National security definition
National security includes economics, psychology, and sociology/anthropology; or they incorporate a wider range of international problems under the rubric of security studies, including domestic violence, subnational and transnational threats, the AIDS epidemic, drug trafficking, international debt and economic recession, exponential population growth, environmental pollution, and the widening rich-poor gap. Still another definitional perspective proposes a more abstract meaning for national security focusing on values: Trager sees national security as "having as its objectives the creation of national and international political conditions favorable to the protection or extension of vital national values" (Frank Trager, 1973); Wolfers perceives national security "objectively" as "the absence of threats to acquired values" and "subjectively" as "the absence of fear that such values will be attacked" (Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, 150); and Peterson and Sebenius view national security (using the U.S. National Security Council's working definition) as preserving a society "with its fundamental institutions and values intact." Peter G. Peterson with James K. Sebenius, 1986.
Similar differences of opinion exist about the appropriate levels of analysis for considering national security. Haftendorn distinguishes among national, international, and global security: while traditionally the "national security" notion concentrates on the ability of each state to protect itself, "international security" suggests the possibility of collective security among several states (claiming that cooperation can break the "security dilemma" where increasing one state's security automatically decreases another state's security), and "global security" deals with a universal set of principles and practices guaranteeing the security of all nations through a system of world order. Others identify "regional security" or "individual security" (Richard Shultz, Roy Godson, and Ted Greenwood, 1993, 1). as part of the overall security picture. Analysts differ markedly about (1) which of these levels is generally most central to the notion of national security, (2) how each level......
