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UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL PUNJAB

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE

EMMERGING SECURITY CONCEPTS; ISSUES

IN REGIONAL & GLOBAL SECURITY

Course Instructor: Inam Ghani

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 COURSE DESCRIPTION

 What is security?
 What does it mean to be secure?
 Who or what secures us?
 Can we ever be secure?
 To familiarize students with the major theories and themes in contemporary
security studies.
 To explore the evolving nature of threats.
 Part One introduces students to the core theories and issues of so-called
‘hard’ security, which dominated the twentieth century and retains its
relevance in the twenty-first,
 Part Two is structured around so-called ‘soft’, or ‘critical’ approaches that
have been increasingly prominent since the 1980s in particular.
 COURSE OUTLINE
1. Introduction & Overview: Defining Security & Security Studies
2. Elements of National Power
3. Realism and International Security
4. National Security, National Security of Policy of Pakistan (NSP-2022-2026)
5. Maritime Security
6. Role of Nuclear Weapons in National / International Security
7. ‘Old’ Wars -v- ‘New’ Wars
8. Terrorism, Guerilla Warfare and Insurgency
9. Cyber Security
10. Critical Security Studies: Issues and Approaches
11. Human Security
12. Culture, Governance and the Issue of Control
13. Back to the Future? Security in the 21st Century 4
 WEEK 1.

INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW: DEFINING

SECURITY & SECURITY STUDIES
 SECURITY
• The state of being or feeling secure; freedom from fear, anxiety, danger, doubt, etc.;
• State or sense of safety or certainty
• Something that gives or assures safety, tranquility, certainty; protection; safeguard
• Protection or defense against attack, interference, espionage, etc.
• Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm or other unwanted coercion.
• Fear is subjective, Threat is objective.
 The value of security
• Security is a core value of human life.
• To be secure is to be untroubled by danger or fear.
• Without security ‘there is no place for industry… no arts, no letters, no society;
• Worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.
• Citizens of developed Western states routinely take their security for granted until it is
challenged by some extraordinary event like the September 11 attack on the World Trade
Center or the July 7 bombings on the London Underground.
• Sadly, many people around the world do not live in such peaceful or prosperous
circumstances.
• Four Key assumptions of security underlying the idea of security:
• Security in (or of) what,
• From what,
• For what, and
• By what means?
1- Security in (or of) what?
• This assumption recognises the vulnerability of humans who live in social circumstances.
• An isolated individual is inviolable from attack by other people.
• The idea of security is directed at the problem of harmful acts by other people, either fellow
citizens or foreigners and not the forces of nature.
2- Security from what?
• In Hobbes’ ‘state of nature’ every human being is a potential threat because the struggle for
survival in a world of limited resources is ‘war of all against all’.
• One human being may be stronger, another more cunning, but each in his or her own way is
capable of inflicting harm upon another.
• Accordingly, there can never be complete trust and mutual security between human beings.
3- Security by means of what?
• Our safety is protected by creating barriers, bulwarks, ramparts, police forces, armed forces,
etc., to keep us out of harm’s reach.
• The opposite of safety is vulnerability − being exposed to danger, in peril, at risk, etc.
• Safety requires only that everybody respect everybody else’s freedom and leave them alone.
• Security is achieved wherever and whenever men and women do not threaten or harm one
another.
• Unfortunately, not everyone is prepared to forgo their own desires or ambitions if these
infringe the
• well being of others.
• Insecurity arises when some people will not restrain themselves and cannot be restrained by
others.
• Security can be achieved in two ways: through deterrence on the part of the would-be
protector or diffidence on the part of would-be attacker.
4- Security for what?
• The answer to this question should now be clear: so that people can enjoy the advantages of
living in society with others while limiting the risks.
• As a result, security is a core value of human relations.
• The necessity of security arises from the fact that people do want to live together and are thus
vulnerable to each other.
 Paradigms of security

• There are three main paradigms of security within international relations:

