the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

from peace to security 137The single most successful ‘expansive’ concept of the 1980s, is, however,probably ‘Common Security’, coined by the Independent Commission onDisarmament and Security Issues chaired by Olof Palme in 1982. CommonSecurity was picked up by Peace Researchers, particularly perhaps inGermany, where the concept resonated with central policy debates (Meyer,1989; Wæver, 1989b) The underlying assumption of Common Securitywas that ‘the main threats to international security come not from individualstates but from global problems shared by the entire internationalcommunity: nuclear war, the heavy economic burden of militarism andwar, disparities in living standards within and among nations, and globalenvironmental degradation’ (Porter and Brown, 1991: 109). Starting fromnational security, the report stressed that many aspects of the securityagenda were collective and pointed to the ‘less tangible dimensions tosecurity’. It held that ‘Citizens of all nations want to be able to remaintrue to the principles and ideals upon which their country was founded,free to chart futures in a manner of their own choosing’ (IndependentCommission on Disarmament and Security Issues, 1982: 4). Clearly, thisshould be read against the backdrop of the Second Cold War. To saythat citizens wanted to be true to their countries’ ideals was to reiteratenot only the (fictitious) harmony between state and individual held bystate-centric conceptions of security, but also to invoke the principle of‘non-interference in domestic affairs’: state sovereignty protected statesfrom others meddling in their domestic ideological, religious, politicalor economic choices. The Palme Commission was thus firmly embeddedwithin the bipolar confrontation where states were seen as the key toamorepeacefulworld.Suggestingthatstatescouldoverridetheprincipleof non-interference in domestic affairs to defend the insecuritiesof threatened populations, as became the norm in humanitarian operations/warsin the 1990s (Kosovo being the strongest example), was not onthe agenda. The way in which questions of military technology saturatedcritical security thinking in the early 1980s is also evidenced in that afterthe first 12 pages laying out more general links between Common Security,national security, development and the Third World, the rest of thePalme Commission Report’s 177 pages are devoted to detailed discussionsof different disarmament and arms control scenarios. ‘True security’ wasdefined as ‘ending the danger of nuclear war, reducing the frequency anddestructiveness of conventional conflicts, easing the social and economicburdens of armaments’ (Independent Commission on Disarmament andSecurity Issues, 1982: 6) and underdevelopment was considered throughits relationship to military conflict: either because the militarisation of