Reflecting on the Relationship between Security and Military Strategy

It is lowest-contested among students of international relations that security points to the freedom of threats and the ability of states to come to terms with external pressures over their sovereignty. All other things being equal, especially internal constraints notwithstanding this substantial consensus, there still remains much to argue. The apple of discord concerns not only the form in which external threats may clothe, but also the form of strategies required for response. Contemporary debate on theory and practice of security and strategy is dominated by the argument that the most effective strategy for dealing with external threats to state security is the use of armed force. Outside security is widely perceived to be synonymous to military power. Even from this 'restricted' perspective, however, the conceptualisation of security is well worth a less 'reductionist' scrutiny; there is more to security than military power. Within the recently developed realist 'new thinking' about strategy and security, this article seeks to put forth the idea that the externally-oriented conception of security should be conceived in a holistic perspective, beyond the sphere of military strategy.

On first sight, a striking feature of the international system is its anarchic nature, i.e. the absence of a centrally controlled global government. It basically implies that there is no any overarching or supranational political authority to demand compliance with international law and restrain the use of force in relations within and among states. The result is that anarchy causes an enduring problem of security to the extent that states distrust each other as potential threats to their territorial integrity and functional independence, and compete with each other to maintain and improve their power position in the system's structure. In essence, anarchy is a self-help system which induces states to safeguard adequate conditions of survival by enhancing their capabilities at the expense of the others. This struggle ultimately produces a diffuse sense of insecurity, the so-called security dilemma: each state conceives of the self-help moves of the other as potentially threatening and takes additional protective measures regarded as offensive by the latter, and so on. The preservation of security, therefore, becomes the principal policy objective of all states. The quest for security is identified with the pursuit of freedom from threats through reliance on exogenous and endogenous sources of power, i.e. external and internal balancing respectively.

In this light, what policymakers and strategically-oriented scholars assume is that security is a function of state power, which, in turn, is largely a function of military capabilities. It is taken for granted that threats take on the form of an armed invasion or a claim for control over a part of a state's territory and resources  From this standpoint, it is ventured that the prudent response is military strategy; and by extension, the reduction of domestic vulnerabilities comes to become tautological with the increase in military power. In short, national security is most often conceptualised in terms of military power and strategy. The use of armed force is acknowledged as a rational means employed by states in pursuit of their interests. The assumption behind military strategy is that the prince determinant of security is war and armed force. What determines the making of a state's grand strategy are two imperatives: a) if you want peace, prepare for war and b) achievement of military superiority vis-à-vis present or would-be adversaries.

At a deeper level of analysis, however, one could argue that since the end of World War II, a number of transformations have changed the conditions of anarchy within which states interact. The international system is no longer as anarchic as we are used to assume. An 'institutionalized' anarchy has somehow grown in the sense that states are limited by an array of factors in their solitary, self-help struggle for security. These factors are mainly: a) the advent of nuclear weapons and b) the making of a web of 'complex interdependence' as a result of the liberalization of world trade and the deepening of the international economic integration in terms of the internationalization of production and the globalisation of financial markets.

The former has made it difficult to imagine circumstances in which it could be rational for one nuclear power to resort to military strategy for war confrontation in order to advance its own security at the expense of the other. The latter, underpinned  as it is by technological breakthroughs, has made territorial expansion and military occupation a requisite for free access to foreign markets and it has made raw resources needless. Oil and water may be considered an exception to this rule. The elimination of the importance of territory is also due to the fact that the number of persons dependent on farm land as a source of subsistence is continually shrinking. All in all, the main strategic implication of interdependence, which reflects a rising network of interacting functional linkages, mainly in the economic and environmental realm, is twofold: first, the unprecedented diffusion of state power and secondly, the fact that no state pursues to isolate itself from interaction networks because it is too costly for its own interests. Even the ability of great powers to impose their will is significantly conditioned. Such security problems as the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the instability of the international economic system, migration, arms trade, terrorism, narcotics, demographic explosion and environmental degradation are unlikely to be effectively dealt with by one great power. They instead dictate the concerted action of all the great powers. Interdependence in essence removes any possibility of invulnerability to outside pressures since no state, regardless of its level of development and growth rate, is self-sufficient and completely autonomous.

Another point to be stressed is that interdependence has paved the way for the emergence of the economic element as an indispensable ingredient of security. Within the context of the grossly complex density of interactions, an increasing number of states attach far more priority to the economic dimension of state power, competing with each other for technological leadership, market shares and geopolitical spheres of economic influence as essential means of political preponderance. The relative technology, competitiveness, productivity, volume of trade, financial transactions, and the level of the educated labour force. Not surprisingly, states with strong economic power are able to yield considerable political power by employing their comparative economic advantages as diplomatic leverages and bargaining devices to affect the political behaviour of their rivals and allies. Japan throughout much of the Cold War is a case in point. The historical record of the rise and fall of the great powers, after all, demonstrate that economically strong states most often cause shifts in the geopolitical landscape and military balances, should they pursue to imprint their rising economic power on the international political stage.