• National security,
• International security and
• Human security.
• The first two approaches give moral primacy to the state as a necessary precondition for
human flourishing.
• In contrast with these two state-centred approaches, a third perspective on security gives
moral primacy to human beings and the community of humankind over and above the
interests of states or the international society to which they belong.
1- NATIONAL SECURITY
• Proponents of national security, generally called the realists, generally assume that we live
in a world where states are both the main sources of security and the main security
threats.
• The problem of national security arises out of this anarchical world view, that is, a world of
independent and armed states which are capable of inflicting harm upon one another.
• National security policies are directed at creating and maintaining armed forces for
national defence and deterrence.
• They also involve measures designed to deal with internal threats to security such as
criminals, rebels, terrorists, etc.
• The national security paradigm is well equipped to address circumstances like those of the
Cold War where two rival states are actively opposing one another.
• But is less well placed to interrogate problems of ‘weak’, ‘failed’, or ‘totalitarian’ states
because of tendency to collapse the distinction between state security & personal security.
• Realists like Schelling produced convincing accounts of the arms race between the USA and
the USSR during the Cold War
• But were largely silent on the security dilemmas confronting civil rights proponents in ‘Jim
Crow’ states of the American South or political dissidents in communist states of Central
2- INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
• The proponents of international security, pluralists or rationalists, see a world characterized
by a mixture of conflict and cooperation.
• From this perspective, relations between states constitute an ‘anarchical society’.
• Thus although it is true that there is no single source of authority or government,
international relations nevertheless are reasonably orderly and purposeful, and subject to
mutual regulation and constraint stemming from a shared interest in survival and
coexistence.
• Following on from this, pluralists differ from realists in their assumption that states are not
the only actors responsible for providing security.
• Instead, pluralists believe the responsibility for providing security also extends to
international society.
• This way of conceptualizing security became prominent during the 20th century as the idea of
a global and increasingly institutionalized international society gained ground.
• One of its earliest embodiments is in Article 11 of the Covenant of the League of Nations
which was intended to preserve the territorial settlement created at Paris in 1919 following the
end of the First World War.
• Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the Members of the
League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the
League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the
peace of nations.
• Similarly Article 1 of the UN Charter in 1945 stated “To maintain international peace and
security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and
removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other
breaches of the peace…
• The international security paradigm operates somewhat differently than either the national or
human security paradigms.
• Whereas both national and human security imagine insecurity as an external threat, there
is no similar external dynamic within international security.
• Since international society is global, unless or until we encounter extraterrestrial beings
capable of threatening human life, insecurity in this context must necessarily come from
within and not from without; it is an internal dynamic arising out of the condition of
anarchy.
• Usually insecurity is consequent on the action of other members of international society
(i.e., states) but it can also be created by non-state actors like terrorist groups.
• It is this non-state dynamic which gives the so called American-led ‘War against terror’
which followed the September 11 attacks its global extent.
• International security is thus an internal problem for international society as a whole.
• In this context, the use of armed force is directed at
• what may in essence be thought as the problem of internal subversion by those who would
threaten the plural and cooperative character of international society.
• Secession, irredentism, aggressive war, conquest, illegal occupation, mass expulsion,
genocide and other actions which violate international law all threaten to disrupt the general
condition of peace, order and lawfulness within international society.
• International law and enforcement directed at such transgressions are akin to domestic law
enforcement within state – that is, they are intended to preserve a general condition of
peace and stability within society (in this case international society) so that the members of
that society (principally states) can go about their daily lives.
• In practice, however, such enforcement is often highly controversial precisely because it
would potentially sacrifice the national security of one state member of international
society for the good of the whole society.
• The 2003 invasion of Iraq by US-led forces is a case in point.
• The military attack and consequent occupation of the independent and sovereign state of Iraq
was not authorised by the United Nations Security Council and, for that and other reasons,
many experts in international law consider these acts to be illegal.
• In contrast, the so-called Gulf War of 1990−91 is usually cited as one of the few examples of
legitimate international law enforcement both because it was done with prior UN Security
Council authorisation and because it received almost universal support by the members of
international society.
3- HUMAN SECURITY
