Essay Instructions: I would like you to answer the question with 300 words and I will send u the material through the email so you can answer the question.
After reading the Burgess chapter the question I have is 'are we going over the top a little, are we broadening the agenda to much'?
For instance Burgess discusses Societal and Migration, could they not be discussed together? Likewise climate change, water, and energy are the not linked? And finally organized crime, narcotics, human, and arms trafficking are they not the same issues (Organized crime)?
What do others think?
- reading : Broadening the Agenda of Security
Burgess, J. Peter. „Non-Military Security Challenges?, in Contemporary
Security and Strategy, 2nd edition, Craig A. Snyder (ed.) Palgrave
Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2008, pp. 60-78.
Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. „Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict:
Evidence from Cases?, International Security, vol. 19, no. 1, 1994, pp. 5-
40. Available in the eReadings.
Purvis, Nigel and Joshua Busby. „The Security Implications of Climate Change
for the UN System?, ECSP Report, Vol. 10, 2004, pp. 67-73. Available in
the eReadings.
Below is some of the reading for you so you can answer the qustion.........
Broadening the security agenda
Objectives
When you have completed this topic, you should be able to:
• identify the key non-military threats of security
• understand the multidimensional nature of security
• critically assess the non-military responses to security.
Introduction
Since the end of the 1980s, with the end of the era of superpower rivalry and the receding threat of nuclear war, scholars, politicians and other decision-makers have fundamentally reassessed the notions of international security.
The new approach to the question of international security takes the view that the security threat to states from other states, is on a downward course. Analysts and policy makers have become increasingly concerned with other sources of instability, including issues such as environmental degradation, economics, societal and political sources of conflict, giving way to a more ambiguous understanding of security. The concept of security, therefore, needs to encompass not just the protection of a state against foreign military attack but also the protection of states from non-military threats.
Moreover, recent years have witnessed a growing recognition of the intimate relationship that exists between the security of states and the security of the citizens who constitute such entities. The notion of ‘human security’, is creeping around the edges of official thinking, suggesting that security be viewed as emerging from the conditions of daily life, food, shelter, employment, health, public safety, rather than flowing downward from a country’s foreign relations and military strength. Thus, the individual’s security does not, necessarily, derive from their nation’s security. It has become clear that some states which are militarily and strategically powerful are not necessarily strong or stable. The concept of security is an issue that involves many different levels and agents, referring not only to practice within the state or between states, but encompassing different units, from the individual to the global, in addition to a temporal dimension, from the immediate and the proximate to the longer term.
In this new era threats to state security are less and less likely to emanate from other states. More emphasis is being placed upon internal and trans-boundary threats to security. Such threats to security include environmental degradation, economics, international crime, migratory movements and mass population displacements.
Multidimensional nature of security
As Barry Buzan (1991a, p. 432) argues, security is no longer limited to the protection of a state or society against foreign military attack but also the protection ‘of an independent identity of that state or society from forces of change that challenge this identity’. He further identifies five major sectors in which influences upon security can be divided up into: military, political, economic, societal and environmental.
Generally speaking, military security concerns the two-level interplay of the armed offensive and defensive capabilities of states, and states perceptions of each others intentions. Political security concerns the organisational stability of states, systems of government and the ideologies that give them legitimacy. Economic security concerns access to the resources, finance and markets necessary to sustain acceptable levels of welfare and state power. Societal security concerns the sustainability, within acceptable conditions for evolution, of traditional patterns of language, culture and religious and national identity and custom. Environmental security concerns the maintenance of the local and the planetary biosphere as the essential support system on which all other human enterprises depend. These five sectors do not operate in isolation from each other. Each defines a focal point within the security problematic, and a way of ordering priorities, but all are woven together in a strong web of linkages.
(Buzan 1991b, pp. 19–20)
There also exists, however, a traditional school of military thinking which argues that security studies is about the study of war and the use of force, threat and the control of military power. Walt argues that widening the agenda beyond this: ‘runs the risk of expanding “security studies” excessively; by this logic, issues such as pollution, disease, child abuse, or economic recessions could all be viewed as threats to “security”. Defining the field in this way would destroy its intellectual coherence and make it more difficult to devise solutions to any of these important problems’. (Walt, cited in Buzan, Waever & de Wilde 1998, pp. 3–4)
In the previous topics military and societal security has been extensively covered and as such the focus for this topic is on the other sectors of security threats as identified by Buzan—political, environmental and economic.
Textbook
Begin your reading with the chapter by Peter Burgess (2008), ‘Non-military security challenges’, in C Snyder (ed.), Contemporary security and strategy, 2nd edn, pp. 60–78.
Burgess focuses on non-military challenges to security. He begins by looking at the class of non-military security threats against which military force has little or no utility. These may be either local or global in character, but their impact will register on the security of states sooner rather than later, if they are not doing so already. These include environmental issues (e.g. humanly-generated climate change in general and global warming in particular); resource depletion (e.g. deforestation; over-fishing); health issues (e.g. the consequences of the HIV-AIDS epidemic); forced migration; and organised transnational crime. Of course, many of these matters overlap and reinforce each other. These should be regarded as security concerns for states insofar as they directly threaten the peace and prosperity of a country and its citizens, and indirectly insofar as they give rise to violence and undesirable political and strategic change.
Economic security
Economic security involves the maintenance of economic growth, open sea-lanes of communication, free and fair trade practices, access to finance, markets and natural resources. Restructuring of the global economy has occurred leading to the emergence of a two-tier system of states. In the first tier are the developed states of North America, Western Europe. In the second tier are the developing states of East and South-East Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, South America, Central and South Asia. This is also commonly referred to as the North-South divide as the developed states (with the exception of states such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore) are in the Northern Hemisphere while the developing states are to the south of the developed states.
