Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SECURITY AND SECURITIZATION
. . . only freedom can make security secure.
Karl Popper (Popper 1966: 130)
Defining Security
Security Studies
The study of security in the global context is a sub-discipline of the wider subject
usually still referred to as International Relations. International Relations is the study
of all political interactions between international ‘actors’, which include states (represented
by governments), international organizations (either inter-governmental
or non-governmental 1 ) and, to a lesser extent, some wealthy, private individuals.
Security Studies concerns itself with a sub-set of those political interactions marked
by their particular importance in terms of maintaining the security of the actors.
Where the line demarking International Relations and its sub-discipline is to be drawn
is increasingly contentious, as indeed is the demarcation of International Relations
in relation to the wider realm of Political Science. Increased political interaction
between actors, other than through the traditional state-to-state route, has served to
blur the distinction between domestic and foreign policy and widened the scope of
International Relations. The process commonly referred to as globalization has led
to internal political issues increasingly externalized and external political issues
becoming increasingly internalized. Traditionally domestic policy concerns, like
health and rights, are increasingly prominent on the global political agenda. Events
occurring in other states, such as disasters or massacres, are increasingly deemed
to be of political significance for people not personally affected. In light of these
changes, and the reduced prevalence of inter-state war, it has become a matter of
contention among theorists of International Relations whether Security Studies
should maintain its traditional emphasis on military threats to the security of states
or widen its focus. Alternative perspectives have argued increasingly that the
discipline should either extend its reach to include non-military threats to states, or
go further and bring within its remit the security of all actors in relation to a range
of threats, both military and non-military.
The main paradigms of International Relations offer alternative conceptual
frameworks for comprehending the complexity that emerges from attempting
to study the huge volume of interactions between actors that makes up the contemporary
global system. These different ‘lenses’ for making sense of this political
complexity focus in very different ways when it comes to thinking about issues of
security in International Relations.
Realism
Realists are the traditionalists in International Relations and Security Studies and
theirs is still the dominant paradigm, both academically and in terms of the ‘real
world’ as the approach favoured by governments in conducting their foreign policies.
2