The concept of human security appears to be self-evident. Of course, governments in democratic countries strive for human security. Would they have any other raison d’etat? The truth is governments fail in a lot of areas, not the least of these being human security.
Even though human security seems as if it would be the most noble of pursuits, the primary objective of most governments is state security. Tragically, policies done in the name of state security, even if they injure humans on a wide scale, may be justified by the so-called national interest.
Conceptually, important differences exist between human and state security, differences that are fundamental.
The focus of human security is on individuals and extends to those who are not protected by the state, or in the worst case, terrorized by the state or violence within it. Therefore, human security is a transnational concept.
Human security rejects the sacrifice of one group of people to secure another, attributing equality to each life. Advocates of human security reject security strategies intended to benefit only a fraction of the world’s population. Moreover, they maintain that violence cannot be contained in an interdependent world and will eventually blow back to countries whose borders no longer protect them.
A case in point is that the United States, acting on the basis of state security after Sept. 11, decided to take the war to the terrorists, so that Americans would not have to fight them at home. Innocent Iraqis were sacrificed ostensibly to make us safer in the United States.
Our government sold the war as moving the front to Iraq. When terrorists actually flocked to Iraq, our government felt vindicated and better able to target terrorists, instead of caring about the increased security risk to Iraqis.
Proponents of human security would not only point to the gross injustices of a security view only concerned about a minority in the world, but also the flawed security judgment that war is an effective instrument against terrorists.
Human security informs us about the nature of the real battleground, the individual level, where terrorists are recruited along with other dangerous enemies who destroy society through peddling drugs, prostituting children, and other destructive, criminal activities.
Furthermore, human security grounds and humanizes the abstract, nebulous and political concept of state security.
A conceptual lens, like that of human security, is a powerful analytic tool. This concept reveals with astonishing clarity the crux of the disagreement between the United States and Europe over the use of force.
In the interests of U.S. state security, the United States wants Europeans to contribute more combat troops to Afghanistan. Europeans respond with what seems to Americans an odd counter-offer. They say they are willing to contribute more police training.
The significance of police training is in the goal of bringing more order to Afghan society and, thus, securing civilians, more precisely, those whose support is needed to win the war and has recently shifted to the Taliban.
Convinced that human security provides the only winning approach in Afghanistan, Europeans hesitate or outright refuse to increase their combat troops. From the U.S. view, Europeans are not serious about fighting terrorism. They are weak. Europe’s opposing view is that the United States is blind to human security concerns and, as a result, hurting its security efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The basic assumption of human security is that the state enhances its security as long as it protects humans. It is an uncompromising doctrine. There is no security without human security.
Violence spawns violence. As long as the state is made up of humans, it would seem the state would agree.
