INTRODUCTION

As the twentieth century draws to a close, traditional threats to security have receded, while newer non-traditional threats ethnic conflict, religious fundamentalism, small arms proliferation, mass migration, environmental degradation, and narco-trafficking have surfaced. This has raised questions regarding the conceptual suitability of traditional military-centred paradigms to the new realities. This article examines the historical development of the new security agenda, assesses the criticism levelled against it and analyses its impact on policy.

FROM SUN TZU TO BARRY BUZAN

Traditionally, security was almost exclusively focused on states and military concerns.1 In this way, the concept came to refer to `national security' and was synonymous with `defence'. This Clausewitzian conceptualisation of security is clearly evident in the following definition by Ian Bellamy: "Security itself is a relative freedom from war, coupled with a relatively high expectation that defeat will not be a consequence of any war that should occur."2 Bellamy's rather narrow view is echoed by Giacomo Luciani who commented that, "[n]ational security may be defined as the ability to withstand aggression from abroad."3 As such, the study of security in the post-1945 period was dominated by concepts such as `containment', `deterrence', `flexible response', `massive retaliation', `balance of power', `mutually assured destruction' (MAD), and an overarching concern with nuclear strategy.4

This is not to say that there were no alternative voices to be heard that challenged this predominantly military-centred paradigm, one which, it could be argued, has dominated strategic discourse from the time of Sun Tzu, almost 2 500 years ago! As early as 1705, the German philosopher Leibniz expressed the need for the state to provide common security (la sécurité commune) to its citizens, and the French philosopher, Montesquieu noted that true political freedom could only occur when people are secure.5 Both philosophers put the security of individuals ahead of the security of states.

In 1950, the political scientist Harold Lasswell passionately argued for a broader conceptualisation of security, "... all measures which are proposed in the name of national security do not necessarily contribute to the avowed end ... Our greatest security lies in the best balance of all instruments of foreign policy, and hence in the co-ordinated handling of arms, diplomacy, information, and economics; and in the proper correlation of all measures of foreign and domestic policy."6 Lasswell's views were reinforced by Robert McNamara, the former United States Secretary of State, who pleaded for less of a military-political focus on security in 1968. This was later echoed by Galtung's reference to "... four highly credible, but also totally avoidable threats to our existence on earth war, hunger, repression and eco-disaster."7

Despite these dissident voices, the juggernaut of military-centred security studies continued to hold sway. One possible reason that could account for the effective marginalisation of voices appealing for a more holistic understanding of security could be that the fear of nuclear annihilation was so overwhelming that all else paled into insignificance. This is a view certainly subscribed to by former US President Dwight Eisenhower when he declared: "... with both sections of this divided world in possession of unbelievably destructive weapons, mankind approaches a state where mutual annihilation becomes a possibility. No other fact of today's world equals this in importance it colours everything we say, plan and do."8

The dominance of this traditional paradigm was not to last, however. Changes in the strategic environment in the 1970s necessitated a reconsideration of conventional understandings of security. According to Carim,9 five factors laid the foundations for a `devaluation of the military's currency'. These were:

the beginnings of détente between the superpowers in the early 1970s as exemplified by the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 1) in 1972;



the American experience in Vietnam which exposed the limits of imposing military solutions on certain types of conflict;



the financial costs of this campaign in conjunction with world economic recession which fuelled a deleterious inflationary spiral;



America's economic decline relative to Japan and the European Economic Community (EEC) who were competing more successfully in international markets; and



the quadrupling of oil prices by the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the 1970s which sent shock waves throughout the global economy and exposed the West's external dependence on strategic resources. This was important for another reason as well: it underlined the reality of economic interdependence within the context of a globalising world.

These developments, together with the emergence of the information super-highway, made ordinary people more aware of the serious threat that famine, economics, and the like, hold to individual and social well-being. In her book, The Planned Miracle,10 June Goodfield notes how a combination of poverty, famine and disease makes the destruction of Hiroshima small by comparison: "The atom bomb on Hiroshima killed 180,000 people; every three days a silent Hiroshima occurs in childhood deaths. Globally, children are dying at somewhere near the rate of 270,000 per week, 14 million a year; 217 million will not reach their fifth birthday; one death in every three in the world today is the death of a child."

These tectonic shifts in the global security landscape shook the very edifice of the dominant paradigm as Americans were forced to concede that threats to their national security also stemmed from a flagging economy. This new concern regarding the economic dimensions of security is perhaps best captured in the definition of security by William Blair, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, who told the US Congress in 1972, "Our national security today depends on things like balance of payments, economic affairs, foreign assistance ..."11 The mere acceptance of the economic dimensions of security by the establishment served to bolster those marginalised voices calling for a widening of the security agenda. Thus, the events of the 1970s effectively opened the sluice gates for further criticism of the dominant paradigm.

