Background
To what extent should we widen the agenda of security studies and why to include issues like the environment, population migration, food security, health security, poverty and the concerns of women (and other groups)? Support your arguments with reasons against each.
Security matters. It is almost impossible to make real sense out of a word deeply enthroned on politics without referring to security. A body in power either in a monarch, dictatorship or democracy has to provide security lest it fails. Every single day, people in different regions in the world are starved, killed, impoverished, tortured, raped, displaced, denied education, imprisoned all in the name of security. The concept of security in this case saturates the contemporary society globally by littering the speeches of pundits and politicians, radio waves, and newspaper columns that are full of it as well as the images of insecurity that flash across the internet and television screens constantly. All these factors have accorded security a fascinating, deadly, and important subject in academia. To many, security is viewed as a symbol of protection from the emanating threats posed by hunger, disease, crime, unemployment, political repression, social conflicts, and environmental hazards. However, the concept of security remains a pillar that is widely contested through a logomachy that has given rise to different schools of thought that empathize on differing nuances. In this paper, I will address the extent to which the agenda of security studies needs to be widened and the rationale behind the need to include issues such as food security, population migration, poverty, health security, and the concerns and security of women in this broader picture.
Security studies have over the past decades grown out of debate especially over the measures that need to be deployed to protect the state against internal and external threats following the aftermaths of the Second World War. Security has in this case turned out as a watchword by distinguishing security studies from the early thinking on this discipline and military history, as it evolves, thus serving as a linking concept that connects a diverse set of research studies. Referring back to the last sixty years of research on matters international security, the first proverbial question remains in defining the elements that make up this sub-field in an effort to comprehend the boundary zones that lie between it and other adjacent disciplines. According to Magyar & Air University (2001), security is stipulated simply as the study of diplomacy and war as confined primarily to a state-centric analysis. Biersteker (2014) therefore considers the state as central in the discourse on security studies. This consequently denotes the need to undermine the neo-realist assumptions in an effort to argue that security studies is more than the mere balance and control of military powers and forces. However, the ideologies that security should be defined from the perspective of safety found within a state are primarily born from the anarchic life and the Hobbesian idea.
Environmental Security Concerns and its Reasons
Security has been a subject of study for as long as the existence of human societies. As studies from the world’s etymology reveal, security means different things to people depending on the place of human history and time. According to Abrahamsen & Williams (2011), the field has over time enjoyed a golden age since 1950 when the civil strategists benefited widely from closer connections with the Western regimes and governments as well as other foreign security policies. During this period, the Western governments relied on conceptual innovations, academic institutions, practical proposals, hard research, and other willing recruits in establishing security policies.
Until the 1980s, the aspect of strategic studies was viewed as a discipline primarily responsible in the study of security matters, an aspect that reduced the element of military affairs in this discipline. Since this period, security studies have turned out to be particular globally, an aspect that is attributed to the widespread labels that intricate the discipline as responsible for studies on security (Ingwe, 2014). Such turns were to a larger extent informed by the critical approach in which classical paradigms were questioned and new approaches of thinking on security matters advanced. Underlying in these majorities of new methods lays the idea that security remains a mere technical aspect that should not only be left for experts to discourse, but deeply embedded in practice and that requires a careful look.
From 1980 onwards, especially in relation to the period that followed after the culmination of the Cold War, studies on security started to broaden their agenda in an effort to include issues that were previously considered as out of reach such as terrorism, migration, environment, food security, health security, poverty, and the concerns of women in its broader picture (Ingwe, 2014). At this same time, studies on Peace and Conflicts shifted their focus to include emergent ethnic conflicts as well as other new conflicts emanating from the environment and globalization as its parts. Curiously, the broadening of the agenda of security studies to different areas has furthered the studies on security studies.
