Security Dilemma

In international relations theory, the security dilemma refers to the difficulty of increasing a state's security without simultaneously (and inadvertently) decreasing the security of other states. Coined by John H. Herz in a 1950 article, the term has become an integral part of explanations of how peace-seeking states may blunder into arms races, crises, or wars. For example, a state may seek to increase its own security and deter outside aggression by building up arms. A neighboring state, witnessing the buildup, will misinterpret the move as preparation for future aggression; feeling threatened, it will attempt to increase its own security by acquiring arms. The first state's suspicions about its neighbor's belligerence are confirmed, leading to an arms race, increase in tension, or war. Conflict in this case is a product of mutual misperceptions and miscommunications that arise not only from the cognitive failures of policy makers but also from the inherent difficulty of credibly conveying peaceful intentions while building up arms or establishing buffer zones. In the domestic realm, as Robert Jervis points out, people can seek to increase their security in ways that do not threaten others—for instance by putting bars in their windows or avoiding high-crime areas. Sovereign states, on the other hand, rarely have such options available to them. What Herz called the “tragic implication” of the security dilemma is that uncertainty and fear about the intentions of other states can lead to war even when all sides are desperate to avoid one.

Several factors can mitigate the dangers associated with the security dilemma and help induce cooperation among states. One is the recognition that the dilemma exists in the first place. Failure to recognize it as such leads to two related problems. First, statesmen will not realize that their own attempts to increase security—even if done for genuinely peaceful reasons—will inevitably threaten other states, despite all assurances to the contrary. Second, they will fail to recognize that other states may arm because they fear attack, seeing their attempts instead as symptoms of aggression. A state that genuinely sees itself as peaceful, and assumes that others do as well, will wrongly conclude that any objections to their own arms buildup must mean that those who object are belligerent. The difficulty here lies in credibly conveying what the policy makers may take for granted: that outsiders should not feel threatened by the state's attempt to increase its security. Of course, merely recognizing this problem does not eliminate the dilemma. Even if policy makers recognize that others may simply be trying to increase their own security, and even if they take into account how their own attempts to do so may be misperceived by others, they cannot rely on the promises and sworn good intentions of others to maintain their security. The problem becomes not a failure of communication or empathy, but instead a failure to credibly commit to peaceful intentions in the absence of an external enforcer. (A functioning collective security system is thus another factor that can make the security dilemma more or less acute. A state will feel less threatened by a neighbor's arms increases if it believes that collective security agreements will deter potential aggressors. In this case the security concept takes the role of an external enforcer.)

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