Security in the Contemporary World
1. Chapter Overview
2. What is Security?
- Those who study security say only things that threaten ‘core values’ count as security threats.
- The challenge is determining: Whose core values? How intense must the threat be to qualify?
- Security is a ‘slippery idea’ — different societies at different times have different conceptions of it.
- Broadly, security notions fall into two types: Traditional and Non-Traditional.
3. Traditional Security — External Threats
🎯 Four Components of Traditional Security Policy
1. Deterrence
Preventing war by threatening to raise the costs of attack to an unacceptable level. Making a potential aggressor believe that attacking would cost more than any possible gain.
2. Defence
Limiting or ending war when it actually breaks out — denying the attacking country its objectives and turning back or defeating the attacking forces. Security policy is concerned with both preventing war (deterrence) and limiting war (defence).
3. Balance of Power
Countries monitor the power of neighbouring states to assess future threats. A powerful neighbour is a potential threat — even without an obvious hostile intention. States work hard to maintain a favourable balance by building military, economic, and technological power.
4. Alliance Building
An alliance is a coalition of states that coordinate their actions to deter or defend against military attack. Alliances are formalised in written treaties and based on national interests — which means they can change when interests change. Example: The US backed Islamic militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, but later attacked them after 9/11 (2001).
4. Traditional Security — Internal Threats
🇪🇺 Western Countries (Post-WWII)
- Internal security was largely assured after 1945 — US and Soviet Union expected peace within borders
- Western European countries faced no serious threats from internal groups
- Focus was primarily on external threats — the Cold War standoff
🌍 Newly-Independent Countries (Asia/Africa)
- Faced both external (neighbour conflicts) and internal threats (separatist movements)
- External and internal threats often merged — neighbours instigating internal separatist movements
- Internal wars now make up more than 95% of all armed conflicts worldwide
- Between 1946–1991, there was a twelve-fold rise in civil wars — the greatest jump in 200 years
5. Traditional Security and Cooperation
📋 Accepted Principles (Just War)
- Countries should go to war only for the right reasons — primarily self-defence or to protect others from genocide.
- War must be limited in terms of means — armies must avoid killing non-combatants, unarmed persons, or those who have surrendered.
- Force must be used only after all alternatives have failed.
🔒 Three Forms of Cooperative Security (Traditional)
Disarmament
All states give up certain types of weapons entirely. Example: BWC (1972) — banned biological weapons; CWC (1997) — banned chemical weapons. Both included all great powers.
Arms Control
Regulates the acquisition or development of weapons without banning them outright. Examples: ABM Treaty (1972); SALT II; START; NPT (1968) — allowed countries that tested nuclear weapons before 1967 to keep them; others had to give up the right to acquire them.
Confidence Building Measures (CBMs)
Countries share information about their military intentions, plans, and force deployments with rivals. Designed to ensure that rivals do not go to war through misunderstanding or misperception.
6. Non-Traditional Notions of Security
👤 Human Security
- About the protection of people more than the protection of states.
- Secure states do not automatically mean secure peoples — in the last 100 years, more people have been killed by their own governments than by foreign armies.
- Narrow concept (Kofi Annan): focuses on violent threats — “protection of communities and individuals from internal violence.”
- Broad concept: includes hunger, disease, and natural disasters (which kill far more people than war, genocide, and terrorism combined). Also encompasses economic security and threats to human dignity — summarised as “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear”.
🌐 Global Security
7. New Sources of Threats to Security
🔥 Terrorism
Political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately. International terrorism involves citizens or territory of more than one country. Terrorist groups seek to change a political condition by force or threat of force; civilian targets are chosen to terrorise the public. Since 9/11 (2001), international attention to terrorism increased dramatically, though terrorism itself is not new.
⚖️ Human Rights Violations
Three types: (1) Political rights (freedom of speech/assembly); (2) Economic and social rights; (3) Rights of colonised/ethnic/indigenous minorities. Developments like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the Rwanda genocide, and East Timor killings raised debate on whether the UN should intervene to stop human rights abuses.
