CHAPTER 1: PERSPECTIVES ON SECURITY

Key concepts

• Security may be defined as “absence of and protection from threats to the physical and/or psychological integrity,
or to the acquired values of individuals or of a social body”

• Security is a condition and a process; lies in the eyes of the beholder; it is costly

• Security dangers may be: threats, risks, challenges, and vulnerabilities

• The concept of security has evolved with time

• Modern security studies were born during the Cold War. Th estate and military threats have been at the center of
the concept of security. After the Cold War, the concept of security changed to include non-state actors and non-
military threats

• Factors of security for the Copenhagen School: Military, Political, Social, Cultural, Economic, Environmental

• Securitization is the process by which an issue enters the security agenda of an entity. It requires a “speech act”
and public support.

Security is one of man’s basic needs. It provides the framework to the development of any other
human activity. Since the most remote antiquity, individuals and human groups have understood this
reality and dedicated significant resources to find protection from threats coming from nature or
from other groups. Today, the provision of security is, in fact, the main responsibility of a state
towards its citizens.

In the traditional sense of International Relations studies, the term “security” has been employed to
describe what states do to preserve the lives, welfare, and values of their citizens from any external
threat of military nature. More recently, however, the term has been expanded to incorporate non-
military threats or risks that may compromise the security of states or of their members. The term
has won in complexity.

Security studies is a sub-discipline of International Relations born after the carnage of World War I
out of the desire to avoid its horrors again. This chapter will define the contours of the discipline and
introduce some key concepts of regular use in International Security Studies (ISS).

WHAT IS SECURITY?

For a long time, there has been a very close relationship between the notion of security and
International Relations. Security was at the heart of IIRR because the Realist School dominated them,
and they are based on power. Security Studies were thus born as a subfield of IIRR -others believe
it’s the other way around- during the Cold War because its central concern was to avoid a new World
War.1

1 Terry TERRIFF, Stuart CROFT, Lucy JAMES, and Patrick M. MORGAN, Security Studies Today, (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1999), 10.
The starting point for International Relations studies is the experience of insecurity. The concept
“security” is elusive, complex, and ambiguous. It is hard, therefore, to find a single, universally
accepted, definition of it, because it may mean different things to different people.

Originally, the Latin noun securitas referred to a condition of individuals, of a particularly inner sort.
It denoted composture, tranquility of spirit, freedom from care, absence of anxiety. Security was,
then, an individual issue, more a feeling than any other thing.2 In terms of its origins, security has a
somewhat negative connotation, and referred to individuals and was thought of as careless, dangerous
and, in some cases, sinful confidence.3

Security may be seen as synonymous to and interchangeable with the term “protection.” Against
what? In the narrowest sense, against any threat to our own’s physical integrity or, in a broader one,
to our property, health, welfare, social status, or values.

Condition or process?

There are two basic ways to see security. One is as a desirable condition. From this perspective,
security could be defined as “being safe from harm or danger,” or as the “absence of threats to the
physical and/or psychological integrity of individuals or of a social body.” Wolfers, for instance,
characterizes it as the “absence of threats to acquired values.”4

The definitions forwarded in the previous paragraph are as straightforward as incomplete. Both fail
to capture all the dimensions of such a complex term. More than just a condition, security may be
seen as a process; it is a commodity that must be achieved, and then nurtured and maintained under
a changing environment. We can redraft the definitions advanced in the previous paragraph to
recognize this reality by saying that security is the “absence of and protection from threats to the
physical and/or psychological integrity of individuals or of a social body.”

Of note is the idea that security threats -or, in a broader concept, “challenges”- are not limited to
those that compromise life or physical integrity of individuals, or the survival of a social body, but
expands to those that may limit, hamper, or reduce it in any way, and to those that have the same
effect on values cherished by those subjects like, for example, individual freedom, prosperity, etc. For
this reason, in the field of International Relations, most scholars work with a definition of security
that involves the alleviation of threats to cherished values.5

Security among human needs

In his celebrated pyramid, the American psychologist Abraham Maslow established a hierarchy of
human needs which ranked them from the most basic ones -placed at the bottom of the pyramid-up
to the most ethereal ones -self-actualization-, situated at the top of the hierarchy. A man must have
his most basic needs satisfied if he wants to aspire to the fulfillment of the next level of necessities.

