Booth, Ken. “Security and Emancipation”. Review of International Studies, Vol.17, No.4 (1991): 313-326.

Booth, Ken. “Security and Emancipation”. Review of International Studies, Vol.17, No.4 (1991): 313-326.

• The meaning of the word 'security' has changed because the conditions of the world have changed, mainly because the threat of nuclear war and environmental destruction have endangered all human life (315).
• The focus on security issues are emanating from foreign militaries is becoming increasingly outmoded, although still sometimes relevant, as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait demonstrated. States have realized that extremely costly defense expenditures are not beneficial, and have begun to reduce armaments. Moreover, for most civilians, the greatest security threat comes from their own government's ineptitude or malignancy, and many governments are more threatened by their own militaries than by foreign armies (318).
• Interstate war is declining as an institution, as states are more reluctant than ever to fight wars. As a result, the purpose and ideas of security must necessarily change (316).
• Traditional definitions of 'security' have been primarily informed by the realist school of IR theory, and are based on three assumptions: the military nature of threats and responses, the centrality of states, and the goal of maintaining the status quo (318).
• The author suggests a new approach to security studies, called 'utopian realism'. This new concept recognizes that security is no longer based around states and neither threats nor solutions are necessarily military in nature (317).
• The traditional method of security based around order and stability is inadequate because it does not account for the nature instability of oppression and inequality. The focus of true stability, order, and security must be on emancipation, because only the rectification of social injustices can produce a society without security threats (319).
• This means treating human beings as the referent object in security, the ultimate object of security, rather than states. States can be used as an effective means of producing human security, but human security, not state security, is a goal in its own right (319).
• The difference between this concept of 'security' and traditional concepts is demonstrated by the situations of Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. Europe was militarily stable and security, but only through an expensive buildup of weapons and widespread oppression. With the collapse of Communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe, a new form of more stable, emancipatory security has developed (319).
• This theory of security demands an activist and emancipatory ethic, because it links security to the general liberation of all peoples. Since oppression is the root of all insecurity, no one can be secure unless no one is oppressed and everyone is secure. This means that the pursuit of security is now linked to the general liberation of mankind, as opposed to the secure of one group through the oppression of another (322).