One of the first to take advantage of these changing circumstances was the so-called `alternative security school'. The thrust of this approach crystallised in response to Ronald Reagan's `Evil Empire' and the arms race which it engendered. According to this train of thought, more arms did not mean more security more specifically, more nuclear weapons did not result in a safer planet. In this, the school's work was inspired by the intellectual tradition of John Herz who, in the early 1950s, introduced the idea of the `security dilemma', "... a structural notion in which the self-help attempts of states to look after their security needs tend, regardless of intentions, to lead to rising insecurity for others as each interprets its own measures as defensive, and the measures of others as potentially threatening."12

Herz's theoretical insights found practical expression in the work of the alternative security school which introduced the radical notion of `security interdependence' to the strategic discourse. According to this notion, "Western security was intimately related to that of the Soviet Union and vice versa; modern weaponry had created an objective security interdependence. This meant that it was necessary for the West, for example, to recognise the fact that increases in Soviet weaponry did not necessarily improve Western security. The reverse was also true."13 This rather abstract notion was given concrete expression in concepts such as arms control and non-offensive defence. The notion of security interdependence rapidly gained support under the banner of common security. For example, the 1982 Palme Commission provided political support to the idea of common security, arguing that "... states can no longer obtain security at each other's expense, but only through co-operative efforts."14

The concept of security interdependence of the 1980s was developed further by scholars like Paul Kennedy, Pierre Lizee and Sorpong Peou in the 1990s. They argued that the emergence of transnational security threats, such as drought, narco-trafficking and pollution, necessitated transnational or collective responses.15 Thus, Kennedy notes: "In this larger and more integrated sense, `national' security becomes increasingly inseparable from `international' security."16 The notions of common or collective security, of course, progressed from the earlier thinking of `complex interdependence' scholars such as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye.17

It would be wrong to assume, however, that these debates were only confined to the security discourse of the West. Ideas of common security had already entered the discourse of the Politburo of the Soviet Union during the eighties.18 It was motivated in large part by Mikhail Gorbachev's understanding that the Soviet economy could not sustain a new arms race and that the superpower stand-off needed to be addressed decisively. Carim19 puts it this way: "In conjunction with his domestic policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) which aimed to revive the Soviet political and economic system, Gorbachev galvanised the process of détente by proceeding with unilateral Soviet disarmament and by urging a series of arms control agreements."

Thus, the 1990s witnessed the rapid demilitarisation of superpower relations. One aspect of the demilitarisation was the knock-on effect it had on International Relations scholars such as Barry Buzan and Ken Booth. The result was the questioning of fundamentals: what is security, whose security, and security from which threats?20

In determining whose security needs to be addressed, Booth noted that the problem with traditional security perspectives was that it equated security exclusively with state security.21 The problem with this perspective, as Buzan22 rightly argued, was that state security was often purchased at the expense of human security, specifically in the dictatorships of the developing world. In practice, it meant making people the primary referent of security as opposed to the state, and implied that the security of the people had to be focused on. Thus, new security thinking increasingly paid attention to what has been termed `human security' as opposed to traditional state-centric approaches. According to the Bonn Declaration of 1991, human security is "... the absence of threat to human life, lifestyle and culture through the fulfilment of basic needs."23 This definition, in turn, has also been informed by feminist contributions to new security thinking which strongly argue that there is a need for `care' to be incorporated into any security discourse. This seeks to place the security concerns of the ordinary man and woman on the street at the very core of any security strategy.24

One of the practical consequences of talking about human security as opposed to state security, or making people the primary referent of security, is that it becomes possible to identify threats to human security at subnational, national and transnational levels.25 The focus on human security reinforced the broadening of the security agenda to include non-military threats. According to Buzan,26 the security of human collectivities are affected by threats emanating from five sectors: military, political, economic, social and environmental. These insights have resulted in a radical revision of traditional definitions of security. Today, most definitions are wider and tend to complement the definition of human security given above. For instance, Richard Ullman's definition of security is conceptually more suitable to contemporary reality than most traditional ones: "... a threat to national security is an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens drastically and over a brief time span to degrade the quality of life for the inhabitants of a state, or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the range of policy choices available to the government of a state or to private nongovernmental entities (persons, groups, corporations)."27

FROM MARGINALISED TO DOMINANT DISCOURSE

To be sure, the new security agenda did not go unchallenged by those who sought to retain security's traditionally narrow military and state-centric approach. These critics argued that the broader the concept of security, the fuller, and potentially unmanageable, the threat agenda will become. But Ken Booth levels several counter-arguments against this criticism and it is useful to quote his response in some length.

