In this, 21st stakeholders may be force to conclude that international terrorism is the greatest threat to our global security and therefore in an attempt to maintain or to bring down those threats status and control them with military force. We will argue to disprove the fact that, is not a major security threat we face in the 21st and that approach is a failure since it has been clearly demonstrated in the last five years, from the ‘war on terror’ and this is distracting the attention of various leaders from the real threats that we face as humans beings. There is the need for an urgent action must be taken in the next five to ten years before it becomes extremely difficult to a highly unstable global world for the next generations.
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In this essay, we will look at some argument and agreement made by thinker of International Relations and writer of the theories of security in international relations. As you will agree with me, let me make it clear that there is not any target such a security threat to us, or in other words, we cannot point to one thing in particular that is a threat to our security.
“As we face multiple threats-from nations, nonstate actors and failed states–we will maintain the military superiority that has secured our country, and underpinned global security, for decades” Obama. So many issues are of threats to our security. (i.e. the social effects of climate change, the security implication of HIV/AIDS, the war on Terror…and many more) but for the purpose of this essay we will examine, much talk about Human Security and Economic Security, with the theories of security. The traditional strategic studies view, the Copenhagen school view, the English school view of the threats to security. By the conclusion of this essay the reader will have sufficient understanding of the way both theories of security have set they argument as what can considered as a security threat to as in the 21st century.
The underlying base of this essay–the greatest threats we face–in the 21st century and with reference to the relevant theories of security, we try to establish if indeed there are any in particular. They define security as the protection of a person, property or organization from attack. The theory of security is to know the types of the attacks and to make a pre-emptive attack on a source of the threat. Alternatively, the state of being secure, assured freedom from poverty or want.
The term human security apparently had its origins in policy statement emanating from the United Nations in the mid-1990s in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Report (1994). In this document, ‘human security’ is classified as a condition where people are given relief from the traumas that besiege human development. A state concerning human security also argues that it has been too long interpreted narrowly: and the critiques are clear and forceful, but the report subsequent proposal for a new concept of security-human security-lacks precision. (Paris, 2001)
Human security has two categories; the first is safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. The second one is known as the protection from sudden and hurtful disruption in the patterns of daily life -whether in homes, in jobs or on the communities. In ensuring human security, there are seven-pronged approaches that need to be address; economic, food, health, environment, personal, community, and political security. The understanding of human security is categorized as one of the broad definitions and is the basis for divisions about the meaning for human security, which we shall explore in details (Collins, 2007).
In elaborating the notions of human security, it is possible to identify a set of principles, which elucidate the way in which such an approach differs from traditional approaches to human security. The principles cover the both ends and means. There is a lot of discussion nowadays about the ‘responsibility to protect’ and under which condition is right to use military force. Example of when the use of military in the interest of international relations, is the current situation in “the Ivory Coast”. Human Security approach implies more not less assistance for development, since human development is a key component of human security. The same approach of human security could benefit development in so many ways; i.e. it is aimed at providing the conditions (physical safety, rule of law…) and sustainable institutions that are integral to development. The world today is face with more critical juncture. On one hand, international efforts to stabilize conflicts since the end of the Cold War and have limited successes. On the other hand, the spread of terror and the war on terror, this is considered the sources of human insecurity in the world. (Kaldor, 2007).
On the account of human security approach offer by the Copenhagen school securitization, it may somehow seem nonsensical. One is a policy-making agenda and the other is a theoretical tool for the analysis for security policies. Although human security approach is a policymaking agenda – is taken from the approach within the critical security studies, been critical and simply by virtue in the mainstream. The human security offers an alternative to the approach of securitization in term of only utility. The analysis present by the Copenhagen School about the objective is highlighting the insecurities of individuals or groups of individuals. However, like the other approaches security, (or non-state centric), the human security comes with the 1994 “Human Development Report, Japan’s social safety nets” and Canada’s and Norway’s Human security Program” which is originated from within the policymaking world. “Human security ought to be ‘freedom from fear’ not about ‘freedom from want’ […] for two reasons.
