Globalization brings economic interdependence to the world, speedy communication and cultural exchange. But interconnectedness also brings a broadening of security threats and approaches to contain them. Palisades resident Dan Caldwell, political science professor at Pepperdine University, will address the question of security in the 21st century and sign “Seeking Security in an Insecure World” (Rowman and Littlefield) on Thursday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. Caldwell and co-author Robert Williams, associate professor of political science at Pepperdine, offer an overview of the range and nature of new threats to world security in their book, intended for a lay audience. “We started this book before 9/11 as an academic text, but then after the event we thought general readers and citizens needed to get the lay of the land,” Caldwell told the Palisadian-Post. “This is the only overview of contemporary threats. There are many books on bioterrorism, environmental degradation, infectious disease or nuclear threats, but none that has reconceptualized the concept of security.” The book offers a historical view of security, beginning with the traditional paradigm, where the state (nation) was the focus of concern and national security policy and defense policy was generally limited to matters relating to the use of military force. “Prior to 9/11, many people in the United States and other parts of the developed world lived in a kind of fool’s paradise,” the authors write. “The collapse of the Soviet Union a decade earlier had brought to an end the prolonged period of intense insecurity associated with the Cold War and ushered in a brief period in which the principal security concern in the developed world appeared to be whether or not to take responsibility for the protection of people in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda.” In the new paradigm, security involves defense against many different kinds of threats, including environmental problems, the collapse of currencies, and human trafficking, and recognizes that threats against the lives of the citizens and other values of the state may come from the state itself. The authors each drafted seven chapters, then traded, edited, advised and rewrote. A sampling of chapters includes traditional sources of insecurity: nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, disease, cyberthreats, drugs and thugs. The last section covers such topics as political and social conditions of insecurity, ethnic conflict and security, and living in the aftermath of the World Trade Center with the threat of terrorism. Caldwell wrote the chapter on infectious diseases, in which he reviews the devastating results of biological warfare. He notes that biological weapons pose a particularly significant threat because of certain characteristics, including extraordinary lethality, small size, low production costs and accessibility to rogue states and terrorist groups. While we can deal with the crisis by learning more about the threat and preparing to deal with it, Caldwell said, “in the end, peace and security require more than defensive responses to the threats we perceive.” The authors point out in the first chapter that threats should be viewed at as products of capabilities and intentions. As an example, “the United States and Russia continue to dwarf all other international actors in their WMD capabilities. But because their intentions toward each other are now benign, their WMD capabilities pose very little threat to each other. Rogue states have vastly smaller WMD capabilities, but because we cannot assume benign intentions, they constitute a clear threat to our society.” Caldwell said that what surprised him in researching the book was the connection between security and women’s education and the lot of women worldwide. “In Africa, women don’t have options, no education, and no possibility of working outside the home. When their husband goes off and has sex, gets AIDS, she’s a victim.” The authors write, “In seven African countries, babies born in 2004 have a life expectancy of 40 years or less, due primarily to the scourge of AIDS. In short, those who live in developing countries have less money, dramatically lower life expectancies, lower infant survival rates, higher death rates from infectious diseases, lower literacy rates and less access to safe drinking water and health care. “Economic circumstances are important because poverty is a key social condition associated with war and terrorism.” Looking forward, Caldwell and Williams suggest that Western policymakers and scholars must look beyond their own cultural constructs. “If our conclusions to this point have been correct’that seeking security today requires countering threats from nonstate actors, recognizing threats that are transnational and, consequently, indivisible in character, dealing with the problems of unintended consequences and operating in parts of the world that are especially unfamiliar to most of use in the West’then the ability to understand and even empathize with those in other cultures is more important than ever before.” Caldwell said that the challenge is to coordinate an international response to potential security threats, which is particularly difficult when considering that there are 200 sovereign states in the international system. The co-authors write: Sovereignty means that each of the states is free to address (or to ignore) global warming, or human trafficking or terrorism, as it sees fit….The failure of one state to curb greenhouse gas emissions or to stop the destruction of rainforests has a negative impact on all states that are attempting to address global warming. Furthermore, nonstate actors’terrorists, arms traffickers, nuclear scientists willing to sell their services to the highest bidder’exploit differences among states and operate in the gaps of the international system.” “There is no such thing as absolute security; it’s a matter of degree,” Caldwell said. “Providing security is managing insecurity, and in today’s world national security is an oxymoron. It’s a global problem.”
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
