5.1 What is Security?

Open any newspaper and the words security or national security appear several times — about the army, intelligence agencies, terrorism, internal disturbances, even economic policy. Yet very few writers stop to define what they mean. In movies and television, everything to do with national security looks shadowy, secretive and dangerous; the implication is that ordinary citizens have no business asking questions. In a democracy, this should not be acceptable. If the State spends huge sums in our name to make us secure, we have a right — even a duty — to ask: What exactly is security? Who decides what is a security issue? And what are India's security concerns?

5.1.1 The Working Definition: Freedom from Threats to Core Values

At its most basic, security^? means freedom from threats. But that cannot mean freedom from every threat. Every time a person steps out of the house there is some risk; if every risk counted as a security issue, the world would be saturated with security problems and the term would lose all meaning. Scholars therefore narrow the definition: only those things that threaten core values — the values without which a country or a community could not survive — count as security threats.

That immediately raises sharp questions. Whose core values? The core values of the country as a whole, or the core values of an ordinary woman or man on the street? Do governments, acting on behalf of citizens, always agree with citizens about what is most important? And how intense must a threat be to count as a security threat? Surely there are big and small threats to virtually every value we hold dear. The chapter offers a working answer: security is about extremely dangerous threats — threats so serious that they would damage core values beyond repair if no action were taken.

5.1.2 Two Frames: Traditional and Non-Traditional

Security is, however, a slippery idea. Different societies, at different times in history, and at different places on the map, have understood security differently. It would be amazing if eight billion people, organised into nearly two hundred countries, all conceived of security in exactly the same way. Scholars therefore divide modern conceptions of security into two large families: traditional notions (focused on the State, its territory and its sovereignty) and non-traditional notions (focused on people, their communities and the planet they share). This Part examines the traditional family in detail. Part 2 will turn to the non-traditional family, which became prominent after the UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report redefined security as "human security".

5.2 Traditional Notions of Security

Most of the time, when we read or hear about security, what is meant is traditional security^? — also called national security. In this view, the gravest danger to a country is from military threats posed by another country. The other country, by threatening or actually using force, endangers a State's core values of sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. War also kills civilians: in modern conflicts, ordinary men, women and children are increasingly targets, sometimes precisely to break their support for the war effort.

5.2.1 External Threats — Three Choices When War Threatens

When facing the threat of war, the NCERT identifies three basic choices open to a government:

Security policy, in the traditional view, is therefore concerned with two military actions — preventing war (deterrence) and limiting or ending war (defence).

5.2.2 The Four Components of Traditional Security

Out of these basic choices, traditional security policy develops four classic components. They are related but distinct, and most national security strategies combine all four in some mixture.

5.2.3 Component 1 — Deterrence

Deterrence^? is about preventing war. A country signals to its rivals that any attack will provoke a response so costly — in lives, equipment and prestige — that the rival decides not to attack at all. The classic example of the Cold War period was nuclear deterrence: both the United States and the Soviet Union built thousands of nuclear weapons precisely because each side knew that an attack on the other would invite a devastating nuclear response. The same logic operates between India and Pakistan today: both states declared themselves nuclear powers (India tested in 1974 and 1998; Pakistan tested in 1998), and the result is that neither country can launch a major war against the other without risking unacceptable retaliation.

5.2.4 Component 2 — Defence

Defence^? is about limiting or ending war if war does break out. When deterrence fails — as it did between India and Pakistan in 1947–48, 1965, 1971 and 1999, and between India and China in 1962 — armies fight to push the attacker back, deny territory, and end hostilities on terms that protect the country's core values. Successful defence may not "win" a war; it may simply make the cost so high that the attacker withdraws.

5.2.5 Component 3 — Balance of Power

When countries look around the world, they notice that some neighbours and rivals are bigger and stronger. A neighbour may not say it is preparing for war; there may be no obvious reason for attack. But the simple fact that the country is very powerful is itself a sign that, in some future situation, that country could choose to act aggressively. Governments are therefore very sensitive to the balance of power^? — the relative weight of military, economic and technological strength between themselves and others. They work hard to maintain a favourable balance with neighbours, with countries with which they have differences, and with countries with which they have had past conflicts. Maintaining a balance involves building up one's own military strength, but also one's economy and technology base — since these are the foundations of military power.

5.2.6 Component 4 — Alliance Building

An alliance^? is a coalition of states that coordinates its actions to deter or defend against military attack. Most alliances are formalised in written treaties and identify, with reasonable clarity, who the threat is. Countries form alliances to increase their effective power relative to another country or alliance. Alliances are based on national interests — and they can change when those national interests change. The famous example given by NCERT: the United States backed Islamic militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s but later attacked the same network — Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden — after the terrorist strikes on America on 11 September 2001.

