During recent years, a number of western donor countries have recognized the utility of, and need for, more robust and well-articulated national security frameworks. Two interesting phenomena have contributed to the awareness of such a need.
Security Policy is the name we give to the government-wide, coordinated policy of a nation to define and pursue its wider security-related objectives. It is a policy which is made at the strategic level, and implemented at the operational level. From it are deduced a number of other policies, notably (but by no means exclusively) that for defence. This article is concerned with how such policy is made (both intellectually and practically) and then how it is then implemented.
Three preliminary remarks are worth making. First, much writing about national security policy is western-centric, assuming large, powerful states with sophisticated government systems and a wide and varied security agenda. Such studies are of doubtful utility outside a narrow range of countries, and this article is therefore deliberately focused primarily on the making of security policy in small and medium-sized nations, whose concerns will be regional rather than global. Second, much other writing is concerned with issues of transparency, oversight, parliamentary involvement etc, which, although worthy, are secondary. Not only do you have something to oversee before oversight is of any value, but a well-designed and well-functioning security policy system means that such issues are of lesser significance, and a bad system is not usually remediable by oversight anyway. Finally, this article limits itself, for simplicity, to the traditional list of security sector elements – military, police, intelligence services, as well as diplomacy and the central coordination of security. This means that I do not really touch on the Human Security argument. To do so would not simply make this article very long and complex; it would also introduce a whole range of other issues which sit uncomfortably with thinking about traditional security questions. In effect, a Human Security thesis argues that practically everything is part of the security sector, and therefore writing about the security sector is equivalent to writing about the coordination of government itself.
The sources of many of the threats to the national security of developed countries today lie in fragile states. In such countries governments fail to properly deliver public services and goods (security in particular) to their citizens. In short they are unable to effectively manage or execute their core tasks. The resulting exclusion, uncertainty, poverty and insecurity fuel conflict. Global interconnection and interdependence cause such fragility and conflict to have serious negative regional and international spill-over effects in the form of migration, criminal networks, diseases, environmental degradation, terrorism, more conflict and human trafficking. Richer countries are often quick to label these effects as threats to their own national security. Such labeling is often used to 'securitize' the issue, which results in it being addressed only superficially. The international development agenda, however, aims at tackling the root causes of poverty and conflict. There is great potential across the international development community to address many of today's national security challenges. Sustainable development, however, is a long term, arduous and non-linear process. In the short run - and as a consequence - national security may require occasional securitization of development. In the long run this is not an advisable strategy. From a development perspective, increased engagement of donor countries in fragile states has significant advantages for their national security interests.