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What is Security?

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 WHAT IS SECURITY?

INTRODUCTION

There is no doubt that security is one of the most important concepts in International

Relations, since it is related to the safety of states and their citizens and their very survival.

However, defining security is not an easy matter, since the term has had many different

meanings to different people in different places and different times over the course of human

history. The obvious consequence is that there are many different ways to think about security.

Actually, there has been a never-ending debate on its nature and dimension, since there is not a

broad consensus on its meaning. Is it a goal to be pursued at all costs, no matter what? Is it a

condition or a perception? Or is it a consequence of measures taken to protect people, values,

ideas, territory, and resources and so on? Is it a means or an end? What is security? How can we

assess security? Are there degrees of security? Is it an objective concept or a subjective one?

How security threats emerge and why? Is it related only to states or security is also related to

individual human beings? Is security synonymous with survival?

In order to present a definition of any given idea – security, in this case – it is necessary

to first understand its nature and the main aspects the concept is supposed to convey. In this

sense, in order to find possible answers to some of the question above mentioned, and also in

order to be able to formulate new questions, Political Scientists and International Relations

scholars have been trying hard to redefine security, not least with the end of the Cold War. This

argument is backed by the large number of security definitions that have since appeared.

However, it seems that, unfortunately, most of these efforts are more concerned with

analyzing important international contemporary agenda issues and how these issues might be

related to the foreign policy of major countries than with the concept of security itself. Baldwin

1
(1997) argues that, very often, in addition to the traditional concern with security from external

military threats, most scholars appear to be more interested in redefining the policy agendas of

nation-states in order to include and give high priority to topics as poverty, trade, economics,

human rights, transnational crimes and environment. In this line of thinking, Baldwin contends

that little attention is being dedicated to conceptual issues as such. For example, Jessica

Tuchman Matthews (2011:64) says that:

The 1990s will demand a redefinition of what constitutes national security. In

the 1970s, the concept was expanded to include international economics […].
Global development now suggests the need for another analogous, broadening
definition of national security to include resource, environmental and
demographic issues.

However, before proceeding to the analysis of such “broad definitions”, it is important to

see how the concept of security has evolved and how understandings of security have changed

from a “traditional agenda”, state-centered and based upon Realist approaches, to a more diverse

set of “non-traditional” issues.

My argument unfolds in two parts. In the first part, I begin by presenting the main tenets

of realism, liberalism, and constructivism, which are are usually considered the most important

theoretical schools in the modern field of International Relations. Even though these approaches

may present overlaps and points in common, as a rule of thumb they are perceived and portrayed

as distinct perspectives, with different core assumptions. Then, I argue that analyzing what these

perspectives have to offer about the concept of security has the potential to clarify the relevance

and contribution of each school of thought to the field of security studies, and may additionally

serve as a much needed source of inspiration for further empirical research and theory building

research in this area. Finally, building on this analysis, the second part of this paper takes a

2
deeper look at what different streams of thinking believe should constitute the core of the

modern field of “security studies”.

REALIST APPROACHES TO SECURITY

During most part of the Cold War, security studies were basically focused on issues

revolving around the control, threat or use of force (Nye & Lynn-Jones 1988). Consequently, the

international system was considered inherently state-centric, since states were seen as both the

main users of force and the main targets of the use of force. The acclaimed article of Arnold

Wolfers ‘National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol provided a clear overview of the most

important competing definitions of security during the Cold War. According to Wolfers (1952),

security is a crucial concept in International Relations, but it can also extremely subjective in

nature.

The traditional security paradigm refers to a realist construct of security in which the

referent object of security is the state. The Realism school in International Relations theory deals

with macro issues such as political and militaristic ones in a context where security and power,

measured in terms of military capabilities, are the driving forces in the international system.

Security, then, means national security. Other goals are secondary. National security is

synonymous with national interest, which emphasizes that the security policy subordinates any

other interests to those of the nation (Wolfers 1952). As a consequence, the stability of both the

domestic and the international system was based on the premise that if state security is

maintained, then the security of citizens will naturally follow. The underlying assumption is that

the domestic political order here was stable and essentially peaceful.

3
 Hans Morgenthau laid out the main tenets of Classical Realism in the classic book

Politics Among Nations: the Struggle for Power and Peace, where he insisted on the rationality

of statesmen and their actions in terms of national interest, defined as the pursuit of power. To

Morgenthau, security is a derivative of power since “(W)e assume that statesmen think and act in

terms of interests defined as power, and the evidence of history bears that assumption out”

(Morgenthau 1993:3), while it might be argued that actually it does not.

