Non Military Issues As Legitimate Security Concerns example essay topic

In the wake of the Cold War, a host of what have been loosely termed "new security" challenges have become the focus of growing concern worldwide. These challenges have defined changed priorities forcing the reconsideration of the traditional concept of security that is no longer focused on a bipolar world, but rather accounts for a spectrum of challenges that have a demonstrated capacity to threaten the political, economic, and strategic interests of the state. The new challenges typically comprise such things as international terrorism, ethnic strife, environmental degradation, drug trafficking, population growth, uncontrolled migration, and organized crime. While none of these issues could be considered novel, under a traditional (realist) doctrine focused almost entirely on external threats to the state from other states, their treatment as security issues constitute something of a new development. It remains unclear, however, whether the changing priorities should be viewed as representing substantive changes in the international system sufficient to be termed a "new agenda", or if they are merely adjustments in the traditional model of state security and national interest. This analysis is intended to clarify this issue by providing some background on the contemporary debates about security, specifically addressing modern concerns over migration, drugs, and HIV / AIDS in order to conclude that the "new agenda" is not really new, and could more aptly be described as an evolution of the paradigm of international security.

In attempting to evaluate the existence of a "new" international security agenda, a key preliminary task is defining what is meant by security. Traditionally, security has been analysed from a Western historical perspective, and was primarily focused on the concerns of the particular type of state outlined in the Treaty of Westphalia (Ay oob, 1995). From this viewpoint, the search for security is primarily a matter of deterring and defending against foreign coercion, attack, or invasion through the maintenance of adequate military defences. While on most issues presented as opposing viewpoints, both realism and liberalism are essentially conservative doctrines inclined towards policies of war avoidance above concerns internal to the state. A bit further down the line though, the two theories part company, with liberalism and notions of collective security in the international community generally being overshadowed by realism's notion of sovereign states acting in a decentralised anarchic system, one in which conflict is endemic and security is managed by power-seeking and self-help.

Perpetual peace is impossible; at best there can be stability gained through effective management of alliances intended to counterbalance hegemony. Realist security focuses on war, the ability to fight wars, and the external threats to the state which, might give rise to them (Pettiford and Curley, 1999). Over the course of time, the realist security paradigm has been subjected to ongoing criticism as being too one-dimensional and short-sighted (Romm, 1993). As the cold war wound down and the threat of foreign attack diminished, arguments for a broader, more comprehensive approach to security policy resurfaced and began to attract attention and support. There are specific differences that distinguish these more recent views from earlier ones which were largely ignored; the argument is no longer essentially about widening he focus of security policy to include non-military threats. Rather, the new thinking on security questions not only the primacy of military threats but also the place of the nation-state as the focus of security policy.

Although adherents to the realist security paradigm recognize that the end of the cold war has brought relief from the traditional dominant source of insecurity - namely superpower nuclear conflict - the nature of international society has not fundamentally changed in their view. The protection of the state, its territory, citizens, and vital interests from the potentially hostile intentions of others remains just as relevant today as before. Thus, the absence of major interstate confrontation or conflict is seen by some as just a temporary phase in a long-standing pattern of peace and conflict in world affairs (Mears heimer 1992; Waltz 1993). The alternative security paradigm that is emerging has its roots in the liberal school and view of the world as increasingly shaped by order and cooperation rather than anarchy and conflict (Rothschild, 1995).

In particular, the incidence of interstate aggression is assessed to have declined to the point where it is now more the exception that the rule of global society. As a consequence, the traditional preoccupation with defending the nation-state from the large-scale attacks of others is viewed as anachronistic, and possibly wasteful and potentially provocative (Stares, 1998). Some ascribe this trend to the possibility that the utility of war as a rational instrument of statecraft is declining. The combination of the greater destructiveness of modern military technology, the growing public intolerance to even small military casualties (Luttwak, 1995), and the increasing interdependence of the international economy that not only constrains the freedom to go to war but also makes its prosecution immensely counterproductive (Rosecrance, 1986) is seen to have made the costs of war unacceptably high. The lessened probability of interstate warfare is not the same as believing that the incidence of conflict and violence in the world has declined, however. Internal or civil conflict remains an endemic feature of many areas.

It is a problem that some believe may grow worse in the future as a result of he negative effects of resource scarcity and environmental degradation on the stability of communities, particularly those in the developing world (Myers 1993; Kaplan 1994) Such challenges have a demonstrated capacity to threaten the political, economic, and strategic interests of the state as well as human security - defined by the UN as safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease, and repression. HIV / AIDS rated only a passing mention in the analyses of threats to international security immediately following the Cold War (DuPont, 2001). Despite overwhelming evidence that the disease was set to devastate sub-Saharan Africa and was spreading rapidly across the globe, defence and foreign policy practitioners tended to regard HIV / AIDS as a bio-medical rather than a security problem, reflecting lingering realist preoccupations with causes and consequences of military conflicts between states. However, as the concept of international security is undergoing a shift in focus towards non-military challenges, HIV / AIDS has quickly become a topic of grave concern and there is growing awareness of the circular relationship between HIV / AIDS and security. As a result, AIDS was the first health issue ever to be addressed by the UN Security Council, which admitted that "post-Cold War security is about more than guns and bombs and the balance of power" (Holbrook, 2000). The disease is a root cause of instability and insecurity, but it is also a by-product of poverty, conflict, and weak states with a capacity to foster ethnic conflict, weaken social structures, and destabilize countries.

