FriedensForum, no. 4, July-August 2026 (in German; this is the English original)
Climate protesters, blockading coal exports, are met by police who make arrests. Whose security is being protected?
Immigration authorities arrest individuals, planning to deport them. Whose security is at stake?
A country’s military forces prepare to strike a foreign uranium enrichment facility. Whose security is involved?
Security means different things to different people. Governments try to promote their preferred meaning: protection against military threats and terrorists. This is the meaning when “national security” is invoked. The state is presumed to be the most important entity that needs defending against attack. Protecting national security is the usual justification for military spending, surveillance, secrecy, and limits on speech and action. A paradox of national security is that measures taken to protect the state can reduce other sorts of security.
Security, in a general sense, means safety and freedom from fear and uncertainty, and can apply to any aspect of life. Personal security includes safety against physical attack. When people have a “security detail,” this means bodyguards to deter and resist assault. Also important is protection of one’s family, home and possessions.
Could there be total safety, without any risks or dangers? This might mean never leaving the house, because it’s dangerous walking outside: you might be hit by a car or attacked by a stranger. But it can also be dangerous at home, due to other residents and building hazards. Maybe the ultimate in safety is being in prison, in isolation. But that means no freedom. Taking risks is part of becoming open to the world. There needs to be a balance between security and doing things that have risks.
Then there are job security and financial security. Having an income and feeling that it will continue give a sense of safety. Many people expect governments to keep the economy growing, ensure employment opportunities, and protect against crime — all relevant to types of security.
This can lead to a strange process. Because governments are expected to provide security, they have an incentive to raise alarms about dangers, because when there’s a threat, the government is the saviour. This is why support for the government increases when there’s a war or terrorist attack. People expect the government to protect them, and they identify with government leaders who promise this protection.
However, not everyone goes along with government priorities, and some see them as misguided or dangerous. This is reflected in different conceptions of security. A prime example is climate change. Dealing with it as an urgent matter can be thought of as seeking climate security, or as security for future generations. It’s an aspect of environmental security, which includes protecting non-human species, the land, atmosphere, oceans and beyond.
Security thus can be thought of as very close to the individual, as personal safety, or as extending to families, neighbourhoods, populations, countries, the global population, future generations and the planet. It can be self-centred or altruistic. There is no right or wrong way to think about security, but some people try to impose their views on others, and some of them have more power to do so.
Security struggles
Individuals can pursue personal security at their homes by locks and barriers, and by surveillance equipment and alarms. A different approach is to make friends with close neighbours who will help if needed. Other approaches are to rely on policing, join campaigns to stop crime, and join movements against poverty and disadvantage. Yet others are to support politicians who oppose immigration, saying it impairs social cohesion. Community leaders can appeal to any of these motivations. They can support stronger policing, or ways to reduce disadvantage and support restorative justice, or raise alarms about foreign or domestic dangers. Ongoing disagreements and struggles draw on different conceptions of security and different ways to achieve it. Setting up a gated community with a private police force is quite a different approach than campaigns to promote quality of life for all. Media portrayals of lives of luxury and excess can foster acquisitiveness and a willingness to cheat and steal to acquire more possessions.
In struggles over security, governments have the most obvious tools. They fund police and military establishments that gain legitimacy when they exaggerate, manufacture or provoke dangers from foreign militaries and domestic challengers. The huge alarm about terrorism serves to gain public support for the government’s approach to security. The media give priority to dangers — to accidents, disasters, wars — that most commonly engender fears and encourage support for governments to provide protection.
When protesters block the export of coal and are met by police, two conceptions of security clash. If the government, backed by the police, has more influence in the media, its idea of security will predominate. A similar contest over how to think about security occurs when immigration authorities deport asylum seekers and when military forces strike a foreign uranium enrichment facility.
It is very difficult to counter the government’s idea of security, because it is assumed in most media reports to be what security is all about, so much so that “national security” becomes the assumed way of thinking about security, as something so vital that it justifies secrecy, restrictions on civil liberties, and actions against dissidents and protesters. Yet it is crucial to challenge narrow government security thinking, to put other priorities and ways of thinking on the agenda. Is it better to question the assumptions underlying national security and promote alternative ways of thinking, or to use different terms that are not so loaded with government-centred assumptions? Both are important.
Thanks to Jungmin Choi, Suzzanne Gray and Linda Patel for useful comments.