International security is a term which refers to the measures taken by states and international organizations, such as the United Nations, European Union, and others, to ensure mutual survival and safety. These measures include military action and diplomatic agreements such as treaties and conventions. International and national security are invariably linked. International security is national security or state security in the global arena.
By the end of World War II, a new subject of academic study, security studies, focusing on international security emerged. It began as an independent field of study, but was absorbed as a sub-field of international relations.Buzan, B. and L. Hansen (2009). The Evolution of International Security Studies. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Since it took hold in the 1950s, the study of international security has been at the heart of international relations.Sheehan, M. (2005). International Security: An Analytical Survey. London, Lynne Rienner Publishers. It covers areas such as security studies, strategic studies, peace studies, and other areas.
The meaning of "security" is often treated as a common sense term that can be understood by "unacknowledged consensus".Sheehan, M. (2005), International Security: and Analytical Survey, London, Lynne Rienner Publishers The content of international security has expanded over the years. Today it covers a variety of interconnected issues in the world that affect survival. It ranges from the traditional or conventional modes of military power, the causes and consequences of war between states, economic strength, to ethnic, religious and ideological conflicts, trade and economic conflicts, energy supplies, science and technology, food, as well as threats to human security and the stability of states from environmental degradation, infectious diseases, climate change and the activities of non-state actors.Buzen, B., O. Wæver, et al. (1998). Security: A new frame work for Analysis. Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner Publishers.; Doty, P., A. Carnesale, et al. (1976). "Foreword." International Security 1(1).
While the wide perspective of international security regards everything as a security matter, the traditional approach focuses mainly or exclusively on military concerns.
Concepts of security in the international arena
Edward Kolodziej has compared international security to a Tower of BabelKolodziej, E. (2005). Security and International Relations. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.11. and Roland Paris (2004) views it as "in the eye of the beholder".Paris, R. (2004). "Still and Inscrutable Concept", Security Dialogue 35: 370–372. Security has been widely applied to "justify suspending civil liberties, making war, and massively reallocating resources during the last fifty years".Baldwin, D. (1997). "The Concept of Security." Review of International studies 23: 5–26
Walter Lippmann (1944) views security as the capability of a country to protect its core values, both in terms that a state need not sacrifice core values in avoiding war and can maintain them by winning war.Lippmann, W. (1944). U.S. Foreign Policy. London, Hamish Hamilton David Baldwin (1997) argues that pursuing security sometimes requires sacrificing other values, including marginal values and prime values. Richard Ullman (1983) has suggested that a decrease in vulnerability is security.Ullman, R. (1983). "Redefining Security." International Security 8(1): 129–153
Arnold Wolfers (1952) argues that "security" is generally a normative term. It is applied by nations "in order to be either expedient—a rational means toward an accepted end—or moral, the best or least evil course of action".Wolfers, A. (1952). ""National Security" as an Ambiguous Symbol." Political Science Quarterly 67(4): 481–502. In the same way that people are different in sensing and identifying danger and threats, Wolfers argues that different nations also have different expectations of security. Not only is there a difference between forbearance of threats, but different nations also face different levels of threats because of their unique geographical, economic, ecological, and political environment.
Barry Buzan (2000) views the study of international security as more than a study of threats, but also a study of which threats that can be tolerated and which require immediate action.Buzan, B. (2000). 'Change and Insecurity' reconsidered. Critical Reflection on Security and Change. S. Croft and T. Terriff. Oxen, Frank Cass Publishers. He sees the concept of security as not either power or peace, but something in between.Buzan, B. (2007). People, States & Fear. Colchester, ECPR.
The concept of an international security actor has extended in all directions since the 1990s, from nations to groups, individuals, international systems, NGOs, and local governments.Rothschild, E. (1995). "What is Security." Dædalus 124(3): 53–98.
Traditional security The traditional security paradigm refers to a realist construct of security in which the referent object of security is the state. The prevalence of this theorem reached a peak during the Cold War. For almost half a century, major world powers entrusted the security of their nation to a balance of power among states. In this sense international stability relied on the premise that if state security is maintained, then the security of citizens will necessarily follow. Traditional security relied on the anarchistic balance of power, a military build-up between the United States and the Soviet Union (the two superpowers), and on the absolute sovereignty of the nation state.Owen, T. (2004), "Challenges and opportunities for defining and measuring human security", Human Rights, Human Security and Disarmament, Disarmament Forum. 3, 15–24 States were deemed to be rational entities, national interests and policy driven by the desire for absolute power. Security was seen as protection from invasion; executed during proxy conflicts using technical and military capabilities.
