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Critical and Conventional Approaches to Security
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National Security and Terrorism
In this course, Dr Lily Hamourtziadou (Birmingham City University) explores national security and the threat of terrorism. In the first lecture, we think about the contrasting critical and conventional approaches to security. In the second lecture, we think about forms of irregular warfare and the groups involved in each type. In the third lecture, we think about counter terrorism strategies and the war on terror. Next, we think about the use of drones in counter terrorism. In the fifth and final lecture, we think about critical and conventional approach views on the use of killer drones in warfare.
Critical and Conventional Approaches to Security
In this lecture, we think about the critical and conventional approaches to security, focusing in particular on: (i) the conventional approach to security, which posits that threats exist in the world independently of the state in question and its actions; (ii) the conventional approach position that national security and territorial sovereignty are of utmost importance; (iii) the importance of border control and defence in the conventional approach to security; (iv) the conventional approach to security, which considers war to be inevitable, positing that the most important aspect of security is that a nation should be ready for war at any time; (v) the critical approach to security, which states that threats are not objective, but part of the politics of representation; (vi) the critical approach’s view that knowledge can change over time, relative to truth; (vii) collective, cooperative and human security under the critical approach, which serve a purpose above individual national security; (viii) defunding the military in favour of international cooperation as part of a critical approach to security; (ix) a critical approach consideration of the conditions that create a threat to national security, rather than just the threat itself; (x) violations of rights, injustice, poverty and illiteracy as threats to national security under the critical approach; (xi) contrasting threats from outside of the sovereign nation with those present within; (xii) ideational threats as a core threat to individual and national security.
I am Doctor. Lily Hamulsiado.
00:00:07I'm a senior lecturer in Security and International
00:00:08Relations at Birmingham City University.
00:00:11And today, I will be talking about security and threats to security.
00:00:14And I will start by outlining two approaches to security, a
00:00:19conventional one a critical one.
00:00:24As you may imagine, the conventional one is actually an
00:00:26older understanding of security and the critical one newer.
00:00:30And when I say newer, I mean, the last fifty years or so.
00:00:34So the conventional approach to security is the one that you'd
00:00:38probably be most familiar with.
00:00:41And this approach says that there are threats out there in
00:00:43the world that are objective,
00:00:46that they exist independently of us,
00:00:48independently of our state,
00:00:50of our police, of our military, of the media.
00:00:53So there are threats as in bad things out there exist just
00:00:58because they're bad.
00:01:02And so what is it that as a state we need to do.
00:01:05So we need to have, good military power.
00:01:10We need to have a strong army in order to fight those threats
00:01:13whether they're threats that, come to us,
00:01:16all threats we need to go to.
00:01:19So a strong military is very important for security
00:01:21approach.
00:01:26Now, what kind of security comes first? National security.
00:01:28So this approach says the nation and its at state
00:01:32level is what is the most important aspect of security.
00:01:36Anything else will have to come second.
00:01:40So the military is there to protect national security.
00:01:42What else is important? Well, territorial sovereignty.
00:01:48So that means the land that we call our state that is ours,
00:01:52needs to be protected.
00:01:56We need to be able to rule over that completely as a as a
00:01:58nation, and nobody should be allowed
00:02:02to either take territory away from us or be ruling
00:02:06over part of our territory that we regard as hours.
00:02:10And so that is part of the conventional approach.
00:02:14So another important element in this conventional approach is
00:02:16both and the defensive borders.
00:02:20The state is very important in this approach.
00:02:22And because the state has borders,
00:02:25whatever those borders may be, in in our case, in the UK,
00:02:27it tends to be the island.
00:02:31So the borders need to be defended and there need to be
00:02:34secure forces at the border controlling who comes in,
00:02:38who leaves and maybe stopping anything that is regarded as a
00:02:43threat to our national security.
00:02:47And finally, this approach says that the the state's
00:02:50most important task is to always be prepared for war.
00:02:55This approach believes that war is inevitable,
00:02:59other states cannot be trusted and therefore a war will happen
00:03:04at some point whether it's a defensive war or a semi
00:03:08defensive wall or a preemptive wall.
00:03:12You know, there are many ways you can talk about wall.
00:03:14The state always needs to be ahead to fight that war.
00:03:17And this is the biggest task estate has.
00:03:21Now, more recently, the been critical approaches to security.
00:03:25And those critical approaches don't necessarily focus on
00:03:28states, but they focus on communities, collectivities, and individuals.
00:03:31So the level at which security is even discussed,
00:03:38in this critical approach is very different.
00:03:41For example, the critical approach says that threats are not objectively out there.
00:03:44They are part of what they call a politics of representation.
00:03:50So we are told,
00:03:55what a threat is.
00:03:58We find out through, what our politicians say, what the media
00:04:00says, something is presented to us as a threat.
00:04:04It doesn't necessarily mean that it's out they're sitting
00:04:08for us to do something about it.
00:04:11It's presented to us in a particular way.
00:04:13An event, for example,
00:04:15the invasion of Ukraine now it didn't happen to the UK.
00:04:17Did it? It was between two states, Russia and Ukraine.
00:04:21And yet here in the UK,
00:04:24that is present been presented to us as a threat to us.
00:04:25This is what I mean about threat is part of presentation.
00:04:30Another thing that this critical approach questions is
00:04:35the idea of truth and the idea of knowledge,
00:04:39that there is something called truth and we can find that out.
00:04:41And we can gain knowledge.
