The word ‘security’ in international relations used to have only one meaning, the safety of a state from attack or political interference by another state. So a state needed military forces, a police force, a security (secret) service and perhaps membership of an alliance to guarantee its independence and freedom from potential threats from other states. It is in this sense that the Italian Armed Forces and security services, in cooperation with NATO forces and, in particular, US conventional and nuclear forces (the nuclear umbrella) provided Italy with ‘security’ during the Cold War period, and continue to provide it with all the advantages of an alliance based on collective security. Developments at the Euopean Defence Agency now offer Italy another parallel line of defence. Moreover, states often saw and see themselves as responsible (where possible and usually through diplomacy) for their citizens’ safety abroad and, to some extent, for the well-being of expatriate emigrant communities in other countries, and these are roles that have grown over time. Another significant change is that for modern developed economies the traditional concept of security has grown to include asymmetric threats (not necessarily coming from another state) and threats in other fields such as energy security, cyber-security and even trade security.
In the traditional
sphere of security a distinction should perhaps be made between threats to
security that could be posed by states (e.g. Iran’s nuclear development
programs and suspected nuclear arms ambitions, North Korea's nuclear arms and
rocket tests) which can be addressed through the UN and traditional diplomacy,
and the asymmetric threats posed by non-state transnational actors where the
threat is not so easily tied to a specific state or location (e.g. a
transnational terrorist group like Islamic State). The latter require
widespread, intense and continuous cooperation and monitoring by the
international community at the level of governments, police forces and security
services. There is also an obvious conflict here between a state’s duty to
ensure the security of its citizens and its legal and moral obligation to
respect international laws and norms regarding privacy and the human rights of
its own citizens, of those of other states and of those who are not officially
recognized as citizens of any state. Cyber security threats may come from other
states, or from non-state groups or individuals. Threats to energy security and
trade security may come from other states, non-state actors (e.g. pirates),
unsustainable competition for limited resources, natural disasters or simply a
mismanaged global economy.
However, today the
term ‘security’ can be interpreted in many ways and is being applied more and
more widely, mainly because we now think of security as relating to people
rather than simply to the state (compare the following ideas, national
security, international security and
human security). Of course, as mentioned above, states generally did accept
that they were responsible for trying to ensure the security of their citizens
abroad. An attack on the citizens of a state could have serious consequences
for the perpetrator in terms of diplomatic and popular reaction, and in terms
or possible material retaliation, sanctions, or even war (think of the First
World War, the sinking of the Lusitania and the death of American citizens, the
later adoption by Germany of unrestricted submarine warfare and the US entry
into the war).
In terms of the
wider use of the word ‘security’ today, one way of linking the various current
‘security’ concepts is simply to think of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the rights it sets out as belonging to all human beings. If human
beings possess such rights then it is the task of the international community,
the members of the UN to guarantee, to
secure, these rights. Thus, the concept of security now includes
institutions, systems and operations to safeguard these rights.
First, there is
the most basic human right, the right to life. Thus, the vast majority of UN
operations around the world are concerned with ‘security’ in terms of saving
lives and providing sustainable living conditions. An attempt by the UN to
mediate in order to prevent a conflict or to end a conflict between two
countries or between two groups within a country, peace-keeping, peace-building
and peace enforcement operations are all ways in which the UN, and thus the
international community, seeks to protect people from war and violence and save
lives, and promote their physical security. The same is true for UN attempts to
promote and support governance-building in a failed or failing state, for all
UN, NGO or single country emergency and humanitarian aid programs aimed at
providing food, water, shelter, basic necessities and health care, and for
longer term development programs to promote sustainable agricultural and
industrial development and promote more effective resource management. Viewed
in this way ‘sustainability’ simply means trying to guarantee security not only
for people today but for future generations.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
goes on to list other rights, civil rights – freedom from slavery, freedom from
arbitrary arrest, the right to a speedy and fair trial, freedom of speech,
freedom of association and freedom of the press, and the rights associated with
active participation in politics. This suggests that ‘security’ for the
citizens of a country means that individuals live in a functioning democracy,
under the rule of law as enforced by a democratically controlled police force
and judicial system. NATO, for example, exists as an alliance of countries of this kind, committed to guaranteeing
to its members the ‘security’ of these kinds of values and not simply security
from invasion. Moreover, issues such as human rights in China and, in
particular, the civil, political, cultural and religious liberties of ethnic
minorities such as Tibetans (Buddhists) and Uighurs (Moslems) and Chinese
citizens in general, obviously do affect relations between China and the West.
