Global security has been declining for some years now. There are many markers of this persistent deterioration – massive loss of life, rising numbers of displaced people (the estimate for 2024 is 130 million, a larger population than all but 9 countries), deepening crisis and confrontation, and unsolved social and ecological problems.

So how do we think coherently about security in these times when there are so many sources of insecurity ?

The security horizon

The cycle of violence

I’m asking this question against a dark background, soon after Iran launched 300 missiles and drones at Israel, risking further escalation.

Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu recently declared “a clear principle: Those who harm us, we harm them.” There is no call to doubt his fidelity to the principle: responding to the Hamas attack and atrocities of 7 October last year, estimated as the third most lethal terrorist attack of all time, Israel responded with a bombing campaign that ranks among the most severe civilian-punishment air campaigns ever and, according to the BBC, has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s buildings. The argument that this is a discriminate or proportionate response is impossible to sustain. That means there is a prima facie case to answer under International Humanitarian Law simply because of the scale of the action, let alone because of the destruction of health facilities and refusal of free access for humanitarian aid.

So we know Israel under Netanyahu can inflict a lot of destruction, death and suffering. But that principle, of course, can be reversed into, “Whoever you harm, they will harm you.”

The cycle of violence shows no signs of being broken, and all sides are contributing to the already significant risk of wider escalation in the Middle East .

All the while the war in Ukraine continues, the casualties keep mounting, and there seems no way out. There is no clear pathway to a peaceful settlement. After 18 months in which there has been little territorial gain by either side, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are devastating and, with Ukraine running short of supplies, there are early signs that Russian forces may make possibly significant advances on the battlefield. These will probably not end the war quickly and, even if they do, there will be no gain in peace and security for anyone, not even for Russia.

Beyond these two wars that currently grab so much time, energy and worry, there are armed conflicts in about 50 other countries. In Sudan, according to the April update from UNHCR, civil war and the collapse of order have displaced 8.6 million people. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the comparable figure, cumulative over two decades, is 6.6 million.

The great powers

At the same time, confrontation continues between China and the United States over Taiwan and more generally the geostrategic situation in Northeast Asia. In February 2023, Russia suspended its participation in the New START treaty with the USA—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control agreement between the two. And global military spending, which surpassed 2 trillion US dollars a year in 2021, has been growing every year since 2015 and shows little sign of slowing down.

Economy and society

All this has unfolded in a world that has not fully recovered from the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic – the expectation is that 2024 will put the cap on the global economy’s worst half decade for the last three decades – and in which social and economic inequalities continue to deepen. Global food insecurity likewise continues to deteriorate, as it has since 2015 under the combined pressure of violent conflict and climate change.

Climate change and ecological disruption

As to climate change, 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded. The average global temperature was just over 1.5° Celsius above “pre-industrial times”. February 2023 through January 2024 was the first year-long period in which the global average temperature stayed 1.5° above the pre-industrial average. The significance of 1.5, of course, is that it is the aim of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement to stay below that level of temperature increase if possible, with a 2°C rise agreed to be the maximum that must not be breached. In fact, we are on course for 2.9° and, despite everything, the main fossil fuel producers are planning to increase output.

Evidence that climate change has had, is having and will have a negative effect on peace and security is now well established. The argument is, in any case, a matter of common sense. Social life is built on natural foundations. At the limit, if we don’t get the water, oxygen and food that we need, we don’t survive. When the natural foundations of life are shaken, it is no surprise if there is social instability, upheaval, conflict and violence. These are not the only possible outcomes but they are the ones that are worrying.

Ecological disruption goes beyond climate change. The 2023 update on the nine planetary boundaries reported that six out of nine had been breached. By extension from the case of climate change, it is no surprise to find that recent research identifies ways in which broader ecological disruption has security consequences. Disruptions that are particularly concerning from the perspective of security include antimicrobial resistance, the physiological effects of different kinds of pollution, the decline of biodiversity and biomass, the rise of intrusive species, and the impact on livelihoods of local tipping points such as the emergence of dead zones in rivers, lakes and coastal waters.

Three spheres of security

Back to my question then, how do we think about this in a coherent way? Put differently, how do we go beyond snatching at bits and pieces of it to have a sense of the whole?

I want to begin by suggesting that there are three spheres of security. For the sake of convenience, each one needs a label but, as always, it’s a good idea to focus on the contents of the can rather than on its label.