💸 Global Poverty
World population growing rapidly — half the growth in just 6 countries (India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia). Rich-poor gap widens: high income + low population growth → richer; low income + high population growth → poorer. Poverty drives migration, creating political frictions. Most of the world’s armed conflicts occur in sub-Saharan Africa — also the world’s poorest region.
🏃 Refugees and Migration
International law distinguishes: migrants (voluntary) vs refugees (fleeing war/disaster/persecution — states must generally accept them). Those who flee within their own country are internally displaced people — e.g., Kashmiri Pandits who fled violence in the Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s. From 1990–95, 70 states fought 93 wars killing ~55 lakh people, generating millions of refugees.
🦠 Health Epidemics
HIV-AIDS, bird flu, SARS, Corona, Ebola have spread rapidly across borders through migration, business, and tourism. By 2003, ~4 crore people were infected with HIV-AIDS worldwide (two-thirds in Africa). Old diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera have mutated into drug-resistant forms. One country’s failure to contain disease affects others — emphasising the need for international cooperation.
🌡️ Environmental Degradation
Climate change and global warming pose existential threats to some nations. Rising sea levels threaten entire island nations (Maldives) and coastal populations. Environmental degradation disproportionately harms vulnerable countries that did least to cause it. No single country can solve this — requires mandatory international cooperation.
8. Cooperative Security
- International cooperation can be bilateral, regional, continental, or global — depending on the nature of the threat and willingness of states to respond.
- Cooperative security involves a variety of actors: international organisations (UN, WHO, World Bank, IMF), NGOs (Amnesty International, Red Cross, religious organisations, trade unions), businesses and corporations, and influential individuals (e.g., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela).
- Cooperative security may involve the use of force as a last resort — but force is more legitimate when sanctioned and applied collectively by the international community rather than by a single state acting alone.
9. India’s Security Strategy
Component 1: Military Capability
- India has been involved in conflicts with Pakistan (1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999) and China (1962)
- Surrounded by nuclear-armed neighbours, India tested nuclear devices in 1974 (first test) and 1998 (Pokhran II)
- Nuclear tests in 1998 were justified on grounds of national security given regional nuclear threats
Component 2: Strengthening International Norms & Institutions
- Nehru’s support for Asian solidarity, decolonisation, disarmament, and the UN
- Advocated a universal and non-discriminatory non-proliferation regime
- Argued for an equitable New International Economic Order (NIEO)
- Used non-alignment to stay outside superpower bloc politics
- Signed and ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (greenhouse gas reduction)
- Sent troops on UN peacekeeping missions
Component 3: Internal Security Challenges
- Militant groups from Nagaland, Mizoram, Punjab, and Kashmir have sought to break away from India
- India preserved national unity through a democratic political system that allows communities to articulate grievances and share political power
- Democracy allows different groups to express dissent peacefully — reducing the pull of armed separatism
Component 4: Economic Development and Poverty Reduction
- Attempt to lift the vast majority of citizens out of poverty and reduce extreme economic inequality
- Democratic politics creates pressure on governments to combine economic growth with human development
- Democracy is not just a political ideal — it is also a means of providing greater security to the poor and deprived
10. Traditional vs Non-Traditional Security — A Comparison
🛡️ Traditional Security
- Referent: The State — its sovereignty and territorial integrity
- Main Threat: Military force from another state
- Approach: Military — deterrence, defence, balance of power, alliances
- Cooperation: Disarmament, arms control, CBMs
- Threat source: External (and internal for new states)
- Force is both the principal threat and the principal means
🌍 Non-Traditional Security
- Referent: Individuals, communities, humankind
- Main Threats: Terrorism, poverty, disease, environmental degradation, refugees
- Approach: Cooperative — bilateral, regional, global
- Cooperation: International organisations, NGOs, multilateral agreements
- Also called Human Security or Global Security
- Military force is largely ineffective against these threats
11. Mind Map — Chapter 5 at a Glance
Sovereignty
External source
Balance of Power
Alliance Building
Arms Control · NPT
CBMs
Global Security
Individuals as referent
Refugees · Epidemics
Environment
UN · NGOs
Force as last resort
Internal security
Economic development
1998 Pokhran II
NPT non-signatory
12. Summary — Quick Revision
Security implies freedom from threats. Only threats that endanger core values so severely that those values would be damaged beyond repair qualify as security threats. Conceptions of security vary between societies and over time — they are broadly categorised as traditional and non-traditional.
