Q.(a) What is the primary goal of human security ? Explain the difference between the narrow and broad concepts of human security.
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Security Studies Typology: A First Look
Think about security in your own life. You lock your door at night — that's personal security. You expect the police to handle law and order — that's societal security. You hear about border tensions between countries — that's national security. Now imagine trying to study all of this systematically. Where would you even begin?
That's exactly the problem that a typology of security studies solves. A typology is just a fancy word for a classification system — a way to sort things into categories so we can understand them better. In security studies, the typology helps us answer one basic question: whose security are we talking about, and from what?
The Core Distinction: Traditional vs. Non-Traditional Security
The NCERT textbook for Class 12 Political Science (Chapter 7: Security in the Contemporary World) introduces this typology by drawing a sharp line between two broad approaches.
Traditional security focuses on military threats between countries. It's the oldest and most familiar way of thinking about security. The state is the central actor, and the main concern is protecting borders, sovereignty, and territorial integrity from other states. Think of the Cold War, nuclear deterrence, or the arms race — all classic traditional security concerns.
Non-traditional security widens the lens. It says threats don't just come from other countries' armies. They can come from terrorists, climate change, pandemics, economic collapse, cyberattacks, or even from within your own country (civil war, ethnic violence). The "who" being protected also expands — it's not just the state, but also people, communities, and the global system itself.
The NCERT textbook explicitly states that the shift from traditional to non-traditional security is not about replacing one with the other. Both coexist. The typology helps you see which lens is being used to analyse a given security problem.
Breaking Down Traditional Security
Traditional security thinking rests on a few core assumptions:
- The state is the primary referent — meaning the thing we are trying to keep secure is the state itself.
- The main threat is military force from another state — invasion, war, coercion.
- The solution is military power — armies, navies, air forces, alliances, and deterrence.
Within traditional security, scholars further distinguish between:
- National security — protecting one country's interests.
- International security — the security of the system of states as a whole (e.g., preventing world war).
- Strategic studies — the narrower field of military strategy, war-fighting, and deterrence theory.
The NCERT textbook points out that traditional security thinking dominated the entire 20th century, especially during the Cold War. The idea of "balance of power" and "arms control" comes from this tradition.
Breaking Down Non-Traditional Security
Non-traditional security emerged because the world changed. After the Cold War ended, new kinds of threats became impossible to ignore. The typology here includes:
- Human security — shifting the focus from the state to the individual. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) popularised this in the 1990s. It means protecting people from threats like hunger, disease, natural disasters, and political repression.
- Environmental security — climate change, resource scarcity, deforestation, and water wars.
- Economic security — financial crises, poverty, unemployment, and inequality.
- Health security — pandemics (like COVID-19), infectious diseases, and bioterrorism.
- Cyber security — attacks on computer networks, data theft, and digital warfare.
- Transnational crime — drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering.
The key difference? These threats do not respect borders. A virus does not stop at a checkpoint. Climate change affects everyone. Cyberattacks can originate from anywhere.
The NCERT textbook emphasises that non-traditional security does not mean the state becomes irrelevant. The state still plays a major role — but it must cooperate with other states, international organisations, and even non-state actors (like NGOs or private companies) to tackle these threats.
Why This Typology Matters …
Part (a): Human security aims to protect people rather than states; the narrow view means freedom from fear (from violence) and the broad view adds freedom from want (from hunger, disease and disaster).
Part (b): Newly independent Asian and African states faced external military threats from neighbours and internal threats from separatist and ethnic movements, so they had to guard against dangers from within their borders as much as from outside.
For most of history "security" meant the security of the state — its borders, sovereignty and government. Human security turns this around and makes the individual the focus. Its primary goal is to protect people from threats that diminish or endanger their lives, whether those threats come from war, hunger, disease or repression, recognising that a person may live in a "secure" state and still be deeply insecure.
The narrow concept of human security centres on freedom from fear — protection from violence. Its concerns are armed conflict, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, human trafficking and state repression. Supporters argue that keeping the definition tight makes it workable, allowing clear responses such as peacekeeping, disarmament and the protection of civilians.
