At the beginning of this course, I believed that security was a very complex issue with many interdependent factors. I felt that some types of security were more important in the short term or long term and that you couldn’t have, for example, healthy national or physical security without healthy human and ontological security. After this course, I still believe these things, however I recognize and appreciate now that it cannot always be as simple as I felt it should be; dealing with immediate, short-term national/physical threats, then putting the rest of the nation’s energy and resources into creating healthier ontological, human, environmental or emancipatory securities. I now know that sometimes, in order to attain any semblance of these securities, some nations may have to prioritize and deal with large-scale, long-term national or physical securities first; negotiating with foreign powers or with their own people to heal tenuous divides enough to even consider tackling any other type of security.
Two of the most notable examples of such necessary actions would include the Dayton Accords and the conflict with North Korea. While the Dayton Accords may have created its own problems for Bosnia, it did manage to put an end to the immediate civil unrest that was occurring between the different ethnic groups in the nation. Since then, Bosnia’s human security has increased drastically -ontological is still up for debate, and other types of security are unclear-, something which potentially would never have happened without the prioritization of national and physical security. Instead of dealing with the immediate crises/ threats to national and physical security and focusing primarily on healing the aftermath/ other types of security as I had previously believed was the best overall approach to security, they temporarily did the opposite. It was what was necessary for their nation and, despite some current social tensions, it helped to ensure a great deal of security on all fronts.
Dealing with North Korea currently, foreign nations and organizations like the United Nations have to follow a similar approach. It is a well-known fact that North Korea is engaging in numerous human rights abuses and that most North Korea’s are suffering greatly. However, it is also a well-known fact that North Korea is testing nuclear weapons and consistently threatening to use them against foreign powers, most often the United States. To protect the militarily threatened nations, (and/ or truly aid suffering North Koreans) the threatened nations and the U.N. have to actively attempt to negotiate with North Korea for peace. China also has to actively be negotiated with, due to their vast influence over North Korea, in order to persuade them to convince North Korea to agree to any peaceful actions.
China is, of course, hesitant to persuade North Korea to improve either problem as China fears its own human rights abuses having to be corrected and/or a political collapse in North Korea that would flood China with refugees. On both fronts, China ultimately fears its own physical and national security being threatened by attempts to secure any foreign nations physical and national security (in regard to North Korean threats), that might destroy these securities for North Korea. In the end, regardless of the effectiveness of any attempted negotiations, these securities are integral factors for all involved, and attempts to achieve such securities should still continue, in order to ensure any other types of securities remain or, depending on the nation, are instated.
Overall, I still feel that ontological, human, environmental and emancipatory securities are the foundation of a secure and stable society. Without any of them, a nation faces potential civil unrest, environmental degradation, loss of food, loss of hygienic conditions, loss of economy, and general political collapse. This has been evidenced again and again throughout our cases studies of nations such as Somalia, Sierra Leone, Haiti, and several Middle Eastern nations affected directly by ISIS. However, now, due to cases studies such as Bosnia and North Korea, I also better understand and appreciate the need to focus on national and physical security issues - of the nation(s) being defended, the nation(s) being defended from and the nations caught in between- in order to protect and help build this foundation.
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