Redefining Security

Author(s): Richard H. Ullman

Source: International Security , Summer, 1983, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Summer, 1983), pp. 129-153
Published by: The MIT Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538489

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 Redefining Security Richard H. Ullman

Since the onset of the

Cold War in the late 1940s, every administration in Washington has defined
American national security in excessively narrow and excessively military
terms. Politicians have found it easier to focus the attention of an inattentive
public on military dangers, real or imagined, than on nonmilitary ones;
political leaders have found it easier to build a consensus on military solutions
to foreign policy problems than to get agreement on the use (and, therefore,
the adequate funding) of the other means of influence that the United States
can bring to bear beyond its frontiers.
Even the Carter Administration, which set out self-consciously to depart
from this pattern, found in its later years that the easiest way to deflect its
most potent domestic critics was to emphasize those aspects of the dilemmas
it faced that seemed susceptible to military solutions and to downplay those
that did not. Jimmy Carter's failure to win reelection may suggest not that
his political instincts in these respects were faulty but merely that his con-
version was neither early nor ardent enough.
Just as politicians have not found it electorally rewarding to put forward
conceptions of security that take account of nonmilitary dangers, analysts
have not found it intellectually easy. They have found it especially difficult
to compare one type of threat with others, and to measure the relative
contributions toward national security of the various ways in which govern-
ments might use the resources at their disposal.
The purpose of this paper is to begin to chip away at some of these
analytical problems. It proceeds from the assumption that defining national
security merely (or even primarily) in military terms conveys a profoundly
false image of reality. That false image is doubly misleading and therefore
doubly dangerous. First, it causes states to concentrate on military threats
and to ignore other and perhaps even more harmful dangers. Thus it reduces
their total security. And second, it contributes to a pervasive militarization
of international relations that in the long run can only increase global inse-
curity.

Richard H. Ullman, Professor of International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Affairs, spent the 1982-83 academic year as a visiting member of the Institute
for Advanced Study.

International Secuirity, Summer 1983 (Vol. 8, No. 1) 0162-2889/83/010129-15 $02.50/0

C) 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

129

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 Initernational Security | 130

Security versus What?

One way of moving toward a more comprehensive definition of security may

be to ask: what should we be willing to give up in order to obtain more
security? how do we assess the tradeoffs between security and other values?
The question is apposite because, of all the "goods" a state can provide,
none is more fundamental than security. Without it, as the 17th-century
philosopher Thomas Hobbes observed in a passage often cited but endlessly
worth recalling:

there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and
consequently no Culture of the Earth, no Navigation, nor use of the com-
modities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instrui-
ments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no Knowl-
edge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no
Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent
death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, bruitish, and short.'

For Hobbes it did not much matter whether threats to security came from
within or outside one's own nation. A victim is just as dead if the bullet that
kills him is fired by a neighbor attempting to seize his property as if it comes
from an invading army. A citizen looks to the state, therefore, for protection
against both types of threat.
Security, for Hobbes, was an absolute value. In exchange for providing it
the state can rightfully ask anything from a citizen save that he sacrifice his
own life, for preservation of life is the essence of security. In this respect,
Hobbes was extreme. For most of us, security is not an absolute value. We
balance security against other values. Citizens of the United States and other
liberal democratic societies routinely balance security against liberty. Without
security, of course, liberty-except for the strongest-is a sham, as Hobbes
recognized. But we are willing to trade some perceptible increments of se-
curity for the advantages of liberty. Were we willing to make a Hobbesian
choice, our streets would be somewhat safer, and conscription would swell
the ranks of our armed forces. But our society would be-and we would
ourselves feel-very much more regimented.
The tradeoff between liberty and security is one of the crucial issues of our
era. In virtually every society, individuals and groups seek security against

1. The Leviathan (1651), Part I, Ch. XIII.

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 Redefinling Security | 131

the state, just as they ask the state to protect them against harm from other
states. Human rights and state security are thus intimately related. State
authorities frequently assume-sometimes with justification-that their for-
eign enemies receive aid and sustenance from their domestic opponents, and
vice versa. They often find it convenient, in any case, to justify the suppres-
sion of rivals at home by citing their links to enemies abroad.
The most profound of all the choices relating to national security is, there-
fore, the tradeoff with liberty, for at conflict are two quite distinct values,
each essential to human development. At its starkest, this choice presents
itself as: how far must states go, in order to protect themselves against
adversaries that they regard as totalitarian, toward adopting totalitarian-like
constraints on their own citizens? In the United States it is a tension that
arises every day in the pulling and hauling between police and intelligence
agencies and the Constitution. At a practical level, the choices become: what
powers do we concede to local police? to the F.B.I.? to the C.I.A. and the
other arms of the "intelligence community"?
Other security choices may seem equally vexing if they are not equally
profound. One is the familiar choice between cure and prevention. Should
the U.S. spend a (large) sum of money on preparations for military interven-
tion in the Persian Gulf in order to assure the continued flow of oil from
fragile states like Saudi Arabia, or should it be spent instead on nonmilitary
measures-conservation, alternate energy sources, etc.-that promise sub-
stantially (although not rapidly) to reduce American dependence upon Per-
sian Gulf oil? A second choice involves collaboration with regimes whose
values are antithetic to America's own. Should the United States government
forge a relationship of greater military cooperation with the Republic of South
Africa, and risk racial conflict in its cities at home? Or should it continue to
treat South Africa as an international outlaw and perhaps enhance domestic
racial harmony-an important characteristic of a secure society-at the cost
of enabling the Soviet navy to pose a greater potential challenge to the safety
of the sea lanes around Africa upon which so much vital cargo flows? A
third choice involves military versus economic assistance to poor countries.
Should U.S. policy aim at strengthening Third World governments against
the military threats that they assert they perceive to come from the Soviet
Union and its allies, or at helping their citizens develop greater self-reliance
so as, perhaps, ultimately to produce more healthful societies with lower
rates of birth and thus relieve the rising pressure on global resources? Finally,
many choices juxtapose international and domestic priorities. If a stretched