2 Emma ROTSCHILD, “What is Security?” Daedalus, Vol. 124, No. 3 (Summer 1995), 61.
3Mark NEOCLEOUS, “Against Security,” Radical Philosophy, No. 100, (Mar/Apr 2000), 9.
4 Arnold WOLFERS, “’National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 4

(December, 1952): 485.

5 Paul D. WILLIAMS, and Matt McDONALD, eds., Security Studies. An Introduction, Third Edition, (New York,

NY: Routledge, 2018), 1.

In Maslow’s construct, safety needs or, in other words, the need for security and protection, are close
to the base of the pyramid, second only to the most basic physiological needs. Feeling secure and
protected is one of mankind’s more cherished objectives.

Maslow seems to have an understanding of security as an individual need that must be covered in
order to be able to lead a productive, happy, life. It is debatable is family ranks in this tier or in the
upper one. Obviously, it is closely connected to the basic level of physiological needs (a job is
something good to be able to feed oneself, although per se, it is not essential: nourishment may be
achieved by other means like hunting -which, by the way, is a job- or stealing).

Picture 1 – Maslow’s Pyramid

Security, however, has a key societal dimension. Because we humans are social animals, we may
achieve the security we need in society and through society. Collective security contributes to create
the conditions for individuals to be secure. We may provide for our own physical security through
an armored door -although, in this case, we will need others to manufacture the door and to install it
for us-. Or we can pay taxes to maintain a police force to protect us against internal disorder and
insecurity. In order to be complete, therefore, any study or analysis of security must consider it and
its challenges at the different levels of analysis of the individual, groups of individuals, states, the
international system, even at that of planet Earth itself.

Security is a human need subsumed in the security of the nation. The social contract, in fact, was
defined in terms of it being the outcome of human desire for security of life and liberty. This is the
fundamental problem to which the institution of the state provides the solution.6

CHARACTERISTICS OF SECURITY

Ultimately, security lies in the eye of the beholder. What makes one actor secure may be perceived
by others as a direct threat, or vice versa. For some people, for instance, possessing arms is a source
of security while, for others, the very proliferation of weapons constitutes a threat to their personal
security. Similarly, the perception of security threats may vary within the same society -we may, think,

6 Emma ROTSCHILD, “What is Security?” Daedalus, Vol. 124, No. 3 (Summer 1995), 64.
for instance, of women, or the Rohingyas in Myanmar and how these groups perceive security vis-à-
vis their fellow citizens.

Furthermore, perceptions on threats may vary with time, so that we may say that the concept of
security is in a permanent flux, incorporating or discarding elements as they become relevant or
obsolete with the passage of time. For example, one hundred years ago, nobody believed global
warming would become a security problem for millions of human beings. Conversely, in years past,
certain diseases, or overpopulation were seen as the most pressing challenges for humankind.

The issue of the definition is more than a mere academic exercise. For millions of human beings,
it is an issue of a very practical nature. Moreover, from the answer to the question depend crucial
things like budget prioritization and allocation of resources. It counts because it orients -and funds-
security policy efforts undertaken by states and, for the case, other supranational or transnational
actors. It also guides public opinion about policy, suggesting a way of thinking about security.7

Therefore, the definition of what constitutes security has sometimes more to do with redefining the
political agenda of a state than with the concept of security itself. This definition often translates
in policy priorities to the environment, human rights, economics, drug traffic, epidemics, etc., in
addition to the traditional concern with security from external military threats.

Both individuals and social groups -most relevant among them, the state- are ready to go at great
lengths to achieve security, exerting considerable efforts to make sure they remain free form harm.
No matter how much they spend, however, they will never have an absolute certitude of being
protected against all threats. There is no such thing as absolute security at any level. The variety
of challenges and threats to it are almost infinite, and the resources and means to foil them, finite. A
degree of risk is always present and must be assumed.

Security is costly. As the technological possibilities of a challenger multiply, so does the investment
in resources, human and material, an actor must assume to remain secure. Security may involve costs
of a different nature like, for example, to individual privacy and liberty. For the sake of security,
surveillance -visual or electronic- over regular citizens is expanding, as is intrusion in areas that had
remained private until now. Societies are subject to this ever-growing tension between security and
individual rights. Each society must find its own right balance in this tradeoff.