1. National security

This is what is normally covered by states’ security policies (so it’s often called state security). It has a focus on threats to (and in response, support for) the security of the national territory and population and, along with that, national and international stability and order. It has many components: preparations against external attack, terrorism and insurgency; armed forces, arms races; technological developments such as in artificial intelligence and cyberspace and their impact; peace operations, alliances and therefore diplomacy.

Complex but, at core, we pretty much know what we are referring to when we talk about it.

2. Human security

In the three decades since it was articulated in the 1994 Human Development Report, human security has been a conceptual counterweight to national (or state) security. Sometimes this has been expressed as a dichotomy between soft (or human) and hard (or state etc) security.

There has been extensive discussion about how to define human security. For some, it seems to cover just about every aspect of human well-being, which all too often means it covers nothing much in any very useful way. I find it most useful if it is focussed on what it is that makes some societies particularly prone to violent conflict while, in others, the conditions are more conducive for peace. This means attention to issues as wide-ranging as satisfying basic needs; different degrees and dimensions of inequality and marginalisation (economic, gender, ethnographic); the quality of governance; the resilience of communities and societies in the face of everything from cyber insecurity to floods to changes in the terms of international trade; in many if not all countries, issues of social development strategy and, in conflict-affect countries, peacebuilding.

It is truly multidimensional, which is perhaps unfortunate because it means it is not simple, but hardly surprising, given the complexity of human society.

3. Ecological security

Here we have a much more recent concept and I sense (and fear) that the definitional debate is just beginning.

One question is what the “referent object” of security is when one discusses ecological security; simply put, are you aiming to protect humans or nature? Annoyingly, perhaps, for those who like fine distinctions (and long arguments), my answer is both, because humanity is a part of nature. The problem is that too many of us for too long have acted as if we are not.

A different question is whether the focus is on the direct challenge to human well-being and security posed by ecological disruption (e.g., in the form of more frequent and powerful hurricanes and cyclones), or on the knock-on consequences of disruption (e.g., the loss of livelihood, such as from fishing, caused by the formation of a dead zone in a river, as seen in the photo below, or the mass movement of people because an area has become inhabitable)? Again, irritatingly enough, my answer is both – direct and indirect impacts alike are of concern from a peace and security perspective.

In this approach, the concept of ecological security focuses on the natural foundations of the social life that we have made and the impact upon it of ecological disruption of different kinds.

One security space

Three spheres of security, then, jostling for our attention. But there are clear linkages between them: from climate change via food insecurity and migration to upheaval and conflict; from war to environmental impact, famine and flight; from inequality via repression to insurgency, war and its knock-on consequences; from climate change to loss of livelihood and migration; from lack of social and political inclusivity to poor environmental regulation and on to food insecurity and conflict risk; and more. Acting on the points of intersection between them could mean addressing two or more problems at once, achieving a double or triple pay-off.

On the relationship between national and human security, I have argued before that the difference between them is commonly over-stated. The task of national security should be to promote the human security of the citizens. For various reasons, this cannot be done without paying attention to and also upholding the human security of other states’ citizens.

Bringing ecological security into this frame is straightforward enough. How should a responsible and well-governed state try to look after the well-being of its citizens, in a dangerous world with this combination of challenges to national security, human security and ecological security?

Clearly, the best approach to meeting this goal needs to find a balance between the three spheres that identifies both what is specific to each and where the linkages lie.

This is why it is important to recognise that the three spheres of security inhabit one security space, occupying, perhaps, three corners of a conceptual triangle marked security:

The security Venn

But the points of the triangle are the wrong metaphorical image. The three spheres are not simply separate from each other with linkages. The connections go deeper. They are both separate from and part of each other:

None of three spheres is in principle superior to either of the other two. Each one is needed so the other two can be fulfilled.

The Venn diagram offers an all-round approach – a 360 degree approach – to security in a political world that is experiencing a horrible fracturing, a social and economic world that is facing regression on several fronts, and an ecosphere facing perturbing disruptions.

As well as an integrated, holistic approach, the Venn diagram creates seven segments and allows us to think about the headlines for the main tasks:

There will be some segments of policy and action within a 360 degree approach that are specific to one sphere but, without the connection to the others, no segment can make very much sense or provide real security.

At the centre of the Venn, the challenge is the perfect storm where everything could wrong all at once; meeting that challenge is the heart of policy approach. If we can start to get this balance right, we have a bright future.