Recurso Humano

For several decades, the dominant realist paradigm largely silenced the post-national security views expressed in E. H. Carr’s work, Twenty Years’ Crisis, has been cited frequently to reinforce realism’s world view. For realists, the meaning of security was subsumed under the rubric o f power. Conceptually, it was synonymous with the security of the state against external dangers, which was to be achieved by increasing military capabilities. This focus on a state-centric definition of security grew out o f realist assumptions of a sharp boundary between domestic “order” and international “anarchy”. As Waltz puts it, “the state of nature is a state of war.”22 Given the lack of an international authority with the power to curb states’ aggressive ambitions, states must rely on their own capabilities for the achievement of security. As realists have acknowledged, this self-help system often results in what they describe as a “security dilemma”: what are justified by one state as legitimate security-enhancing measures are likely to be perceived by others as a threatening military build-up.23 This action-reaction phenomenon can be conceptualised as an escalation of negative leverages applied by two or more adversaries in a conflict situation in which each side’s field expectation changes with the leverages applied at each step of escalation, and each sid’s expectations and intents are not fully known to the other. Logically, under such

22 Waltz, Theory o f International Politics, p. 102.

23 John H. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 4; Barry Buzan, An Introduction to Strategic Studies: Military Technology and International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 77-79; Richard Smoke, “National Security Affairs,” in F. Greenstein and N. Polsby, eds..

Handbook o f Political Science (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1975), Vol. 8, pp. 247-362; M. D. Wallace, “Arms Race and Escalation: Some New Evidence”, in J. D.

circumstances, it is possible that this process provides the dominant explanation of an arms race at one stage, whereas such a development might be regarded as an escalation to war at some other stage.

For realists, the security dilemma proposition is essential for the notion that the conflictual nature of international politics is due to the anarchic features of the international system. As a result, two assumptions may be seen to comprise the security dilemma. First, because the international system is anarchic, the governments of adversarial states are compelled to choose between abstaining from protecting themselves properly against an existing threat and taking measures likely to provoke an increased threat. Second, in security dilemmas, governments are convinced that it is better to be safe than sorry, and they put protection against immediate threats before avoiding the provocation of future ones; when compelled to choose, they prefer deterrence to detente. Further, each increment in a major state's military industry or armed might in response to perceived threats always engenders a heightened threat to any potential adversary. Hence, any one state's efforts to gain “absolute security”, in Henry Kissinger's view, will lead to other states’ perception of their absolute insecurity.24 *

Since, by definition, there is no way for states to escape this dilemma, an increase in one state's security decreases the security of others. The assumption about the nature of the security-seeking nature of states is "based on the fact that threats, and preparations to meet them, are interrelated in unpredictable and contradictory w ays"''

(Beverly Hill, CA: Sage, 1979), p. 242; Robert C. North, War, ! 'eace, Survival: Global Politics and Conceptual Synthesis (Oxford: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 239-242. 24 Henry A. Kissinger, A Work!Restored: The Polities of t 'onservatism in a Revolutionary Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), pp. 144-145.

Michael Mandelbaum. The bate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the Nineteenth and Twentieth ( enturies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed.,

Nevertheless, to some analysts, the security dilemma is a subjectivistic, and not an objectivistic, concept. Many question the logic that causes states to engage in the behaviour that creates and sustains the security dilemma, arguing that the central issue of international relations is not evil but tragedy. States often share a common interest, but the structure of the situation prevents them from bringing about the mutually desired situation. Robert Jervis has described this syndrome as the “spiral model”, and the most vicious form of it is “when commitments, strategy, or technology dictate that the only route to security lies through expansion.” The virulence of the security dilemma is influenced by whether offensive weapons and strategies can be distinguished from defensive ones, and whether the offence is more potent than the defence.26 Jervis, however, believes that mutual security is possible if defensive policies are more effective than offensive ones. When offensive policies escalate to a very costly war, it is rational for states to cooperate with others in order to avoid the risk.

