T04UK 2039 Critical Review

Content type

User Generated

Uploaded By

xubnpnb96

Pages

Rating

1. Introduction

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2012 has been strongly emphasizing on the

importance of the safekeeping of human security to be central to global stability, livelihood and

development of people within their Member States (UNGA, 2012). On the other hand, remarks

made by the United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump has been putting forward the importance

of national security maintenance for the strong safety of the American citizen throughout his term,

by stating that leaders should always put their countries first, and that the nation-state is the

foundation to the achievement of better welfare for citizens in the long run (White House, 2017).

As such, this paper aims to produce a concrete answer to the thesis statement on “Which approach

offers the most hope for a peaceful world: human security or national security” by breaking down

the two concepts first and foremost. After that, a detailed evaluation on why national security is a

better vehicle to yield the most hope for a peaceful world will be given out throughout the rest of

the paper.

2. Human Security or National Security for a Peaceful World

Before constructing a detailed evaluation on the stated topic, it is crucial that an overview on each

of which is given out beforehand, so that their nature and core elements could be thoroughly

understood. Particularly, human security has been defined by Acharya (2001) to be the approach

taken by state leaders in order to protect, develop and grow the overall survival, livelihood and

dignity of the people over time. Such approach to security can be argued to be human-centric,

which aims to produce solutions for problems that directly affect human beings on an individual

scale, instead of those affecting the states. On the other hand, national security is an approach that

aims to eliminate threats to a nation-state’s sovereignty in order to safekeep them as a whole,

centralizing the nation’s own citizenry instead of citizenry or humans of all states (Zelikow, 2013).

The paper written by Lama (2018) has indicated that: in recent years, the concept of human security

has been receiving a much higher level of attention than national one, ranging from environmental

protection, cultural preservation to global hunger alleviation; an explanation has been provided by

the authors to be the direct link between such security type to its foreseeable benefits for human

beings, while national security is a much more sensitive and vague topic that citizens often do not

possess much voices and control toward over time.

First and foremost, the conflicts between nation-states and national insecurities have been argued

by numerous researchers to be a more emergent threat to the hope for global peace than human-

centric insecurities due to their innate natures. In essence, the work conducted by Meyer et al.

(1997) has stated that: as nation-states are constantly in a state of rapidly striving and developing

themselves to overcome others around the globe, there is bound to be continuous disagreements

among them relating to resource extraction and usage that could spur up inter-state conflicts over

time; this situation is implied by Robert-Okah (2014) to support the more critical role of strong

national security for all states around the globe to the establishment of firm global peace in the

future. In fact, as threats to national security can be a constant issue that continuously spawns

decade-after-decade, the safety and stability of global governance could in turn directly influence

humans’ livelihood and well-being over time and put lives at risk (Golder and Williams, 2006). A

real-life example for this can be seen in the case of China’s movements on the South China Sea

tin order to push forward their Cow Tongue Line acknowledgement, which has directly violated a

great number of global and national security policies and regulations regarding territories and

borders over the decades of countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines (Ndi, 2016). One of the

direct immediate consequences of such violation to national security regulations is the heavy

turbulences of the lives and safety of the nations’ people living across the regions adjacent to the

areas that are under dispute (Tuan, 2013), thus degrading the overall level of human security as

defined at the beginning of the paper. As such, it can be stated that national insecurity could

actually be a cause for human insecurity across regions, implying that the prioritization of national

security maintenance could be a more preferred path for global leaders to be able to produce the

most hope for a peaceful world in the future.

Secondly, it has been extracted within a number of past reports that: the full achievement of

national security could in fact be able to resolve a number of critical problems afterwards, which

could significantly improve human security in the end. In essence, while human security is a

critical aspect in ensuring the strong development and growth of human races around the world,

national security could be serving as a foundation for the resolution of various human security

issues, while also protecting global peace and stability throughout the process. For instance, the

paper written by Duckett et al. (2016) has pointed out that: a number of global environmental

problems, such as climate change and global warming, has been proven to be highly-wicked ones,

which are: issues that require the involvement of various different stakeholders and authorities to

End of Preview - Want to read all 4 pages?

Access Now

Unformatted Attachment Preview

1. Introduction The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2012 has been strongly emphasizing on the importance of the safekeeping of human security to be central to global stability, livelihood and development of people within their Member States (UNGA, 2012). On the other hand, remarks made by the United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump has been putting forward the importance of national security maintenance for the strong safety of the American citizen throughout his term, by stating that leaders should always put their countries first, and that the nation-state is the foundation to the achievement of better welfare for citizens in the long run (White House, 2017). As such, this paper aims to produce a concrete answer to the thesis statement on “Which approach offers the most hope for a peaceful world: human security or national security” by breaking down the two concepts first and foremost. After that, a detailed evaluation on why national security is a better vehicle to yield the most hope for a peaceful world will be given out throughout the rest of the paper. 2. Human Security or National Security for a Peaceful World Before constructing a detailed evaluation on t ...
Purchase document to see full attachment