An Elusive Concept

It is common ground that the concept of national security is not limited any longer to external and internal threats to the integrity of a nation. It also includes the linkages between these two challenges to national security exemplified, for instance, by cross-border and domestic terrorism mutually reinforcing each other. Moreover, threats to national security are increasingly believed to include emerging and non-traditional dangers, atypically from climate change, migration, pandemics, water and food security, and so on. Clearly, such variegated and diffused aspects of national security cannot be credibly addressed by individual nations, but require a regional and international cooperative effort. A new recognition of cooperative security has consequently accrued. Alongside comprehensive and human security to provide for the security of nations, cooperative security has gained a new salience after the Cold War ended, and undifferentiated bloc approaches to national security became questionable. Cooperative security thereafter became part of the Newspeak of national security.