National
security
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state
through the use of economic power, diplomacy, power projection and political power.
The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II.
Initially focusing on military might, it now encompasses a broad range of
facets, all of which impinge on the non military or economic security of the
nation and the values espoused by the national society. Accordingly, in order
to possess national security, a nation needs to possess economic security, energy security,
environmental security, etc. Security threats involve not only conventional foes
such as other nation-states but also non-state actors such as violent non-state actors, narcotic cartels, multinational
corporations and non-governmental
organisations; some authorities include natural disasters and events causing severe environmental damage in this
category.
Measures taken to ensure national
security include:
- using diplomacy
to rally allies and isolate threats
- marshalling economic power to facilitate or compel
cooperation
- maintaining effective armed forces
- implementing civil defense and emergency preparedness
measures (including anti-terrorism legislation)
- ensuring the resilience and redundancy of critical infrastructure
- using intelligence services
to detect and defeat or avoid threats and espionage,
and to protect classified information
- using counterintelligence services or secret police to protect the nation from internal threats
Definitions
There is no single universally
accepted definition of "National Security" since there are some
differences on describing National as State and everything consist in a nation.
The variety of definitions provide an overview of the many usages of this
concept. The concept still remains ambiguous, having originated from simpler
definitions which initially emphasised the freedom from military threat and
political coercion to later increase in sophistication and include other forms
of non-military security as suited the circumstances of the time.[1]:1-6[2]:52-54
A typical dictionary definition, in
this case from the Macmillan Dictionary (online version), defines the term as "the
protection or the safety of a country’s secrets and its citizens"
emphasising the overall security of a nation and a nation state.[3]
Walter Lippmann, in 1943, defined it in terms of war saying that "a nation has
security when it does not have to sacrifice its legitimate ínterests to avoid
war, and is able, if challenged, to maintain them by war".[1]:5 A later definition by Harold Lasswell,
a political scientist, in 1950, looks at national security from almost the same
aspect, that of external coercion:[1]:79
"The distinctive meaning of national security means
freedom from foreign dictation."
Arnold Wolfers (1960), while
recognising the need to segregate the subjectivity of the conceptual idea from the
objectivity, talks of threats to acquired values:[4]
"An ambiguous symbol meaning different things to
different people. National security objectively means the absence of threats to
acquired values and subjectively, the absence of fear that such values will be
attacked."
The 1996 definition propagated by
the National Defence College
of India
accretes the elements of national
power:[5]
"National security is an appropriate and aggressive
blend of political resilience and maturity, human resources, economic structure
and capacity, technological competence, industrial base and availability of
natural resources and finally the military might."
Harold Brown, U.S. Secretary of Defense
from 1977 to 1981 in the Carter
administration, enlarged the definition of
national security by including elements such as economic and environmental
security:[6]:5
"National security then is the ability to preserve the
nation's physical integrity and territory; to maintain its economic relations
with the rest of the world on reasonable terms; to preserve its nature,
institution, and governance from disruption from outside; and to control its
borders."
In Harvard
history professor Charles Maier's definition of 1990, national security is
defined through the lens of national power:[7]
"National security... is best described as a capacity
to control those domestic and foreign conditions that the public opinion of a
given community believes necessary to enjoy its own self-determination or
autonomy, prosperity and wellbeing."
According to Prabhakaran Paleri,author of National Security,Imperatives and
Challenges,national security may be defined as:[2]:52-54
"The measurable state of the
capability of a nation to overcome the multi-dimensional threats to the
apparent well-being of its people and its survival as a nation-state at any
given time, by balancing all instruments of state policy through
governance,that can be indexed by computation, empirically or otherwise,and is
extendable to global security by variables external to it."
History
of the national security concept
The origin of the modern concept of
"national security" as a philosophy of maintaining a stable nation
state can be traced to the Peace of Westphalia, wherein the concept of a sovereign state,
ruled by a sovereign, became the basis of a new international order of nation
states.[8]:19 It was Thomas Hobbes
in his 1651 work "Leviathan"
who stated that citizens yield to a powerful sovereign who in turn promises an
end to civil and religious war, and to bring forth a lasting peace, and give
him the right to conduct policy, including wage war or negotiate for peace for
the good of the "commonwealth", i.e. a mandate for national security.[9]
The Clausewitzian view of diplomacy and war being the instruments of furthering
national cause, added to the view of national security being sought by nations
by exercising self-interest at all times.[9]
This view came to be known as "classical realism" in international relations.