5.2.7 Internal Security — A Neglected but Necessary Part of Tradition

By now the alert reader will have asked the obvious follow-up question: Doesn't security also depend on internal peace and order? How can a society be secure if there is violence inside its borders? Indeed it does. Traditional security must concern itself with internal security as well — but in the literature of the post-1945 period, internal security received less attention because, for the most powerful countries on earth, internal peace was largely taken for granted. The United States and the Soviet Union were each internally united; powerful Western European countries faced no serious threats from groups within their borders. Their security debate was dominated by external threats.

The picture was very different for the newly-independent countries of Asia and Africa after the late 1940s. Their security challenges were different from Europe's in two ways. First, they faced the prospect of military conflict with neighbours. Second, they had to worry about internal military conflict — separatist movements demanding their own countries, civil wars, communal violence. Sometimes external and internal threats merged: a neighbour might support an internal separatist movement, leading to tension between the two states. Internal wars now make up more than 95 per cent of all armed conflicts in the world. Between 1946 and 1991, civil wars rose twelvefold — the greatest jump in 200 years.

5.3 Traditional Security and Cooperation — Disarmament, Arms Control, Confidence Building

Traditional security is centred on the use, or threat of use, of military force. But — and this is sometimes missed — the traditional view does recognise that cooperation in limiting violence is possible. War is allowed only for the right reasons (mainly self-defence or to protect others from genocide), and only after all alternatives have failed. Armies must avoid hurting non-combatants and unarmed surrendering soldiers. Force must not be excessive. Beyond these limits on the conduct of war, the traditional view also accepts three forms of practical cooperation: disarmament, arms control, and confidence building.

5.3.1 Disarmament

Disarmament^? requires all states to give up certain kinds of weapons. Two great post-war disarmament treaties were signed against the two non-nuclear "weapons of mass destruction". The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972 banned the production and possession of biological weapons; the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1992 did the same for chemical weapons. More than 155 states have acceded to the BWC and 193 states to the CWC, including all the great powers — making them among the most universal disarmament treaties ever signed.

5.3.2 Arms Control

The superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — were not, however, willing to give up the third type of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons. They turned instead to arms control^?, which regulates the acquisition or development of weapons rather than abolishing them. The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972 stopped both superpowers from using ballistic missiles as a defensive shield against a nuclear attack — they could deploy a few defensive systems, but not produce them on a large scale. Other arms-control agreements followed: the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty II (SALT II) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

The most famous arms-control treaty is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. It did not abolish nuclear weapons; it regulated them. The five states that had tested and manufactured nuclear weapons before 1967 — the US, USSR (now Russia), UK, France and China — were allowed to keep their arsenals. All other states were to give up the right to acquire them. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996, which bans all nuclear test explosions, is also part of the same architecture, although it has not yet entered into force because several key states (including the United States and India) have not ratified it.

5.3.3 Confidence Building Measures

Traditional security also accepts Confidence Building Measures (CBMs)^? — a process in which rival countries share ideas and information about defence matters on a regular basis. They tell each other about military intentions and, up to a point, military plans; about the kind of forces they have; about where those forces are deployed. The aim is to demonstrate that they are not planning a surprise attack — and so to reduce the risk of war by misunderstanding or misperception. India and Pakistan, for example, exchange annual lists of their nuclear installations and pre-notify ballistic missile tests under bilateral CBMs.

5.4 The Cold War Era and Military Spending Today

The period between the end of the Second World War (1945) and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) is called the Cold War. It was the great age of traditional security thinking. Two superpower-led alliances — NATO and the Warsaw Pact — confronted each other across an "iron curtain" running through Europe, while wars by proxy were fought in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and dozens of other places. The Cold War accounted for about one-third of all wars fought after 1945, most of them in the Third World. The arms race, the space race and the nuclear race were all expressions of the traditional security framework: each side built up military, economic and technological power, formed alliances, balanced its rival, and tried to deter attack.

Traditional security has not disappeared with the Cold War. Even today, the world's largest military budgets dwarf almost every other category of public spending. The chart below shows the top defence spenders for a recent year — a reminder that the four classic components are still alive and very expensive.

5.5 The India–Pakistan Case — Deterrence in Action

The most concrete way to understand traditional security is to look at the longest-running deterrence relationship in our region — between India and Pakistan. Since independence in 1947, the two countries have fought four wars (1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999) and have come close to many more crises. Both became openly nuclear in 1998. Since then, no full-scale war has been fought between them: each side knows that the other has nuclear weapons. This is the classic logic of mutual deterrence — neither side gains from a major war, and both sides therefore avoid one. India also follows a declared policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons.

Deterrence is not, however, a complete substitute for diplomacy or for confidence building. India and Pakistan exchange annual lists of their nuclear installations under a CBM that has been in force since 1992; they also pre-notify ballistic missile tests. The two countries have also engaged in episodes of cooperative diplomacy — the Lahore Declaration (1999), the Composite Dialogue, and various back-channel talks — even when relations were strained. Traditional security and cooperation are not opposites; they go together.