The COVID-19 pandemic and a new understanding of security

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 led to an unprecedented crisis of global proportions that led to the blockade of vital components of social action on a scale that threatened international and national security. The pandemic has demonstrated the potential to evolve and generate a wider range of threats and has opened up essential questions of understanding the security and security organization of states. It is a threat to which, although recognized in most strategic security documents, the response of national and international security systems has not been successfully defined within the still dominant understanding of security based on traditional security studies. It has been shown that security systems are still determined by a traditional concept that does not fully identify the causes of threats and crises and their correlations, which increases uncertainty and negatively affects the normative and institutional capacity needed to respond effectively to crises. The paper is based on the hypothesis that the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a security paradigm shift that challenges the scientific community and policy-makers to define new approaches and new methods of researching security phenomena and strategic modelling of security systems and crisis management nationally and globally. The paper will therefore analyse the impact of the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic on understanding security through an analysis of the threats it has generated and defining the correlation between theoretical knowledge and practical crisis management experiences.