National security

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National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military attack, national security is widely understood to include also non-military dimensions, such as the security from terrorism, minimization of crime, economic security, energy security, environmental security, food security, and cyber-security. Similarly, national security risks include, in addition to the actions of other nation states, action by violent non-state actors, by narcotic cartels, organized crime, by multinational corporations, and also the effects of natural disasters.

Governments rely on a range of measures, including political, economic, and military power, as well as diplomacy, to safeguard the security of a nation state. They may also act to build the conditions of security regionally and internationally by reducing transnational causes of insecurity, such as climate change, economic inequality, political exclusion, and nuclear proliferation.

Definitions

The concept of national security remains ambiguous, having evolved from simpler definitions which emphasised freedom from military threat and from political coercion. Among the many definitions proposed to date are the following, which show how the concept has evolved to encompass non-military concerns:

• "A nation has security when it does not have to sacrifice its legitimate interests to avoid war, and is able, if challenged, to maintain them by war." (Walter Lippmann, 1943).
• "The distinctive meaning of national security means freedom from foreign dictation." (Harold Lasswell, 1950)
• "National security objectively means the absence of threats to acquired values and subjectively, the absence of fear that such values will be attacked." (Arnold Wolfers, 1960)
• "National security then is the ability to preserve the nation's physical integrity and territory; to maintain its economic relations with the rest of the world on reasonable terms; to preserve its nature, institution, and governance from disruption from outside; and to control its borders." (Harold Brown, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 1977–1981)
• "National security... is best described as a capacity to control those domestic and foreign conditions that the public opinion of a given community believes necessary to enjoy its own self-determination or autonomy, prosperity, and wellbeing." (Charles Maier, 1990)
• "National security is an appropriate and aggressive blend of political resilience and maturity, human resources, economic structure and capacity, technological competence, industrial base and availability of natural resources and finally the military might." (National Defence College of India, 1996)
• "[National security is the] measurable state of the capability of a nation to overcome the multi-dimensional threats to the apparent well-being of its people and its survival as a nation-state at any given time, by balancing all instruments of state policy through governance... and is extendable to global security by variables external to it." (Prabhakaran Paleri, 2008)
• "[National and international security] may be understood as shared freedom from fear and want, and the freedom to live in dignity. It implies social and ecological health rather than the absence of risk... [and is] a common right." (Ammerdown Group, 2016)

Romm, Joseph J. (1993). Defining national security: the nonmilitary aspects. Pew Project on America's Task in a Changed World (Pew Project Series). Council on Foreign Relations. pp. 122. ISBN 978-0-87609-135-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=shxDOnuVcyYC. Retrieved 22 September 2010. 

Paleri, Prabhakaran (2008). National Security: Imperatives And Challenges. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. pp. 521. ISBN 978-0-07-065686-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=DMzcGe0-HQwC. Retrieved 23 September 2010. 

Romm, Joseph J. (1993). Defining national security: the nonmilitary aspects. Pew Project on America's Task in a Changed World (Pew Project Series). Council on Foreign Relations. pp. 122. ISBN 978-0-87609-135-7. https://books.google.com/books?id=shxDOnuVcyYC. Retrieved 22 September 2010. 

Quoted in Paleri (2008) ibid. Pg 52.

Brown, Harold (1983) Thinking about national security: defense and foreign policy in a dangerous world. As quoted in Watson, Cynthia Ann (2008). U.S. national security: a reference handbook. Contemporary world issues (2 (revised) ed.). ABC-CLIO. pp. 281. ISBN 978-1-59884-041-4. https://archive.org/details/usnationalsecuri0000wats. Retrieved 24 September 2010. 

Template:Smallcaps Peace and security for the 1990s. Unpublished paper for the MacArthur Fellowship Program, Social Science Research Council, 12 Jun 1990. As quoted in Romm 1993, p.5

Definition from "Proceedings of Seminar on "A Maritime Strategy for India" (1996). National Defence College, Tees January Marg, New Delhi, India. quoted in Paleri 2008 (ibid).

Ammerdown Group (2016). "Rethinking Security: A discussion paper". https://rethinkingsecurityorguk.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/rethinking-security-a-discussion-paper.pdf.