00:04:46So this approach says,
00:04:48certain things are regarded as truth or served as truth and
00:04:50regarded as knowledge and those things may change.
00:04:53We may find out actually that wasn't knowledge at all.
00:04:56It was a wrong thing that we believed.
00:04:58So this idea of an objective truth is very much
00:05:00critiqued or at least,
00:05:04this critical approach says we need to be thinking about that
00:05:07and not just accepting it.
00:05:10Another thing about this critical approach is that
00:05:12rather than prioritized national security,
00:05:16it says that there is something called collective security
00:05:19there is cooperative security, there is human security,
00:05:23and all these securities are equally important.
00:05:27National Security not the most important one.
00:05:31Corporation rather than war is what this critical approach, says.
00:05:34So rather than go war have our state always ready to fight a
00:05:39war with a strong military where all the funding goes
00:05:42because obviously a strong military needs a lot of money
00:05:45And so it says the state shouldn't necessarily be
00:05:49putting so much of its money towards the military.
00:05:51There are ways that you safeguard security through
00:05:54cooperation rather through aggression or confrontation or bombing anybody.
00:05:57And finally, what this approach looks at is not just the threats itself,
00:06:04whether it's a terrorist threat or russia is a threat
00:06:09but it looks at the conditions that produce these threats,
00:06:13the conditions that make threats.
00:06:17What kind of thing makes something a threat.
00:06:19So it's these conditions, at social level,
00:06:23at political level at its global level,
00:06:26that it looks at.
00:06:30And so in the last fifty years or so, we have a
00:06:32broadening of the concept of security.
00:06:36So security isn't just about a state its borders and its
00:06:38military and loss of life.
00:06:42A state is a uh-uh security is a lot more than that.
00:06:43For example, human rights, we have a commitment to this idea
00:06:46that every person in the world, not just in our own state,
00:06:51but in other states as well,
00:06:54has rights that we cannot violate.
00:06:56That we shouldn't violate.
00:06:58And therefore, when a human right is violated,
00:07:00that is a threat to security.
00:07:03Whether it's in our or in some other state.
00:07:05Another is, injustice as insecurity.
00:07:08So it's not just out defending our land, but actually
00:07:12defending ourselves from injustice
00:07:16and defending others from injustice, if necessary.
00:07:18Provoids is an insecurity.
00:07:22Illiteracy.
00:07:25We recognize various conditions that people find themselves in
00:07:26that to the insecurity and it is those that we are concerned about.
00:07:31So we have a people centered security more than we did.
00:07:36Individual national and international security is what
00:07:41we need to be looking at in the twenty first century
00:07:45and about creating the right environment,
00:07:48the right political environment, economic
00:07:51environments, social environments, and systems that
00:07:54help people anywhere in the world live a life of security,
00:07:58safety and dignity because whenever someone's dignity, is threatened,
00:08:04that is as real a threat as if a soul or shooting.
00:08:10So today's security agenda in the last few years, actually,
00:08:15includes many, many threats, we think now if I were to ask anybody,
00:08:19what is the current threat for someone living in the UK?
00:08:25They may say, because of what happened with the police, maybe,
00:08:29abuse of, of power by the state.
00:08:34But they would probably also say certain countries, you
00:08:37know, Syria, Russia, that would say terrorism is a threat.
00:08:40But actually, there are so many threats that perhaps we don't even think about.
00:08:44Threats posed by environmental degradation and everything that
00:08:50that with it, climate change, deforestation,
00:08:54the spread of infectious disease, with COVID,
00:08:59we saw quickly a disease may spread.
00:09:02We thought that was behind us, but actually,
00:09:04COVID showed in twenty twenty that it is not and it affected
00:09:07billions of people around the world.
00:09:11Finally, an ideational threat is an like an idea being a threat.
00:09:14It could be an idea or an idea about, a system that's a
00:09:18fundamentalist or this idea that,
00:09:23if you're not a believer of a certain kind,
00:09:26you know, you should be hated and you could die.
00:09:30So that's an ideational threat and a lot of what we call
00:09:32terrorism has these threats in it in that they are extreme and
00:09:36they're about hating others.
00:09:40And so remember, very important to take away security threats.
00:09:42Now a threat is not necessarily something bad.
00:09:47We think of a threat as something bad,
00:09:51something evil all we are saying when we're saying that
00:09:52something is a threat is that is in a particular relationship
00:09:55to something else.
00:09:58So if a is a threat to b, that means that
00:09:59a is some kind of threat to it that is a threat to an interest that B has.
00:10:04It could be an economic interest it could be about
00:10:09land, about resources, but we are talking about a relationship.
00:10:12So threats are about relationship.
00:10:16And so although a may be a threat to b,
00:10:18it may not be a threat to c or d or e or all the way to z.
00:10:20So it's about that relationship.
00:10:25Relationships change.
00:10:27So something that is a threat to us now wasn't a threat to us
00:10:28fifty years ago, and it may not be a threat to us next year.
00:10:32So relationship is one thing to remember and context.
00:10:36Relationship changes based on a changing context.
00:10:40When the context changes an enemy may not be an enemy anymore.
00:10:44
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Hamourtziadou, L. (2024, February 22). National Security and Terrorism - Critical and Conventional Approaches to Security [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/national-security-and-terrorism
MLA style
Hamourtziadou, L. "National Security and Terrorism – Critical and Conventional Approaches to Security." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 22 Feb 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/national-security-and-terrorism