"First, it must be conceded that broadening the concept does greatly widen the agenda. So what? This is what the political process is all about: making choices between competing demands. Bureaucratically, the implementation of security does not have to be dealt with by the same ministry, just as `defence' has a land, sea and air component and `foreign policy' has diplomatic, strategic and commercial aspects. So, while the security agenda should be broadened, it need not become unmanageable. Second, to leave the agenda narrowly defined by military considerations will leave security advice narrowly dominated by military specialists. There will be times when this is justifiable, since there will be times when the military threat deserves special consideration and there is a particular urgency to military threats. Ever since the time of Thomas Hobbes but in reality earlier security has been the primary obligation of governments. To place an item on the security agenda is therefore to raise its profile. If we are serious about human rights, economic development, the lot of women ... then we must simply accept the problems of an expanded agenda and of the need to settle the question of priorities in the political process. To control the agenda, up to a point is to control policy. Yes, an expanded agenda is by definition potentially more unmanageable: but one needs to ask why somebody wants certain issues such as human rights off that agenda? And why do they want to privilege [military] threats?"28

Despite these criticisms, the proponents of the new security agenda seem to have weathered the storm and have come to dominate the current security discourse. This is perhaps best illustrated by the way in which this new approach to security has revolutionised the discipline of Strategic Studies. Commenting on the relationship between security and Strategic Studies, Carim notes that the "... the concept of security is central to Strategic Studies in much the same way that power is central to Politics and wealth is central to Economics; that is, they are inextricably linked, but conceptually distinct."29

Traditionally, Strategic Studies has been dominated by a military understanding of security. Evans and Newnham30 define classical Strategic Studies as "... the field of inquiry that is concerned to examine the ways in which actors use their military capabilities to achieve political goals, in particular, with the way in which the threat and use of force has served these ends. It is sometimes referred to as the Clausewitzian tradition after the nineteenth century Prussian strategist who did so much to advance the symbiosis between war and state policy ... Strategic Studies has been primarily concerned with military power as the key attribute which has to be converted into usable instruments."

Strategic Studies' lopsided emphasis on military prowess at the expense of non-military security threats has opened it to criticism from those who argued that its substance needs to be informed by the debates around the widening of the concept of security. John Chipman, the Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) argued that, "Strategic Studies has been dominated by perversion and has resulted in a blinkered perspective which is unable to foresee, explain or even understand sources of threat other than those emanating from military confrontation."31

The dominance of new security thinking is also illustrated by the fact that members of the IISS were called upon to change a key text of their Constitution at an Extraordinary General Meeting in 1992. They had to approve the following:

"The object for which the Institute is established is to promote on a non-party basis the study and discussion of an exchange of information upon any major security issues including without limitation those of a political, strategic, economic, social or ecological nature."

The original version read:

"The object for which the Institute is established is to promote on a non-party basis the study and discussion of and the exchange of information upon the influence of modern and nuclear weapons of warfare upon the problems of strategy, defence disarmament and international relations."32

In a similar vein, the Institute for Defence Policy changed its name to the Institute for Security Studies in January 1997, thereby reflecting its acceptance of the broader vision of security. Its mission statement also reflected this change by noting that it aims to "enhance human security in Africa."

This has resulted in a radical change in the substance of Strategic Studies to include small-arms proliferation, narco-trafficking and organised crime, mass migration, economic insecurity, ethnicity, religious fundamentalism, and regional power clientelism.33

But the impact of new security thinking has not been confined to the theoretical discourse: it has also had a tremendous influence on policy-makers. In addressing a conference in Tanzania, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Salim Ahmed Salim, noted the changes in Southern Africa from the 1980s to the present as it related to the Frontline States: "In security terms, the objective was to defend against colonial aggression and apartheid destabilisation. Now that circumstances have so radically changed, the first task must be to rethink security, to redefine the security needs and to elaborate a new defence doctrine. While in the past, the views and efforts of the Frontline States found common ground in the task of liberation, we should now find a new basis for common security moving from confrontation to co-operation in Southern Africa. This common security must be one in which all find relevance and which is holistic in scope, embracing the non-traditional areas such as social and economic domains."34

