Emerging Dialectic between National and Human Security: The Corona-ization of Global Security

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.

According to Wolfers (1952), security denotes protection of “acquired values”. It is then a value which a nation can have more or less of. Objectively, it measures the absence of threats to acquired values, and subjectively, it measures the absence of fear of threats to acquired values. This discrepancy between the objective and subjective connotations of security is significant. Wolfers argue that the concept is ambiguous and farfetched. In other words, it can be used to mean anything especially when used without clear specification.

Critical security studies that obtain from Critical theory, criticizes the orthodox definitions of security (State being the ONLY referent object and threats being military in nature and external), underscores the social construction of security, emphasizes the broadening and widening of the security agenda and emphasize the increased interdependency for security to offset the burden of defence spending and the comprehensive handling of threats.

This article argues that both national security and human security are necessary but insufficient in addressing the contemporary security threats. There is a security dialectic evolving between elements of the state-centric and human-centric approaches. The dialectic is between two referent objects, the state and people, between internal and external threats to these referent objects and between the various means for enhancing the security of each. The dialectic also involves causal and constitutive connections between these elements. Over time it is possible that a new synthesis in the form of a middle path may develop between the state-centric and human-centric approaches (Kerr, 2003). The emergency of the global pandemics like Covid 19 has truly attested to this fact.

The state-centric critique of the human-centric perspective has several dimensions. According to many traditional scholars, there are inadequate grounds for making human security the referent object of security (Kerr, 2003). Barry Buzan, for example, is unconvinced that the focus on state security as the referent object should not be replaced or even supplemented by human security. He (Buzan) argues that the referent object of human security can not readily be the individual or all people everywhere, humankind.

Focus on the individual brings up the problem of agency, since, in practice, individual security is an attempt to bypass the state and the state is necessary, though not sufficient condition for each person’s security. Moreover, Buzan argues that if human security is really about individual security then this is nothing new and it is already the focus of human rights law. If humankind is the referent of human security then it is ‘too big and too vague to have popular appeal’.

If human security is about the middle level- or societal security- then it concerns collectivities of people that are collected together because they share a common identity of some form. Usually such collectivities are manifested as nations and religions which, Buzan argues, is a short route back to the ‘national security’ perspective from which human security advocates are presumably trying to escape’. For these reasons Buzan rejects the idea of human security as a useful component of international security.

The arguments for a human-centric approach to security which challenges traditional views about the meaning of security as advanced by Critical security scholars embrace a much broader understanding of security, which Keith Krause describes as having three axes, which include; the horizontal push- attempts to broaden the traditionalist’s narrow definition of security to include what is perceived as other types of threats to the state such as economic, environmental and unregulated population movements; the Vertical push goes beyond the state-centric focus above to deepen the concept of security to include other types of referents; at one end individual security (often called human security), at the other end, global security, and in between regional and societal security; and the third axis, still within the state-centric mold (and which concerns the means to enhance state security) endorses cooperation among security sectors through common, cooperative, collective and comprehensive security approaches. This interpretation of the traditional approach is a useful descriptive account of the differences between the two perspectives (Krause, 1998).

However, the most strident critique of the traditional approach is that it fails to recognise the normative human centric dimensions of security. The liberal scholar Richard Falk places the idea of human security within ‘visionary interpretation of human destiny’ which can be traced from earliest times to the present. Modernity, Falk argues that, situate(s) part of this visionary impetus within the secularised imagination of individuals and groups seeking to discover an autonomous pathway to a better, more secure and fulfilling, future for human societies.

It is now clear that the concepts of state security and human security will be ‘the concepts that security policies will be organised around for a long time ahead. Hence Lodgaard proposes a re-conceptualisation of the idea of security as a ‘dual concept of state security and human security’ (Lodgaard, 2000). Security involves both; Security of states, or national security; concerns defence of territorial integrity of the state and freedom to determine one’s own form of government. Security of states, at the global level, is possible but not always probable, through collective security, sometimes through collective defence. Security of the people involves a widening of the idea of security, from the exclusive reserve of security of the state, to the security of people. In other words, the objective of human security is the safety and survival of people, or in other words freedom from fear of physical violence.

The emergency of Corona virus is a true reflection of the new dialectic between national and human security. In theadvent of the emergency of a virus (Corona virus), the modern and sophisticated global security infrastructure has been rendered irrelevant and inapplicable in this war. The war is being fought with maximum silence of the guns and mighty nuclear machinery; the war without any visible actors, no aggressors and human existence in a grave jeopardy.

In his address to the nation regarding Covid 19 in April, 2020; His Excellency the President of the Republic of Uganda, Yowel Kaguta Museveni remarked that the world is currently in the state of war as; A war without guns and bullets, a war without human soldiers, a war without ceasefire agreements, a war without a war room and a war without sacred zones.

The war where everyone whether nation-states or human beings as persons/individuals, are all belligerents, the massive defensive war without any aggressor; pre-emptive self defense, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and preventive diplomacy have all not been able to be applied in this very menace. In fact, the citizens are at war with their governments owing to the inevitable negative effects of lockdowns as an ultimate measure to arrest the situation, democracy on test, human rights laws are silent and economies world over shattered. In other words, one can detect the intra-state whiff of desperation and duress world over.

The plague has no respecter of advanced, rich and world’s powerful nations and leaders; nor has it spared the wretched of the earth. Guess what, the UN Security Council has not dared to convene a special sitting regarding the Corona virus or passing any resolution to that effect, as its tradition holds in the awake of any conventional war; as the UN charter rests the entire discretion regarding the mandate on global peace and security unto the shoulders of the United Nations Security Council. In other words, this leaves one puzzled; has the UN system or the UNSC become anachronistic and obsolete in the face of contemporary security threats?

Museveni further postulated that the army in this war is without mercy, it is without any milk of human kindness, it is indiscriminate-it has no respect for children, women or places of worship. This army is not interested in the spoils of war, it has no intention of regime change, it is not concerned about the rich mineral resources underneath the earth, it is not even interested in religious, ethnic or ideological hegemony; it is an invisible, fleet-footed and ruthlessly effective army. Its only agenda is a harvest of death, it is only satiated after turning the world into big death field. And, its capacity to achieve its aim is not in doubt; without ground, amphibious and aerial machines, it has bases in almost every country of the world. Its movement is not governed by any war convention or protocol. In short, it is a law unto itself; it is Corona virus, also known as Covid 19.

What next for global security since mankind is on the verge of extinction amidst modern arsenals, strong defence systems and strict immigration policies?

In conclusion, therefore, collective and cooperative attempts should be made in writing and furthering a new and comprehensive narrative about security, one that fully blends national and human security. In any case, hasn’t this tragedy (Covid 19) bred a popular desire for human security to surpass national security? Isn’t this the right time to explore into unknown unknowns with the possibility of worst case scenarios?

The world is unlikely to face a military invasion, of the sort it might have experienced in World War II, but its security is threatened by a series of global upheavals around food, water, cyber attacks, new epidemics, transnational crime and climate change. In the wake of global pandemics, the concept ‘Security’ has a much broader connotation than the more threat-based protective and response concepts on which a lot of public policy concentrates.

After unparalleled Corona virus, the concept of human security gives us the language to reassess the most immediate threats to our survival and the need for global cooperation to respond to them.

By

Bosco Asiimwe Ikondere,

Mr. Asiimwe is the Director, Democratic Governance and Freedoms at the Center for Multilateral Affairs