Political Science · Ch 5 — Security in the Contemporary World
What is Security?
What is Security?
What is Security?
Start from the plainest possible definition: security means freedom from threats. But almost everything in human life — and in the life of a state — carries some element of threat, which makes that definition, on its own, far too broad to be useful. Step out of your own front door and you already face some small risk to your safety; treat every such risk as a "security" matter and the concept collapses into meaninglessness, since virtually everything would qualify.
Scholars of security narrow the definition by tying it to whatever threatens a country's or a people's core values — but that move raises hard questions rather than settling them.
Whose core values count? Are we talking about the values of the state as a collective entity, or the values that matter to ordinary people in their daily lives? The two are not automatically the same — a government acting in its citizens' name does not always share their exact sense of what's at stake.
How serious does a threat have to be? Threats to something we value come in every size, from the trivial to the catastrophic — a hostile move by another government, a street robbery, both damage someone's values to some degree. Counting every one of these as a "security" issue would leave us paralysed, seeing danger everywhere; the concept only stays usable if it's reserved for genuinely severe cases.
Put together, these two questions point to a working answer: security is about threats serious enough that, left unaddressed, they would do irreversible damage to a society's or a state's core values — not the ordinary, everyday risks of life. …
The cartoon shows a large, muscular man in a military uniform, clearly representing a soldier or a military force. He is holding a small, fragile-looking dove in one hand. The dove, a universal symbol of peace, is struggling — its wings are flapping and it appears to be trying to escape. The soldier’s other hand is raised in a gesture that looks like a command or a warning, as if he is ordering the dove to stay still or behave.
In the background, there is a cage or a small enclosure, suggesting that the dove has been captured and is being forcibly restrained. The soldier’s expression is stern and controlling, not protective or gentle. The overall scene is one of domination: peace is not being nurtured or allowed to fly freely; it is being physically subdued by military power.
The caption reads: “Taming Peace”. Below that, a question is posed: “Have you heard of ‘peacekeeping force’? Do you think this is a paradoxical term?” The cartoon is credited to Ares, Cagle Cartoons Inc.
The cartoon directly challenges the idea of “peacekeeping” as it is often practised by military forces. It suggests that when armed soldiers are sent to enforce peace, the result may not be genuine peace at all — it may be a coerced, fragile calm maintained by the threat of force. The dove (peace) is not free; it is being “tamed” or controlled by the very institution (the military) that claims to protect it. …