Immanuel Kant, in his 1795 essay, "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical
Sketch" (Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein
philosophischer Entwurf. (German)),
proposed a system where nation-states and dominating national interests were
replaced by an enlightened world order, a community of mankind where
nation-states subsumed the national interests under the rule of the
international law because of rational insight, common good and moral
commitment. National security was achieved by this voluntary accession by the
leadership to a higher order than the nation-state, viz. "international
security". Thus was born the "idealism" school of international
relations.[9]
As an academic concept, national
security can be seen as a recent phenomenon which was first introduced in the United States
after World War II,[1]:2-4 and has to some degree replaced other concepts that
describe the struggle of states to overcome various external and internal
threats. The earliest mention of the term national security, however, was made
in Yale University in 1790 wherein reference was made to its relation with
domestic industries.[2]:52
National
Security Act of 1947
The concept of national security
became an official guiding principle of foreign policy in the United States when the National
Security Act of 1947 was signed on July 26, 1947 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman.[1]:3 As amended in 1949, this Act:
·
created important components of
American national security, such as the precursor to the Department of Defense);
Notably, the Act did not
define national security, which was conceivably advantageous, as its ambiguity
made it a powerful phrase to invoke whenever issues threatened by other
interests of the state, such as domestic concerns, came up for discussion and
decision.[1]:3-5
The notion that national security
encompasses more than just military security was present, though understated,
from the beginning. The Act established the National Security Council so as to
"advise the President on the integration of domestic, military and foreign
policies relating to national security".[2]:52
While not defining the
"interests" of national security, the Act does establish, within the
National Security Council, the "Committee on Foreign Intelligence",
whose duty is to conduct an annual review "identifying the intelligence
required to address the national security interests of the United States as
specified by the President" (emphasis added).[11]
Gen. Maxwell Taylor's
essay of 1974 titled "The Legitimate Claims of National Security" has
this to say:[12]
The national valuables in this broad sense include current
assets and national interests, as well as the sources of strength upon which
our future as a nation depends. Some valuables are tangible and earthy; others
are spiritual or intellectual. They range widely from political assets such as
the Bill of Rights, our political institutions and international friendships,
to many economic assets which radiate worldwide from a highly productive
domestic economy supported by rich natural resources. It is the urgent need to
protect valuables such as these which legitimizes and makes essential the role
of national security.
Current
American views
The United States Armed Forces
defines national security (of the United States) in the following manner :[13]
national security
— A collective term encompassing both national defense and foreign relations of
the United States. Specifically, the condition provided by: a. a military or
defense advantage over any foreign nation or group of nations; b. a favorable
foreign relations position; or c. a defense posture capable of successfully
resisting hostile or destructive action from within or without, overt or covert.
In 2010, the White House
included an all-encompassing world-view in a national security strategy which
identified "Security" as one of the country's "four enduring
national interests" that were "inexorably intertwined":[14]
"To achieve the world we seek,
the United States must apply our strategic approach in pursuit of four enduring
national interests:
·
Security: The security of the United States, its citizens, and
U.S. allies and partners.
·
Prosperity: A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an
open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity.
·
Values: Respect for universal values at home and around the world.
·
International
Order: An international order
advanced by U.S. leadership that promotes peace, security, and opportunity
through stronger cooperation to meet global challenges.
Each of these interests is
inextricably linked to the others: no single interest can be pursued in
isolation, but at the same time, positive action in one area will help advance
all four."
Elements
of national security
As in the case of national power,
the military aspect of security is an important, but not the sole, component of
national security. To be truly secure, a nation needs other forms of security.
Authorities differ in their choice of nation security elements. Besides the
military aspect of security, the aspects of diplomacy
or politics;
society;
environment; energy and natural resources; and economics are commonly listed. The elements of national security
corelate closely to the concept of the elements
of national power. Romm (1993) lists security from
narcotic cartels, economic security, environmental security and energy security
as the non-military elements of national security.[1]:v,
1-8
Military
security
This is traditionally, the earliest
recognized form of national security.[2]:67 Military security implies the capability of a nation to
defend itself, and/or deter military aggression. Alternatively, military
security implies the capability of a nation to enforce its policy choices by
use of military force. The term "military security" is considered
synonymous with "security" in much of its usage. One of the definitions of
security given in the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, may
be considered a definition of "military security":[15]
A condition that results from the
establishment and maintenance of protective measures that ensure a state of inviolability
from hostile acts or influences.
—Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
Political
security
The political aspect of security has
been offered by Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, Jaap de Wilde as an important component
of national security, Political security is about the stability of the social
order. Closely allied to military security and societal security, other
components proposed in a framework for national security in their book
"Security: a new framework for analysis", it specifically addresses
threats to sovereignty.[16]
System referent objects are defined, such as nation-states,
nations,
transnational groups of political importance including tribes, minorities, some
religious organisations, systems of states such as the European Union
and the United Nations, besides others. Diplomacy, negotiation and other
interactions form the means of interaction between the objects,
Economic
security
Historically, conquest of nations
have made conquerors rich through plunder, access to new resources and enlarged
trade through controlling of the conquered nations' economy. In today's complex
system of international trade, characterised by multi-national agreements,
mutual inter-dependence and availability of natural resources etc., the freedom
to follow choice of policies to develop a nation's economy in the manner
desired, forms the essence of economic security. Economic security today forms,
arguably, as important a part of national security as military security.
Environmental
security
Environmental security deals with
environmental issues which threaten the national security of a nation in any
manner. The scope and nature of environmental threats to national security and
strategies to engage them are a subject of debate.[1]:29-33 While all environmental events are not considered
significant of being categorised as threats, many transnational issues, both
global and regional would affect national security. Romm (1993) classifies these
as :[1]:15
- Transnational environmental problems that threaten a
nation's security, in its broad defined sense. These include global environmental problems such as
climate change due to global warming, deforestation and loss of
biodiversity, etc.[1]:15
- Environmental or resource problems that threaten a
nation's security, traditionally defined.
These would be problems whose outcomes would result in conventional
threats to national security as first or higher order outcomes. Such
disputes could range from heightened tension or outright conflict due to
disputes over water scarcity in the Middle East, to illegal immigration into the United States caused
by the failure of agriculture in Mexico[1]:15.
The genocide in Rwanda,indirectly or partly caused by rise in population and
dwindling availability of farmland, is an example of the extremity of
outcome arising from problems of environmental security.[17]
- Environmentally threatening outcomes of warfare, e.g. Romans
destroyed the fields of Carthage
by pouring salt over them; Saddam Hussein's burning of oil wells in the Gulf War;[1]:15-16
the use of Agent Orange by the USA in the Vietnam War for defoilating forests for military purposes.
Security
of energy and natural resources
"...a support inventory... biotic
or abiotic,
renewable or expendable,... for sustaining life at a heightened level of
well-being."
—Prabhakaran Paleri (2008)
Resources include water, sources of energy, land
and minerals.
Availability of adequate natural resources is important for a nation to develop
its industry and economic power. Lack of resources is a serious challenge for Japan to overcome to increase its
national power. In the Gulf War of 1991, fought over economic issues, Iraq captured Kuwait in order to capture its oil wells,
among other reasons. Water resources are subject to disputes between many
nations, including the two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan.
Nations attempt to attain energy and natural resource security by acquiring the
needed resources by force, negotiation and commerce.
National
security and rights & freedoms
The measures adopted to maintain
national security in the face of threats to society has led to ongoing dialectic, particularly in liberal democracies, on the appropriate scale and role of authority
in matters of civil and human rights.
Tension exists between the
preservation of the state (by maintaining self-determination and sovereignty)
and the rights and freedoms of individuals.
Although national security measures
are imposed to protect society as a whole, many such measures will restrict the
rights and freedoms of all individuals in society. The concern is that where
the exercise of national security laws and powers is not subject to good governance,
the rule of law, and strict checks and balances, there is a risk that "national security" may
simply serve as a pretext for suppressing unfavorable political and social views. Taken to its logical
conclusion, this view contends that measures which may ostensibly serve a
national security purpose (such as mass surveillance, and censorship
of mass media),
could ultimately lead to an Orwellian
dystopia.
In the United States, the
politically controversial USA Patriot Act
and other government action has brought some of these issues to the citizen's
attention, raising two main questions - to what extent, for the sake of
national security, should individual rights and freedoms be restricted and
can the restriction of civil rights for the sake of national security be
justified?
Technical
aspects
Because of the highly competitive
nature of nation states, national security for countries with significant
resources and value is based largely on technical measures and operational
processes. This ranges from information protection related to state secrets to
weaponry for militaries to negotiations strategies with other nation states.
The national security apparatus depends largely on combinations of management
practices, technical capabilities, the projection of images both internally and
externally, and the capacity to gain enough of the will of the people to gather
taxes and spend them on useful efforts. While some nation states use power to
gain more power for their leadership, others provide quality of life
improvements to their people, thus creating larger geopolitical conflicts
between types of governments. These all have foundations in internal education
and communications systems that serve to build the nation states on strategic
and tactical bases and create the conditions for success and failure of the
nation state. Increasingly the world is replacing transportation with
communication and thus the ability to communicate effectively and convey
messages in the information environment is critical to national security for
the Western nations. Issues like global warming and research priorities
increasingly dominate the reality of competition between nation states. All of
these lead to the need to have a clear understanding of the technical issues
underlying national security in order to create and sustain the institutions
that ultimately feed the future of the nation state.
The entire wiki article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security
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