One can see this as Western concern to promote the security of basic rights in China,
and to prevent the Chinese political model (the one-party authoritarian state)
from spreading to other states as its economic influence grows along with its
support for non-democratic and sometimes repressive regimes in Africa. Among
these civil rights is freedom from ‘arbitrary interference with one’s privacy,
family, home or correspondence’. As already noted, with the introduction of
stronger anti-terrorist legislation such as the Patriot Act and the Homeland
Security Act in the US many civil rights groups are concerned that the need for
the state to provide its citizens with security against terrorist attacks has
led to the infringement of privacy rights through the monitoring of phones and
internet activity without ‘just cause’ (prior permission granted by a judge in
specific circumstances).
Questions relating
to the prosecution of the individuals responsible for humanitarian crimes,
atrocities, ethnic cleansing and genocide committed by groups or states are all
concerned with providing justice (reasserting and ‘securing’ this idea through
exemplary trials and sentences) after the framework of basic human rights has
broken down or been deliberately ignored. Obviously, because of the its
fundamental recognition of each member state’s sovereignty as regards its
domestic affairs, the UN and its affiliated agencies are often unable to
intervene effectively in such cases. As a result, these questions may become
the subject of disputes in international relations and ultimately the work of
the International Criminal Court in prosecuting individuals, or may never be
adequately addressed in an international context because a state is too
powerful and can block any legal action, or because a state does not belong to
the ICC, or does not agree to cooperate with it. Nevertheless, the ICC exists
in order to promote respect for human rights as a legal norm towards which all
states must work.
The UN Universal
Declaration of Human Rights also says everyone has a series of economic and social rights, such as the
right to health care, education, the right to a job, to earn money and to an
adequate standard of living (although it is not clear how the international
community can guarantee work!) and freedom from unsustainable low-wage economic
exploitation. Thus, there are UN welfare programs aimed at providing health and
education security and economic security in terms of sustainable development.
As we have seen, such programs, together with programs for environmental
protection, are aimed at promoting future human security in social and economic
terms. Another concept here is the right to own property and the security of
that ownership, a basic question in relation to civilians in failed states,
faced with armed bands, or where there is an absence of the rule of law and the
presence of criminal organizations or, more recently, the threats from piracy
or exploitative élites (where would-be businessmen and professionals cannot be
sure of keeping a reasonable amount of the money they make or the ownership of
the business they set up).
‘Security’ can be
similarly interpreted in terms of the need to guarantee the right to freedom of
movement, whether as a necessity (for refugees) or as an opportunity (for
migrants).
Questions relating
to women’s rights and the rights of children may be in terms of basic human
rights (protection from violence and slavery), civil rights (the same civil
rights as men) or social and economic rights (education, freedom from
exploitation in terms of labor and for women freedom from forced marriage and
forced child-bearing – the right to choose).
All of this is to
say that although the international community today seems to see ‘security’ in
terms of the fight against terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear, chemical
and biological arms, illegal trafficking in conventional arms, drugs, people
and organs, and the protection of information systems against cyber-attacks,
the term ‘security’ needs a much wider interpretation to be fully understood in
today’s world.