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 International Security | 132

national budget cannot afford both increased outlays for military forces and
for a more effective criminal justice system at home, programs that create
work opportunities for poor inner-city teenagers, or measures to improve
the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink, which expenditures
enhance "security" more?
The tradeoffs implied in these and many other, similar questions are not
as profound as that between security and liberty. But they are nevertheless
capable of generating conflicts of values-between alternate ways of viewing
national security and its relationship to what might be called global security.
There is, in fact, no necessary conflict between the goal of maintaining a
large and powerful military establishment and other goals such as developing
independence from Persian Gulf oil, promoting self-sustaining development
in poor countries, minimizing military reliance on repressive governments,
and promoting greater public tranquility and a more healthful environment
at home. All these objectives could be achieved if the American people chose
to allocate national resources to do so. But it is scarcely likely that they-or
their Congressional representatives-will choose to make all the perceived
sacrifices that such large governmental programs entail.
Indeed, the present Administration, supported by Congressional majori-
ties, has embarked upon a substantial buildup of military spending while at
the same time reducing outlays-and perceptible concern-for the other
objectives listed here. Such policies are not merely neglectful of what some
writers have called the "other dimensions" of security. They sometimes create
conditions-increased worldwide arms expenditures, heightened intra-re-
gional confrontations, and greater fragility rather than resilience in Third
World governments-that make the world a more dangerous rather than a
safer place. To use an image from the theory of games, there is a real danger
that the policy choices of present and future U.S. administrations will place
us on a square on the game board in which all the players are worse off. In
other words, the game may well not be "zero-sum," making the United
States and some other nations more secure, or richer, while yet others are
left less well off. Instead, it might be "negative-sum," making all the nations
perceptibly less secure, with fewer disposable assets to spend on welfare
rather than on military forces.
To make this point is not to argue that a well-armed Soviet Union increas-
ingly confident of its abilities to project military power at long distances
poses no potential threat to American security. Clearly it does. Nor is it
necessarily to argue (although I would do so) that much of what appears

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 Redefininlg Security | 133

threatening about recent Soviet behavior has its origins in Soviet responses
to American policies and force deployments. That is a topic for a separate
discussion.2 But it is to argue that the present U.S. Administration-and, to
a substantial degree, its predecessors-has defined national security in an
excessively narrow way. It happens also (as will be suggested later) to be a
politically quite expedient way.

A Redefinition of Threats

In addition to examining security tradeoffs, it is necessary to recognize that

security may be defined not merely as a goal but as a consequence-this
means that we may not realize what it is or how important it is until we are
threatened with losing it. In some sense, therefore, security is defined and
valorized by the threats which challenge it.
We are, of course, accustomed to thinking of national security in terms of
military threats arising from beyond the borders of one's own country. But
that emphasis is doubly misleading. It draws attention away from the non-
military threats that promise to undermine the stability of many nations
during the years ahead. And it presupposes that threats arising from outside
a state are somehow more dangerous to its security than threats that arise
within it.
A more useful (although certainly not conventional) definition might be: a
threat to national security is an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens
drastically and over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality of
life for the inhabitants of a state, or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the
range of policy choices available to the government of a state or to private,
nongovernmental entities (persons, groups, corporations) within the state.
Within the first category might come the spectrum of disturbances and dis-
ruptions ranging from external wars to internal rebellions, from blockades
and boycotts to raw material shortages and devastating "natural" disasters
such as decimating epidemics, catastrophic floods, or massive and pervasive
droughts. These are for the most part fairly obvious: in their presence any
observer would recognize that the well-being of a society had been drastically
impaired.
The second category is perhaps less obviously apposite. In considering it,

2. There is no better place to begin that discussion than Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception
in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), chapter 3.

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 International Security | 134

it may be helpful to reflect on the way in which the threat from Nazi Germany
to the United States was discussed in the years immediately preceding Amer-
ican entry into World War II-or, indeed, the way the threat from the Soviet
Union has been viewed throughout most of the postwar era. Death and
physical destruction are, of course, one realization of the threat. They rep-
resent "degradation of the quality of life" in its most extreme form, and they
would be an inevitable result of war-even a war from which the United
States emerged victorious.
But suppose war had not come. Suppose Hitler's Germany or Stalin's
Russia had asserted domination over Western Europe and, perhaps, other
parts of the globe as well. The conquerors would have organized those
societies in a manner that almost certainly would substantially have closed.
them to the United States. That, of course, would have meant fewer oppor-
tunities for American traders and investors. But so, also, would there have
been fewer opportunities for unfettered intellectual, cultural, and scientific
exchange. And the extinction of civil and political liberty in countries which
shared our devotion to those values would have made it more difficult to
assure their preservation in an isolated and even besieged United States. In
a very large number of ways, the range of options open to the United States
government, and to persons and groups within American society, would
have been importantly diminished.
It is easy to think of degradation of the quality of life or a diminution of
the range of policy choices as "national security" problems when the source
of these undesirable conditions is a large, powerful, antagonistic state such
as Nazi Germany or Stalin's U.S.S.R. And it is even (relatively) easy to
organize responses to such clear and present dangers. But it is much more
difficult to portray as threats to national security, or to organize effective
action against, the myriads of other phenomena, some originating within a
national society, many coming from outside it, which also kill, injure, or
impoverish persons, or substantially reduce opportunities for autonomous
action, but do so on a smaller scale and come from sources less generally
perceived as evil incarnate. Interruptions in the flow of critically needed
resources or, indeed, a dwindling of the available global supply; terrorist
attacks or restrictions on the liberty of citizens in order to combat terrorism;
a drastic deterioration of environmental quality caused by sources from either
within or outside a territorial state; continuing violence in a major Third
World state chronically unable to meet the basic human needs of large
numbers of its citizens; urban conflict at home perhaps (or perhaps not)

