On Security - Part I: Establishing the Inquiry

One of the subjects that I find particularly fascinating and pertinent to one's practical understanding of world politics, as well as critically important to our understanding of how the reality of our political world and its discourse are shaped, is how we conceptualize security. This is a subject about which my thinking continues to evolve, and which will likely be an issue that is returned to with some regularity in this blog.

Realists like Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer tell us that security is the central interest of the state. Others like Hans Morgenthau tell us that the central interest of the state is power. But even though this derives from human nature for Morgenthau, one finds in the different variations on realism the clear function that power serves - increasing the state's security. While the discussion about what is actually the central interest of the state is an interesting one, it is not the one that I focus on here. Rather, my focus is on what security is, and whose security this concept refers to.

Given realism's long-standing position as the dominant theoretical approach to international security, the answer to this question is fairly straight-forward. Security refers to National Security, or the physical safety of the state from military attack by another state (or perhaps non-state actors in the contemporary context). One can see the practical implications of this foundational conceptualization in the recent discourse about human rights practices within the context of the Global War on Terrorism. The idea that human rights standards must be waived or circumvented in the interest of national security reflects a value-ordering and an assumption about what security is and whose is most important.

Setting aside for the time being the claims about the tactical effectiveness of torture as a means for eliciting useful information in the so-called "ticking time bomb scenario" (a dubious argument, which distorts the evidence of the effectiveness of this technique as well as obscures its real purpose), the importance here is that the argument is based upon the assumption that the security of the state is of greater importance than that of the individual.

Perhaps this is true. But this is a position that merits debate, rather than one that can be assumed. Additionally, if one is to accept this proposition, one should also understand that this conclusion is the result of a successful process of what Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde refer to in Security: A New Framework for Analysis as securitization. Securitization is the process through which something or someone is framed as an existential threat, which justifies extraordinary measures by the threatened party.

If you are interested, you can view some commentary by Barry Buzan on the concept of securitization in an interview that he recently gave.

That the security of the state is paramount, and that it is defined in terms of traditional military threats would seem to make sense too, given that one can look over the course of history and find loss of life on a grand scale within the context of interstate warfare. Consider for instance, the tens (even hundreds) of millions of lives lost during the Twentieth Century in wars between states. Given that predatory states exist in the world, and seek to expand their power at the expense of others, we may in fact need to reify the security of the state over our own as a means of achieving our own individual security. After all, we cannot protect ourselves from such threats. The state is the only actor with such capacity.

But what if the state is the single largest threat to our individual security? Then what happens to the justification for reifying national security over our own? In fact, R. J. Rummel finds in Death by Government that four times as many people were killed during the Twentieth Century in cases of what he calls democide by their own states than in organized warfare between states. And this figure actually under-estimates the deaths at the hands of one's own government to a significant degree, given that it is restricted to only one type of state violence. It therefore misses many people killed by their governments, but outside of the context of systematic mass murders.

It seems to me then, that we have at least two reasons to consider the basic assumption that state security must be prioritized over that of the individual suspect. First, the justification above is actually based upon a philosophical premise that the importance of state security rests on its duty and ability to protect that of individuals. Thus, it is actually individual security that should be considered supreme, and state security considered to be a means toward achieving that end. Second, there is empirical evidence that the state - in many cases - does not in fact satisfy this duty (or perhaps in cases of failed states, cannot). In fact, it appears to be the single largest threat to the security of its people. Therefore, one is compelled to question the validity of assuming up front that the security of the state should always be considered ahead of the security of other actors.

The purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive argument against the importance of state security. In fact, I would not even agree with such an general argument. Rather, it is to suggest that our understanding of security should be much broader than it traditionally has been. At very least, the points made above provide a starting point for a parallel concern with the value of individual, or human security. Arguments that are premised upon the unquestioned supremacy of state security should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Nor do I claim that these ideas are entirely novel. They are shaped by a number of important scholars. Particularly prominant here are those that have already been mentioned as well as my recent reading of Bill McSweeney's Security, Identity, and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations.