The state and national security: current issues and contemporary application

Abstract

The dominant security paradigm has styled the nation state in order to reflect its popular basis as the fundamental source of social belonging. The good governed nation state is a formidable security organization as an all. It is through the nation state that citizens guarantee their own security, individual as well as collective. Personal security thus becomes dependent upon and even analogous to national security. In contrast, insecurity is understood as an external threat located outside the state. Internally or externally directed, policies taken to ensure national security may be of an economic, political or military nature. National security measures thus include, among others: maintaining effective armed forces; implementing anti-terrorist measures; ensuring civil and emergency defenses; using intelligence to detect and counter external attack and internal subversion; using diplomacy to strengthen alliances and isolate threats; and using economic power to encourage cooperation and isolate or weaken political rivals. Generalizing, the article reflects the national security approaches, specifics and extreme circumstances of liberal democracies, authoritarian states and failed states.