THREATS, RISKS, CHALLENGES; VULNERABILITIES

Dangers to the security of an individual, group, society, state, or supranational entity may be of
different nature.

Threats

According to Webster’s Dictionary a ‘threat’ is “1. a statement or expression of intention to hurt,

destroy, punish, etc. in retaliation or intimidation”, and 2. “an indication of imminent danger, harm,
evil etc.; as, the threat of war.”

Ullman defined a national security threat as “an action or sequence of events that: 1) threatens
drastically and over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of life for the inhabitants of

7 Emma ROTSCHILD, “What is Security?” Daedalus, Vol. 124, No. 3 (Summer 1995), 58.
a state; or 2) threatens significantly to narrow the range of policy choices available to the government
of a state or to private non-governmental entities (persons, groups, corporations) within the state.”8
New security threats of the future include, for example, population growth, resource scarcity, and
environmental degradation.

Risks

For Webster’s Third International Dictionary ‘risk’ means “1. the possibility of loss, injury,
disadvantage, or destruction: contingency, danger, peril, threat ...; 2. someone or something that
creates or suggests a hazard or adverse chance: a dangerous element or factor ...; 3. the chance of loss
or the perils to the subject matter or insurance covered by the contract; the degree of probability of
such loss; amount at risk; a person or thing judged as a specified hazard to an in- surer; an insurance
hazard from a cause or source (war, disaster); 4. the product of the amount that may be lost and the
probability of losing it.”

The Oxford Guide to the English Language gives this concise definition: “possibility of meeting
danger or suffering harm; person or thing representing a source of risk.”

Challenges

British English dictionaries offered these meanings of the term challenge: “1. something difficult ...
that tests strength, skill, or ability...; 2. questioning rightness: a refusal to accept that something is
right and legal; 3. invitation to compete: a suggestion to someone that they should try to defeat you
in a fight, game etc.; 4. a demand to stop: a demand from someone such as a guard to stop and give
proof who you are, and an explanation of what you are doing”; or: “a demanding task or situation”;
as well as: “call to try one’s skill or strength; demand to respond or identify oneself; formal objection”;
or: “a call to engage in a fight, argument or contest; a questioning of a statement or fact; a demanding
or stimulating situation, career, etc.”

The term ‘challenge’ has often been used for security and global issues but it has hardly been defined,
and in many cases it is used synonymously with ‘threat.’ Dodds and Schnabel (2001: 42– 43) pointed
to ‘new’ and ‘non-traditional’ security challenges as a major concern in the post-cold war security
environment. They argued “that the general public’s conception of the security environment has
altered so dramatically as we enter the new millennium is an indicator of how significantly this
environment may have actually changed”. They see as major forces for the reconceptualization of
security “the increasing level of globalization” that “has engendered a growing sense of vulnerability
to ... remote threats, such as distant conflicts, contagions, crop failures and currency fluctuations”.

Vulnerabilities

A vulnerability may be a weakness or a flaw in the subject that increases his exposure to dangers.

8 ULLMAN, Richard H., “Redefining Security,” International Security, Vol. 8, No. 1 (summer 1983): 129-153.
EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT OF SECURITY

Before the Cold War

The need to achieve and maintain security led to the development of specialized study of this concept.
In one way or another, security has been the object of study for as long as there have been human
societies.

The idea of security has been at the heart of European political thought since, at least, the crises of
the seventeenth century (Rothschild, 1995; 60). For centuries, domestic security was only seen from
the point of view of the stability and preservation of the power of the ruling elites. Its only objective
was that of maintaining inner peace for the benefit of those elites and of their grip on power. Military
constabulary forces were usually the main providers of internal security.
With the development of the modern state, security started to be perceived as a prerequisite for civil
and law-governed life. Consistent with this view, security would require political institutions to
provide what humans in the state of nature cannot for themselves.

With the development of the modern state at this time -after the Peace of Westphalia (1648)-, the
focus of security was put on this form of political organization. Internal and external security were
both oriented to the survival of the state, and the concept of security acquired a mainly -almost
exclusive- military dimension.9 Under this view, security studies -not yet formalized as a standalone
discipline were applied to mostly practical issues of military nature like fortification, drill and training
of military forces, or battlefield deployment and tactics.