Realism gave anarchy a privileged position in explaining international relations. Anarchy

should be understood as the absence of a central authority that could enforce agreements or

prevent the use of force. It is the nature of the international system that explains why states

behave the way they do as they seek security in an anarchic international environment.

According to Christine Agius (2013:96)

For realists, anarchy produces a self-help world. The lack of power above the
state means that the ‘logic’ of self-help produces competition in the international
system, creating security dilemmas and problematizing the possibilities for
collective action.

In this essentially anarchic world, characterized by the absence of a hegemonic stability,

the international system would be inherently susceptible to a Hobbesian war of “all against all”

(Ripley 1993), the reason why every version of Realism see the world though pessimistic lenses.

The Realist approach to tackling insecurity thus relies on individual state power, which is a

defining feature of the international system, and can be seen primarily as the resources available

to a state for building military forces (Glaser 2013). States, seen as unitary actors, were

considered rational entities. Their national interests and policies would be driven by the desire

for absolute power. Security was then seen as insurance or protection against invasion and it was

4
based on the existence of technical and military capabilities. According to Mario Laboríe Iglesias

(2011:3)

National security revolves around the realist paradigm, according to which

global policies are always a struggle between States to reach power, under a
situation of anarchy, where they compete for their own national interests. In this
context, States rely on military power in order to guarantee those interests,
counteracting the threats that arise from other States armed forces. This way,
national sovereignty and balance of power, which is distributed between the
different States, are related unmistakably to what it is understood by security.

As a result, states must rely only on their own capabilities to protect their national

security, what might eventually lead to more insecurity, due to a competition for power. In this

paradigm, states would assess each other in terms of their power, resources and capabilities, not

in terms of any variation that exists within states, regarding ideology, political system, culture,

etc… Security was an objective value. In this regard, Hans Brauch (2011:61) says that objective

security, from a realist perspective, is obtained when the dangers posed by multiple challenges,

threats, challenges and vulnerabilities “are avoided, prevented, managed, coped with, mitigated

and adapted to by individuals, societal groups, the state or regional or global international

organizations”.

The prevalence of this theoretical approach reached a peak during the Cold War period.

Actually, Jack Levy (1998:146) contends that the realist tradition has dominated the study of

security and war since Thucydides, and includes “Machiavellians, Hobbesians, classical balance

of power theorists, Waltzian neorealists, and hegemonic transition theorists”. Even though

theorists within the Realist school might adopt different approaches to explain the international

system and to make predictions, they shared a basic core of common assumptions:

[t]he key actors in world politics are sovereign states that act rationally to
advance their security, power, and wealth in a conflictual international system

5
 that lacks a legitimate governmental authority to regulate conflicts or enforce
agreements (Levy 1998:146).

During the Cold War, security was all about states, strategies, military power and status

quo (Williams 2013). From a traditional realist perspective, most nations entrusted their security

to a balance of power among states for over forty years. However, Wolfers (1952) presented an

entirely different idea of security. According to Baldwin (1997), Wolfers argued that states

actually varied widely in the values they placed on security. In fact, Wolfers (1952) contended

that some states might be dissatisfied with the status quo to such an extent that they would be

more interested in acquiring new values than in securing the values they already had. Wolfers

believed that states would be inclined to perceive differently their so-called “acquired values”

and the degree of danger they might face; the degree to which they would seek to protect “core”

and/or “marginal” values, and the means by which they would ensure security, which would

range from alliances and arms race, to neutrality and the pacifist non-use of force.

A classical realist, Wolfers disputed the notion that security is an absolute value, as it was

advocated by traditional thinkers. In his view, we do not live in a binary world in which either

you have security or you do not. You can have more or less security. Security, as a negative

value, can be subjective and, as a social science concept, it is ambiguous and elastic in its

meaning (Brauch 2011). In Wolfers’ words (1952:484-485):

[S]ecurity, in an objective sense, measures the absence of threats to acquired

values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear that such values will be
attacked. However, security and power would be synonymous terms if security
could be attained only through the accumulation of power, which is not to the
case. The fear of attack-security in the subjective sense is also not proportionate
to the relative power position of a nation. Security after all is nothing but the
absence of the evil of insecurity, a negative value so to speak.