The first is negative one: the broad vision of human security is ultimately nothing more than a shopping list; it involves slapping the label human security on a wide range of issues that have no necessary link. At a certain point, human security becomes a loose synonym for ‘bad things that can happen’, and it than loses all utility to policymaking -and incidentally to analysts. [Second and] more important, it is not clear that anything is gained by linking ‘human security’ to the issues such as education, fair trade practices and public health.”(Keith Krause). We do not limit ourselves to the ‘traditional approaches’ to the definition of human security as freedom from fear and freedom from want. There are big question coming from some critics of the theory: “… the idea of being protected from harm or the threat of harm”, and there are saying about “what does it mean to be ‘secure ‘and who should be secured?”. On that basis, comes the thought from the Copenhagen School about. Who is to provide human security? Surely, the individual himself cannot provide that. Thus, logically, provision of human security can only be guaranteed by the larger entity such as society, the state, and some global institution, as the Copenhagen school puts it “security action”.
Nonetheless, according to one key member (Barry Buzan) of the Copenhagen School in a framework individuals can be either securitizing actors or the referent objects of security. “Human security is the idea that the individual is the receiving end of all security concerns.”
Analyst like Johan Eriksson, focuses on the nature in which Copenhagen school present their argument and think it should acknowledge its own responsibility for widening the agenda of security. He is also of the view that, there is a contradiction between in there saying that: they are observing that security is now widened and in that sense, he believes that there are acting as much as politicians (and securitizers) as analysts. Eriksson is of the view that this inconsistency can only be resolved in two ways: “either its own political responsibility for making the case for a widened agenda is admitted and seriously discussed, or the multisectoral agenda is abandoned altogether, in an exchange for a more rigid securitization approach.” Another critique of human security is Lene Hansen. Who pointed to the absence of gender-based insecurity in the work of the Copenhagen school because they do not with about security but generally about societal, but not individual or groups. (e.g., gender or ethnic), security. She argues in a case study of the honour-killings in Pakistan. In which she states that there are two “silences” in the Copenhagen school: the first is “security as Silence,” by which she means that the securitization approach assumes that it is possible to speak about the security issues. In the case study of the honour killing it, show that it not possible for the issues to be securitized: if woman speak up about the problem, they might increase the threat to themselves. The second problem in the Copenhagen school’s theory is that the definition of securitization, can only take place when a referent object is existentially threatened; yet the gender based security issues do not fit within any of it definitions of referent object. In summary of the problem, Hansen. “The focus on speech produces problems in situations where the possibilities of speaking security are constrained, and the conditions for becoming a referent object are such that gender security is almost excluded from qualifying”. (Booth, 2005).
Debates over human security comes in from others outside the Copenhagen school are point made by Amitav Acarya. He argues that human security falls in two categories. First, believers and sceptics of the concept disagree over whether human security is new or necessary notion, and what are the costs and benefit of adopting it as an intellectual tool or a policy framework. The second puts it that there have been debates over the scope of the concept, mainly among the believer themselves. However, the difference between the two conceptions of human security can be overstated, since both regard the individual as the referent object of security, and both acknowledge the role of globalization and the changing nature of armed conflict in creating new threats to human security. Moreover, both also for the rethinking of state sovereignty as a necessary part of promoting human security. (Baylis, 2005).
Another component of theories of security is the ‘Critical Security Studies’ which came up from a conference in York University, Toronto. The term came in the course of discussions at the conference and has since been adopted. Among the thinker of these theory in particular, was Krause and Williams began to raise the question about the referent object of security: who or what is to be secured. The tradition answer to this question is that the referent object is the state: security refers to protecting the state from external threats, and the people living within the territory of the same state are considered secure to the degree that the state is secure. As William and Krause put it, such a view largely reduces security for the individual to citizen-ship. If the focus on the state as a referent object is insufficient, what if we adjust our focus to the individual human being, or perhaps to the community in which humans live.