Economic security is about access to the resources, finance and markets necessary to sustain acceptable levels of welfare and state power—therefore many individuals in the South live in a state of economic insecurity. For the poorer nations economic threats to security cover a range of issues—economic stagnation, environmental degradation, impoverishment, and in some cases depletion of resources, especially water, coupled with a lack of legitimacy of many governments and reinforced in most cases by rapid rates of population growth. As such, some states (e.g. Sudan, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone and Liberia) are unable to sustain even basic human . This can contribute to internal instability. Further potentially contributing to internal instability is uneven economic development and the distribution of resources.
Economic change is a fundamental necessity in most developing countries. If these countries are unable to manage their economic problems there will be serious political and social upheavals that will, eventually, spill over into the developed regions of the world. The developing countries will be able to threaten the developed world with unwanted migration, because economic conditions in the sending countries may be so harsh that migration becomes the only resort, unless welfare standards are maintained and development prospects kept alive.
Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde (1998, p. 116) argue that the issue of economic security is a fuzzy one at best but that economic activity can directly influence security issues in all the other sectors. This can be triggered by economic failures (e.g. famine and negative development) or by economic success (e.g. cultural homogenisation, loss of autonomy in military production, pollution and the gutting of state functions). As economics serves as the foundation for many of the other sectors threats to security can spill over from threats to the economic sector.
Environmental degradation as a source of political violence
Whilst dating back many centuries, the problem of international environmental degradation has only really started to gain prominence on the international agenda since the early 1970s. Some scholars have argued that linking security with the environment has created a political awareness and sense of urgency which are required to solve environmental problems and thus increase security. However, concerns have been raised that this linkage could lead to a militarisation of thinking about environmental problems. Such traditional military thinking is often state centred with the ability or will of a state to address such problems often dependent upon its character.
Environmental degradation can be considered a major threat to human life. Pollution, soil erosion and other problems of resource scarcity can negatively impact upon standards of living. Thomas Homer-Dixon (1994), takes this argument further. He argues that over the next 50 years human population will increase dramatically, and as a result there will be scarcities of renewable resources, high quality arable land and the species within them. This will then lead to violent civil or international conflict. This violence is often sub-national in nature, persistent and diffuse.
Poorer areas of the globe are already experiencing such shortages. These shortages can increase demands on institutions of the state whilst reducing their ability to meet these demands. These have the potential to lead to state fragmentation or despotic government, which can lead to internal problems and insurgency. Resource disputes can also lead to conflict between countries. As such definitions of environmental security have focused on sustainable utilisation and protection of resources. Environmental degradation as a result of warfare can often escalate conflicts. In peace time non-warfare military activity can impact on the environment not only in terms of pollution and resource usage, but also with regard to problems with nuclear testing, accidents with nuclear powered vessels and dumping of nuclear waste.
E-reading
Now read Thomas Homer-Dixon (1994), ‘Environmental scarcities and violent conflict: evidence from cases’.
How does Homer-Dixon argue that environmental degradation causes violent conflict? Is this the same as a security threat? Who or what is the referent object and how should it/they be secured?
E-reading
Finally, read the article by Nigel Purvis and Joshua Busby (2004), ‘The security implications of climate change for the UN system’.
This explores the security implications of climate change. Purvis and Busby present a summary of the adverse impacts of climate change. They analyse the security implications and offer policy recommendations for strengthening the UN’s capacity to respond to climate-related security threats.
Political threats
Political security is even more difficult to categorise then economic security. It can be argued that all actions are political and hence all threats to security at their core are political. Political security can, however, be distinguished from the other sectors through the questioning of what is necessary to maintain stable organisation structures within a state. Political threats to the state can therefore be directed towards ‘the idea of the state, particularly its national identity and organising ideology, and the institutions which express it’. (Buzan, cited in Buzan, Waever & de Wilde 1998, p. 142) Political threats can vary in importance or intensity depending on the strength of the state. Strong states, or those states with strong political institutions, are less vulnerable than are weak states whose political institutions lack a general consensus of legitimacy.
Political threats to weak states can take on the following forms:
• internal threats based on ethnic or national divisions within states
• internal threats based on political or ideological grounds
• inadvertent threats based on a state-nation split (such as differing assumptions in regard to calculating territorial rights for a state-nation)
• external, but unintentional threats to states on political-ideological grounds
• security of and against supranational, regional integration
• systemic, principled threats against states that are vulnerable because of a state-nation split
• structural (systemic) threats to states on political-ideological grounds
• threats from trans-national movements that claim a higher sovereignty than the state
• threats to international society, law and order.. (Buzan, Waever & de Wilde 1998, pp. 155–9
Conclusion
In dealing with security issues in future, military strategists will have to talk to a much wider range of people (i.e. sociologists, environmentalists and scientists in addition to historians and political scientists), if they are to be successful.
The military aspect of security is, however, by no means dead. Armed forces still play an important role in maintaining state sovereignty, providing deterrence and international prestige, contributing to international operations and fulfilling diplomatic roles. However, it must be remembered that states that are militarily and strategically powerful are not necessarily strong, stable or secure.
References
Buzan, B 1991a, ‘New patterns of global security’, International Affairs, vol. 67, no. 3.
Buzan, B 1991b, People, states and fear: an agenda for international security studies, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York.
Buzan, B, Wæver, O & de Wilde, J 1998, Security: a new framework for analysis, Lynne Rienner, Boulder, Colo.
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