Reshaping the Security Envelope
| Author | Ernie Regehr |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200506000409 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Reshaping the
security envelope
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Given that the primary and most immediate experience of insecurity in
troubled societies worldwide is through unmet basic needs, political exclu-
sion, denied rights, social and political disintegration, and the criminal and
political violence that invariably accompany these conditions of insecurity,
the primary means of achieving security must be through the creation of
favourable social, political, and economic conditions—that is, through eco-
nomic development, respect for basic rights, political participation, control
over the instruments of violence, and the peaceful settlement of disputes.
Hence, Canadian spending in support of international peace and security
should be expanded beyond the traditional three Ds—defence, develop-
ment, and diplomacy—to a more comprehensive five Ds of security—devel-
opment, democracy, disarmament, diplomacy, and defence—which better
reflect the dimensions of human security. Canada is an extraordinarily pros-
perous and secure country and has a responsibility to increase its commit-
ment to international peace and security. That means an overall expansion
of the five Ds security envelope, as well as spending shifts within that enve-
Ernie Regehr is a policy advisor with Project Ploughshares in Waterloo, Ontario. This
article is based on a longer working paper with Peter Whelan, who calculated the security
spending estimates.
| International Journal | Autumn 2005 | 1033 |
| Ernie Regehr |
lope to give appropriate emphasis to addressing the social, political, and
economic conditions that are essential to durable international peace and
security.
T H E M E A S U R E O F S E C U R I T Y
The search for a security consensus
Canadian security policy promises to be a significant and contentious sub-
ject for national debate for many years to come and for many reasons,
including the threat of terrorism and the threatened further proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, both of which bring international peace and
security concerns directly to Canadian shores. In addition, funding for
international peace and security efforts will continue to be crowded out by
other urgent national priorities, such as health care, the urban infrastruc-
ture, and so on. There is also a widespread view, one that is embraced across
the full political spectrum in Canada, that current Canadian defence policy
is not workable, either because it lacks resources or because it does not
address real security needs, or both. And finally, a changed security envi-
ronment, as well as changes in understanding of what security policy
should encompass, mean that there is no broad consensus on what
Canadian security priorities should be; that is, what the threats to security
really are, and how those threats should be met.
The lack of consensus concerning the nature and extent of the threats
to national and international security and the appropriate means to count-
er them is deeply rooted. The threat of terrorism, for example, is certainly
widely accepted as real but there is little agreement on how imminent or
prominent it is, whether it is primarily a policing and intelligence problem,
a military problem, or whether it is a social-economic-political problem that
requires greater attention to “root causes.” The ballistic missile threat is
also widely accepted as real, but again, there is little agreement on how
imminent it is, which missile threat is the greater danger (e.g., Russia’s or
North Korea’s), or whether the priority response should be defence, coun-
terproliferation, or nonproliferation diplomacy.
The April 2004 tabling of a national security policy by the government
of Prime Minister Paul Martin is an effort to guide the development of a
national consensus. It is, as the prime minister notes in the preface,
“Canada’s first-ever comprehensive statement of our National Security
Policy,” and makes the point that “although threats to Canada will change,
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| Reshaping the security envelope |
our security interests are enduring.” Three core national security interests
are identified:
protecting Canada and the safety and security of Canadians at home
and abroad;
ensuring that Canada is not a base for threats to our allies; and
contributing to international security.
The report emphasizes that “Canadian security will be increasingly
dependent on our ability to contribute to international security,”1 citing as
an example the danger that failed states far away from Canada can become
havens for terrorists, thus increasing risk to Canada.
The following is focused exclusively on the third core interest, that is,
Canada’s contribution to international peace and security. The objective is
to place the defence contribution to international peace and security within
a broader security framework—understanding defence as but one of a
broad range of security measures. The relative levels of funding currently
devoted to the multiple elements of security policies and measures are
reviewed, along with a suggestion for enlarging and realigning the security
spending envelope.
A human security envelope
In order to be effective, national and international security policies and
measures should obviously address and mitigate the ways in which people
and communities experience insecurity. And around the world, the most
immediate experiences of insecurity come in the form of unmet basic
needs, political exclusions and the denial of basic rights, social and political
disintegration, and the related escalation of criminal and political violence.
In addition, the retention and further spread of nuclear and other weapons
of mass destruction pose an ongoing threat to the safety of people—much
less immediate than the other threats just noted, but with extraordinary and
irremediable consequences if such weapons were to be used.
This comprehensive understanding of security is variously labelled,
but the term “human security” is perhaps the most widely accepted. The
point of highlighting the “human” in human security is to redress an
imbalance in security discourse that has attached disproportionate atten-
tion to the security of the state. While the security and behaviour of states
1 “Securing an open society: Canada’s national security policy,” Privy Council Office, April 2004,
www.pco-bcp.gc.ca.
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| Ernie Regehr |
are obviously central to the security of persons, the inordinate focus on mil-
itary capacity to protect sovereignty and to defend territory and, in too many
cases, straightforward regime survival, frequently comes at the expense of,
and with little regard for, the security, welfare, or safety of persons. It is not
that the doctrine of human security emphasizes personal security over state
security; rather it makes human safety the measure of state security. The
extent to which the people of a particular state live in freedom and safety,
under just laws, and with their essential needs met, is the extent to which
that state is secure. Human security values identify the safety and welfare
of people as the central objectives of state security.
The primary threats to the safety and welfare of individuals in most
instances do not stem from external military forces bent on attacking the ter-
ritorial integrity of their state or on undermining its sovereignty by impos-
ing their will on an otherwise safe and stable national order. Rather, the pri-
mary threats to security are internal and manifested in conditions of eco-
nomic failure, the violation of basic rights, and political marginalization. It
follows, therefore, that the primary guarantor of the security of people is less
likely to be a formidable military equipped to keep foreign powers at bay than
favourable social, political, and economic conditions. In other words, the
promotion of human development, basic rights, and political participation is
at least as essential to advancing human security, and thus national and
international security, as is the development of...
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