Chinese Scholars Look at the World (Non-Traditional Security Volume)

Author: Wang Jisi, Chief Editor; Zha Daojiang, Sub-series Editor
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: With the expansion of research subjects in international politics since the end of the Cold War, non-traditional security has become an integral part of the field of security studies. The issue we encounter is: what is non-traditional security? Literally, "non-traditional" is a counterpart to "traditional." The complexity lies in the fact that not only is the scope of "traditional" difficult to define, but even the concept of "security" itself has long been a subject of debate among international political researchers, both Chinese and foreign. These disagreements involve researchers' values, philosophical reasoning and judgment about how to achieve security for a research subject (normative arguments), as well as the empirical evidence they can access to support theoretical perspectives. Therefore, it has become the norm in security studies to continuously debate and refine in pursuit of precision. A more likely conclusion that could be reached by a broad consensus is that "traditional security" primarily refers to identifying the threats a nation must face and anticipate to maintain its survival, and proposing effective means to address these threats. The core of this consensus is: to protect a nation's territory and sovereignty from threats, by observing the balance of military forces between countries, considering the extent of unilateral arms build-up, and analyzing how to achieve peace in regional and global contexts through a combination of military and non-military means, based on one's own security. The meaning of "non-traditional security" is most evident in the understanding of the sources of threats on a global scale. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a unified state, the political and economic model it represented lost its appeal. More importantly, the competition for spheres of influence between superpowers in international politics ended. This expanded the scope of security studies. More precisely, topics marginalized during the Cold War received attention. The focus of security studies in the field of international political science no longer centered on the military and ideological challenges faced by the state actor. Different understandings of the sources of threats to national security gave rise to the term "non-traditional security." For example, the 1992 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association's section on "International Security and Conflict" encouraged the submission of papers on non-traditional security issues related to the environment, resources, and the economy. Under the umbrella of "non-traditional security," there are many possible adjectival modifiers: economic, ecological, environmental, gender, racial, social, cultural, "human security," and so on. How to define them is related to the analytical level in security studies: individual, family, society, state, international system, humanity. This book consists of eight chapters: Introduction, Economic Security, Food Security and Poverty Issues, Resource Security, Ecological Security, Maritime Security, Cross-border Crime, and Public Health. Although each chapter stands alone, readers can easily discern the logical and factual connections at both the conceptual and substantive levels. This book does not include "terrorism" in its scope. This does not mean that China's official policies and academic research do not treat terrorism as a form of non-traditional security. On the contrary, long before the September 11th attacks, ethnic separatism, religious extremism, and international terrorism were already the targets of China's government's efforts to address them domestically and through international cooperation, and have also become research topics studied from multidisciplinary perspectives by numerous scholars. According to the agreement made during the editorial process of the series, the topic of "terrorism" is more suitable to be included in the "International Security" volume edited by Professor Yan Xuetong.