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 Redefiniing Security | 135

fomented by the presence of large numbers of poor immigrants from poor

nations-all these either degrade the quality of life and/or reduce the range
of policy options available to governments and private persons.
For a leader trying to instil the political will necessary for a national society
to respond effectively to a threat to its security, a military threat is especially
convenient. The "public good" is much more easily defined; sacrifice can not
only be asked but expected; particular interests are more easily coopted or,
failing that, overriden; it is easier to demonstrate that "business as usual"
must give way to extraordinary measures; dissent is more readily swept aside
in the name of forging a national consensus. A convenient characteristic of
military threats to national security is that their possible consequences are
relatively apparent and, if made actual, they work their harm rapidly. There-
fore, they are relatively noncontroversial.3
The less apparent a security threat may be-whether military or nonmili-
tary-the more that preparations to meet it are likely to be the subject of
political controversy. The American and the Soviet military establishments
are symbiotically allied in the effort to coax resources from their respective
political chiefs. Each regularly dramatizes (and surely exaggerates) the threat
posed by the other. The effects of such arguments within the Kremlin are
not easy to document, but the evidence suggests that they are often persua-
sive. So are they generally persuasive for American Congressmen anxious to
demonstrate to their constituents that they are "pro-" national security. The
contrast with the generally unenthusiastic reception given to programs aimed
at aiding poor countries, ameliorating the disaffection of poor persons at
home, halting environmental degradation, stockpiling strategically important
materials, or other such measures is striking but scarcely surprising. Propo-
nents of such programs in fact frequently do justify them on the ground that
they promote national security. But because their connection to security is
often not immediately apparent, opponents find it easy to reject or simply
ignore such arguments, if not to refute them.4

3. This is not to say that there are not recriminations following wars or military crises. Indeed,
the governments that lead nations when war is thrust upon them-or when they initiate war
themselves-are often subject to pillory. It may be alleged that their complacence allowed their
nations' defenses to atrophy to a point where their military forces no longer deterred attack. Or
they may be accused of recklessness that brought on a needless and expensive war. But while
the war is still in prospect, or while it is actually underway, there are too seldom any questions
of leaders' abilities, to command the requisite resources from their perceptibly threatened
countrymen.
4. The same is true, it should be noted, about some "ordinary" foreign threats. In 1975 a

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 International Security | 136

Preparing for Catastrophe

A comparison between American society's preparations for two events, each

carrying relatively low risks but each posing the threat of catastrophically
high costs, is instructive. One is nuclear war between the United States and
the Soviet Union. The other is a large earthquake along the San Andreas
fault that runs much of the length of the state of California. Nuclear war
would undoubtedly result in many more casualties and much greater dam-
age, but a major earthquake along the San Andreas fault, and the gigantic
tidal wave that would likely follow it, might well kill or seriously injure
hundreds of thousands of persons and cause billions of dollars of damage to
property. Certainly it would be devastating to regional, if not national, se;
curity. Seismologists say that the probability of such an earthquake occurring
within half a century is relatively high, from 2 to 5 percent in any one year.5
The odds that large-scale nuclear war will occur cannot be so confidently
calculated, but they are surely much smaller.
Every year the United States government spends many billions of dollars
to build up nuclear forces whose purpose, at least according to strategic
theory, is to make nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. less likely.
Americans regard that as a proper function of government. So, also, do most
Americans probably regard the construction of shelters and other facilities
that might reduce the damage caused by nuclear war should it occur. But
administrations in Washington or in likely target states and municipalities
habitually spend very much less-indeed, quite small sums-on such mea-
sures, and they spend even less on measures that might reduce the damage
from a catastrophic earthquake.6

majority of Senators and members of Congress did not believe that the presence of Soviet-
supported Cuban troops in Angola posed a significant threat to U.S. security, and legislated
limits on potential American involvement. Three years earlier they imposed a cutoff on U.S.
bombing of targets in Cambodia and North Vietnam on the supposition that continued bombing
would no longer (if it ever did) promote U.S. security. For a discussion of these Congressional
curbs on the President's ability to commit American military resources, see Thomas M. Franck
and Edward Weisband, Foreign Policy By Congress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979),
esp. pp. 13-23 and 46-57.
5. For a recent authoritative study, see An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a
Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken (Washington: Federal Emergency
Management Agency, 1980). For a summary of current estimates, see Richard A. Kerr, "Cali-
fornia's Shaking Next Time," Science, Vol. 215 (January 22, 1982), pp. 385-387.
6. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) fiscal year 1983 appropriation for
civil defense was $147,407,000; for "comprehensive emergency preparedness planning" for

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 Redefininig Security | 137

How can we explain these discrepancies? Regarding so-called "passive"

defenses against nuclear weapons (shelters and the like, as distinguished
from "active" defenses such as missiles to shoot down missiles), one expla-
nation is that the task seems too daunting, a quixotic effort given the size of
the attack the Soviet Union could launch. When scores of millions might be
killed, the prospect of saving tens of millions-as, indeed, a large-scale effort
at civil defense might make possible-seems heartening only to the most
zealous student of what has come to be called "comparative recovery rates"
between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. And the cost of such a shelter program
would be enormous, very expensive insurance against a catastrophic but
very unlikely risk. Yet there is little doubt that it could (within these macabre
limits) be made effective.7
Against earthquakes, of course, shelters can offer little protection. The
danger to life and property along the San Andreas fault comes because many
hundreds of thousands of California residents have individually made deci-
sions to locate their homes and businesses there. In their view, the advan-
tages of cost or location outweigh the disadvantages of exposure to the risk
of major catastrophe. They might increase their own and their families'
chances for survival by strengthening existing buildings or replacing them
with more resistant structures. But the probability is that, owing to the
geologic properties of the San Andreas fault, an earthquake there would be
so severe that for many structures such measures would be ineffective. In
such a situation governmental authorities can do little but monitor, warn,
and make sure that emergency facilities are on hand for the moment when

earthquakes it was $3,120,000. California's total budgeted expenditure for earthquake safety for
fiscal year 1983 was $13,391,000. For a detailed breakdown, see State of California, Seismic
Safety Commission, Annual Report to the Governor and the Legislature for July 1981-June 1982
(Sacramento: August 1982), pp. 16-21.
7. The "classic" appeal for a large U.S. civil defense program, based upon hypothesized com-
parative U.S. and Soviet recovery rates, is T.K. Jones and W. Scott Thompson, "Central War
and Civil Defense," Orbis, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Fall 1978), pp. 681-712. For a more recent discussion,
see Robert Scheer, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War (New York: Random
House, 1982), pp. 104-119.
The enormous cost is one principal argument against a large-scale U.S. civil defense program.
But another relates to strategic doctrine. A civil defense program that promises to offer effective
protection might in a crisis invite an enemy first-strike attack. The adversary, so this reasoning
runs, would read large-scale civil defenses as indicating that we ourselves were prepared to
initiate nuclear war. It would therefore strike at the first sign that we were beginning to move
our population into shelters, as we surely would during a severe international crisis. Thus we
enhance stability by not opting for civil defenses: the other side knows that since our population
is exposed, we would not be likely to initiate nuclear war, and the incentives for them to strike
preemptively are thereby reduced.

