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Enver MeĊedović UDK:316.344.5:316.6]:32:355.45:316.6]:32
SECURITY AND THE POLITICAL COMMUNITY
Abstract
Security is the most mentioned, but the least explained concept. Every man, every society through
various forms attempts to achieve certain level of security.
This paper presents the main features of the very concept of security, as well as the basic characteristics of
the state and the national security.
Keywords: safety, security, public security, national security.
1.
INTRODUCTION
In many areas of the human life, safety or security is one of the most mentioned but the least
explicable terms. In essence, the need for security and hence the engagement with it, is based on movements
for predictability, certainty regarding the fate of the most important goods and values which figure in regard
of fate of the most important resources and values underlying personality and narrower or wider
communities have or aspire towards. Political scientists and lawyers more often discuss these phenomena
and for many of them international security is one of the areas where the internal and the foreign policy rub
as fields of studies and as practical activities.
When the common goals or interests were sought within all the countries, the first and most logical
seemed self-preservation, striving not to disappear, and this inevitably led to the concept of security.
2.
TERMINOLOGICAL ISSUES
By comparison of the labels for this term used in the most important languages, it turns that they are
not always the same for everything what they mean. In English, we will determine that terms used are secure
and safe, and security and safety. Similar is the case with the French language that recognizes securute and
surete, while the German language is poor in this sense and the words sicherheit and sisher cover concepts
such as: reliable, certain and harmless. The same applies to the Russian words bezopasniji and bezopasnost,
while bezbednyi means merely the absence of material poverty. In the Serbian language there are confusing
circumstances since in circulation are expressions bezbednost and sigurnost that could be, but not
necessarily are synonymous. The complex by which we roughly denote security acquires actuality in many
areas. Besides the already mentioned to public safety, for the rule of law it gains importance and legal
security. In the struggle for freedom from fear and poverty there is the concept of social security, which is
now called social insurance. Outside the political and legal field, the term safety becomes actual where the
technical developments are more and more used - road traffic safety, safety at the work place, etc. When the
human factor is concerned, the threat from human evil, incompetence of handling plants, the term general
safety is domesticated.
3.
THE CONCEPT OF SECURITY IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
It is interesting that the security in this area has become topical in the twentieth century and that
sinceThomas (1917), in one form or another is counted in one of the basic aspirations of the man. Striving
towards safety is one of the main motives of the human behavior. If for the second example we take the
representatives of the socalled depth psychology, one gets the impression that they are more concerned with
man's uncertainty and according to them safety leads to behavior towards goals, and uncertainty behavior
towards risk. Neoanalytists recognized the need for security as one of the basic instincts of normal humans,
in addition to striving toward growth and maturation. Fromm's access is to understand the success of the
totalitarian systems, especially fascism, similar mechanisms produce authoritative personality described by
Adorno and his associates. The uncertainty is the characteristics of the human of one historical period,
Fromm relates this to the capitalist period, and Riesmen binds it to the newer society.
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4.
THE STATE AS A GUARANTOR OF PERSONAL SECURITY
Judging by the fact that the epitome of security, in the form of female figure is on the coins of the
Roman emperors ever since Nero's time, it seems that the state has always assumed on itself a part of caring
for the security of the individual. As soon as the state takes upon itself the care of the conditions under which
they enter into these relationships and stabilize the innate and acquired protection of the goods from other
people, the terms of legal security and public safety begin to discern. Legal security is a guarantee of
predictability and certainty. The legal safety is the price of trust that is given to the state. National security
means that the state in ordinary case takes over the protection of life, physical integrity, property and other
rights of the people. Personal safety can be achieved collectively in small groups which depends on the
underdevelopment of the state apparatus to the conflict of certain groups with the authorities. African-
americans in some parts of the United States trust only to themselves, their organization and refuse to
cooperate with the state.
5.
STATE SECURITY
State security and the concept of national security belong to the so-called old, traditional approaches to
security
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. At the heart of national security is its sovereignty, i.e., its survival, territory and sovereignty as
vital values and interests that are protected by military capabilities and the ability to divert military
aggression or to successfully respond to it
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. Security is usually called state security because the object of
protection is considered the state as such. This term is a consequence of equation of the state with those who
manage it, from what we can conclude that anyone who threatens it at the same time is its destroyer. On the
occasion of the complex issues that are behind the state security the terminology should be enriched so that
one can speak about the class security in one state, that does not necessarily mean the survival of the group in
power but excludes its displacement with the class enemy. The real national security would be of
international interest because in the past period there is more evident tendency for the states to mutually
protect from the immoral and irrational forms of political struggle.
6.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Determining the content of the concept of national security is a difficult and complex task, because
previous theoretical analysis and understanding of national security did not solve all dilemmas. Reason is
that it is a term which also consists of two controversial terms: national and security, which are in content
and value incompletely understood in the social and political sciences
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. If we could establish the actual
content of the term national security, it is necessary to determine its linguistic roots and origins, in order to
perform a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical concept of national security
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. National security was
previously often characterized as external security of the state. States have, as Giruad said, the right and duty
to ensure its preservation and its development, whereas in this sentence the holder of the duties of self-
preservation and the creditor of these duties is mystified. This leads to the concept of national security, one
of the most used and least defined terms in the dictionary of international policy.
The values usually in mind can be divided into four groups:
A. Survival - presumed as logical goals and aspirations of each social system, each political
organization and each individual. Survival must have at least three meanings:
a) the existence of the state as a political community, the state as an organized system of government,
as an independent subject of the international law, as a actor in the international relations it does not lose its
identity and becomes part of a state, or another state, or it does not fall apart in several new states none of
which will be the same as the earlier.
b) National survival - it is about striving towards education of the nation state as one of the most
important factors that can be opposed to the survival of the states which does not fully meet this survival.
