As a Fellow at the Rockridge Institute, I’ve been exploring the framing of security and it’s relationship to climate change. While climate change is a relatively new idea, our ideas about security have been around since the birth of the nation (and before). They have shifted dramatically since the cold war. In the contemporary context of international terrorism and climate change, ideas of security have become much more global and, at the same time, more individualized.
This diary is based on my paper Shifting the Climate of Security, which has recently been published on the Rockridge Institute website.
I just posted a shorter version of the paper for discussion on our blog site for the progressive community, Rockridge Nation.
Security is a contested concept.
As an idea, it means different things to different people. There is a central meaning that we all agree upon, which is that security is providing protection from harm. Security issues emerge when a threat appears that produces an element of risk that harm will occur. Protection against this threat requires that the risk of harm be reduced or eliminated. In order to stand up to the threat, the source of protection must be strong, and this is where the contested element is introduced: strength itself is contested and has two very different meanings.
The first meaning for strength is protection against an impending force, for example, a levy that withstands a flood or a city wall that stands up to attack. The second meaning is strength through the use of force. The first is often thought of as defensive, the second as offensive or aggressive. These different meanings, when applied to a situation involving a security issue, lead to two opposing meanings:
Meaning 1: Security is the elimination of risk through strong forms of protection against threats
Meaning 2: Security is the elimination of risk through the use of force – or threat of force - to eliminate threats
We need to reframe national security as human security.
By framing the principle concern of security as an issue of human life and dignity we immediately recognize a broad arena of relevance including the spread of disease, job security, ethnic conflict, freedom of speech, and so on.
The alternative, framing security as about the use of force to protect national interests, is grossly inadequate in today’s world. International politics plays out in a deeply interdependent web of activities with our global economy and immense social challenges. The barrel of a gun cannot solve the AIDS crisis. The strongest military in the world cannot destroy extreme poverty. Carbon dioxide cannot be zapped by space-based lasers or conquered by an invading army. The war frame is completely irrelevant to these concerns and the absurdity of these statements provides all the testimony necessary to recognize this fact.
Security issues have been overly focused on nations
It is absolutely essential to recognize that there are many concerns that should not be addressed at the level of nation states. The struggle to address international terrorism is one example. It cannot be adequately addressed if it is approached with the faulty understanding that nations are people (enemy states, rogue states, friendly states, etc.), which is an expression of the metaphor A Nation is a Person. This understanding results in emphasis on nation-to-nation interactions when the reality is that national borders do not adequately separate those who pose security threats from those who do not.
The climate crisis provides an ideal path for reframing security as human dignity.
Terrorism has already been framed badly so it is difficult to work with. Climate change does not carry this burden. Deep frames pertaining to the security issues related to it do not exist, presenting a powerful opportunity for progressives to promote our understanding of security on an issue that has wide popular support among people who self-identify as both liberals and conservatives.
Global climate change is a key motivator of this broadened perspective because of its capacity to destabilize strained regions of the world by disrupting food production, polluting drinking water, and driving mass migrations of people on unprecedented scales.
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Written by Joe Brewer, a Rockridge Institute Fellow. Founded by George Lakoff, the Rockridge Institute is a progressive political think tank reclaiming the political debate through the application of cognitive science, neuroscience, and linguistics to a broad range of concerns. The Rockridge Institute depends upon support from the progressive community.