The Evolving Security Agenda

There are a number of ways of thinking about ‘security’. Traditionally this has tended to mean focusing of the capacity for, and responses to, collectively organized violence — usually at the hands of the state. Much of the literature dealing with security still tends to have a state-centric focus. While this is an entirely understandable and justified approach, given the state’s historical importance as a source of, or a defender against, violence and conflict, it is not the only security concern facing states these days. On the contrary, and despite the preoccupation with state security in much of East Asia, there are new security challenges confronting states everywhere. Whether it is international terrorism, the deterioration of the natural environment, or even the uncertainties triggered by economic downturns, human beings are subject to a range of threats and dangers that go well beyond the conventional security agenda that typified the security concerns of policy-makers and academic specialists in former times (see Newman 2013).