The ideas of common security and a widening security agenda have also found practical expression in the five main subregional organisations in Africa. These are the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the east; the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the west; the Maghreb Union (UMA) in the north; the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the south; and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) representing the Central African region.35 Each of the subregional groupings began with a focus on development issues, but slowly took on security functions. This underscores the reality of the intimate relationship between security and development. After all, in cases where there is civil unrest, it is difficult to attract foreign investor capital. This, in turn, has negative implications for development. Some examples of these subregional organisations engaging in a security role which come to mind, is that of ECOWAS troops attempting to keep the peace in Liberia, or IGAD pursuing a peaceful settlement to the ongoing Somali crisis. This complements the role of other subregional, largely development-oriented organisations in the developing world obliged to undertake a security function. Both Latin America and Asia bear this out. In Latin America, MERCOSUR (the Southern Market) was compelled to intervene in the border war between Ecuador and Peru in February 1995. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) was also forced to engage in a peacekeeping function during the Cambodian civil war.

The new security agenda has also found its way into the Southern African security discourse. For example, at a meeting of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security in Gaborone in January 1996, the respective ministers noted that one of the main objectives of the Organ is "... to promote the political, economic, social and environmental dimensions of security."36

An holistic approach to security has also informed the policies of the South African government. In an address to the United Nations, President Nelson Mandela said: "It is ... true that hundreds of millions of politically empowered masses are caught in the deathly trap of poverty, unable to live life in its fullness. Out of this are born social conflicts which produce insecurity and instability, civil and other wars that claim many lives and millions of desperate refugees ... Out of this cauldron are also born tyrants, dictators and demagogues ..."37

In the same vein, the South African Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad criticised narrow military-centred perceptions of security and argued that the following issues should also be included:

the promotion of human rights, democracy and good governance;



sustainable economic development for the sake of the political, economic and social well-being of all the people of Southern Africa;



constructive and mutually beneficial interaction between SADC and the rest of Africa;



the protection of the environment, the prohibition of arms proliferation, the control of arms, arms smuggling, drug trafficking, refugees and displaced soldiers, mass migration, drought and other natural disasters;



ethnic conflicts; and



territorial claims.38

New security thinking has also emerged in the South African Department of Defence's White Paper on Defence which explicitly states: "In the new South Africa national security is no longer viewed as a predominantly military and police problem. It has been broadened to incorporate political, economic, social and environmental matters. At the heart of this new approach is a paramount concern with the security of people."39

The widening of the security agenda has also had a positive impact on the role of the armed forces in the changing global security landscape. Consider, in this regard, the various tasks the military has performed more recently. In Austria, the army is used for the construction of anti-avalanche `breaks', the stabilising of ski ropes and the development of alternative energy sources (solar and water). In Bulgaria and Cuba, soldiers are used to plant trees and to create national parks and nature reserves in their military localities. A similar situation exists in Finland where commanders of each military district are responsible for the environmental welfare in their areas. In South Africa, the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is used to support police operations against crime and to curb the influx of illegal immigrants into the country. In France, the Navy is used to minimise pollution at sea. In Italy, the army has set up the Geographical Military Institute for the study of seismic cartography of the soil, tectonic (rock) modifications, movement of the earth's crust and subsidence. In Jordan, the army is used to combat locust invasions.40

CONCLUSION

The above serves as a brief overview of the historical evolution of the concept of security from a narrow, military-centred focus to a wider, more holistic approach. This overview has not presented `new security thinking' in all its complexity and subtle nuances. This does not mean that `new security thinking' is monolithic or homogenous. Rather, it is a rich and varied tradition with its proponents differing just as heatedly from each other as they differ from supporters of the more traditional paradigm. Their opposing views include, among others, the viability of the nation-state in an era of globalisation and the utility of force in a period where the greatest security threats relate to non-military sources of insecurity, such as famine and disease. Despite these differences, however, all proponents of the `new security thinking' are united in their criticism of traditional military-centred paradigms as being inappropriate for the challenges we face as we approach the dawn of a new millennium.

ENDNOTES

K Booth, A Security Regime in Southern Africa: Theoretical Considerations, Southern African Perspectives: A Working Paper Series, 30, Centre for Southern African Studies, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, 1994, p. 3.



B Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, Harvester-Wheatsheaf, New York, 1991, p. 16.



Ibid., p. 16.



J Baylis & N J Rengger, Introduction: Theories, Methods, and Dilemmas in World Politics, in J Baylis & N J Rengger (eds.), Dilemmas of World Politics: International Issues in a Changing World, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, p. 9.



E Rothchild, What is Security?, in M Singh (ed.), Redefining Security in Southern Africa: Workshop Proceedings, Common Security Forum, Centre for History and Economics, King's College, Cambridge, 1995, p. 16.



J J Romm, Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary Aspects, Council on Foreign Relations Press, New York, 1993, p. 3.



