnational Crime and Australian National Security’, paper presented to the conference on Crime and Australian National Security, Australian Defence Force Academy, 1 December 1995, pp.5–6.
Jim Richardson, ‘Asia-Pacific Security: What Are the Real Dangers?’, in Coral Bell (ed.), Nation, Region And Context, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 112, (Strategic and Defence Study Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 1995), p.101.
Henry Kissinger, ‘A New National Partnership’, Speech by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger at Los Angeles, 24 January 1975, cited in Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence, p.3.
Gwyn Prins (ed.), Threats Without Enemies: Facing Environmental Insecurity (Earthscan, London, 1993).
Mark Sommer, ‘Non-military factors bring new meaning to art of spying’, The Jakarta Post, 15 January 1996, p.5.
Simon Dalby, ‘Security, Intelligence, the National Interest and the Global Environment’, Intelligence and National Security, vol. 10, no. 4, October 1995, p.191.
Most notably, Martin van Creveld in his book The Transformation of War, (The Free Press, New York, 1991)
Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century, (Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1993).
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Dupont, A. (1997). New Dimensions of Security. In: Roy, D. (eds) The New Security Agenda in the Asia-Pacific Region. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25701-0_4
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