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A Conceptual Overview of Security in a Globalizing World
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The Concept of Security in a Globalising World*
Steve SmithUniversity of Exeter
This is a fascinating, and somewhat frightening, time to be reflecting on the nature ofinternational security. On the one hand, no discussion about it can ignore the events ofSeptember 11, 2001, events, which are often presented as ushering a new era of ‘post-modern conflict’. On the other there is the dark shadow cast by the Kashmir crisis,and for the kind of more traditional conflict that it might tragically lead to. This paperwill try and clear away the conceptual undergrowth surrounding the concept ofsecurity, both so that we do not slip into implicit, possibly hidden, assumptions aboutthe nature of international security and, crucially, to whom, and about what it refers,and so that we raise explicitly the question of the relationship between our thinkingabout security and our own social, cultural and even geographical locations. Theunderlying aim of this paper is to reflect upon the critically important relationshipbetween theory and practice, that is to say how our theories, explicit and implicit,about international security relate to the security practices.
I will proceed in the following way: first I want to set out the traditional account ofinternational security, and I define that as the model that dominated strategic andsecurity studies from the end of the Second World War to the end of the Cold War. Ithen want to look at how that traditional account has been both modified and criticisedsince the end of the Cold War. I will do this by examining four main developmentswithin what can broadly be called the mainstream, and then turning to somealternative ‘schools of thought’, each of which defines security in a different way toeither the original or the modified mainstream
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. I will offer a brief survey of six of the
main alternatives. Of course, the usual health warnings apply: to some extent I havehad to sacrifice nuance and overlap in an attempt to differentiate between the variousapproaches, and doubtless my classifications themselves reflect a ‘view fromsomewhere’ about both security studies and about the wider questions of the nature ofthe social world. I then want to look at claims that the widening and deepening of theconcept of security makes it less useful for understanding international politics.Finally, I will say something about how this literature might help us in betterunderstanding the nature of international security in a globalising world.
However, before looking at the main accounts of security in the field, I need to maketwo points about the contemporary security situation. The first is that one commonreaction to the events of September 11, the claim that it changes fundamentally the
* This paper was written for the 37th University of Otago Foreign Policy School, held in Dunedin inJune 2002. The paper here is the paper as delivered at that workshop.
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I have looked in more details at alternatives accounts of security in two articles: ‘The Increasing
Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualizing Security in the Last Twenty Years’, in ContemporarySecurity Policy, Vol. 20(3), 1999, pp.72-101, and ‘The Contested Concept of Security’ in K. Booth(ed) Critical Security Studies (Lynne Rienner, 2001), forthcoming, 2002.
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1
The Concept of Security in a Globalising World*
Steve Smith
University of Exeter
This is a fascinating, and somewhat frightening, time to be reflecting on the nature of
international security. On the one hand, no discussion about it can ignore the events of
September 11, 2001, events, which are often presented as ushering a new era of ‘post-
modern conflict’. On the other there is the dark shadow cast by the Kashmir crisis,
and for the kind of more traditional conflict that it might tragically lead to. This paper
will try and clear away the conceptual undergrowth surrounding the concept of
security, both so that we do not slip into implicit, possibly hidden, assumptions about
the nature of international security and, crucially, to whom, and about what it refers,
and so that we raise explicitly the question of the relationship between our thinking
about security and our own social, cultural and even geographical locations. The
underlying aim of this paper is to reflect upon the critically important relationship
between theory and practice, that is to say how our theories, explicit and implicit,
about international security relate to the security practices.
I will proceed in the following way: first I want to set out the traditional account of
international security, and I define that as the model that dominated strategic and
security studies from the end of the Second World War to the end of the Cold War. I
then want to look at how that traditional account has been both modified and criticised
since the end of the Cold War. I will do this by examining four main developments
within what can broadly be called the mainstream, and then turning to some
alternative ‘schools of thought’, each of which defines security in a different way to
either the original or the modified mainstream
1
. I will offer a brief survey of six of the
main alternatives. Of course, the usual health warnings apply: to some extent I have
had to sacrifice nuance and overlap in an attempt to differentiate between the various
approaches, and doubtless my classifications themselves reflect a ‘view from
somewhere’ about both security studies and about the wider questions of the nature of
the social world. I then want to look at claims that the widening and deepening of the
concept of security makes it less useful for understanding international politics.
Finally, I will say something about how this literature might help us in better
understanding the nature of international security in a globalising world.
However, before looking at the main accounts of security in the field, I need to make
two points about the contemporary security situation. The first is that one common
reaction to the events of September 11, the claim that it changes fundamentally the
* This paper was written for the 37th University of Otago Foreign Policy School, held in Dunedin in
June 2002. The paper here is the paper as delivered at that workshop.
1
I have looked in more details at alternatives accounts of security in two articles: ‘The Increasing
Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualizing Security in the Last Twenty Years’, in Contemporary
Security Policy, Vol. 20(3), 1999, pp.72-101, and ‘The Contested Concept of Security’ in K. Booth
(ed) Critical Security Studies (Lynne Rienner, 2001), forthcoming, 2002.
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