They also argue that by looking at individuals and particular the communities, in which they live. A critical security study has to take seriously the idea, of norms and values, which constitute the communities, which are to be secured. Notwithstanding, the traditional security studies treats its referent object as just that: an object. The state is a ‘thing’ that is found, out there in the world, and subject to objective study by security analysts. Krause and William expressed the desire that led them first to Toronto and then to the Critical Security Studies volume as seeking a ‘critical perspective’ on security. They worked so hard to ensure that this critical perspective was not monopolized by a single theoretical approach.
Years after it appeared, Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde published security: A new framework for analysis. The intention of this book was serve as a relatively comprehensive statement of a distinctive perspective on the study of security. That perspective has come to be known as the Copenhagen School. In the development of Critical Security Studies the Copenhagen approach play a very important part. Despite the fact that it exponents work hard to distinguish their perspective from Critical Security Studies. The desire for a critical security study initially drew scholars from a range of theoretical perspectives including constructivism, post-structuralism, and post-Marxism. However, interestingly, despite all this influence on Critical Security Studies, the Copenhagen School has sought to distance itself from the Critical Security Studies. (Collins,2007).
The theologians of The Welsh School, brought a critical issues against the Copenhagen School Approach were too narrow,-and that security is more than just survival. Moreover the notion of emancipation and disillusion by the realist to explain post Cold War, and especially Ken Booth, has made it absolutely clear that emancipation, was not power or order is the goal of studying security studies. The Welsh School term ‘security’ as the absence of threats. While embodying Emancipation as the freeing of people or (or individuals and groups) from any physical and human constraints which stop them from carrying out what they would freely choose to do. The war on terror and threat of war are just one of the most constraints, together with poor education, political oppression and poverty among others. This take us to the next point of which shall be looking at, the Economic Security as a threat we face in the 21st century. Some people may be of the idea that why we will take economic security as a threat we face.
The economic security itself remains a highly contested concept, only because it scholars have approached it from all angles of disciples have seen it from different perspectives. According to sociologists and anthropologists they have try to adopt a micro-level approach, but political scientists still working in this framework of traditional security studies have been more with what is refer to as the economic -security nexus rather than economic security per se. (Dent, 2007).
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “defines economic security as the condition of an individual, household or community that is able to cover its essential needs and unavoidable expenditures in a sustainable manner, according to its cultural standards”. Having seen what it’s refer to as economic security than we can attribute it to a state in that categories can be call a state with economic security. That can be a threat we face on a global scope. However, the continued preoccupation with the linkage in the mainstream literature may be more at the expense of developing more ideas about what specifically constitutes the pursuit of economic security in the international system. This is problematical and somewhat unrefined and sometimes confused the relationship between the economic-security nexus and economic security dates back in (Knorr’s 1977).
His contributions to early economic security debate was indicative was of a rather negative terms, when post cold war period scholar thought about economic security. According to him, the manifestation of economic security policies becomes most apparent when counties consciously chooses to accept it, than becoming trap in an economic security whereas as no in the position providing for the state.
In conclusion, as to whether scholars will pursuit economic security and represent the securitization of economic issues, and furthermore are they simply, willing to define it by their attempts to distinguish between politicized economic and security spillovers form the economic sector into others. At the fundamental level of determining the economic security of what and who is to be secured and what, are the main threat to our security? The question will always been ask and there will require to be answered, it is up to the scholars to provide a real definition to those questions” (Bill, 1996).
In distinguishing, as to what and whom the threat to our security both school did not pinpoint anything, but there have made some clear points: the Walsh school presents security as a means of survival and the capacity to fulfilling and meaningful life, and by so doing we emancipate from the threat of poverty, hunger and disease. Disease in the sense that, according to the “ICRC economic security programmes are closely connected to efforts in complementary fields: Health programmes, hospital management, and first aids are all combine with economic security operations”. Emancipation and security there are both side of the coin. Emancipation, not power or order, but produce a true security. (Booth1991). While the Copenhagen school use the approaches by Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, Jaap de Wilde and others…this is the sectorisation approach of exploring new fields of security and the securitisation which explore how some issues become securitised while other do not. The Copenhagen school had some criticisms for not doing enough to break away from the realist state centric notion of security. “The school is also accused of merely shifting to other positivist epistemology by labelling identity as having an essential character”.