In the liberal thought of the Enlightenment, security is both an individual and a collective good. It
is a condition, and an objective, of individuals, but one that can only be achieved in some sort of
collective enterprise. It is something that must be endlessly revised and reviewed -therefore, a
process- (Rothschild, 1995; 63).

After the French Revolution, when the concept of “subjects” started to shift toward that of
“citizens,” or of individuals entitled to certain rights and depositaries of a national sovereignty they
delegate in the state, the idea of security started to broaden to consider the responsibilities the state
has towards the internal security of its members. Police forces were developed to provide this
security, and a division of work between them and the armed forces started to take place, with the
latter given responsibility more for military defense against external threats, or against domestic ones
if they were of military nature, as it is often the case in civil wars. Under this scheme, police forces
were tasked with providing society with order and protection and security against domestic threats.

The liberalism of the second half of the eighteenth century brought a shift in the understanding of
security. Now, the concept crossed the limits of politics, entered in the language of economy, being
refocused on individuals but, this time, as a positive term. It is now that John Stuart Mill claims
“security of person and property… are the first needs of society. “There is, furthermore, an
identification between security and liberty at this time. For liberalism, security came to refer to the
liberty of secure possession; the liberty, that is, of private property (Neocleous, 2000; 18).

9 The principally military sense of the word “security,” in which security is an objective of states, to be achieved

by diplomatic or military policies, was an innovation of the epoch of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
(Rothschild, 1995; 61).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, after the traumatic experience of World War I, to
prevent such drama from reoccurring, the focus of strategic studies expanded to incorporate the
analysis of the conditions of peace, and of the problem of war. War and its prevention became, thus,
the central issues in security studies.

During the Cold War

Modern Security Studies were born and flourished as a subfield of the discipline of International
Relations after the Second World War, during the Cold War. They emerged in the context of the
geopolitical confrontation between the West and the East and of the failure of the collective security
mechanisms articulated at the end of World War I.

Security studies were now conceived as a discipline working at the interaction of military expertise
and university-based social science aimed at delivering policy-relevant knowledge supported by a
broad, interdisciplinary academic knowledge base (Collins, 2019; 429). They were dominated by the
United States scholarship -the studies became more scientific- and were driven by the state’s policy
needs. This dominance shaped the global debate on the issue and led to the neglect of other non-
policy related dimensions of security for a number of years.

The combination of nuclear weapons and the Cold War made necessary the merging of different
disciplines in the study of war, particularly from the point of view of how avoiding it, because of its
potential consequences. It was necessary to closely coordinate military and non-military
considerations (Collins, 2019; 430).

At this time, Security Studies concentrated almost exclusively on the state as the main actor and
beneficiary of security -to the point that, at least in the United States, the discipline was dubbed
“national security studies”. Buzan defined threats to states in three senses: to the idea of the state
(nationalism); to the physical base of the state (population and resources); and to the institutional
expression of the state (political system) (Terriff et al., 2008; 18). This notwithstanding, security
studies continued to revolve around the employment of military power, which was seen as the main
threat to national security

The golden age of International Security Studies took place during the 1950s and 1960s. The main
threat to the security of states in the International System, directly derived from the calculations of
power in the anarchic system, came then from the military power of other actors, because power
considerations were usually translated into that form of power. “Security” was conterminous with
“defense” in what the British scholarship called “Strategic Studies.”

The focus of security studies was then on nuclear deterrence, developing systems analysis related to
the structure of the armed forces and resource allocation and refining the tools of crisis management.
Games theory or systems analysis are examples of scientific tools applied to security studies which
produced progress in both scientific theories (Williams & McDonald, 2013; 3).10

During the Cold War, security studies was composed mostly of scholars interested in military
statecraft. If military force was relevant to an issue, it was considered a security issue; and if military

10Systems analysis is a methodology used to solve force structure and resources allocation which drives from
economic theory and operations research developed by natural scientists, engineers, and economists during the
Second World War.
force was not relevant, that issue was consigned to the category of low-level politics (Baldwin, 1997;
9).

The object of Security Studies was, clearly, the preservation of peace between the two confronted
visions of the world vying for hegemony. The possibility of total annihilation through the massive
use of nuclear weapons made the need to understand and promote security a very pressing need.
Because it revolved around the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, Security
Studies were often labeled with the adjective “International,” so that Security Studies and
International Security Studies (ISS) were one and the same thing.

