Preview
Security in Global Politics
IB DP Global Politics — HL extension: Global political challenges | HL | Security
📋 What You Will Learn
- Define security and distinguish traditional (state-centric) from broader (human security) conceptions
- Explain the key dimensions of security: military, political, economic, societal, environmental and cyber
- Analyse the actors and institutions involved in providing, contesting and undermining security
- Compare how different theoretical perspectives interpret threats and security responses
- Evaluate the tension between state security and individual/human security
- Examine contemporary security challenges — terrorism, cyber threats, climate-related insecurity, nuclear proliferation — through researched case studies
- Recommend evidence-based courses of action to address a security challenge (Paper 3 skill)
🔍 Guiding Question When states pursue their own security through military power, surveillance and border control, do they make individuals and communities more secure — or less?
🌍 Why This Matters In October 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people; Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Both sides invoked "security" to justify their actions — yet the same word described radically different realities for different people. Security is never politically neutral: who defines the threat, who is protected, and at whose expense are always contested questions.
🔑 Key Concept Link Security engages all four key concepts simultaneously. Power determines who can project force and define threats. Sovereignty is both the object of traditional security (protecting the state) and a constraint on responses (non-interference). Legitimacy shapes whether a security measure is accepted or resisted — a surveillance programme or military intervention may be legal yet widely seen as illegitimate. Interdependence means that threats — pandemics, terrorism, climate change, cyberattacks — cross borders and cannot be solved by any single state alone. Return to these links throughout.
What Is Security? Contested Definitions
Security seems self-evident — protection from harm — but the moment you ask "security for whom, from what, and provided by whom?" the concept fractures into competing visions. The answer shapes everything: which actors matter, which threats are prioritised, and which policies are justified.
📖 Definition — Security (traditional / state-centric) In the traditional conception, security refers to the protection of the state from external military threats to its territorial integrity and political independence. The state is both the referent object (what is protected) and the primary provider of security.
📖 Definition — Human Security Human security, developed in the UNDP Human Development Report (1994), shifts the referent object from the state to the individual. It encompasses freedom from fear (protection from violence) and freedom from want (protection from poverty, disease and environmental harm). Seven dimensions are identified: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security.
📖 Definition — Securitisation Securitisation (Copenhagen School — Buzan, Wæver) is the process by which a political actor frames an issue as an existential threat requiring emergency measures beyond normal politics. Once securitised, an issue can justify extraordinary powers — surveillance, detention, military force — that would otherwise be unacceptable. The concept highlights that "threats" are socially constructed, not objective facts.
Why the distinction matters
- Traditional security prioritises the state: military spending, alliances, deterrence, border control.
- Human security prioritises the person: healthcare, food, shelter, freedom from violence — including state violence.
- The two can conflict: a government may increase its