International Security and World Politics

Mian Majid Ali Afzal

With the economic development of the modern states, one of the most debated ideas among individuals and intellectual platforms of regional and international politics was international security. The concept of international security has always been highlighted by the social scientists in multiple disciplines of social sciences such as international relations, political science, foreign policy and diplomacy. Since European renaissance that led to Industrial Revolution and Multi-polar politics, the concept of international security has been fervently discussed among political scientists, academia and scholars of international relations, as well as the state actors of developed, developing and non-developed countries. After the end of the Second World War, the discipline of international peace and security has been increasingly taken as a subject by varsities around the globe.

For almost a century, discussions on international security remained controversial due to the bipolar world order as both superpowers in this system formed alliances in the form of organizations, bilateral agreements, and also signed the treaties such as NATO, Warsaw Pact and NAM. No doubt, a clear difference was observed during this period as there were no incidents of traditional war; however, proxy war phenomenon replaced the traditional warfare. This new type of warfare is considered less harmful for the parties as compared to a traditional war. However, this development proved consequential for the communist bloc as its patron, i.e. the Soviet Union, got dismembered, and replaced with we today know as the Russia Federation. Due to this change, the world order also transformed to become unipolar. But this setting also brought with it new threats, also known as non-traditional security threats, due to belligerence of some states.

The non-traditional security threats included things like global warming and its impact in the form of manmade or natural disasters, anti-globalization, terrorism by non-state actors, proxies, human rights violations by people or states, epidemics, transnational organized crime network, mafias, money-laundering, financial terrorism, ethnic issues of, and among, societies, drug addiction and transportation and clashes of interest between or among the states over the economic interest or territorial integration. All in all, from the individual’s security to state and from state to regional and international, and, then, the security of space gradually fell within the domain of international security.

A major threat to international society is anti-globalization in which major states can rise up against each other, e.g. US-China trade war, Brexit. The second daunting threat in this context is hyper-nationalism in different countries which is reflected by a radical mindset, e.g. ELAM in Cyprus, Shiv Sena in India and VOX in Spain.

The third threat to international security can be the isolationism which is increasingly becoming a threat to internationalism. In this category, individuals who are working as political actors in their countries like Justin Amash and Rand Paul in the USA. The fourth major threat is hyper religionism based on the use of religion in national and international politics like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, TTP, Pan Malaysian Islamic Party and Buddhism-based political movement in Myanmar.

To maintain and improve the international security, it is important for the United Nations, WTO, ICJ, World Bank, IMF, and regional and international organizations to adopt methods of consensus-based decisions; otherwise, world politics ultimately will head towards another power competition that will be problematic for the international peace. 

The writer is serving as a Strategic and Administrative Adviser at CPEC-based project in Islamabad. He is also a member of Anti-Drug Task Force Punjab.mianmajid582@gmail.com