Rethinking national security

It would be recalled that the Great Depression of the 1930s had devastating effects on rich and poor nations of the world. At that time the craze for crude oil was not there but nations who depended on industries for survival suffered setbacks. Some countries recovered in the mid-1930s while others could not improve their economies until the Second World War started in 1939. The world fought a Second World War and in order to save the world from economic recession, some 44 Allied nations sat in a place called New Hampshire, USA, convened the UN Monetary and Financial Conference that eventually resulted in the formation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund which are popularly referred to as the Bretton Wood institutions. This was to reconstruct world economic systems and regulate international monetary systems. Since the Second World War ended in 1945, there have been other instances of global economic depressions occasioned by oil glut and wars in the Middle East. Enough of this digression, but suffice it to state that the last economic recession occurred in the year 2008.

The current exodus of refugees to Europe from troubled spots of the world gives this writer and other observers in the world a cause for concern. Since the Second World War, Europe has not faced the gravitational flow of refugees of such complexity and magnitude as that being experienced in this crisis. These migrants are mainly from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Mali, The Gambia, and Nigeria. Others are from Somalia, Palestine and Senegal. There are also refugees from other parts of the world whose citizenships could not be ascertained as reported by the international media. The situation is so bad that the Mediterranean has witnessed the worst refugee drowning episodes in decades. For instance, on 19 April, 2015, it was reported that an estimated 700 migrants were killed when their boats capsized in the Mediterranean. At the time of writing this piece, the death toll has risen beyond 1,500. The upsurge in the number of refugees is due to Jihadists in Syria and Iraq, civil wars in the Middle East, oppression and internal conflicts in Africa as well as other parts of the world. Can you imagine what would have happened if those refugees gravitating towards Europe are only Africans or Nigerians? Would Germany and other countries in Europe allow them to file their papers for asylum? If there is internal crisis in Nigeria such that refugees have to move in large numbers outside the shores of our country to other nations, which of our neighbouring countries in the West African sub-region will be willing to accommodate them?

In the 1980s, defence was only considered by most nations as the dominating component of national security. That is, political leadership in most countries, especially in Africa, commonly viewed national security from the angle of military response to and management of armed conflicts or threats. This was also very common when military juntas dotted every nook and cranny of the African continent. Security to military juntas meant regime protection to an extent that monies that could have been used for development were spent procuring arms and ammunitions.

Defence has always been very controversial as people have different views about security threats, protection and the value of life, all of which are reflected in the case of defence. In developed and a few developing nations, economists and defence scholars have always asked if defence is a worthwhile investment for the society. Questions also arise whether there is anything like a just war and the morality of producing weapons and exporting arms to poor countries whose citizens are suffering from poverty, hunger and diseases, amongst other social negatives. Indeed, in some civilized societies, interest in defence-related issues has always emanated from three sources of social demand, namely, the state, scholars and academic interests. Their argument is that scarce resources allocated to defence means that these resources are not available for alternative use such as social welfare spending, such as missile versus education and health trade-offs.

In a democracy, regime change is done by the people through ballot boxes as stipulated by the constitution. This is because democracy does not permit a regime to perpetuate itself in office beyond a stipulated period. At the end of the prescribed period as enshrined in the nation’s constitution, that regime must be voted out of office. For instance, if this does not happen in every four years in the case of Nigeria, then it is not democracy but autocracy. This is because often, people misconstrue defence to mean national security. In fact, defence is one of the many components of national security.

It was in 1986 that Robert McNamara posited that ‘in a modern society, security does not mean military force, though it may involve it; security is not traditional military activity, though it encompasses it; security is not military hardware, though it may include it; security is development, and without development, there can be no security’. Simply, national security is development and without development there can be no security. Contemporary security scholars have identified about 15 or less components of national security that could give rise to development, namely, defence security, economic security, border security, environmental security, food security, health security, energy security, and cyber security. Others are informational security, geostrategic security, disaster security, resource security, transportation security, genomic security, and ethnic security. There is no hard and fast rule regarding the number of components a nation can have in its national security framework. It depends on how policymakers perceive national security and resources available to execute it.

 

MA Johnson