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 International Security 1 138

a devastating quake occurs. Alas, while federal and state agencies currently
monitor seismic events, they have done relatively little actually to prepare
for the predicted disaster. Yet there is no doubt that, should it occur, the
consequences would be extraordinarily dire.8
It scarcely needs stating that there are vast differences between the threats
to "national security" posed by nuclear weapons and those posed by cata-
strophic natural disasters. Nuclear wars, after all, originate in human minds:
other minds may therefore initiate actions to affect the adversary's calcula-
tions of costs and benefit, of risks and reward. Behind earthquakes and
floods are no minds. They cannot be deterred. But -their potential damage
can be substantially reduced by the application of foresight and the expen-
diture of resources. Indeed, the probability that an incremental expenditure
on protection against earthquakes or floods will be effective is surely very
much greater than the probability that a comparable incremental expenditure
will enhance deterrence against nuclear war. Yet Americans and their elected
representatives are prepared to acquiesce in-indeed, in some instances they
show enthusiasm for-vast programs of weapons acquisition which, in the
name of forestalling nuclear war, have given the United States enough nu-
clear weapons to exterminate the world's population several times over. But
the polity is ill-equipped to make resource allocations that, dollar for dollar,
would contribute at least as much to "security" as would the acquisition of
the additional nuclear weapons upon which the present Administration seeks
to spend many billions of dollars.
The example of protection against earthquakes raises other interesting
points of comparison. While some community measures are useful, risk
aversion against such disasters is very largely in the hands of individuals.
Individuals can also affect at least to some limited extent the degree to which
they will be at risk in the event of nuclear war. They can choose not to live
in the vicinity of likely nuclear targets, and householders can provide them-
selves with substantial protection against fallout and at least some protection
against blast effects. But the pattern of a Soviet nuclear attack-and, there-
fore, the location of likely danger-is very much more difficult to predict
than the danger zone of a major earthquake. And the opportunity costs to a
citizen of choosing to live in a place so remote that injury from nuclear

8. The FEMA study cited above (note 5) estimates that the likely damage from the most probable
(but far from the most destructiye) major earthquake on the San Andreas fault might be $17
billion, but it indicates that the figure might be low by a factor as high as three (p. 22).

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 Redefining Security 1 139

weapons effects are likely to be minimal are very much greater than the costs
of choosing not to live near the San Andreas fault or another area of similarly
great seismic instability, whose locations are all well known. In addition,
protection against nuclear weapons effects is much more a community matter
than is protection against earthquakes. Particularly is this true for residents
of multiple-family urban dwellings. Only communities can afford to construct
the deep, strong shelters that would offer city residents even a remote chance
of surviving a nearby nuclear explosion.9
The other nonmilitary security measures discussed thus far in this paper
are almost all considerably farther than protection against earthquakes to-
ward the community end of a spectrum running from the individual to the
national community.10 Economic assistance to poor countries, programs to
reduce dependence upon Persian Gulf oil, military relations with repressive
regimes, efforts to combat air and water pollution, stockpiling of scarce
resources, all require either governmental allocation of resources or govern-
mentally framed policies and regulations. Like the acquisition and deploy-
ment of military forces, they all depend upon organization to be effective; in
a polity like the United States, the impetus for such organization must come
from government, the ultimate wielder of carrots and sticks.

Indirect Threats: Conflicts over Territory and Resources

At the root of most of the violent conflicts in history has been competition
for territory and resources. The coming decades are likely to see a diminution
in the incidence of overt conflict over territory: the enshrinement of the
principle of national self-determination has made the conquest of peoples
distinctly unfashionable. But conflict over resources is likely to grow more
intense as demand for some essential commodities increases and supplies

9. The most authoritative generally available projection of the effects of a variety of type
Soviet nuclear attacks on the United States is The Effects of Nuclear War (Washington, D.
Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment, 1979).
10. It should be noted that the currently preferred mode of avoiding nuclear war (as disting
from diminishing the likely effects of nuclear war) is at the far end of this spectrum
maintenance of a deterrent nuclear striking force is preeminently a national responsibilit
incidentally, beyond the grasp of all but the wealthiest nation-states. Other modes of avoi
war, such as negotiation and disarmament, are also endeavors which only duly legitimate
national authorities, as distinguished from sub-national groupings or private individuals, can
undertake. Earthquakes differ from nuclear war in that they cannot be either deterred or
forestalled. But societies can protect against their effects. That is why, despite obvious differ-
ences, the comparison with nuclear war as a threat to societal security seems instructive.

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 Inzterniiational Security | 140

appear more precarious. These conflicts will also have their territorial aspects,
of course, but the territory in contention is likely either to be unpopulated
or only sparsely populated. Much of it will be under water-oil-rich portions
of the continental shelves. Those parts above water will be the ostensible
prizes, often isolated or barren islands whose titles carry with them exclusive
rights to exploit the riches in and under the surrounding seas.
Such struggles over resources will often take the form of overt military
confrontations whose violent phases will more likely be short, sharp shocks
rather than protracted wars. In most instances they will involve neighboring
states-Chile and Argentina, Iraq and Iran, Greece and Turkey, Morocco
and Algeria, China and Vietnam, and many others. Most will be in the Third
World. None is likely to involve the United States, although American
firms-oil companies and other resource-extracting enterprises-may well be
caught up on either side of a particular dispute. Thus, if national security is
defined in conventional ways this country's national security is not likely to
be directly affected by such disputes.1"
Their indirect impact upon American national security is likely to be large,
however. Supplies of essential commodities will be at least temporarily dis-
rupted. Local regimes may fall, their places taken by successors often less
friendly to the United States. Outside powers hostile to American interests,
such as the Soviet Union or Cuba, may intervene to support local clients,
placing pressure on Washington to launch (or at least organize) counter-
interventions. In some quite plausible scenarios Washington might intervene
to protect local clients whether or not Moscow or Havana were involved.
Those circumstances that might lead to a direct confrontation of Soviet and
American forces are, of course, the ones most dangerous to U.S. national
security. Luckily, they are also the least likely.
"Resource wars" (as some call them) have figured prominently in dooms-
day forecasts for more than a decade. But they are only one way-and not
the most important way-in which resource issues will impinge upon na-
tional security in coming years. It will not require violent conflict for resource
scarcities to affect the well-being-and the security-of nations on every rung
of the development ladder. In considering ways in which such scarcities

11. For a discussion of the kinds and scope of disputes that are likely to arise, see Ruth W.
Arad and Uzi B. Arad, "Scarce Natural Resources and Potential Conflict," in Arad et al., Sharing
Global Resources, 1980s Project/Council on Foreign Relations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979),
pp. 25-104.