6
 With such words, Wolfers presented a distinction between objective and subjective

dimensions of security. His focus is on “threats”, not on “power”, and threats can result not only

from an empirical reality, but also from a psychological construction. This innovative idea could

be considered an early “social-constructivist” understanding of security.

Wolfers also suggests that security, or national security, can be a dangerously ambiguous

concept if used without specification. The characterization of security as “the absence of threats”

seems to encapsulate the essence or the central idea of the notion of security. In this regard,

Williams (2013:1) works with a definition of security that involves the “alleviation of threats to

cherished values”. Notwithstanding, in analyzing Wolfers’ definition, Baldwin (1997:26) notes

that there might be some degree of ambiguity in the expression “absence of threats”, being

necessary to rephrase Wolfers’ concept of security as a “low probability of damage to acquired

values”. In doing so, Baldwin argued that

The advantage of this reformulation can be illustrated as follows: In response to

threats of military attack, states develop deterrence policies. Such policies are
intended to provide security by lowering the probability that the attack will
occur. In response to the ‘threat’ of earthquakes, states adopt building codes.
This does not affect the probability of earthquakes, but it does lower the
probability of damages to acquired values. Thus the revised wording focus on
the preservation of acquired values and not on the presence or absence of
‘threats’.

Such reformulation of Wolfers’ phraseology was intended to broaden the general

meaning of security, since traditional military-oriented concepts of security have been considered

too narrow to describe reality, a view shared by Richard Ullman (2011). Baldwin (1997) argues

that, with this reformulation and in order to avoid ambiguity, security could be defined in terms

of two specifications:

7
A) Security for whom? This means who is the referent object, or who is supposed to feel secure.

Would it be the individual, and if so, would it be some, most or all of them? Or would it be the

state, the international system, and so on?

B) Security for which values? Since security is not an absolute value, it needs to be balanced

against other key values, such as economic welfare, liberty, territorial integrity, and

environmental conservation, for example.

However, Baldwin acknowledges that, important though they may be to the concept of

security, these specifications are not enough to provide a more precise guidance for its pursuit.

Hence the need for some more specifications such as “how much security” security “from what

threats”, “by what means”, “at what costs” and “in what time period”.

LIBERAL APPROACHES TO SECURITY

Even though the liberalist tradition could be traced back to the Enlightenment (Morgan

2013), it could be argued that the Liberal school of thought, with its distinct approaches1,

developed as a reaction to Realism’s hegemony in IR theory and security studies. Liberalists

accept the assumption that states operate in an anarchic environment and behave in a self-

interested manner, but they hold that international politics does not need to be inherently conflict

ridden and violent (Keohane 1989). States can rely on mutual cooperation to tackle global issues.

Liberalists identify nation states as the most important actors in the international system, but they

give considerable attention to others actors, such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs),

1
According to Eriksson and Giacomello (2006:229), Liberalism is actually a broad perspective which includes,
among others, “Wilsonian idealism and neoliberal theories (Moravcsik 1998, 1999; Walker 1993), democratic
peace theory (Russett and Antholis 1993), interdependence theory (Keohane and Nye 1977, 1989), second-image
theory (Gourevitch 1978), the bureaucratic politics approach (Allison and Zelikow 1999), and domestic politics
approaches (Risse Kappen 1995; Snyder 1991)”.

8
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), transnational corporations, interest groups and others.

State’s behavior is determined primarily by domestic actors’ power, preferences, decisions, and

the nature of state’s domestic political system, not by international system. In this context,

foreign policy is domestic preferences projected outwards (Morgan 2013). Jack Levy (1998:145)

summarizes some of the core ideas of Liberalism as:

In contrast to the realist focus on the struggle for power and security in an
anarchic and conflictual Hobbesian world, the liberal tradition sees a more
benign Grotian international society or Lockean state of nature where anarchy
does not imply disorder. States have common as well as conflictual interests,
aim to maximize economic welfare as well as provide for security, and create
international institutions that help regulate conflict and promote cooperation.

As the Liberal political thinking developed, the more traditional notion of national

security began to include in its agenda non-military aspects. States are still the main referent

object, but other dimensions and spheres started to be taken into account. And most importantly,

individuals began to become the centre of interest. According to Paul Williams (2013:4)

Whereas realism seeks an explanation for state behavior in the international

system, liberalism looks to the state as the unit of analysis and places importance
on domestic actors’ power and preferences and the nature of their political
systems. Since behavior is a product of domestic circumstances for liberalists,
states are not alike, and this means that international relations are determined by
the choices that people make; the world can operate in a realist manner, but for
liberalists it does not have to.

