Security

Our perceptions of what constitutes security and any potential threats to it have changed greatly since the end of the Cold War both in theory and in practice. The Cold War was a time of intense nuclear confrontation, but in essence the conflict was contained through deterrence; threats were clearly defined and international relations were predictable, as many states organized themselves into opposing military and ideological blocs. In comparison, current threats are multiple, diffuse, and unpredictable. Fears of rogue states, international terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction preoccupy the developed world as it tries to come to terms with asymmetric warfare. Established solutions such as increasing military superiority through advances in military technology offer little comfort, as even its unquestioned military supremacy was not enough to prevent the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Additionally, weak states in the developing world are unable to guarantee security to their citizens, leading many to challenge their authority, and in Africa in particular, internal wars have been a major cause of instability. The evident disparities between the world's rich and poor states, coupled with the effects of global environmental degradation, are leading many to question the current division of global wealth and resources. In short, it is not clear how security can be guaranteed anymore.

Security is also a contested concept in international relations theory. For many years, Arnold Wolfers's 1962 definition of security was a standard. He defined national security in an objective sense as the lack of threat to acquired values and the fear that those values will be attacked.

Since the end of the Cold War, though, many of his assumptions have been questioned, as people asked questions about what sort of values were to be protected, who had the responsibility or right to provide such protection, and whose values were to be secured. Theoretically speaking, in recent years we have seen a development in the use of the concept of security from the original, narrow, predominantly statecentric, military definition to a much wider concept, which has both broadened the concept to include the consideration of nonmilitary security threats, such as environmental or economic threats, and also deepened it to suggest the state is not the only referent of security, but also that societal groups and individuals can be at risk. Equally important, growing international interdependence makes it increasingly difficult not to think in terms of international or global security rather than purely national security. This approach again attempts to dislodge the state as the primary referent of security, placing greater emphasis on the interdependency and transnationalization of nonstate actors. This development has not gone unchallenged by people like Stephen Walt, who continue to restrict the application of security to threats in the military realm to the nation-state, but this change has made security more relevant to the global governance debate.