Security in the Contemporary World

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Political Science Class XII (Contemporary World Politics), Chapter 5.

Safe from what, and safe for whom?

If someone snatches a bag on your street, you have been robbed. Has your security been threatened? And if two countries disagree over a trade rule, is that a security problem for either? This chapter begins with these two questions because the answer to "what is security?" decides everything else: what governments spend on, what armies are for, and who gets protected first.

What is security?

Security means freedom from threats. But not every threat counts. A threat becomes a security threat only when it endangers core values and is so severe that those values would be damaged beyond repair if nothing is done. If every danger were called a security issue, the world would look like one giant emergency and the idea would lose its meaning.

Then comes a harder question: whose core values? Those of the country as a whole, or of ordinary women and men in the street? Governments do not always share the citizen's idea of what is core. This opens the way to the two big families of ideas in the chapter.

Traditional security: the threat from outside

In the traditional view, the gravest danger is military action from another country, because it threatens a nation's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. War does not only target soldiers. Ordinary men and women are made targets too, sometimes to break their support for the war.

A government facing a threat of war has three basic choices.

Remember the difference this way: deterrence works before war, defence works during war.

Governments also watch the balance of power, which means the relative strength of their neighbours and rivals. They build military, economic and technological power because economic and technological strength is the base of military strength.

Alliances are coalitions of states that coordinate their actions to deter or defend against military attack. They are usually formalised in treaties and are based on national interests, so they can change when interests change. The textbook's example is the US backing Islamic militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, then attacking such groups after the 11 September 2001 attacks led by Al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden.

Why does each country look after its own defence? In world politics there is no acknowledged central authority above states, which is why the international system is called a rather brutal arena. The UN has authority only to the extent that its members allow it and obey it.

Traditional security: the threat from inside

After World War II the US, the USSR and powerful Western European countries felt secure inside their borders and looked outwards. Some European powers still worried about violence in their colonies, such as the French in Vietnam in the 1950s and the British in Kenya in the 1950s and early 1960s. For the newly independent states of Asia and Africa the position was different: they faced both external threats from neighbours and internal threats from separatist movements. They often feared their neighbours more than the superpowers.

Sometimes external and internal threats merge, for example when a neighbour instigates a separatist movement.

Cooperating even among rivals

Even traditional security leaves room for cooperation. There are limits on the ends of war (self-defence or stopping genocide) and the means (sparing non-combatants, the unarmed and the surrendering, and avoiding excessive violence). Force is to be used only after all alternatives have failed.

Three tools help rivals avoid or limit war, and CUET loves to ask which is which.

The superpowers did not want to give up nuclear weapons, the third type of weapon of mass destruction, so they chose arms control.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: learn BWC with 1972, NPT with 1968 and CWC with 1997, as in the table. In reality: a treaty has several dates. The CWC text was adopted in 1992 and came into force in 1997, and the BWC opened for signature in 1972 and entered into force later. If a question gives two different years for the same treaty, check whether it means adoption or entry into force.

Pause and predict: The NPT is often described as a step towards a world without nuclear weapons. Is it a disarmament treaty or an arms control treaty?

Check your answer: Arms control. Disarmament means giving weapons up, as with the BWC and CWC. The NPT froze the club of nuclear states at those who had tested before 1967 and denied the right to others, but it did not abolish any nuclear weapon.

Non-traditional security: when the referent changes

Non-traditional notions move the referent from the state to individuals, communities and all of humankind, which is why we speak of human security and global security. Protecting citizens from foreign attack may be necessary for human security, but it is not enough: over the last century, more people have been killed by their own governments than by foreign armies.

Two views. For the exam: the narrow view of human security, associated with Kofi Annan, is the protection of communities and individuals from internal violence. Another reading: the broad view adds hunger, disease and natural disasters, because these kill far more people than war, genocide and terrorism combined. The broadest idea joins freedom from want and freedom from fear, which is also described as economic security and the end of threats to human dignity.

Global security emerged in the 1990s, in response to threats like global warming, international terrorism, AIDS and bird flu that no country can handle alone. In some situations one country bears the brunt. The textbook's example: a sea level rise of 1.5 to 2.0 metres would flood 20 per cent of Bangladesh, inundate most of the Maldives and threaten nearly half of Thailand's population.

The new sources of threat

Human rights and intervention. Cases such as Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the killings by the Indonesian military in East Timor raised a sharp debate about whether the UN should intervene when a government violates rights.

Two views. For the exam: there is no agreement on when outsiders should intervene. Another reading: one side stresses that rights are universal and the international community must act when they are violated. The other stresses the sovereignty of states. The textbook presents the question as open.

Three words that are often mixed up:

States are expected to take in refugees, but not migrants. The world map of refugees overlaps almost exactly with the map of conflicts: in the 1990s, all but three of 60 refugee flows coincided with an internal armed conflict.

Pause and predict: A family is forced out of their village by floods and moves to a camp in a district in their own country. Are they refugees?

Check your answer: No. They are internally displaced, because they stayed within national borders. Refugees cross borders.

When is something a security issue?

The test is whether the issue threatens the very existence of the thing being protected. The textbook gives three examples: the Maldives faces a threat to its territory from global warming, one in six adults in Southern Africa has HIV-AIDS (one in three in Botswana, the worst case), and in 1994 nearly five lakh Tutsis were killed by the rival Hutus in a matter of weeks. Without this test, everything could become a security issue and the concept would collapse.

Cooperative security

Most non-traditional threats call for cooperation, not confrontation. Cooperation can be bilateral, regional, continental or global. It involves international organisations (UN, WHO, World Bank, IMF), NGOs (Amnesty International, the Red Cross), companies and individuals such as Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela. Force is a last resort, and works best when sanctioned and applied by the international community together, not by one country alone.

India's security strategy

India's approach has four parts, and the exam usually asks you to match each part to its example.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Contemporary Centres of Power explains the regional blocs and powers behind many of the alliances discussed here.
• Same theme: International Organisations covers the UN and the IAEA, key players in arms control and cooperative security.
• Next: Environment and Natural Resources takes global warming and the Kyoto Protocol further.
• India link: India's External Relations covers the wars with China and Pakistan and the nuclear tests in detail.