Williams implies that policy makers acknowledge that states can have common, shared

values. Thus, they are able to pursue agreements that would mutually benefit them, gradually

implementing confidence-building measures that would generate a more secure environment.

Therefore, although recognizing that cooperation can be difficult, Liberalism tends to be a more

optimistic approach in its essence, by sustaining that lasting security is a concrete possibility.

9
 In the same line of thought, Richard Ullman (2011:11) had already warned against the

risks of defining security merely in military terms:

[…] [it] conveys a profoundly false image of reality. That false image is doubly
misleading and therefore doubly dangerous. First, it causes states to concentrate
on military threats and to ignore other and perhaps even more harmful dangers.
Thus it reduces their total security. And second, it contributes to a pervasive
militarization on international relations that in the long run can only increase
global security”.

The end of the Cold War prompted the emergence of a new thinking about security.

Indeed, with the end of the Cold War, the concept of security has been broadened, or extended as

posits Emma Rothschild (1995), to include threats that have no longer a purely military

character. Rothschild understands this extension in four main forms: first, from the security of

nations to the security of groups and individuals; second, from the security of nations to the

security of the international system; third, an horizontal extension, from military aspects to

political, economic, social, environmental and human aspects; and fourth, the political

responsibility for ensuring security is extended:

[…] it is diffused in all directions from national states, including upwards to

international institutions, downwards to regional or local government, and
sideways to nongovernmental organizations, to public opinion and the press, and
to the abstract forces of nature or of the market (Rothschild 1995:55).

Rothschild’s ideas coincide with the innovative work presented by Barry Buzan in

Peoples, States and Fear (1991). In the early post-Cold War period, Buzan made a significant

contribution to the debate on security by offering categorizations to the evolving security agenda,

Actually, Buzan’s work represented a seminal text in the development of the Critical Security

Studies approach, which challenged the basic tenets of Realism. The notion of threat and

vulnerability is central to Buzan’s ideas, since different components of the state are vulnerable to

10
different types of threats (Brauch 2011). These threats, in its turn, would require the analyst to

understand the state’s potential vulnerabilities.

Based on the premise that we should think of security in holistic terms, Buzan contended

that security should involve five interdependent dimensions: military, political, economic,

environmental and societal security. In his view, each one of these dimension could be used to

explain/analyze a range of different referent objects of security. And more importantly, no

dimension should be analyzed in isolation from the others. In spite of his contribution to the

debate, Buzan acknowledges that the standard unity of security in the international system is the

state. Other collectivities are also important, but states are the dominant units. For this reason,

national security still is and has to be the core issue of international politics. One might argue,

however, that Buzan’s insistence on the centrality of the state as the referent object might mean

that he did not break completely with the Neorealist explanatory model (McSweeney 2004).

Actually, the categorizations offered by Buzan (1991) have virtually become a

commonplace of international politics discussions after the end of the Cold War. Jessica

Matthews (2011), for example, included environmental degradation, resource scarcity and

population growth among the new security threats mankind would have to face in the future.

Brauch (2011:63), in his turn, posits that:

The threat concept as the basis for military planning and legitimating military
programmes – at least among many NATO countries – has fundamentally
changed after 1990. With the widening of the security concept from the
traditional military and diplomatic security, to the new economic, societal and
environmental dimensions, the threat concept has also widened and been applied
to a series of new threats not only to the ‘state’ but also to the other referents of
new security concepts, from human beings to global security .

11
 According to Rothschild (1995), the emergence of this new political preoccupation with

old ideas reflected new political interests. The underlying assumption was that it was necessary

to rethink about the real meaning of the term security by making individuals and/or social groups

priorities both in the domestic and the international agendas. It would be necessary to formulate

an alternative speech in which these actors were at the centre of attention.

However, from a more conceptual point of view, Ullman (2011) presents a more

subjective idea of security. To him, security is not a goal to be pursued at all costs, but a

consequence of measures adopted to reduce possible threats and vulnerabilities. In this context,

security would have the same meaning as its original ancient Latin version, securitas, “which

refers to tranquility and freedom from care” (Liotta & Owen 2006). Security is then a condition,

and since it is not an absolute value, the perception of security depends on how we balance it

against other values, such as liberty.