As the impact of these transformations are becoming much more evident in the post-Cold War era, power competition have by no means withered away. Despite interdependence, most of the world is plagued by ethnic conflicts and militarised disputes. An illustrative example is that of the Third World, where territorial integrity continues to be at stake, the use of force for acquisitive purposes is still on the agenda, and thus military strategy is regarded as a fundamental prerequisite for the preservation of state sovereignty. But as far as the industrially developed and technologically advanced states are concerned, the real cardinal leverage for achieving security and international primacy is economic performance. Notwithstanding the unquestionable significance of military power, military strategy is no longer the sole and most effective instrument of security policy. The great powers have no incentive to provoke a military conflict with one another, since the political and economic profit of such an action is unlikely to exceed the cost. Hence their relations, though still conflictual, are very much less war-prone than they were in the past.

Nonetheless, one could take issue with this perspective. Even after the end of the East-West confrontation, external threats to state security are basically of military kind and must be addressed with military strategy. Morgenthau's apophthegm, therefore, is all the more valid and timely: "nations active in international politics are continuously preparing for, actively involved in, or recovering from organised violence in the form of war."

An answer to such an anti-thesis requires a brief reference to the potential sources of violence and threats with which the western great powers are currently being faced.For simplicity's sake, I distinguish them among the following:

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in eliminating the strength of a powerful disposing factor which significantly prevented the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, i.e. Russian technological and political control over its constituent republics and 'satellite' states. All else being equal, especially the forces of globalisation and interdependence, it is estimated that in the years to come about two dozen developing states are likely to possess ballistic missiles and advanced delivery systems; less than half of them may be nearing or may have passed the so-called nuclear threshold. The problem is that the majority of these candidate states, geographically located mostly in North Africa and the Middle East, are non-democratic regimes, which sponsor terrorism, cultivate Muslim fundamentalism, and attempt to challenge or overturn.the rules of the game in world politics. Other than terrorist assaults and low-intensity strikes, it is true that the possibility of a large-scale conventional armed attack by these developing states against the West is almost slight. But unless the vested nuclear powers take concrete, effective measures to protect their nuclear arsenal and prevent the proliferation of the relevant high technology-based items, the possibility of a short, decisive attack with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons is likely to increase in the coming years.

Mass migration associated with the flood of refugees from Eastern Europe-including the Commonwealth of Independent States-and the turbulent North, seeking food, shelter, and safety in the West. Interstate wars, ethnic conflicts, the scarcity of economic resources, and environmental degradation cause this sort of political and economic migration. The heart of the matter is that migration endangers the social stability and cohesion of the Western states as a result of the militant protests of fascist or right-wing xenophobic forces and of the immigrants' demands for political, economic, and human rights.

Clearly, the global military threat of the Cold War  era is definitely over, and the contingency of the explosion of a new world war among the great powers is slight, almost academic, at least for the time being. But this by no means follows that the Western states' security is guaranteed and self-evident. The large as well as the smaller states of the West continue to compete with each other and engage themselves into diplomatic disputes over a long array of political and economic issues. North-South relations, moreover, are a long way from an articulated system of 'peaceful harmony' and, therefore, much tension and instability is being grown between them. In fact, it is from this development that the primary menace is potential rather than imminent; the exact source and form of threats, even those of the proliferation of WMD and of mass migration, are not so visible and clear-cut. The main question is what strategic implications and what kind of spill-over effects this situation is likely to bear upon state security. It is obvious that at a time when none of the great powers are explicitly aiming for global hegemony and, additionally, when sweaping changes are underway in the international system, it is a difficult enterprise to figure out with some confidence where precisely the next threat is to come from and what form it is to take on.

What is markedly more, unlike the recent past, insecurity can no longer be effectively dealt solely with the threat or use of force. Military strategy, as with the use of military power for achieving political objectives, is not invariably the most effective and, probably of greater importance, least-costly instrument of the Western states' security. Rather than substituting them for military power, the political, diplomatic economic, and cultural tools of security often prove to be more profitable, functional, flexible, and legitimate to the international public opinion's consciousness.

On the whole, even though the Cold War disciplines faded out long before, we are still witnessing the unfolding of formidable shifts in the international and regional landscape. As it seems that we are moving into a fluid and turbulent world, all states, in one way or another, continue to search for a regional, or international role to play. They find themselves forced to reorder and push forward new patterns of beneficial relations so as to accomplish three main tasks: to solve pressing domestic problems, to cope with the dynamic transition of the international system, and to reconceptualize and prioritize vital national interests and policy choices. Above all, the advanced states of the West are compelled to tailor national strategy to two new conditions. The first is that the sources of threats to their security are not readily visible and the second condition is that these threats to do not necessarily target territorial integrity and sovereign independence, and by extension cannot be met exclusively by pure military power. For the Western developed states military strategy is not the sole rational answer to external threats that it formerly was; rather, it is the least attractive tool of national security. Far from being obsolete or outdated options, nevertheless, in short, the resort to war as a means of conflict resolution and the use of force for security purposes are no longer deemed by definition as the proper formula for a given success. In any case, that is what I wish I have brought out in this small piece of work: the proposition that the externally-oriented conception of security should be extended beyond the sphere of military strategy in order to obtain essential meaning.

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