To escape this predicament, some scholars call for changes in customary approaches to the problem of the security dilemma. In their book Transnational Relations and World Politics, Joseph S. Nye and Robert O. Keohane put forward the same view as Jervis by stressing that it is obviously true that states are likely to prepare for confrontation, but they argue that even if states win the confrontations with others, the winning may be costly, and “trasnational relations may help to increase these costs and thus increase the constraints on state autonomy.”27 Ken Booth has suggested non-

26 Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, Vol. xxx. No. 2 (January 1978), pp. 186-214. See also Rober Jervis, Perception and

provocative defence as a strategy to mitigate the old problem of the security dilemma and meet the new needs of security interdependence. According to his observation,

We can work towards peace based on mutual defensive supremacy. That is, we can replace the idea that defence is the best form of security. Non­ provocative defence seeks to maintain a level of deterrence against aggression but to do so in such a way that arms competition would be slowed, crisis stability increased, arms reduction encouraged and political accommodation improved.28

Even so, the irony is, as Glenn H. Snyder argues, that without the desire or intention to attack another, fear still prevails, since no state can really know where the power accumulation of others is only defensively motivated, and it is not easy to distinguish whether weapon systems are for defensive or offensive purposes.29

Given the assumption that a security game is indefinitely iterated, some contend that the traditional version of the security dilemma is too narrow to understand the real nature and transformation of international relations. Accordingly, the concept of “security dilemma” explains only the former East-West conflict, and is no longer sufficient to describe the ongoing co-operative efforts made by the international community. Besides, it is still highly controversial whether the concept of security is well-defined, because it has been used in many confusing ways. The term itself is in general use in international politics and other disciplines, and the dominant concept refers to national security, which has mainly been interpreted in terms of military

capability.

28 “Conclusion: War, Security and Strategy: Towards a Doctrine for Stable Peace,” Ken Booth, cd.. New Thinking About Strategy and International Security (London: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 368. See also Johan Galtung, “Transarmament: from Offensive to Defensive Defence,” Journal o f Peace Research, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1984).

29 Glenn H. Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics, V'ol. 36, No. 2 (July 1984), pp. 461-495.

In fact, in Arnold Wolfer’s words, national security is nothing but an “ambiguous symbol that may not have precise meaning at all.”30 Barry Buzan regards it as an “undeveloped concept” that “has proved too complex to attract analysts, and has therefore been neglected in favour of more tractable concepts.”31 Charles L. Schultze even considers it hard to make a precise formulation since “it deals with a wide variety of risks about whose probabilities we have little knowledge and of contingencies whose nature we can only dimly perceive.”32 If, as argued above, the concept of security is in precise, then one needs to examine cautiously the referent object of the term.

Apart from this, some states pursue their security by confronting adversaries with military build-up; while others seek their security by joining alliances. Some try to be "good neighbours”. Whatever strategy states may choose, according to the traditional version of national security, the requirements dictate that states maintain military forces and a large array of weapons systems adequate to the perceived military threat.

This is not necessarily the case, however, for most challengers of realism, who believe that the historical emphasis on military force has contributed to a truncated concept of security. Defining national security merely in military terms, as Richard Ullman argues, conveys a profoundly false image of reality. Most developing states nowadays emphasise the multi-dimesional complexities of the concept, including the economic, social as well as domestic dimensions of security." They also believe that change will take place only if states realise that they will maximise their gains with co­ operative, rather than disassociative, strategies, and that the surest route to security for

30 Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics

(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1962), p. 147.

31 Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda fo r International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, pp. 3-7.

one state is to pursue security for all states. States change their behaviours because they are interdependent in their security affairs, so that the security of one is strongly affected by the actions of the other, and vice versa.33 34 This structure has been defined by Keohane as one of complex interdependence.

More significantly, international regimes are said to be the only means of overcoming the security dilemma, and of ensuring that all participants are allowed to confirm their non-hostile intent. This concept implies rules, norms and expectations that not only permit nations to be restrained in their behaviour in the belief that others will reciprocate but also form a co-operation that ignores more than following short-run self-interest.35

In short, the evolution of the security paradigm and the changes from “national security” to “international security,” each based on distinctive theoretical and political assumptions, are closely linked to the evolution of the international system and the progress of its interpretation. In each phase, one finds competing interpretations (realism vs. its challengers) based on contradictory voices of the nature of man and the behaviour of states. As time advances, historical experience will show which interpretation prevails and why.