In consequence, security could be defined and valorized only by the threats which

challenge it. At this particular point, Ullman (2011:13) offers an alternative definition of threat to

national security, arguing that it is

[…] an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens drastically and over a
relatively brief span of time 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
(person, groups, corporations) within the state.

The issue is now how to assess vulnerability. Ullman suggests that there is a negative

relationship between security and vulnerability, even though he acknowledges that it is not easy

to measure at the level of state. Security increases as vulnerability decreases and vice-versa.

Since different people at the same place might assess risks differently, and might feel threatened

12
by a disrupting event in different ways, what remains to be known is what resources a given

community would allocate to preserve its security. Or in other words, which sacrifice this

specific community would be willing to do to preserve its cherished values. Well, it is a matter of

perceptions and tradeoffs. In this context, Ullman (2011:13) argues that the tradeoff between

liberty and security is of utmost importance, since “individual and groups seek security against

the state, just as they seek the state to protect them against harm from other states”. In Ullman’s

view, human rights and state security are thus intimately linked.

In this sense, Baldwin (1997:18) argues that security, as any other value, seems to be

subject to the law of diminishing utility, since “the more security one has, the less one is likely to

value an increment of security”. According to Baldwin (1997:19), in a view pretty much similar

to the ones presented by Ullman, the relative importance of security can only be assessed through

a marginal value approach, which means to ask how far security can be traded off against other

important values in order to mobilize policy resources:

The marginal value approach is the only one that provides a solution to the
resources allocation problem. This approach […] is rooted in the assumption
that the law of diminishing marginal utility is as applicable to security as it is to
other values. […] security is only one of many policy objectives competing for
scarce resources and subject to the law of diminishing returns. Thus, the value of
an increment of national security to a country will vary from one country to the
other and from one historical context to another, depending not on how much
security is needed but how much security the country already has.

CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACHES TO SECURITY

Derived from the Critical Security Studies School, the Social Constructivist approach

emerged in 1989 and has systematically expanded to an extent that it can now be considered a

third explanation for why states behave the way they do. According to Eriksson and Giacomello

(2006:232-233) the breakthrough for Constructivism “came partly from attacking the meta-

13
theoretical rationalism which is common to both realism and liberalism and partly from

providing substantive interpretations of those processes and factors downplayed by these

theories”.

Social Constructivism also considers security as an inherently subjective value, or, more

specifically, an intersubjective value. In assessing security, it gives attention to ideational factors,

not material factors. From a Constructivist perspective then, security is expected to be achieved

only once the “perception and fears of security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks are

allayed and overcome” (Brauch 2011:61). Sure, it is important to take objective factors in the

security perception into account. However, even though they are a necessary condition, they are

not sufficient. This happens because subjective factors will certainly influence security

perceptions. As a consequence, the perception of security threats, risks and dangers will depend

on the beliefs, culture, traditions, interests, and worldviews of the analyst. The meaning of

security would then be socially constructed. Paraphrasing Alexander Wendt (1992), security

would be what you make of it.

This approach contends that the idea of security presents a relational dimension, for

identities are constructed through interaction. It thus involves gaining a degree of confidence

about our relationships with other actors. This confidence might come through sharing certain

interests, preferences, values, beliefs and commitments with other actors. In turn, this would

provide some degree of reassurance and predictability.

This “relational dimension” means that “identities matter”, which is one of the core

assumptions of Constructivism, along with intersubjectivity. According to Christine Agius

(2013:88),

14
 The second ontological claim of constructivism is that identities matter.
Identities give actors interests and those interests tell us something about how
actors act/behave and the goals they pursue. Quite simply, actors cannot act
without an identity. […]. Identity is therefore crucial to constructivists, as
Alexander Wendt puts it: ‘A gun in the hands of a friend is a different thing
from one in the hands of an enemy, and enmity is a social, not material,
relation’.

Paul Williams (2013:7) also provides what can be considered a meaningful example:

Thus while US decision-makers think Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons

would be a source of considerable insecurity, they do not feel the same way
about the nuclear arsenals held by India or Israel. Consequently, in the second
philosophy, true or stable security does not come from the ability to exercise
power over others. Rather, it comes from cooperating to achieve security
without depriving others of it.