The broad concept widens this to include freedom from want. It insists that hunger, disease and natural disasters kill far more people than wars do, and therefore that security must also cover economic security, food security, health security and protection from environmental degradation. Critics say this makes the idea too diffuse to guide policy; supporters reply that interconnected threats demand a holistic response.
The broad view is often summarised through the seven dimensions identified by the UN Development Programme — economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security.
Concept understanding — International Security Concepts
International Security Concepts
Think of security the way you think about your own home. You lock the door at night, you keep your valuables in a safe place, you know your neighbours. That's personal security. Now imagine that same instinct applied to an entire country — its borders, its people, its economy, its way of life. That is the starting point for understanding international security.
International security is not about one country alone. It is about how nations interact, compete, and cooperate to protect themselves and, sometimes, to protect each other. The core question is simple: what makes a nation safe, and what threatens that safety?
The Traditional View: Security as Military Protection
For most of modern history, security meant one thing: military strength. A country was secure if it could defend its borders from invasion, deter enemies with a strong army, and win wars if they broke out. This is called the traditional or realist view of security.
Under this view, the world is a dangerous place. Every country looks out for itself. The main threats are other countries — their armies, their weapons, their ambitions. So nations build up their own military power, form alliances (like NATO), and try to maintain a balance of power so that no single country becomes too strong.
The NCERT Class 12 Political Science textbook (Chapter 7, "Security in the Contemporary World") explains that traditional security focuses on military threats from other states. The goal is to protect sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Why does this matter? Because for centuries, this was the only game in town. Wars between countries were the biggest danger. The two World Wars, the Cold War — all of this shaped how nations thought about security. Even today, when you hear about "national security" in the news, it often refers to military preparedness, defence budgets, and border protection.
The Non-Traditional View: Security Beyond the Military
But here is the problem: a country can have the strongest army in the world and still be deeply insecure. What if its water supply dries up? What if a pandemic kills millions? What if its economy collapses because of a global financial crisis? What if terrorists attack from within?
This is where non-traditional security comes in. It broadens the idea of security to include threats that are not military and do not come from other countries. These threats are often global — they do not stop at borders.
Key non-traditional threats include:
- Terrorism — violence by non-state groups aimed at civilians, often across borders
- Climate change — rising sea levels, extreme weather, food and water shortages
- Pandemics — diseases that spread rapidly across the world
- Cyber attacks — hacking, data theft, disruption of critical infrastructure
- Economic instability — financial crises, trade wars, debt
- Migration and refugees — large movements of people due to conflict or disaster
- Organised crime — drug trafficking, human trafficking, arms smuggling
The NCERT textbook makes a crucial distinction: traditional security is state-centric and military-focused, while non-traditional security is human-centric and multi-dimensional. A threat to a person's life or livelihood is now considered a security issue, even if no army is involved.
Why does this matter? Because in the 21st century, a virus or a hacker can cause as much damage as a bomb. Countries cannot solve these problems alone — they need cooperation. This is why international organisations like the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and climate agreements exist.
Human Security: Putting People First
There is an even deeper idea within non-traditional security: human security. This shifts the focus entirely from the state to the individual. The question is not "Is the country safe?" but "Are the people safe?"
Human security covers seven areas, as defined by the United Nations:
- Economic security (jobs, income)
- Food security (access to food)
- Health security (access to healthcare)
- Environmental security (clean air, water, land)
- Personal security (freedom from violence)
- Community security (cultural identity, belonging) …
Part (a): Human security aims to protect people rather than states; the narrow view means freedom from fear (from violence) and the broad view adds freedom from want (from hunger, disease and disaster).
Part (b): Newly independent Asian and African states faced external military threats from neighbours and internal threats from separatist and ethnic movements, so they had to guard against dangers from within their borders as much as from outside.
When the colonies of Asia and Africa won independence after the Second World War, the security problems they faced were not the same as those of the established Western powers.
First, they faced external threats from their neighbours. Newly drawn borders and unsettled territorial claims meant that the main external danger was the prospect of military conflict and war with neighbouring countries, sometimes newly independent themselves. Boundary disputes and rival claims to territory made war between neighbours a constant worry. …
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