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 Redefinitilg Secuirity | 141

might affect national security, analysts should distinguish those that arise
from expansion of demand from those arising from restrictions on supply.

THREATS FROM RISING WORLDWIDE DEMAND

Behind expanding demand, of course, lies the continuing rapid growth in

the world's population. Specialists note that the rate of population growth
has not yet overtaken that of the globe's capacity to feed, house, and care
for its people.12 But that capacity is sorely strained. Moreover, global mech-
anisms for distributing or for managing resources are not effective enough
to prevent local catastrophic failures or to prevent the consumption of some
crucial renewable resources at greater-than-replacement rates. Those re-
sources include tropical forests and other sources of fuelwood, fish stocks,
the ozone layer surrounding the earth, and the global supply of clean air
and water. Moreover, these problems are interconnected. Here is but one
example: As Third World villagers cut down more and more forests in their
search for fuelwood, the denuded land left behind is prey to erosion. Rains
carry topsoil away, making the land unfit for cultivation. The topsoil, in turn,
silts up streams in its path. Meanwhile, the fuel-short villagers substitute
dung (which otherwise they would use for fertilizer) for the wood they can
no longer obtain, further robbing the soil of nutrients and bringing on crop
failures. Unable to sustain themselves on the land, many join the worldwide
migration from the countryside into the cities.13
That migration-caused by many factors-has given rise to an explosive
growth in the population of most Third World cities. Many are ringed by
shantytowns containing millions of squatters, a high proportion of them
unemployed, malnourished, and living in squalor. Under the weight of these
enormous numbers municipal services break down and the quality of life for
all but the very rich suffers drastically. Such cities are forcing grounds for
criminality and violence. Some suffer a breakdown of governmental authority
and become virtually unmanageable. Others are governable only by increas-
ingly repressive means that lead, in turn, to a decline in the perceived
legitimacy of the regime in power. Especially is this the case in nations that

12. See the tables in the statistical annexes to Roger D. Hansen et al., U.S. Foreign Policy and
the Third World: Agenda 1982, Overseas Development Council (New York: Praeger Publishers,
1982), esp. tables B-8 and C-1.
13. For a discussion that brings out the seamless nature of this problem, see Lester R. Brown,
"World Population Growth, Soil Erosion, and Food Security," Science, Vol. 214 (November 27,
1981), pp. 995-1002.

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 International Security | 142

are marked by ethnic or religious divisions. When the resources of a nation

are severely strained, those at the bottom of a social hierarchy are quick to
imagine-often with justification-that those who govern distribute the ben-
efits at their disposal in ways that favor some groups at the expense of
others.
There is a widespread assumption that these are the circumstances from
which revolutions are born. In fact, there is little evidence that any recent
revolution except perhaps the one in Iran has had urban roots. Although
rapid population growth and its attendant miseries have certainly given rise
to conflicts, particularly along communal lines, the governing authorities in
most Third World countries have been able to contain them. Rather than
forging links among urban (and rural) dispossessed persons, recent arrivals
in Third World cities have tended to be overwhelmingly preoccupied with
retaining (and, if possible, expanding) whatever economic niches they have
been able to carve for themselves. They have thus far provided few recruits
for those who would organize revolutions, nor much in the way of troubled
waters in which outside powers might fish.14
First World governments and peoples might be advised not to take too
much comfort from this record. Although the consequences of explosive
Third World population growth and rapid urbanization have not yet been
felt much beyond their countries of origin, the strains on fragile political
structures will not ease before the end of the century, if then: the would-be
workers who will seek employment in the swollen cities of the Third World
during the 1990s have already been born. Even if these strains do not give
rise to revolutions (and, perhaps, to foreign interventions), they are likely to
make Third World governments more militantly confrontational in their re-
lations with the advanced, industrialized states. And they will produce
multifold other pressures on the rich nations. For the United States, the most
directly felt pressure is that of would-be immigrants, some coming through
lawful channels, most coming illegally. The pressure is especially severe-
and probably increasing-from Mexico, but it comes from all over the Carib-
bean and Central American region and from other continents as well. As
population growth in the poor countries hobbles economic development, the

14. For a thorough survey of extant social science research on Third World urban growth and
its relationship to political instability, see the unpublished paper by Henry Bienen, "Urbanization
and Third World Stability," Research Program in Development Studies, Woodrow Wilson
School, Princeton University, December 1982.

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 Redefining Security 1 143

gap in living standards between them and the rich countries is likely to
continue to widen, and resentment of the rich-rich nations and rich per-
sons-will continue to grow. So will pressures for immigration. The image
of islands of affluence amidst a sea of poverty is not inaccurate. This image
has given rise to doomsday scenarios in which, several decades from now,
the poor will threaten the rich with nuclear war unless the rich agree to a
massive redistribution of wealth.15 But even if these scenarios do not even-
tuate (and the superior destructive capabilities of the rich make such denoue-
ments unlikely), the pressure engendered by population growth in the Third
World is bound to degrade the quality of life, and diminish the range of
options available, to governments and persons in the rich countries.
This paper is not the place for detailed discussion of ways to slow popu-
lation growth in the Third World, to help Third World countries absorb their
multitudes of new citizens, and to introduce order into their processes of
urban development. It is sufficient to say that most such ways involve trans-
fers of resources and expertise to Third World countries. The record of the
United States in these areas is generally abysmal: among the O.E.C.D. na-
tions it is near the bottom of the league tables with regard to official devel-
opment aid calculated on a per capita basis. Only in population programs
has the U.S. made a respectable effort.16 But U.S. programs to assist other
nations to solve their population problems are increasingly coming under
attack from the "right-to-life" movement in this country, many of whose
supporters are in the forefront of those pressing for large increases in military
spending. They, and the opponents of economic assistance in general, may
someday pay a significant price for their arbitrarily narrow definition of
national security.