Environmental security in the twenty-first century has taken on a new meaning as an approach aimed at gaining sustainability and the protection of natural resources: an aspect that is currently essential in foreign policy and national security. During the post-Cold War epoch, the national security committees treated environmental security with contempt, considering it as a domain related with the contaminations caused by military activities thus posing a threat to the economic and human health from improperly maintained pollution resulting from industries and nuclear weapons (Elliott, 2015). Throughout this period, the focus of environmental security was directed on the use of ozone-depletes of substances and the manner in which this cross-border contaminations issues that include water and air pollution may be addressed
Food Security Concerns
The world is accustomed to the thought that national security threats are event-driven by attacks. During the period of the Cold War, there were imminent nuclear strikes that were considered as a threat to the security of nations. However, recently, several terroristic attacks have gained prominence, thus pointing to the fact that event threats are currently driving preparations within the national security community. Currently, it is evident that there are slower-onsets of other threats as well, with climate change being one (Katsos, 2018). Climate change has therefore turned out as a threat to the stability of different economies given that these changes have resulted in flooding as well as water shortages and the deplete of other natural resources that have long term challenges.
A look into different maps reveals the growing scarcity of water sources and shortages of resources, thus raising the realization of the depleting aquifers as well as glaciers in major regions of the world such as the Himalayas that is melting at a faster rate while populations are increasing. A global picture of these happenings therefore remains significant for the national security community (Katsos, 2018). This therefore denotes the need for a growing appreciation that is required for resilience especially in the establishment of social capital and infrastructures for communities in an effort to withstand events and environmental disasters. Advancements in social and behavioral sciences would in this case help in integrating dynamic processes of addressing matters environmental security.
The global food security issues remains an aspect that is straightforward given the fact that by 2050, the world may need to feed close to 9 billion people. It is evident that the demand for food will rise to 60% as opposed to the current level, thus sensitizing on the need to end hunger in an effort to achieve food security and improve on the nutrition of the world: efforts that lie on the need to promote sustainable agriculture as evident in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Schmitz, Kennedy, & Schmitz, 2016).In order to achieve this objective, there are a host of issues that need to be addressed such as the ageing demographics, gender parity and global warming to the development of effective skills.
Agricultural sectors, therefore, need to become productive through the adoption of effective business models while on the other hand forging partnerships from the public-private sector. On the other hand, there is a need to achieve sustainability by mainly addressing matters related to greenhouse gas emissions, waste and water control, hunger, malnutrition, and conflicts (Schmitz, Kennedy, & Schmitz, 2015). This is evident in the fact that everyone needs food in as much as there are complexities in the delivery of sufficient food to meet the needs of a national population as well as the whole world’s populace; thus revealing the rationale behind the demand to make food security a priority for all nations whether developed or developing.
Poverty Security
Security as established in this paper has immensely played a significant role in comprehending the element of poverty. Earlier studies revealed that poverty among the peasants mainly focused on food security by studying the strategies inculcated by families, individuals, and communities in ensuring their food security, efforts aimed at minimizing the risks emanating from starvation. However, it is essential to note that the conjuncture that resulted in the rise of discourses on the events of 9/11 and global poverty shifted discussions on the inclusion of poverty as a security issue. Global poverty, also considered as poverty of the global South has therefore been conceptualized as a national security issue or threat by defense experts and intellectuals (Eadie, 2010). It is however interesting to consider that the conception of security underwent several changes before the events of 9/11, a move that increased the idea of poverty as a means to achieve human security.
Illegal immigration, globalized health pandemics, drug smuggling, armed conflicts, religious fundamentalism, radical politicization, and ecological degradation have therefore been connected to the aspect of global poverty. In this regard, it is arguable that there are connections between poverty and security given the long genealogy that is to a larger extent ignored in the formulation of this problem (Eadie, 2010). This is supported by the fact that poverty is a problem of security that is crystalized in the discourses on human security that arose in 2011, thus pointing to the fact that this may not be treated only as a tragic event. Human security remains an aspect that is widely affected by several forces, with poverty considered as one of the aspects that threatens the sustainability of humans.
In this regard, if poverty is viewed as a security concern or threat by the security community, then there is a need for effective measures driven towards combating it that are different from measures that need to be deployed in the event that poverty is comprehended as a issue of human basic needs and development (Eadie, 2010). On the other hand, if poverty is viewed through a depoliticized point of view through the combination of its prospects with the discourses on human security, there it is evident that there are few interventions into such discourses that would make a difference in the lives of the poor. This established the need for repealed thoughts in the formulation of policy interventions that are desirable and feasible in addressing this security issue.