Amitav Acharya (2011), like many others who assemble around the label of Critical

Security Studies, has also presented compelling arguments regarding the need to redefine and to

broaden the concept of “security”. He believes that the “dominant understanding” of security, as

he calls Realism, provided a narrow, limited, exclusive and biased conceptual framework during

the Cold War. Acharya contends that the security experience of the Third World has been greatly

marginalized by mainstream scholars, who have adopted a Eurocentric view of conflict, despite

the fact that it was in Third World countries that most world conflicts have occurred. The result

has been that Security Studies pays insufficient attention to the intrastate conflict and to non-

military sources of conflicts:

[…] the security predicament of the Third World states challenges several key
elements of the national security paradigm, especially the state-centric and war-
centric universe, since their problems of insecurity and their relationship with
the larger issues of international order were quite different from what was
envisaged under the dominant notion (Acharya 2011:52-53).

Acharya also stresses the need to understand that much of the conflict in Third World

countries originates from local regional conditions rather than simple international system

15
transformations. Furthermore, another important way in which the then emergent Third World

would challenge the “dominant understanding” of security relates to the role of nonmilitary

phenomena. In his analysis, “resource scarcity, overpopulation, underdevelopment, and

environmental degradation were at the heart of insecurity in the Third World” (Acharya

2011:54). This broader worldview turned the conceptual tools and methodology used by the

orthodox dominant understanding of security obsolete. Therefore, the logical consequence is that

much of Structural Realism needs to be rethought.

As expected, Realism advocates have consistently reacted against these “new” lines of

thinking. Neorealists like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt seem to strongly believe that

alternative approaches have not been able to provide neither a clear explanatory framework for

analyzing security nor to demonstrate their value in concrete research (Smith 1999). And they go

even further to argue that the adoption of such alternative approaches is analytically mistaken

and politically irresponsible (Krause & Williams 1996). That is the reason why Walt (1992:211)

defines security studies as

[…] the study of the threat, use, and control of military force .... [that is] the
conditions that make the use of force more likely, the ways that the use of force
affects individuals, states and societies, and the specific policies that states adopt
in order to prepare for, prevent, or engage in war .

Anyway, all these approaches and many others not included here offer different

perspectives about the nature of the international system, about the nature of the relationships

among states and about the nature of power. Since they have different referent objects, they

present very distinct means of defining and achieving security. However, they all appear to agree

that security is a matter of high politics; it is central to government debates and pivotal to the

16
priorities they establish. As Buzan (1991:22) would say, “security is primarily about the fate of

human collectivities”.

Nowadays, there seems to be a growing consensus that security has to do with threats.

However the apparent simplicity of the idea hides its huge complexity. It does not appear to be

possible to understand the meaning of security without taking its multiples dimensions into

account. While it is true that most theoretical approaches on security have mainly emphasized

the role of the state, it is not less true that the idea of security only makes sense when it helps to

build more sustainable, developed, equitable and freer societies, even though these cannot be

considered universal values yet. As former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated

in 1995, “there will be no development without security and no security without development”.

17
 WHAT IS SECURITY STUDIES?

After analyzing what Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism have to offer about the

concept of security, now I examine the debate over the nature of the field of Security Studies.

Even though it is regarded as a branch or a sub-discipline of International Relations, the study of

security lies at the heart of International Relations. Due to its dynamism and importance to

international politics, a considerable amount of time and intellectual efforts has been dedicated to

the field of security studies, especially since the end of the Cold War.

Since there are so many different ways to understand and to explain security, the logical

consequence is that there are many different possible perspectives and approaches to security

studies. In this context, several attempts have been made to broaden and deepen the scope of the

field beyond its traditional focus on states and military conflict. These debates over the nature

and meaning of security and the future of security studies have raised fundamental theoretical

and practical issues.

It seems that the answer to the question “what is security studies” depends on the

perspective adopted. The concept of security and what should be considered “security studies”

depend on the referent object, the thing to be secured (Collins 2013:2). Traditionally, security

studies was basically dedicated to the study of war, its causes, consequences, and how to avoid it.

Studying security meant essentially to conceptualize threats in terms of the military threats to the

integrity of a given territory or to the independence of its political institutions. Steve Smith

(1993:3) summarizes the mainstream thinking within the Realist paradigm:

[…] I was taught strategic studies at university, and I accepted the dominant
assumptions of the time, namely that strategic studies was about the military
relations between states; within this context, nuclear issues were dominant,
reflecting both an unconscious ethnocentrism and a real fear of the
consequences for humanity if nuclear 'stability' broke down.