Exercise – Consider the following issues: women’s
rights in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Muslim world, freedom of the
press and the Kurdish question in Turkey, minority rights in Russia,
discrimination and the right to privacy of Muslims in Europe. These are all
issues that cannot be ignored at the international level and that may therefore
affect diplomatic relations and security issues in the broadest sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-terrorism_legislation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_governance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_security
Some Observations
Foreign policy and
domestic politics are no longer completely separate. This is very clear in the
EU but is also of growing importance within the international community as a whole,
within the UN and other international bodies or in bilateral relations.
120 years ago, the
sovereignty of the state was an absolute value. Enhancing the power of the
state and guaranteeing the state’s security were legitimate and often primary
goals of the state. Compare that with today. The IR environment has changed,
partly as a result of the much greater degree of globalized trade and technical
development, but also because of the education and information revolutions.
Ordinary people can monitor and participate in domestic and international
relations much more, and much more easily. As we have seen, they are themselves
also the subject of security questions, all those concerning the human
individual and many of these are best addressed or can only be addressed now
through cooperation at the international level.
Moreover, where
development has failed to take place in one state (and where the rule of law
collapses and there is widespread human suffering) this situation may endanger
first local regional security and eventually international security. So
military interventions are not purely for tangible national interests but also
for the promotion or maintenance of shared values also with regard to perceived future threats (NATO’s recent
operations). Security was previously thought of in terms of military and
economic strength, and borders were real and protected. Today security is
fundamentally dealt with through coordinated action on the basis of shared
values and concerns (e.g. Japanese foreign policy today compared with 80 years
ago) across borders and at many levels through many organizations (e.g. the
ILO, UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the IMF). Is it even possible today to
think of fighting and ‘winning’ a war in the traditional sense? Conventionally,
this meant defeating another state and imposing an advantageous settlement.
Perhaps war, at least for the West, is now usually a question of military
operations undertaken because of a perceived security threat, in the context of
a campaign to maintain public support at home and ‘win hearts and minds’ in the
country where the war is fought (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan). If so, perhaps the
UN, as currently constituted on the basis of sovereign states, is out of date
and even unreformable, since the subject of IR and broad security questions is
now often people rather than states.
The main problem
for the EU remains that of its future identity. Is it going to stay a group of
sovereign states or will it evolve into some kind of federal union? Shared foreign
policy, its latest objective, ultimately requires shared sovereignty. The Greek
financial crisis illustrates the problems for the EU at the internal level,
while on international questions the EU’s more powerful members often speak for
themselves and with conflicting voices. The EU’s effectiveness both in
guaranteeing economic security to its citizens and in helping to promote human
security abroad will ultimately depend on how much political unity it manages
to achieve.
Of course, not all
states are ready and willing to embrace these new values and this new version
of IR. Some still pursue Realpolitik to at least a significant degree, and
among these are both some of the world’s most powerful states (Russia, China,
and the US) and some of the world’s least democratic and least open states
(North Korea and Iran). Thus, some states which are members of the UN and have
signed the UN Charter do not actually share its values and may see it as a
Western organization trying to impose Western values. So currently IR is a mix
of the traditional goals and methods of foreign policy and diplomacy and the
new objectives and methods which are still evolving, but perhaps evolving too
slowly to keep pace with a changing world. International relations often runs
the risk of being an uneasy compromise between real idealism, wishful thinking
and harsh power politics, based sometimes on interventions, which may no longer
be determined simply by the material interests of nation states but by a mix of
conflicting values, and sometimes on a failure to intervene (Rwanda, Syria?).
The nation state alone is no longer able to resolve global problems through
traditional negotiations and Realpolitik, but a world government based on truly
shared values and with effective powers does not exist yet. So collective
security and human security remain difficult concepts, works in progress rather
than a given legally-enforceable framework for international relations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_security
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals
https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/minorities/pages/minoritiesindex.aspx (it says ‘….. measures
to secure the rights of persons belonging to minorities’).
https://www.who.int/health-topics/health-security/#tab=tab_1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_security
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_security
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_security
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/RightSocialSecurity/Pages/SocialSecurity.aspx
https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-security/lang--en/index.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_security
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld
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