Over the recent years, health security has acquired international recognition as security issue. Global health matters have over time arisen, an aspect that is owed to globalization, contemporary conflicts, climate changes, augmented mobility of populations, emerging infections illnesses, and bioterrorism that not only pose threats to the security of a nation but to the global scale security as well (Herington, 2016). The emanating probable risks posed by different epidemics, with precision to endemics are viewed as threats to the national security of different states, and as such, have found recognition in the strategies established to address matters of national security (Osterholm, 2017). The aspect of health security has therefore turned out to be a heated debate over the past few years in political discourse as well as academia. In as much as there is not a single universally accepted term that defines health security, different literatures argue that this notion is profoundly linked to the toll in the blowout of infectious illnesses that threaten not only individual populations but the society in its entirety, with this hedged on the manner in which pathogenic microbes may be utilized as weapons of a biological nature in addressing this issue.
Facts from literature also reveal that certain illnesses such as HIV/AIDS have the capacity to impose economic, social, political, and military implications on a nation. This may jeopardize the security and stability of a region or country, supporting the fact that health is a major security concern. In as much as populations of people residing in developed economies consider that terrorism in this age is the principal threat to the security of a nation, facts adduced from literatures reveal that diseases are the main causes of 90% of all the deaths occurring worldwide (World Health Organization, 2013). Evidence accrued from the World Health Organization reveals that in 2010, over 22 million people died from infectious illnesses, with one of the threats to the security of humanity being HIV/AIDS which has claimed the lives of more than 1.5 million in 2013. According to data retrieved from the World Bank, the first time AIDS was registered, more than 65 million individuals were infected (World Bank, 2013). Currently, reports from the World Bank reveal that there are 35 million more infections with the virus. AIDS is not only considered as the foremost root of demises in Africa now, but has a casualty rate that is 10 times higher than that of any armed conflict, an aspect that has led to profound consequences on the health of families while on the other hand effecting social cohesion, education, and the security system of several nations.
Violence against still remains an endemic aspect in several nations amidst the climate of state inaction and impunity. Dysfunctional criminal justice systems and discriminatory legislative measures have with minimal efforts made strides in addressing this security concern given the fact that it affects the welfare of women who are targeted by several violent extremists with an agenda of gender repression (Hudson, Ballif-Spanvill, Caprioli, & Emmett, 2017). The government therefore needs to make an international commitment and constitutional obligation under several conventions in eliminating all the forms of discrimination against this gender, efforts that need to be directed towards removing the barriers that hinder the empowerment of women. This may be achieved by repealing the discriminatory legislations through the enforcement of laws that have the capacity to protect women and guarantee them of their security.
Several schools of thoughts have however questioned the analytical appropriateness and operational utility of linking environmental, food security, health security, poverty, and the concerns of women with security, raising arguments on these lines. First, these elements are considered as a threat to the well-being of humans, thus making them different from the threats posed by insecurity. Secondly, the inclusion of these elements in the broader picture of security renders the aspect of security as useless since they are viewed as tactics for the developed nations to impose their principles and values on the developing economies in an effort to infringe on their sovereignty, views that are merely hedged on allegations and not facts.
Conclusion
In an effort to divorce facts from half-truths, this study has revealed that the concept of security in this case saturates the contemporary society globally by littering the speeches of pundits and politicians, radio waves, and newspaper columns that are full of it as well as the images of insecurity that flash across the internet and television screens constantly. The agenda of security studies therefore needs to be widened to include issues such as population migrations, food security, poverty, environment, health security, and the concerns and security of women in the broader picture.
References
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Biersteker, T. (2014). Dialectical Reflections on Transformations of Global Security during the Long Twentieth Century. Globalizations, 11(5), 711-731. doi:10.1080/14747731.2014.972063
Eadie, P. (2010). Poverty, Security and the Janus-Faced State. British Journal Of Politics & International Relations, 9(4), 636-653. doi:10.1111/j.1467-856X.2007.00270.x
Elliott, L. (2015). Human security/environmental security. Contemporary Politics, 21(1), 11-24. doi:10.1080/13569775.2014.993905
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Schmitz, A., Kennedy, P. L., & Schmitz, T. G. (2015). Food Security in an Uncertain World : An International Perspective. Bingley, U.K.: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Schmitz, A., Kennedy, P. L., & Schmitz, T. G. (2016). Food Security in a Food Abundant World : An Individual Country Perspective. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
World Bank (2013). World Bank and HIV/AIDS: The Facts. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/hivandaids/brief/world-bank-and-hivaids-the-facts (accessed 11 March 2015).
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