HIV / AIDS flourishes in conditions that are conducive to war and conflict. If HIV continues to proliferate, the virus will threaten the national security interests of afflicted states, the region's collective security interests, and the lives of millions of people. States weakened by HIV / AIDS could become significant sources of regional instability - creating anxieties that they may facilitate the spread of disease, drugs, and organized crime into neighbouring countries. The transmission of HIV / AIDS is greatly facilitated in situations of instability and conflict through risk-taking behavior found in both regular and irregular security forces. Peacetime infection rates among military populations is on average 2-5 times higher than among civilians. During conflicts, the risk of infection soars dramatically, sometimes by as much as 100 times the civilian average (Moody and Frye, 2000).

Thus, although they have traditionally played a positive role in slowing HIV transmission and mitigating the disease's effects through education and preventive health care, military and police forces can also be important vectors in the spread of AIDS within their own countries and internationally. (DuPont, 2001). Although not all countries will be equally affected, the available evidence suggests that HIV / AIDS will rival war as a major cause of death, impoverishment, and instability in the 21st century. HIV / AIDS is becoming a significant cause of human and state insecurity, flourishing in and reinforcing conditions that can lead to war, social violence, humanitarian emergencies and economic collapse. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain has erased the physical barriers between European nations. The removal of the Curtain was accompanied by changes and instability characterized by ethnic rivalries, nationalist disputes, and economic hardship, all in conjunction with the ending of the Cold War.

All resulted in population movements from East to West Europe. In 1989 alone, 1.2 million people left the former Western Pact states to live in Western Europe. In 1991, it was estimated that this number had increased to 2.5 million people, and all indications are that the trend is continuing to intensify (Bearman, 1991). Civil war, economic decline, environmental catastrophe and many other factors have resulted in population displacements from the south to the north (Lo escher).

The south-north migration can be seen in the steep rise of asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants to the west from the Third World (Bearman). The largest and most dramatic population movements have been the millions of refugees and displaced people within the developing world. Political unrest, social upheaval, economic dislocation and ecological disaster have all contributed to the movement of people across national frontiers from one 'southern state' to another (Eber stadt, 1991). Mass population movements are increasingly drawing the attention of policy makers because they create instability, generate interstate tension, and threaten international security.

South Africa, hosting upwards of eight million illegal immigrants, is in interesting case in point. In 1994, it cost the South African taxpayer R 1,985 million to host the illegal alien population. In addition, there exists a causal link between illegal immigrants and the spread of infectious diseases like AIDS; police sources have also noted that almost fifteen percent of all crimes within the borders of South Africa involve illegal immigrants, to include gun running, prostitution, money-laundering, murder, and drug trafficking (Solomon, 1996). Worldwide, the value of illegal trading in drugs may be as high as US $500 billion per annum and is increasing its reach at an alarming rate. (Romm, 1993). The domestic toll from drug addiction is astounding, including loss of productivity, soaring health costs, a sharp rise in drug-related crimes, and acceleration of the spread of AIDS through the use of contaminated needles.

But drugs are not simply a social phenomenon; they have wider political and security implications. For instance, in Latin America there is an intimate relationship between the narcotraficantes (drug traffickers) and leftist revolutionary groups (Romm). Unfortunately, this is not an isolated scenario; it is known that drugs have been the main source of funds for armed movements from the Middle East to Sri Lanka. Drug trafficking can also adversely affect the relationship between states. For example, one of the primary reasons cited for the 1989 invasion of Panama by the U.S. was that its administration as allegedly allowing the country to serve as a conduit for drugs en route to the U.S. A little more recently, and of somewhat ironic interest, Ross Perot attacked the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), arguing that the eradication of restrictions on the free access of goods between Mexico and the U. S would allow drug traffickers greater freedom to distribute their 'poisons' in the U.S. (Kumar, 1995). Without going into the validity of his case against NAFTA, I believe Mr. Perot illustrates the point that there is most certainly a 'global' interest involved in drug trafficking; the amounts of money involved for participants, coupled with the deleterious effects on its victims, most assuredly present a threat to international security.