As Cold War tensions receded, it became clear that the security of citizens was threatened by hardships arising from internal state activities as well as external aggressors. Civil wars were increasingly common and compounded existing poverty, disease, hunger, violence and human rights abuses. Traditional security policies had effectively masked these underlying basic human needs in the face of state security. Through neglect of its constituents, nation states had failed in their primary objective.J. Baylis, (1997). "International Security in the Post-Cold War Era", in John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds), The Globalization of World Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
In the historical debate on how best to achieve national security, writers like Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Rousseau tended to paint a rather pessimistic picture of the implications of state sovereignty. The international system was viewed as a rather brutal arena in which states would seek to achieve their own security at the expense of their neighbors. Inter-state relations were seen as a struggle for power, as states constantly attempted to take advantage of each other. According to this view, permanent peace was unlikely to be achieved. All that states could do was to try to balance the power of other states to prevent any one from achieving overall hegemony. This view was shared by writers such as E.H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau.
More recently, the traditional state-centric notion of security has been challenged by more holistic approaches to security.Strategy and Ethnic Conflict () and Path to Peace () among many others) Among the approaches which seeks to acknowledge and address these basic threats to human safety are paradigms that include cooperative, comprehensive and collective measures, aimed to ensure security for the individual and, as a result, for the state.
Theoretical approaches
Realism Classical realism
In the field of international relations, realism has long been a dominant theory, from ancient military theories and writings of Chinese and Greek thinkers, Sun Tzu and Thucydides being two of the more notable, to Hobbes, Machiavelli and Rousseau. It is the foundation of contemporary international security studies. The twentieth century classical realism is mainly derived from Edward Hallett Carr's book The Twenty Years' Crisis.Elman, C. (2008). Realism. Security Studies:and Introduction. P. D. William. New York, Routledge. The realist views anarchy and the absence of a power to regulate the interactions between states as the distinctive characteristics of international politics. Because of anarchy, or a constant state of antagonism, the international system differs from the domestic system.Morgan, P. (2007). Security in International Politics: Traditional Approaches. Contemporary Security Studies. A. Collins. New York, Oxford University Press. Realism has a variety of sub-schools whose lines of thought are based on three core assumptions: groupism, egoism, and power-centrism.Wohlforth, W. C. (2010). Realism and Security Studies. The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies. M. D. Cavelty and V. Mauer. New York, Routledge. According to classical realists, bad things happen because the people who make foreign policy are sometimes bad.Elman, C. (2008). Realism. Security Studies: An Introduction. P. D. William. New York, Routledge.
Neorealism
Beginning in the 1960s, with increasing criticism of realism, Kenneth Waltz tried to revive the traditional realist theory by translating some core realist ideas into a deductive, top-down theoretical framework that eventually came to be called neorealism. Theory of International PoliticsWaltz, K. Z. (1979). Theory of International Politics. New York, Random House. brought together and clarified many earlier realist ideas about how the features of the overall system of states affects the way states interact:
"Neorealism answers questions: Why the modern states-system has persisted in the face of attempts by certain states at dominance; why war among great powers recurred over centuries; and why states often find cooperation hard. In addition, the book forwarded one more specific theory: that great-power war would tend to be more frequent in multipolarity (an international system shaped by the power of three or more major states) than bipolarity (an international system shaped by two major states, or superpowers)."
The main theories of neorealism are balance of power theory, balance of threat theory, security dilemma theory, offense-defense theory, hegemonic stability theory and power transition theory.
Liberalism
Liberalism has a shorter history than realism but has been a prominent theory since World War I. It is a concept with a variety of meanings. Liberal thinking dates back to philosophers such as Thomas Paine and Immanuel Kant, who argued that republican constitutions produce peace. Kant's concept of Perpetual Peace is arguably seen as the starting point of contemporary liberal thought.Navari, C. (2008). Liberalism. Security Studies: An Introduction. P. D. William. New York, Routledge.;Rousseau, D. L. (2010). Liberalism. The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies. M. D. Cavelty and V. Mauer. New York, Routledge.
Economic liberalism Economic liberalism assumes that economic openness and interdependence between countries makes them more peaceful than countries who are isolated. Eric Gartzke has written that economic freedom is 50 times more effective than democracy in creating peace.Gartzke, E. (2005), 'Economic Freedom and Peace' in Economic Freedom of the World, Annual Report. pp. 29–44 Globalization has been important to economic liberalism.
Liberal institutionalism