Beyond nuclear deterrence, security studies also centered on arms control and disarmament, alliance
politics, counterinsurgency, and organization of government institutions. In the 1960s and 1970s,
new perspectives like area studies, bureaucratic politics or decision-making, were added. Later in the
1970s came perceptions, arms races theory, proliferation of nuclear weapons, and of advanced
military technology, utility of force, strategic intelligence, conventional strategy, and self-reflections
of the field (Collins, 2019; 433).

Historically, studies on international relations have always maintained a close relationship with war,
peace, and security. In fact, insecurity is actually the starting point for the field of International
Relations (Terriff et al, 2007; 10). A close connection between Security and International Relations
studies was established during the Cold War, with realist views dominating the field. Progressively,
“security” studies were more and more seen as “international security” ones and became a subfield
of International Relations.

The theorizing effort of the Golden Age gave way to a certain decline in security studies during these
years, now more oriented to ever-more detailed work on technical specificities due, probably, to the
excessive influence of policy in the field. Another cause for the decline may be seen in the
subordination to IIRR studies the area was led to, losing part of its multidisciplinary character along
the way. This is when Security Studies became a subfield of International Relations and got dominated
by political scientists.

During the 1970s, peace studies started to develop in parallel to security studies and separated from
them. It was seen as a field rival to security studies, both separated by their opposed views on the
acceptability of war as a tool in human relations. Both fields shared, nevertheless, many common
areas, and experienced a merge in the 1980s and 1990s, although the inclusion of peace studies as a
subset of ISS is often disputed and denied, with many scholars in the peace studies side seeing
mainstream security studies as part of the “security problem.”

Views about International Security started to change already during the last years of the Cold War,
although with differences, in Europe and the United States. The United States saw itself as the only
remaining superpower shaping the international order and oriented its effort in ISS to studies of
cause-effect relationships in order to understand how to work the material they act upon (the world).
In Europe, meanwhile, the perspective is one of considering the US an external factor to deal with
and therefore to be in a tension-ridden relationship to security as such. The whole question of what
should and should not count as security issues and how to conceptualize security is much closer to
the European policy agenda than to the US one (Collins, 2019; 437).

Along this line, the 1982 Report “Common Security. A Programme for Disarmament,” also known
as the Palme Commission Report, after the Swedish politician Olof Palme, introduced the idea of
security as a cooperative effort -“common security”- overcoming the view of security against
someone.

AFTER THE COLD WAR: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SECURITY

The end of the Cold War confrontation opened many debates over how security should be studied,
understood, and provided. The collapse of the Soviet Union raised in importance the relevance of
domestic factors in security issues (Terriff et al., 2007; 4). The central problem in security studies at
this time is that there is no agreement on what constitutes security (Terriff et al., 2)

An issue under scholarly debate, even today, is that of the “referent object” of security. In other
words: on whom must security be focused? Whose security must be prioritized? Another issue is that
of the nature of the challenges security studies and security policy must consider.

Much of the debate on what is security revolves around two questions. First, what should be the
focus of the study of security Should it be the state, groups based on another kind of identity, or
individuals? Must all levels be given the same importance and priority? Second, what the threats are
there to security? Is it states and the policies of decision-makers? Or, should other threats emanating
from the environment, or non-state actors be considered? Tied to these questions are the collateral
issues of who holds the responsibility to provide for the state security, and what means and methods
must that responsible employ? The following sections examine these issues.

At the end of the Cold War, scholars in security studies were divided. The “wideners” called for
expanding the concept of security beyond military-political threats to the state, to take in new threats
in areas such as environmental or human security. The “traditionalists” feared that endless
expansion of the concept of security would potentially make it meaningless. Stephen Walt was among
the latter, arguing that expanding security studies would destroy the “intellectual coherence” of the
field (Nyman in Williams; 101).

Only states?

First, a growing part of the scholarship started to question whether the state should be the only
matter of Security Studies. The primacy of the state as main subject of security was contested by
other views that posited that in the name of “state security” the security of many individual citizens
was threatened, or that the focus on interstate war, other dynamics of international security were
being neglected.

Proponents of this view considered that, beyond the state, security studies must occupy themselves
with individuals, sub-state groups, but also regional groups, the global system and the biosphere to
capture the complexity of today’s security dynamics.