On the basis of these issues (among others including broader environmental concerns, organized crime, and terrorism), a concept of "human" security has been proposed that shifts the traditional imperatives of security policy away from defending the nation-state from military threats to protecting the planet's ecosystem and the welfare of its citizens (UN Development Program 1994; Commission on Global Governance 1995). In effect, "states become the means not the ends of security: (Booth and Vale 1994,293). The concept of human security represents, therefore, both a horizontal extension of the parameters of security policy to include an even larger set of problems, such as poverty, epidemics, political injustice, natural disasters, crime, social discrimination, and unemployment, as well as a vertical extension of the traditional object of security policy above and below the level of the state (Booth and Vale; Rothschild). This expansion of the domain of security policy in turn necessitates changes in the traditional approaches to the issue, and places security squarely in the middle of the process of globalisation.

Methods of cooperative security are posited for the regulation of military expenditures and to reduce the residual threat of interstate conflict, with the ancillary benefit of freeing up resources for more pressing social problems. Collective security mechanisms can strengthen the capacity for preventive diplomacy. Various global public policy regimes have also been proposed that commit states and NGOs to commonly accepted behavioural norms and rules (Stares 1998). Human security is now a commonly used term by a number of security experts to stress that in a global age the life of the individual, family, and community are all important. The concept has even been officially adopted by Japan, Norway, and Canada. Canada's Foreign Minister Lloyd Ax worthy asserted that the basic unit of security is no longer the state but human need; while I don't feel this is necessarily accurate, it illustrates that components of the state are increasingly important.

Globalisation has also forced governments to re conceptualize security, requiring preventive action to reduce risks to human safety and human lives. As John Steinbrenner points out", one of the most fundamental implications of globalisation is the shift in the balance of reliance in security policy from deterrence to reassurance and from active confrontation to cooperative agreement" (2000, p. 146). He goes on to point out that one of the major implications of this shift is that the emerging problems of security are no longer primarily concerned with the defence of territory, but with the promotion and defence of legal norms. Virtually every state in the world, for example, now accepts the concept of human rights, and to that extent is now legally accountable for any abuses. The international regime is now responsible for policing legal regimes, treaties, conventions, and protocols involving issues as diverse as weapons proliferation, arms control, human rights, and humanitarian and environmental law. Those who still see security in essentially traditional terms do not share such views.

Some flatly refuse to consider non-military issues as legitimate security concerns (Walt 1991) while still others see the recasting of some issues - such as environmental and drug-related problems - as security threats constituting little more than a ploy to attract more public attention and with it resources to their respective causes (Levy 1995). Buz an is usually credited with having started the security debate rolling by arguing that " a notion of security bound to the level of individual states and military issues is inherently inadequate" and that "the concept of security is, in itself, a more versatile, penetrating and useful way to approach the study of international relations than either power or peace" (1991, pp. 3-6) By and large, it is apparent that non-traditional security concerns are attracting more attention around the world. There is also an increasing inclination in many parts of the world to view their security in broader, more comprehensive terms than has typically been the case. There is general acceptance that some of the most challenging non-traditional security concerns require greater international cooperation if they are to be tackled successfully. However, it is also apparent that in most parts of the world there has been no "revolution" in security affairs, nor does one appear to be imminent. In general, traditional (state-centric) security concerns continue to exert a powerful influence in the setting of priorities and the allocation of resources.

"Traditional" however, does not necessarily mean a preoccupation with external military threats. At the same time, it appears that policy makers continue to adhere to realist conceptions of the international system and in particular the central place of the nation-state as the primary object and instrument of security. "New" security threats remain marginal or secondary to what are essentially traditional military security concerns, thus some of the dominant security concerns in recent years have included the expansion of NATO, containment of Iraq and Iran, and halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction over reformation efforts aimed at combating HIV / AIDS, halting illegal migration, or combating drug trafficking. Essentially, my argument stems from the idea that the "new agenda" in international security is more a re-thinking of the concept rather than a re-creation of the idea, and is therefore not so much new as it is evolving. HIV / AIDS, migration, and drugs clearly all have an impact on international security, but it is my contention that the simple fact that they have an impact does not automatically create an entirely new agenda. The tendency to treat many of the new security threats as distinct phenomena, albeit within a larger set of non-military or non-traditional security concerns, frequently ignores the complex cause-and-effect relationship that can exist among them.

For example, terrorism, organized crime, migration, drug trafficking, and HIV / AIDS can all be linked to one another, although the primacy of the relationship is often in doubt. Critical security theory, abstracted from the realist tradition and theorists like Hedley Bull, is altering the predominant security paradigm to require the effective management and control of political and economic crises rather than solely emphasizing military issues (1995). Bull questioned the legitimacy of an international order, which was based on the respect for state sovereignty without a corresponding respect for human rights and distributive justice, asserting that these issues were vital to international order and security. The important point to take away from this analysis is that simply because the realist agenda has predominated policy making in post-Cold War history, it is not the end-all-be-all of the international security paradigm, and its tenets are not set in stone.

HIV / AIDS, migration, and drugs formulate nothing more than a shift in focus for an agenda that is evolving to meet the needs of a globalised world in which the issues of international security are no longer clearly divided or easily defined.