I would say that because every aspect of world politics could theoretically be a threat to the security of a country, the necessity to not stretch a nation's resources too thin forces a country to need to focus on only the most pressing threats. Therefore, there must be boundaries to security policy just for the sake of logical decision making. We can't focus on everything, and thus have to institute boundaries so we focus on what is more immediately essential to maintaining a country's security.
Therefore, although more preemptive initiatives like those President Obama mentioned including the environment and poverty around the world could cause security problems in the future if it isn't addressed. However, at the moment, it is better to focus our somewhat limited resources on military, as oppose to social threats. I would say that the bigger threat posed to the security of our country is countering terrorists and states that may cause a problem. As a result, I would say we must rank the security issues and determine what are most important to the country at the time, and that forms the boundaries of security policy. Therefore, this is ever changing – for example, during the Cold War, the boundaries to security policies were much different than now – we weren’t focused on stopping terrorism; that wasn’t in our policy. Now, a boundary to security policy would be not focusing on Russia.
I too agree that there must be boundaries to security. Security without boundaries can make countries cocky and are more likely to get enemies or be considered suspicious. But I think that boundaries must be made on the home front, almost more urgently than the battle front. Like Obama noted in the NSS 2010, security is not only an outer shell, but it is should be the core as well. As the government and communities build a secure environment, there need to be boundaries to ensure that innocent people do not get trampled simultaneously. I do agree that we, the United States, need to focus our military, but I think that before or at least while we do that, we work on creating boundaries at home.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree that there is a need for assessment of threats, especially for the allocation of resources. However, I wonder what you would consider to be qualifications for a threat to be "immediately essential". Furthermore, what I consider to be immediately essential, and what you would argue to be immediately essential could be two very different things. WIth that said, who is to determine the middle ground, or what is ultimately best in regards to resource allocation? Is there a right or wrong choice?
ReplyDeleteDhea - I understand what you mean about internal security as well as external, military build ups. My question is what should we do here? Like where should the focus be, if you mean more than just homeland security?
ReplyDeleteChris - You're right - there really is no way to know for sure what is the best decision. I think the best hope we have is that the people making these decisions are analyzing situations and determining what is logically the best way to allocate resources.