Particularly influential in this evolution of perspectives on security studies was the research conducted
by Barry Buzan, one of the leading authorities in security studies. In his book People, States, and Fear
(1983), Buzan undermined the prevalent ideas that security studies should focus exclusively on
nation-states, and that they should revolve solely around the use -or possibility thereof- of military
power.

On the first issue, Buzan made the state the referent object of security, to be true, but he opened a
door to the consideration of society as another object. While in the case of states security threats
affected to its sovereignty, in that of societies, it affected their identity (Terriff et al., 2007; 19). In line
with this, other authors argued that the referent point of security studies must be the individual. The
threats in this case may be hunger, disease, disablement, etc.

Only military threats?

In a similar way as with the issue of the object of security, there is a debate around the question of
what constitute security threats. In a traditional sense, threats are of military nature, with conflict -
violent conflict in particular- being the main threat to a state’s security.

For part of the scholarship, the end of the Cold War presented an opportunity to reconsider the
whole corpus of knowledge on security and reorient it with a new focus on the well-being of
individuals, environmental concerns, development, gender issues, or the status of underprivileged
communities (Ghecu and Wohlforth, 2018; 3).

The concept of security was broadened to incorporate other, non-military, threats to the safety of
individuals and societies alike. The field has expanded so much that its very dependence from the
discipline of International Relations has been put into question.

Two main streams of thought on security prevail today. For the first one, security is a matter of
power. The more power, the more security. For the second one, security is based, not on power, but
on emancipation; it is a concern with justice and human rights. The tension between these two
approaches continues today. For this very reason, the definition of security remains elusive because
of the many approaches to the concept. What should and should not be included in the concept?

SECURITIZATION

The Copenhagen School (CS) emerged at the Conflict and Peace Research Institute (COPRI) of
Copenhagen, and it is represented by the writings of Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, Jaap de Wilde, and
others. It tried to build a bridge between “wideners” and “traditionalists”.

It developed the concepts of securitization and desecuritization in the 1990s. Securitization is the
process by which issues become part of the security agenda.

The school defined international security in a traditional military context: “Security is about survival.
It is when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object.”11

It regards security as a constructed concept. The CS focuses on the processes by which an issue is
securitized. Security is a “speech act” (a concept taken from language theory). A security threat
becomes one when it is labeled as such, and audiences accept it.

Speaking security is not just speaking: security is a “speech act”. A security speech act is
“performative”, not descriptive: to utter security is to do it (Austin, 1962; 6)

“Securitizing actors” securitize issues by declaring something, a “referent object” existentially

threatened (Buzan et al.; 36). They may be political leaders, pressure groups, bureaucracies, lobbyists,
or governments. “Referent objects” may be the state, national sovereignty, an ideology (political

11Barry BUZAN, Ole WAEVER, and Jaap DE WILDE, Security. A New Framework for Analysis, (London:
Rienner, 1998), 21.
security); national economies (Economic security); collective identities (social security); species or
habitats (environmental security).

The issue is whether the concept can be so extended without losing its coherence. By stretching the
concept, everything, and therefore nothing in particular, ends up being a security problem. The
redefinition of the concept of security must be matched by the development of new conceptual tools.
This is what the securitization/desecuritization model developed by the CS tries to do. They offer an
analytical model to study security.

The process of securitization

Any specific matter can be non-politicized, politicized, and securitized.

- Non-politicized: It is not a matter for state action, and it is not included in the public debate
- Politicized: It becomes something managed within the standard political system. It requires
government decision and resource allocations
- Securitized: Requires emergency actions beyond the standard political procedures

Picture 2 - The Securitization Spectrum

A concern may be securitized through an act of securitization: a “securitizing actor” articulates a

politicized issue as an existential threat to a “referent object”. The actor then declares it needs to
adopt extraordinary measures that go beyond the ordinary norms of the political domain.

The opposite movement would be “desecuritization”.

Securitization demands something to be defined as an existential threat to the referent object.

Something being an existential threat is the key in securitization, and what avoids a broad and loose
conceptualization of security (Emmers, in Collins, 2016; 176).