M van Aardt, In Search of a More Adequate Conceptualisation of Security for Southern Africa: Do We Need a Feminist Touch?, Politikon, 20(1), 1993, p. 55.



Quoted in X Carim, Strategic Perspectives for Southern Africa in the 1990s: Theoretical and Practical Considerations, Southern African Perspectives: A Working Paper Series, 23, Centre for Southern African Studies, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, 1993, p. 4.



Ibid., p. 9.



J Goodfield, The Planned Miracle, Cardinal Books, London, 1991, p. xiii



Romm, op. cit., p. 5.



Buzan, op. cit., p. 4.



N J Wheeler & K Booth, The Security Dilemma, in Baylis & Rengger, op. cit., p. 45.



Ibid., p. 45.



P Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, Fontana Press, London, 1993, pp. 129-130; F A Magno, Environmental Security and the South China Sea, Security Dialogue, 28(1), 1997, pp. 97-112; E Ottone, Overcoming Poverty and Exclusion as Causes of Insecurity in Latin America, Security Dialogue, 28(1), 1997, pp. 7-16; W Breytenbach, Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa: From the Frontline States to Collective Security, The Arusha Papers: A Working Series on Southern African Security, 2, Centre for Southern African Studies, University of the Western Cape and Centre for Foreign Relations, Dar es Salaam, Cape Town, 1995, p. 3; P Lizee & S Peou, Co-operative Security and the Emerging Security Agenda in Southeast Asia: The Challenges and Opportunities of Peace in Cambodia, York Centre for International and Strategic Studies (YCISS) Occasional Paper, 21, Centre for International and Strategic Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada, 1993, p. 1.



Kennedy, op. cit., p. 130.



R O Keohane & J S Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, Scott Foresman and Company, Boston, (2nd edition), 1989.



Wheeler & Booth, op. cit., p. 46.



Carim, op. cit., p. 9.



Booth, op. cit



Ibid., p. 5.



Buzan, op. cit., p. 43.



A H Omari, Regional Security: One View from the Frontline States, The Arusha Papers: A Working Paper Series on Southern African Security, 5, Centre for Southern African Studies, University of the Western Cape and Centre for Foreign Relations, Dar es Salaam, 1995, p. 4.



K Krause, Critical Theory and Security Studies, YCISS Occasional Paper, 33, Centre for International and Strategic Studies, York University, Toronto, 1996; Van Aardt, op. cit., pp. 55-59; J B Elshtain, Feminist Themes and International Relations, in J der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations, Macmillan Press Ltd., London, 1995; J A Tickner, Hans Morgenthau's Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation, in J der Derian (ed.), op. cit.



H Solomon & J Cilliers, Sources of Southern African Security and the Quest for Regional Integration, in H Solomon & J Cilliers (eds.), People, Poverty and Peace: Human Security in Southern Africa, ISS Monograph Series, 4, Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, 1996, p. 6.



Buzan, op. cit., p. 19.



Quoted in Romm, op. cit., p. 4.



Booth, op. cit., p. 6.



Carim, op. cit., p. 7.



G Evans & J Newnham, The Dictionary of World Politics, Harvester-Wheatsheaf, London, 1990, p. 379.



J Chipman, The Future of Strategic Studies: Beyond even Grand Strategy, The Roundtable, 322, 1992, p. 135.



P Vale, Can International Relations Survive?, International Affairs Bulletin, 16(3), 1992, p. 100.



S Bearman, Strategic Survey 1990-1991, Brasseys for IISS, London, 1991, pp. 18-21.



S A Salim, The Frontline State: A New Alliance for Peace and Development in Southern Africa, keynote address by the Secretary General of the OAU, to the meeting of the Ministers of Defence and Security of the Frontline States, Arusha, Tanzania, 10 November 1994, pp. 4 5.



J Cilliers, The Evolving Security Architecture in Southern Africa, African Security Review, 4(5), 1995, p. 37; G Cawthra, Sub-regional Security: The Southern African Development Community, Security Dialogue, 28(2), 1997, pp. 207-209.



SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, Meeting of the SADC Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs, Defence and SADC Affairs, Gaborone, Botswana, 18 January 1996, p. 4.



Quoted in A Pahad, Regional Security and the Role of the Military, in Singh, op. cit., p. 20.



Ibid., p. 20.



Department of Defence, Defence in a Democracy: White Paper on National Defence for the Republic of South Africa, Department of Defence, Pretoria, 1996, p. 5.



M Harbottle, New Roles for the Military: Humanitarian and Environmental Security, Conflict Studies, 285, Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, London, 1995, pp. 16-19.