18
 This was, at the same time, the strength and the weakness of the sub-discipline. Security

and Security Studies were then concepts much easier to understand and to deal with, since

societies, the international system and the world were arguably a much simpler place to live in.

Consequently, security studies had to provide a much narrower theoretical framework to explain

and to understand “security”. As Smith states, “it was a world of clear parameters and

established facts” (Smith 1999:3). This does not mean that little intellectual endeavour was

dedicated to debates on security, much on the contrary. However, in that context, most scholars

within the traditional security paradigm viewed the world as having a rigid set of given actors,

structures and processes, and therefore they would not take into account many other dimensions

and sources of threats and insecurity.

It does not appear to be like this anymore. As humankind progresses, paradigms shift.

Even though military aspects of security certainly still are and will continue to be one of the most

important concerns of this sub-discipline, the concept of security has consistently been

questioned, broadened and deepened. David Mutimer (2013:69) argues that “once you question

the referent object of security, you must also question the nature and scope of security, and thus

of security studies”. I argue that people, societies and states are not – and cannot be – concerned

only with protecting their territory from military threats or expanding their territory in order to

obtain greater security or economic benefits. These actors are also interested in preserving their

cherished values, their environment, their way of life, and their identities. That is why,

depending on the approach adopted, Security Studies can cover issues as diverse as the relation

between human beings and environment, transnational criminal activities, terrorism, international

trade, poverty and development, small arms and light weapons and weapon of mass destruction,

among several others.

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 Obviously, not everyone would agree that all these issues should be considered as part of

Security Studies. Amitav Acharya (2011:54) acknowledges this fact and contends that even

nowadays “the dominant understanding of security resists the inclusion of nonmilitary

phenomena in the Security Studies agenda”. Stephen Walt (1992), for instance, is certainly one

of those who resist such inclusion. His argument is that attempts to expand the concept of

security to include nonmilitary issues could over-expand the field to the point that it would

eventually lose intellectual coherence. This would be counterproductive in essence, since the

outcome of such expansion could be to hamper attempts to deal with these policy issues as well

as more traditional military security concerns. Daniel Deudney (1990:465) had already expressed

the same concerns when he argued that

If we begin to speak about all the forces and events that threaten life, property
and well-being (on a large scale) as threats to our national security, we shall
soon drain the term of any meaning. All large-scale evils will become threats to
national security.

That is a legitimate concern. The debate about the nature of security and what Security

Studies should include issues that go much beyond the mere semantic definition of the word

"security"; It would not be unreasonable to argue that “if different definitions become entrenched

among the different approaches in the field, there is a risk that security studies will cease to be an

effective discipline” (Finel 1998:4). Advocates of this perspective contend, not without a degree

of reason, that to expand the scope of security studies to encompass a new and diverse range of

threats and dangers risks blurring even further the distinction between Security Studies and the

study of International Relations.

Anyway, in this context, Walt and Deudney’s arguments are clear examples that the main

debate now is about what counts as a security issue. Krause & Williams (1996:232) suggest that

20
actually the debate about the "new thinking on security" basically revolves around two axes. The

first axe consists of attempts to broaden the neorealist conception of security in order to include a

wider range of potential threats, ranging from development and poverty issues to environment

and international trade. The other axe still adopts a state-centric perspective but has used a set of

terms as diverse, and often synonymous, as “collective”, “cooperative”, “comprehensive”, and

“common” as modifiers to security to “advocate different multilateral forms of interstate security

cooperation that could ameliorate, if not transcend, the security dilemma”. In their view:

What unites these efforts is a conviction that the neorealist focus on

safeguarding the ‘core values’ of a state from military threats emanating from
outside its borders is no longer adequate (if it ever was) as a means of
understanding what (or who) is to be secured, from what threats, and by what
means. The theoretical targets being debated are the conceptualizations of
security (state security) and threat (military force) and the assumption of
anarchy (the security dilemma) that have characterized neorealist scholarship in
security studies (Krause & Williams 1996:232).

David Baldwin (1995), on the other hand, believes that Security Studies is an academic

field in need of “clarification”, if it wants to be of relevance to explain and understand the new

world order. Consequently, in order to rethink the field, we have to inquire what is to be studied

and how. Also importantly, we have to consider “how Security Studies is to be distinguished

from various subfields on the one hand and international relations on the other" (Baldwin

1995:133). According to Baldwin, it is possible to classify the proposals regarding the study of

security into three groups, depending on the degree of reform they advocate.