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S. Mijalković, National Security, Belgrade, Criminalistics and Police Academy, Belgrade, 2009.
251
S. Mijalković, National security from the westphalian till the post-Cold-War concept, Vojno delo, Belgrade, 2009, p. 55 - 73.
252
M. Bajagić.: Bases of Security, Criminalistics and Police Academy, Belgrade, 2007., p. 148.
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A. Miletić, National interest in the American theory of international relations, Belgrade, Savremena administracija, 1978.
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c) Physical survival - reduced to physical survival of people whether they are residents of one country
or members of a nation. The risk of endangering survival is present from the time when wars were led to
Hitler's plans for mass destruction.
B. Territorial integrity - expresses a concern for the integrity of the state, successfull resistance to
foreign territorial demands is the most widely used test of the defensive power of one state, but not the only
one. The state may be out of danger of attack for various reasons, not only because it is powerful.
C. Political sovereignity - means independence, sovereignty, state institutions, way of life and national
life. If the survival of the state is connected to the population, to the integrity of the territory, then these
values can gather around the concept of sovereign authority. Entry into pacts with integrated armed forces
and joint commands enhances the security from the adversary who is considered probable, but decreases the
independence of states' decision-making, as well as its security, towards its allies.
D. Quality of life – to the members of a nation, of a state lies at the heart the quality of life within their
communities, primarily concerned is the life standard, achieved level of economic development and
opportunities for further such development. Attitude of the developed states in this respect differentiates
from the underdeveloped, the first care to preserve the acquired, and the second to the opening of the smooth
way in improving. This is an important aspect of security, because under certain material conditions the so-
called minumum of existence, there is a danger to the survival of the state in primeval sense of human death
and infertility.
7.
THE PERCEPTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY
The subject element in matters of security is not only found in the attitude in goods that should
unconditionally be protected but in the evaluation of their vulnerabilities. Measures are not needed to exist,
according to Ibler and Stojanovic, who define the national security as a condition that is not necessarily
related to activity. In other direction went the writers who talk about security as a fact, the most clear of
whom is Garnet when he says that national security is not objective, but subjective feeling, feeling of
confidence. Some of the researchers in this field define the concept of security as follows:
Security is at an objective glance, lack of threats to the adopted values, and subjectivelly means lack
of fear that these values could be affected (Arnlod Wolfers); In the case of safety, talks lead to the pursuit of
freedom without threats. When this debate concerns the international system, security refers to the ability of
states and societies to maintain their independent identity and their functional integrity (Barry Buzan). The
existence of security can reach only those people and groups who do not deny it to others; security can be
achieved if it is understood as a process of emacipation (Booth and Wheeler)
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.
8.
NORMATIVE CONCEPTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY
It is usually formulated as a goal, as care to achieve safety that the basic values of a political
community will be preserved. Hence this term gets normative ideals' value. It is clearly expresses by the fiery
right-wing writers - as Strauz Hupe and Pessony, who argue that national security is the supreme obligation
of any government. Czempiel rightly says that only with small states the security is identical with protection
against potential or actual attacks. With the growing size of the country its safety may only indirectly be
affected. In 1945 it was known that the area of USA security covers the whole world.
9.
THE RATIO OF NATIONAL AND STATE SECURITY
National security is almost equal with the state security. It defends itself from compromising from the
outside and inside, as well as from where the power elite is in danger. Since nationalism and patriotism start
from a single viewpoint and are keen to find a rational basis in the actual existence of common values, the
fact is that at any time is defended a particular state. So, for example Hitler's opponents were not branded as
master traitors, but as ordinary traitors to the country. Interested neighboring country will always support all
lawful and unlawful means of change, motivated at this and with its security. National security is a condition
wanted from that strong reason. As it is very difficult to objectively determine whether it exists, there may be
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D. Simić, Science and Security, Belgrade, 2002., p. 29 - 30.
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ongoing disagreements, and therefore constant reference to its endangerment and the weirdest measures that
should lead to it. To use Engels's terms, real nation never quite does not coincide with the official nation
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.
10.
CONCLUSION
When it comes to the definition of security, there are many doubts, so in theory there are a lot of
different definitions, special conditions for difficulties arise when it comes to defining the notion of national
security, but what we can say with certainty that there are almost no authors who do not state as the most
important element of national security the survival of the state, with all its elements (population, territory and
political independence). Also what was previously mentioned, the sole considerations of the concept of
security in social psychology allow us to state the two important issues, first the need of people for security,
which turns into the need for the security of community and secondly what role has the political community
in meeting the personal or individual needs for security. In the recent years, the so-called security
communities have been created, as a classic form of intergovernmental cooperation between countries that
are close to the ideological, political, economic, and other regards.
11.
REFERENCES
Dimitrijević V., Security and the political community, Belgrade, 1973.
Bajagić M., Bases of Security, Criminalistics and Police Academy, Belgrade, 2007.
Mijalković S., National Security, Belgrade, Criminalistics and Police Academy, Belgrade, 2009.
Mijalković S., National security from the westphalian till the post-Cold-War concept, Vojno delo, Belgrade,
2009.
Miletić A., National interest in the American theory of international relations, Belgrade, Savremena
administracija, 1978.
Simić D., Science and Security, Belgrade, 2002.
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F. Engels, Notes on the war, Belgrade 1947, p. 55., according to V. Dimitrijević, Security and the political community, p. 38.
Belgrade, 1973.
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