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Traditional security: External
- In the traditional conception of security, the greatest danger to a country is from military threats.
- The source of this danger is another country which by threatening military action endangers the core values of sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.
- The security policy is concerned with preventing war, which is called deterrence, and with limiting or ending the war, which is called the defence.
- Traditional security policy has a third component called the balance of power.
- A fourth and related component of traditional security policy is alliance building. An alliance is a coalition of states that coordinate their actions to deter or defend against military attack. Most alliances are formalised in written treaties and are based on a fairly clear identification of who constitutes the threat.
- In traditional security, there is a recognition that cooperation in limiting violence is possible.
- Traditional security also accepts confidence building as a means of avoiding violence.
- In traditional security, force is both the principal threat to security and the principal means of achieving security.
Non-traditional security:
- Non-traditional notions of security go beyond military threats to include a wide range of threats and dangers affecting the conditions of human existence.
- They begin by questioning the traditional referent of security. In doing so, they also question the other three elements of security — what is being secured, from what kind of threats and the approach to security.
- All proponents of human security agree that its primary goal is the protection of individuals. However, there are differences in precisely what threats individuals should be protected from.
- Proponents of the ‘narrow’ concept of human security focus on violent threats to individuals or, as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan puts it, “the protection of communities and individuals from internal violence”.
- Proponents of the ‘broad’ concept of human security argue that the threat agenda should include hunger, disease and natural disasters because these kill far more people than war, genocide and terrorism combined.
- Creation and sustenance of alliances belong to the traditional notion of security.