The first group encompasses the so-called “traditionalists”, those who actually believe

that no reform is needed, since military security issues remain the main feature of international

politics. According to Eriksonn & Giacomello (2006:227),

[the] traditionalists […] maintain that despite the emergence of ethnic and
religious insurgence, global terrorism, transnational crime, and global warming,

21
 there is no need to broaden the definition of security. Allegedly for the sake of
conceptual clarity and theoretical parsimony (Ayoob 1997; Goldmann, 1999),
and arguably because of their underlying ideological priorities, traditionalists
continue to approach security from the viewpoint of the nation-state and
interstate war.

The second group is related to those who advocate that a fundamental reorganization of

the field, in order to broaden and deepen the concept of security, is not needed. Rather, what is

needed is only a minor, “modest reform” of the field, which should have taken place even if the

Cold War have not ended.

Finally, the third group comprises a mix of liberals, constructivists and critical theorists,

who are usually known as “Wideners”, in opposition to the traditionalists. These Wideners

propose a radical reform of the field, expanding the focus of Security Studies beyond the realm

of military concerns to encompass threats to national survival that derives from environmental,

economic, and criminal issues, among others. As it would be expected, they also incorporate

actors other than the state in their analyses, especially terrorist organizations, international

organizations, private companies, social movements, non-governmental organizations and

individuals. Baldwin (1995:132-135) contends that those who advocate reintegration of the field

with the study of foreign policy and international politics are also included in this third group

Thus, the answer to the question about which group is more accurate in its proposal depends on

each one’s world view, academic background, and ideological affiliation, among several other

factors.

CONCLUSION

There are many ways to think about security, and hence security studies. For all that has

been presented, it is clear that the debate on what Security Studies is and what it should include

is still going on and it is far from end. However, it is possible to reach some conclusions. The

22
first one is that military aspects of security still are, and will continue to be, at the core of the

field. But it is not and cannot be the only concern of peoples, societies and states, for several

reasons. The perception of a military threat involves the existence of values and vulnerabilities

which derive from economic, political, ideological, separatist, environmental, and nationalist

issues, for example. Since these dimensions may represent potential “weaknesses”, they should

not be analyzed in isolation from military aspects. Second, the law of diminishing marginal

utility tells us that it is also important to analyze the tradeoffs between military security and other

goals of public policy, since the pursuit of military security involves political, social and

economic costs.

These two reasons are deeply connected. Michael Sheehan contends that military power

can be acquired only by an enormous effort in terms of the commitment of manpower and

economic resources. According to Sheehan (2013:158), the pursuit of military security requires

states to make sacrifices in terms of spending on other social, or even security, goals that they

might have:

[…] one issue that overlaps with issues of economic security is the question, not
so much of how much military capability does a state need to be secure, but how
much can it afford?

Third, we must consider that since 1991, the dominant form of warfare has been intra-

state rather than interstate. It means that the security of states and people is now threatened more

by domestic problems than by external military threats. Rummel (1994), for instance, estimates

that in the twentieth century around forty million civilians were killed in wars between states,

while nearly six times that number were killed by their own governments. In general, the roots of

these problems can be found in factors as diverse as weak state structures, underdevelopment,

23
poverty, income inequalities, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, absence of a stable

constitutional framework, lack of democracy and political participation, ethnic fragmentation,

religious intolerance, terrorism, and, according to Acharya (2011:54), “lack of material, human,

and institutional capacity to deal with these problems”. They are all basically non-military threats

and are considered top priorities for governments which have to face these sources of conflict.

In consequence, perhaps the time has come to think of Security Studies not as a subfield

of International Relations, but as an autonomous field of research. As Williams (2013) correctly

points out, as important as they are, states are neither the only important actors in the

international system nor the only referent objects for security. Besides, inter-state relations

represent only one aspect of the security dynamics that characterize contemporary world politics.

It is becoming increasingly evident that contemporary security issues require analysis and

solutions that International Relations is unable to provide alone.

Finally, it must be said that the expansion of the concept of security and the willingness

to embrace diversity may seem risky and confusing, but they are needed, rewarding and

refreshing. Since the focus on military aspects of security provides such a narrow theoretical and

intellectual framework to portray the reality of the international system, interdisciplinary

engagement is certainly worth the all the academic risks involved if it enables scholars to explain

a wide range of political phenomena relevant to Security Studies, International Relations and

Foreign Policy, but which are/were often and undeservedly neglected.

24
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