• The proponents of human security, who we often refer to as solidarists or revolutionists,
consider personal security to be a fundamental problem of international relations and not
merely a matter for the domestic politics of the state concerned.
• Human security is often presented as a new perspective on security questions.
• To describe human security in this way is somewhat deceptive because there are historical
precedents for assigning moral primacy to individuals.
• Immanuel Kant, for example, believed in universal duty towards other human beings without
exception of place or jurisdiction.
• Kant describes a ‘universal right of mankind’ by which he means the legitimate claim of all
men and women to recognition and protection by public authorities as individual human
beings.
• Similarly, human rights law, the doctrine of crimes against humanity, the rights of non-
combatants under international humanitarian law (the laws of war) and the prohibition of
genocide, to name only a few issues, existed in order to protect personal security over and
above the security of states long before the term ‘human security’ was coined.
• The core idea embodied by human security is essentially that the security of the person,
the security of the state and the security of the society of states are fundamentally
interconnected
• You cannot have one without the others.
• If any one man or woman or child in the world is unsafe, then nobody else can be safe either.
• To tolerate personal insecurity in one state risks spreading insecurity to other states,
and by extension, international society itself.
• For example, human or minority rights violations in one state may spark refugee flows
that cross frontiers, which in turn create a problem of asylum seekers in other states and a
consequent matter of concern for international agencies like the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees.
• A similar chain effect might be seen with regard to terrorism, or civil war, or other threats
which threaten to overrun international frontiers.
• The criticism that human security proponents direct at contemporary security arrangements
exactly follows on from this principle of human interconnectedness which continues to exist
regardless of juridical boundaries.
• Torture, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, genocide and other gross human rights violations
within states cannot be tolerated if the safety of all human beings is to be achieved.
• Something must be done to stop them, and states should not hide behind the international
legal principles of equal sovereignty and non-intervention to evade this fundamental
humanitarian obligation.
• The human security paradigm is becoming increasingly influential in international relations.
• Nevertheless, for the time being at least, with a few notable exceptions like Canada, it remains
disproportionately a subject of non-governmental organisations rather than the foreign
policies of states.
• And it is still far from universally accepted.
 INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES
• A subfield of international relations that examines the sources, processes, and strategies
for terminating conflicts at the international level.
• The aspects relevant to international security studies include intelligence, crisis
management, decision-making, strategy, and emergent and ongoing complex security
issues on the world stage.
• Primarily, international security studies contribute to understanding why countries engage
in wars with others.
• The understanding could be used to expound on the significance of war across the globe.
• International security studies also shed light on the security challenges that the world is
facing and the potential solutions and opportunities for restructuring international
relations among warring countries.
• Exploring this subfield also allows countries to develop strategies to promote their
security needs.
• Additionally, security studies enhance the understanding of when countries must intervene in
each other's internal problems.
• The interventions have to be strategic to prevent the escalation of the other countries' internal
disagreements to threaten international security, which underpins the importance of studying
international security studies.
• The origin of the modern field of security studies has been traced to the period between World
War I and World War II.
• Quincy Wright's 1942 book, Study of War, was the culmination of a major collaborative
research project dating back to 1926.
• Scholars such as William T. R. Fox, Bernard Brodie, Harold Lasswell, Eugene Staley,
Jacob Viner, and Vernon Van Dyke were involved in the project.
• Security studies courses were introduced at Columbia University, Princeton, the University
of North Carolina, Northwestern, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania in the 1940s.
• Think tanks, such as the RAND Corporation, played an influential role in post-WWII
security studies in the United States.
• The field rapidly developed within international relations during the Cold War, examples
from the era including the academic works of mid-20th century realist political scientists such
as Thomas Schelling and Henry Kissinger, who focused primarily on nuclear deterrence.
• Some scholars have called for expanding security studies to include topics such as economic
security, environmental security and public health.
• Stephen Walt has argued against this expansion, saying it would undermine the field's
intellectual coherence.
• While the field is mostly contained within political science and public policy programs, it is
increasingly common to take an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating knowledge from
the fields of history, geography (stressing classical geopolitics), military sciences, and
criminology.
• The field of security studies is related to strategic studies and military science, both of
which are frequently published in security studies journals.
Thankyou very much!

Questions?