The process of securitization happens in two stages:

- First Stage: Portrayal of certain issues, persons, entities… as existential threats to referent
objects. This can be done by state or non-state actors (they have to have power to do it). At
the heart of this stage is the “speech act”.
 - Second Stage: Language is not enough. The securitizing actor succeeds in persuading a relevant
audience that a referent object is existentially threatened. This is what justifies extraordinary
measures. Securitization can never only be imposed.
Threats may be real or perceived. What counts is that, when states securitize an issue, it is a fact that
has consequences, because this securitization will cause the actor to operate in a different mode than
he would have otherwise” (Buzan et al., 1998; 30).

Securitization injects a sense of urgency into an issue and leads to the mobilization of support and
resources; It creates momentum for the adoption of additional and emergency measures; it may
produce more efficient handling of complex problems; may mobilize public support

Securitization may also be abused to legitimize the role of the military or special security forces in
civilian activities; to curb civil liberties.

+ =
Securitizing
move Audience
(designation of Successful
existential acceptance securitization
threat to a
referent object)

External context
(needs to be favorable)

Picture 3 - Conditions for successful securitization

In the CS securitization model:

1) Securitizing actors initiate the process of securitization through the “speech act”

2) States and governments are not the sole referent objects of security

3) The security concern must be articulated as an existential threat; links security to survival

4) The act of securitization is only completed once a relevant audience (public opinion; politicians;
military officers…) is convinced that the so-called security issue represents and existential threat to
the referent object

5) Once the act of securitization is completed, extraordinary measures may be invoked and imposed
beyond rules ordinarily abided by (Emmers, in Collins; 186).

Securitization is not a good thing for the members of the CS. Security politics can be equated with
emergency measures, limited or non-democratic debate, and threat-defense politics. It is better,
therefore, to aim for desecuritization: the shifting of issues out of emergency mode and into the
normal bargaining processes of the political sphere (Buzan et al, 1998; 4).
In “People, States, and Fear,” Buzan argued that the military security of a state was only one feature,
and that states must mind other threats to their political system, their economic resources, their
society, or their environment.

Five were for Buzan and the Copenhagen School the factors that affect the security of human
collectivities (Williams & McDonald, 2018; 4):

- Military security: concerned with the interplay between the armed offensive and defensive
capabilities of states and states’ perceptions of each other’s intentions.
- Political security: focused on the organizational stability of states, systems of government and the
ideologies that give them their legitimacy. Prevention of government repression, systematic
violation of human rights and threats from militarization
- Economic security: revolved around access around the resources, finance and markets necessary
to sustain acceptable levels of warfare and state power. Economic inequality is viewed by
others as the root of threats to security, making some states more secure while increasing the
insecurity of some others.
- Societal security: centered on the sustainability and evolution of traditional patterns of language,
culture, and religious and national identity and customs.
- Environmental security: concerned with the maintenance of the local and the biosphere as the
essential support system on which all other human enterprises depend. Ken Booth goes as far
as saying that “some analysts argue that one of our problems in dealing with the future is that
we presently lack an easily identifiable enemy… This is misconceived. We do have an enemy,
and an enemy of global proportions at that. The enemy is us. Western consumerist
democracy… is the problem” (Booth, 2916; 344).
NEW THREATS

Under the traditional perspective, the threat was “military” (aggression or terrorism). Now, the
concept expands to consider new threats, risks or challenges (see picture below).

MILITARY AGGRESSION TERRORISM

TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATIONS ENVIRONMENT

ECONOMIC SECURITY ENERGY

GLOBAL HEALTH
HUMAN RIGHTS

Picture 4 - New Threats to International Security

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BUZAN, Barry, WAEVER, Ole, and DE WILDE, Jaap, Security. A New Framework for Analysis,
London: Rienner, 1998.
NEOCLEOUS, Mark, “Against Security,” Radical Philosophy, No. 100, (Mar/Apr 2000): 7-15.

ROTSCHILD, Emma, “What is Security?” Daedalus, Vol. 124, No. 3 (Summer 1995): 53-98.

TERRIFF, Terry, CROFT, Stuart, JAMES, Lucy, and MORGAN, Patrick M., Security Studies Today,
Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.

ULLMAN, Richard H., “Redefining Security,” International Security, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Summer 1983): 129-
153.

WILLIAMS, Paul D., and McDONALD, Matt, eds., Security Studies. An Introduction, Third Edition,
New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.

WOLFERS, Arnold, “’National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 67,
No. 4 (December 1952): 481-502.