In the current global situations, nations have realized the need for enhanced security policies which would be significant in facilitating a peaceful coexistent of the people. Long ago, the security policies adopted by nations were meant to address the needs of the military or the political class of a given country. However, it is believed that a security policy must be a multidimensional plan that incorporates various agents that sustain security of a nation. This is due to the fact that the security environment has been changing over time given the various challenges that have presented themselves with regards to world security issues. As a result a majority of nations have been improvising their security strategies so as to meet the increased needs of security which are multidimensional in nature. Consequently, Europe was not left out in this process of adding value to the security strategies which were in existence. Conversely, Europe was reasonably distinctive in the development of their comprehensive security approach. The hypothesis of this study is to find out how comprehensive security would be exported from Europe to other regions of the world.
It is argued that the comprehensive security approach would be effective in addressing international security issues due to the principles inculcated in the policy. Foremost, the European Union (EU) had recognized that security was a multidimensional issue and hence, they formulated the comprehensive security policy which was efficient at incorporating social, political, economical and environmental factors of security as well as the usual defense aspect of security policies. As a result, this security policy would be efficient at ensuring that there is harmony in all the aspects of people’s life. It is not common for policy makers in the security docket to formulate a comprehensive policy that would aim at ensuring cohesiveness in the various dimensions of life that individuals adopt in the world. Hence, this policy was uniquely crafted to serve the larger European Union considering its scope of operation. Finally, Europe is said to be distinct due to the reason that the European Union portrayed security as having the attribute of being indivisible.
Hence, the EU developed the comprehensive security policy bearing in mind that the EU member states would have to accrue equal stakes in the security plan. Conversely, this would further require that these member countries should cooperate so as to enjoy the benefits of the comprehensive security policy in the region. This security policy is a formulation of various security policies merged together into one comprehensive policy. The policy is composed of two components which include; external security and internal security. However, the external policy is believed to serve the role of facilitating the expansion of EU. The internal security component involves the efforts made in the Justice and Home Affairs as well as in the EU pillars so as to fight against terrorism and offer security to the public. Given this level of operation for the security approach it is vital to realize that it is comprehensive in its sense. In majority of the security policies, most countries seek to be allocated a certain level of control on security matters.
However, in this policy the control of security issues was regarded as being indivisible hence no one could have greater control than the other. This attribute of this security approach promotes its distinction as a comprehensive policy. Thus, Europe is distinct due to the fact that their developed comprehensive security approach recognizes that the current security situation is in a multidimensional nature and security is also indivisible amongst member states. Therefore, the comprehensive security policy of the EU is unique and different from the common security policies developed by a majority of the nations. Following the increased levels of globalization in other aspects of life it would also be prudent to make the comprehensive security approach go global so that it helps at achieving global security. The globalization of this policy would also have some effects on the other countries that have different security policies in place. One of the major effects that the policy would have on other nations is the idea of improved regional cooperation following the fact that the policy regards security as an indivisible product.
Thus, nations would have to work in harmony so as to realize their security objectives. Consequently, the policy would also empower other nations in developing a security policy that would be multidimensional so as to capture diverse aspects of the society. Thus the overriding effect that this globalization of the policy would have on other nations is creation of a convergent security policy that would be utilized by several nations. As a result, the globalized policy would enable nations to have improved conflict prevention, enhanced internal security focused on providing societal defense and proper coordination between the military and civilian to ensure advanced crisis management. However, globalization of this security policy would be coupled by various constraints which would make it difficult for the implementation of this policy into the global platform. To begin with, the gap between the rich and the poor in the society has increased and thus, it would make it hard for this policy to manage the different perceptions of these two unique groups of people.
As a result, the world is not safe from revolutions due to the increased gap of poverty which would therefore make it impossible in implementing this security approach. Another constraint that would present a challenge for the globalization of the comprehensive security plan is the politico-military condition that prevails in most nations in the world. A majority of regions in the world have been experiencing increased tensions, conflicts, terrorism as well as political disputes which are triggered by their volatile politico-military environments. Hence, these constraints would make it difficult for the globalization of the comprehensive security policy. There is high possibility of developing a universalized comprehensive security in the world given the current global conditions which have been filled with a lot of insecurities. However, such a policy would have to be guided by the highest organization in the world and that would probably be the UN Security Council. This policy already exists since the Security Council has a particular criterion that is universally applied to enhance world security. However, the current universal comprehensive security does not capture all issues of a country’s security; rather it gives more emphasis on cross-cutting security issues that affect the entire world.
Work Cited
Hettne, Björn. “Development and Security: Origins and Future”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 41(2), 2010: 30-53.
Lee-Ohlsson, Fredrick. “Sweden and Development of the European Security and Defense Policy. A Bi-Directional Process of Europeanization”, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 44(3), 2009.
Menon, Anand, and Ulrich Sedelmeier. “Instruments and Intentionality: Civilian Crisis Management and Enlargement Conditionality in EU Security Policy”. West European Politics, Vol. 33(1), 2010: 75-92.