THREATS FROM THE SUPPLY SIDE

Population growth dominates the problem of rising worldwide demand for

resources. Moreover, overall demand is rising even more rapidly than pop-
ulation growth figures alone would indicate. Many developing countries

15. For a prototypical example, see Robert L. Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Condition
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), esp. pp. 42-45. For a provocative variation, see McGeorge
Bundy, "After the Deluge, the Covenant," Saturday ReviewlWorld, August 24, 1975, pp. 18-20,
112-114.
16. For the O.E.C.D. rankings, see Hansen, Agenda 1982, table F-8 and figure F-18. For popu-
lation programs, see Dana Lewison, "Sources of Population and Family Planning Assistance,"
Population Reports, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January-February 1983).

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 International Security 1 144

contain growing "modern" sectors, enclaves of affluence and higher living

standards that enjoy the same wasteful consumption patterns of the indus-
trialized world. That imposes yet additional strains on world resources. By
contrast, no single factor dominates the problem of constraints on resource
supplies. A crucial distinction is whether the resource in question is renew-
able, like forests or fish stocks or feedgrains, or nonrenewable, like (preem-
inently) oil. A second crucial distinction is whether the resource is becoming
increasingly scarce through "normal" depletion or through efforts by gov-
ernments (or, indeed, private persons) artificially to restrict supplies by
means of boycotts, embargoes, cartel agreements, recovery limitations, and
the like. Supply constraints are most injurious when they are sudden. For
virtually every raw material there are substitutes with properties sufficiently
similar so that replacement is possible. But whether or not replacement can
take place without painful disruption depends upon whether the shortage
in supply of the original item was foreseen adequately far in advance to
make possible smooth adjustment.
The United States is in a particularly fortunate position. Study after study
in recent years has concluded that oil is the only commodity whose sudden
cutoff would have a drastic effect on national welfare or on economic activity.
Indeed, the same applies in large measure to all of the advanced industrial-
ized market-economy states. Since most produce a considerably smaller
proportion of their domestic oil consumption than the United States, most
would find an oil cutoff even more disruptive.17 But other essential imported
materials for them, as for the United States, either come from highly reliable
suppliers-like-minded states-or from a sufficiently diverse range of sup-
pliers so that a boycott by one or more would not impose really serious
harm.18 Regarding foodstuffs, the O.E.C.D. countries are for the most part
well provided for. Collectively they produce large agricultural surplusses.19

17. See David A. Deese and Joseph S. Nye, eds., Energy and Security (Cambridge, Mass.:
Ballinger, 1981), esp. pp. 131-228 and appendix B, "Worldwide Production and Use of Crude
Oil."
18. See the well-documented discussion in Arad, "Scarce Natural Resources," pp. 32-59. For a
widely cited earlier statement, see Stephen D. Krasner, "Oil is the Exception," Foreign Policy,
No. 14 (Spring 1974), pp. 68-84. John E. Tilton, The Future of Nonfuel Minerals (Washington: The
Brookings Institution, 1977), reaches the same conclusions.
19. A concise survey of global patterns of food production and consumption is in Paul R.
Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, and John P. Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment
(San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977), pp. 284-297. For a current accounting by a U.S. Agriculture
Department official, see Terry N. Barr, "The World Food Situation and Global Grain Prospects,"
Science, Vol. 214 (November 27, 1981), pp. 1087-1095.

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 Redefining Security | 145

Individual O.E.C.D. states that import a high proportion of their domestic

food consumption-Japan is the most important-need not worry about
major disruptions of supply because their purchasing power will give them
first claim on world markets.
The problem is much more serious for Third World states. Many are not
able to feed themselves and find it difficult to pay for imported foodstuffs,
a difficulty compounded since 1973 by the rising cost of the oil they also
must import.20 Food is indeed a weapon that can be wielded against them-
although the industrialized states are most unlikely to employ it. The much
more serious danger they face is their acute vulnerability to natural disasters
that may cripple their own food production or substantially reduce the supply
(and therefore raise the price) of foodstuffs on the world market. As popu-
lation growth brings more mouths to feed, the situations of many Third
World states are likely to grow more and more precarious.
Demand and supply are always related, of course. One approach to the
resource problem is slowing the growth of demand by slowing the growth
of population. But supply-side measures are equally necessary. When the
too-rapid exploitation of renewable resources is viewed as a supply problem,
the solution seems to lie in creating mechanisms for effective regulation of
the rate at which fish are caught, forests are cut, seed crops are harvested
for food, and effluents are released into streams and emissions into the
atmosphere. Sometimes the nation-state is the appropriate arena for such
regulatory activity. In other instances, international mechanisms ("regimes,"
in the current academic jargon) are required. Such measures are likely to be
really effective, however, only when they are combined with efforts to slow
the growth of demand. Moreover, as noted earlier, increasing demand for
many commodities is a product not merely of population growth, but of
rising affluence. And rising affluence is often not accompanied by rising
sensitivity to the need for resource management, and the appropriate tech-
nical and political skills to make management possible.
As indicated above, one way to cope with depleting supplies of any com-
modity is to find substitutes for it. That applies even to some renewable
resources-although not, of course, to clean air and water. It applies more
obviously to nonrenewable resources. For minerals and fuels, a sensible
strategy is to create stockpiles that make it possible to cope with short-run

20. See Deese and Nye, Energy and Secuirity, pp. 229-58.

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 International Security 1 146

interruptions of supply while developing substitutes to cope with long-run

inevitable depletion.
These are scarcely difficult principles to grasp. What is difficult is to per-
suade governments to allocate funds to put the principles into practice.
Especially for powerful countries like the United States that are used to
getting their way in the world, it seems easier to arouse the political will to
respond to a supply disruption with military means than to forestall the
disruption in the first place by fostering alternate sources of supply, or by
developing substitutes for the resource whose supply is threatened.