Traditional security is concerned with military threats from other states. Core values threatened: sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and citizens’ lives. Security policy has four components: deterrence (prevent war), defence (limit/end war), balance of power (monitor relative power), and alliance building (coalition against threat).
Traditional security also recognises the role of cooperation in limiting violence. Three main forms: Disarmament (give up certain weapons — BWC 1972, CWC 1997), Arms Control (regulate acquisition — ABM Treaty 1972, NPT 1968), and Confidence Building Measures (share military information to avoid accidental war).
After WWII, powerful Western countries focused on external threats. Newly-independent Asian and African countries faced both external threats (neighbouring countries) and internal threats (separatist movements). Internal wars now constitute more than 95% of all armed conflicts worldwide; between 1946–1991, civil wars rose twelve-fold.
Non-traditional security expands the referent beyond the state to individuals, communities, and humankind. Human security (narrow: protection from internal violence; broad: also hunger, disease, natural disasters, economic security). Global security emerged in the 1990s for threats requiring global cooperation — warming, terrorism, pandemics. A secure state does not automatically mean secure people.
New non-traditional threats include: terrorism (political violence targeting civilians — intensified global attention after 9/11 2001); human rights violations (debate on UN intervention); global poverty (rich–poor gap, migration, refugee crises); health epidemics (HIV-AIDS, SARS, bird flu — spread across borders); environmental degradation (sea level rise threatens Maldives and Bangladesh).
Cooperative security is the appropriate response to non-traditional threats — military force is largely ineffective against poverty, disease, or climate change. Cooperation can be bilateral, regional, continental, or global; involves international organisations, NGOs, businesses, and individuals. Force may be used as a last resort, and is more legitimate when collectively sanctioned.
India’s security strategy has four components: (1) Military capability — nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, wars with Pakistan (1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999) and China (1962); (2) Strengthening international norms — non-alignment, Kyoto Protocol, UN peacekeeping; (3) Internal security — democratic system to manage separatist challenges in Nagaland, Mizoram, Punjab, Kashmir; (4) Economic development — lifting citizens out of poverty through democratic governance.
13. Important Terms to Remember
- Deterrence: A security strategy focused on preventing war by threatening to make the cost of aggression unacceptably high for the attacker. The attacker is deterred by the prospect of unacceptable losses rather than by actual defence.
- Balance of Power: The tendency of states to monitor the relative power of neighbouring countries and work to maintain a favourable balance, often through military build-up or alliances, to prevent any single state from becoming dominant enough to threaten them.
- Alliance: A coalition of states that coordinate their actions to deter or defend against military attack. Formalised in written treaties, based on national interests — and can change when those interests change.
- Disarmament: An agreement requiring all states to give up certain types of weapons entirely. Example: Biological Weapons Convention (BWC, 1972) and Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC, 1997).
- NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1968): An arms control treaty that limited who could possess nuclear weapons — countries that tested nuclear weapons before 1967 could keep them; all others had to give up the right to acquire them. Did not abolish nuclear weapons.
- Human Security: A non-traditional concept that focuses on the protection of individuals rather than states. In its narrow form: protection from internal violence. In its broad form: also protection from hunger, disease, natural disasters, and threats to human dignity (freedom from want + freedom from fear).
- Refugees vs Migrants: Refugees flee war, natural disaster, or political persecution — states are generally obligated to accept them. Migrants voluntarily leave for economic reasons — states are not obligated to accept them. Those who flee within their own country are internally displaced persons.