Assessing Vulnerability

In every sphere of policy and action, security increases as vulnerability de-

creases.21 At the most basic level of individual survival, this is a law of nature,
seemingly as well understood by animals as by humans. At that level it is a
reflexive response. Reducing vulnerability becomes a matter of policy, rather
than of reflex action, when it seems necessary to calculate the costs and
benefits involved. How much security do we buy when we expend a given
increment of resources to reduce vulnerability? That is a difficult question
even in relatively simple situations, such as a householder stockpiling a
commodity against the possibility of a disruption in accustomed channels of
supply. At the level of the community, rather than the individual, it becomes
very much more difficult: different members assess risks differently, and
they may well be differently damaged by a disrupting event. An investment
in redundancy that seems worthwhile to one family may seem excessively
costly to another. Neither will know which is correct unless the crunch
actually comes. And even then they might disagree. They might experience
distress differently.

21. Some might argue that this is not the case in the strategic nuclear relationship between the
United States and the Soviet Union, and that it is the knowledge within each government that
its society is highly vulnerable to nuclear attacks by the other that keeps it from ever launching
such an attack itself. Security is thus a product of vulnerability. This argument has considerable
force as a logical construct. Yet, not surprisingly, neither superpower is content to act upon it.
As technological developments seem to make possible the limitation of damage from at least
some forms of nuclear attack, each pursues them for fear that the other will secure a momentary
advantage. We are therefore faced with the worst of situations, in which one or the other may
be unduly optimistic regarding the degree to which it might limit damage to its own society if
it were to strike first. Decreased vulnerability accurately assessed may well enhance security even
in strategic nuclear relations; misleadingly assessed it may bring disaster.

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 Redefiniing Secuirity | 147

At the level discussed in this paper, where states are the communities
involved and where the problems are for the most part considerably more
complicated than a simple disruption in an accustomed channel of supply,
the relationship between decreased vulnerability and increased security is
formidably difficult to measure. Consider even the relatively simple measure
of adding crude oil to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the (for the most
part) underground stockpile whose purpose is to make it possible for the
nation to ride out a cutoff in deliveries from one or more major foreign oil
suppliers. We know, of course, the cost of buying and storing a given
increment of crude oil. But until mid-1981 the government of Saudi Arabia
(the world's major exporter of oil) took the position that U.S. stockpiling of
oil was an unfriendly act. It claimed that it maintained high levels of oil
production to provide immediate benefits-"moderate" prices-to Western
(and other) consumers, not to make it possible for Washington to buy insur-
ance against the day when the Saudi leadership might want to cut production
so as, say, to influence U.S. policy toward Israel. Successive administrations
in Washington have regarded the retention of Saudi good will as something
close to a vital American interest, on both economic and strategic grounds.
They therefore dragged their feet on filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.22
Who can say with assurance that those administrations were wrong? Who
could measure-before the event-the effects of putting Saudi noses out of
joint? It may well have been that even so seemingly modest a measure as
adding to the oil stockpile would ripple through Saudi and Middle Eastern
politics in such a manner as ultimately to bring about just that calamity
against which the stockpile is intended to offer insulation, that is, a produc-
tion cutback. Moreover, being finite in size, the stockpile may not offer
sufficient insulation against a protracted deep cutback. But, by the same
token, who can be sure that even if the reserve remains unfilled (its level is
still far below the total originally planned23), and even if the United States
takes other additional measures to mollify the Saudis, an event will not occur

22. See, e.g., Walter S. Mossberg, "Kowtowing on the Oil Reserve," The Wall Street Journal,
May 14, 1980, p. 20, and Sheilah Kast, "Filling Our Strategic Oil Reserve," Washington Star,
February 9, 1981, the latter quoting Secretary-of-State-designate Alexander M. Haig, Jr., as
calling the Saudi position "oil blackmail."
23. The Energy Information Administration's Monthly Eniergy Review (Washington: U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy) presents a running tally of the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. For a
technical account of how the reserve is maintained, see Ruth M. Davis, "National Strategic
Petroleum Reserve," Science, Vol. 213 (August 7, 1981), pp. 618-622. See also Deese and Nye,
Energy and Security, pp. 326-328, 399-403.

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 International Security | 148

that will trigger a supply disruption in any case? If that occurs, the nation
would clearly be better off if it possessed a healthy reserve of stored oil, even
one insufficient to cushion the entire emergency.
Ever since the OPEC embargoes of 1973-74, Western governments have
been extremely sensitive to any hint of a further cutoff of oil or, for that
matter, of other, less critically needed resources. It is not surprising that
many analysts both in Washington and in other NATO capitals interpreted
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979 not simply as Moscow's
ruthless effort to handle a local political dilemma but as the start of a Soviet
march toward the Persian Gulf. Since then, both the Carter and the Reagan
Administrations have regarded raising a robust combined-arms military force
earmarked for Gulf contingencies-the so-called Rapid Deployment Force-
as the most appropriate and, not so coincidentally, also the politically most
saleable response to the threat of instability in the Gulf.
Yet there is wide agreement among specialists that additional overt Soviet
border-crossing aggression in the Middle East is an unlikely contingency.
Far more likely is the coming to power in a major oil-producing state like
Saudi Arabia of a militantly anti-Western regime that might restrict produc-
tion. Against such an eventuality the Rapid Deployment Force offers little
insurance, for there would be great resistance in Congress and in the public
at large to any Presidential use of American forces for intervention in the
turbulent internal politics of the region.
It requires a long and more relaxed view to deemphasize military inter-
vention as an instrument of policy, however. And a longer view is much
more possible under conditions of reduced vulnerability. Then the occupant
of the Oval Office would be more likely to feel that he really has the option
of allowing the politics of regions like the Middle East to run their course.
Were the United States less vulnerable to interruptions in the supply of the
region's oil, administrations might find they had a wider range of options
for pursuing other interests, such as protecting communication routes or the
independence of Israel. Communications routes, for instance, can be pro-
tected at many points. And the American commitment to Israel would cost
less if the U.S. were not simultaneously supplying some of Israel's enemies
with the most potent weapons in its inventory and then giving the Israelis
additional weapons to offset them.
As this paper has suggested, many of the conditions that may most affect
U.S. security have their origins in circumstances that have little or nothing
to do with the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet

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 Redefining Security 1 149

many of them, if not managed, have the potential to give rise to crises
between the superpowers as one or the other intervenes to secure resources
or to support its clients in a domestic or regional conflict in the Third World.
For crisis prevention, if for no other reasons, political leaders in Washing-
ton-and in Moscow, too-should pay heed to these conditions.24
There are, of course, other reasons. To the extent that the quality of life in
the United States is degraded by resource scarcities and by the deterioration
in the quality of life beyond its borders, Americans should be concerned.
That is but the counsel of prudence. Focussing attention on these "other
dimensions of security" will require political leadership of the highest order,
however. Morever, it will require far greater consensus than now exists
regarding what is to be done.
The absence of consensus is, indeed, a formidable obstacle. There is no
agreement within the American policy community regarding ways of coping
with resource scarcities or with the problems of poverty and explosive pop-
ulation growth in the Third World. The Administration currently in Wash-
ington is ideologically commited to market solutions in virtually every sphere
of policy. Thus, rather than develop government stockpiles of oil and other
scarce resources it prefers to leave the task to private entities. Indeed, so
opposed is the Reagan Adminstration to governmentally directed resource
management that it has even encouraged the depletion of the largest oil
stockpile it itself owns, the oilfields set aside as so-called Naval Petroleum
Reserves.25
The same is true for investments in alternate energy sources. The Admin-
stration has drastically reduced federal allocations for energy research and
development of all sorts. Nuclear fusion, solar energy, unconventional oils-
all have had their appropriations sliced. (Only the Clinch River breeder
reactor, a project in the home state of the Republican Senate majority leader,
has been spared.)26 Not surprisingly, in an economic climate marked by both
recession and high interest rates, the private sector shows few signs of acting
upon the Administration's preferences, ideologically congenial though they

24. For an excellent discussion of the genesis and prevention of superpower crises, see Alex-
ander L. George, Managing U.S.-Soviet Rivalry: Problems of Crisis Prevention (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1983).
25. Richard Corrigan, "Three Bowls of Oil," National Journal, December 5, 1981, p. 2167.
26. See these articles by Richard Corrigan, the National Journal's energy correspondent: "The
Next Energy Crisis: A Job for the Government or the Free Market?," June 20, 1981, pp. 1106-
1109; "On Energy Policy, the Administratign Prefers to Duck, Defer and Deliberate," July
1981, pp. 1280-1283; and "Down for the Count," May 22, 1982, p. 919.

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 International Security | 150

may be. Despite bargain prices, there has been little stockpiling of commod-
ities. And, with a worldwide oil glut, the private sector has shown no
inclination to invest in energy alternatives.
Opponents of the Administration's position assert that, regardless of the
economic climate, the marketplace is incapable of adequately discounting
scarcity. Therefore, they argue, the intervention of a single, authoritative
actor-by definition, the federal government-is required to build up stock-
piles and to fund research and development activities that are not likely to
pay off within commercially acceptable timeframes.27

Measuring Security

That intervention will necessarily give rise to what appear to be inefficiencies.

They will appear so because it will be possible to compare the costs of
resources stockpiled, or developed by new production techniques, with the
costs for the same or similar commodities bought on the market. Usually-
unless there has been an intervention of a different sort, such as an embargo
by suppliers-the costs of stockpiles or substitutes will be higher. It is easy
to quantify these so-called inefficiencies. And once quantified, they are easy
to decry. On the other hand, it is much more difficult to assign a weight to
the security that the community may have purchased by sustaining them.
It is at least as difficult, however, to assign a weight to the quantity of
security that the community purchases by a given investment in military
hardware or in manpower. A missile or a tank or an infantry battalion that
never enter combat are like commodities purchased for a stockpile. They also
are inefficiencies. Yet we less often look at military purchases that way. We
do, of course, incessantly decry "waste and inefficiency" in the armed ser-
vices and in the defense industries. But we usually mean that better man-
agement could have purchased comparable military capability for less money.
Rarely do we ask whether the possession of that particular capablity is in
itself "efficient. "
That is not to say that we do not often compare military with nonmilitary
expenditures. Indeed, such comparisons are a staple of political discourse.
Someone points out that for the price of, say, one Navy F-14 fighter it would
be possible to build a certain number of daycare centers or black-lung clinics

27. Corrigan, "Energy Policy," National Journal, July 18, 1981, p. 1283.

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 Redefinieng Security | 151

for the mining towns of Appalachia. And we know that, unlike the F-14, the
centers or clinics would be "used" (indeed, we hope the F-14 will never enter
combat). Moreover, we know quite precisely how much welfare we purchase
with a childcare center or a clinic. We can quantify it in terms of children
attending (and mothers working) or patients treated. But at that point the
comparison between guns and butter ends. We can weigh American forces
against Soviet forces, and we can compare the capabilities of one weapons
system against another. But we cannot really quantify the security we buy
with the funds we spend on an F-14 or, indeed, on an entire carrier task
group. We assume that the task group will deter hostile actions by unfriendly
nations. But it may be that a smaller American Navy will deter them equally
well, and a carrier air wing minus one F-14 may be fully capable of meeting
all the threats that ever come against it.28
This discussion has sought to show that we generally think about-and,
as a polity, dispose of-resource allocations for military and for nonmilitary
dimensions of security in quite different ways. Regarding military forces,
although analysts and interest groups may have their own ideas about such
issues as the appropriate size of the American fleet or the composition of its
air wings, there is general agreement on the principle that there must in the
end be a single, authoritative determination, and that such a determination
can come only from the central government of the polity. Because we ac-
knowledge that there is no marketplace in which we can purchase military
security (as distinguished from some of its components), we would not look
to private individuals or firms or legislators or regional governments to make
such a determination, even though we might disagree with the determination
that the federal government makes.
By contrast, as indicated above, there is no consensus about the need for

28. Part of the difficulty of comparing guns and butter may arise from the fact that polities
demand different orders of satisfaction from the evaluation of the two. Regarding daycare centers
or clinics, officials often feel satisfied when they can certify that services of a given quality have
in fact been delivered. They seldom feel it necessary to ask whether their delivery has really
enhanced the welfare of the community, the nation, or the world: they regard the question as
either self-evident or as impossible to answer. But publics have come to demand more of
accountings for military expenditures. After Israel's sweeping victories in Lebanon in 1982 it
was not enough to ascertain that the American-armed Israeli forces had decisively defeated the
Soviet-armed Syrians and Palestinians, nor even that the campaign had vastly enhanced Israel's
short-run security. Observers asked-and regarded the question as entirely appropriate-
whether it had really enhanced Israel's long-run security.
For a discussion of assessing the benefits of welfare programs, see Alice M. Rivlin, Systematic
Thinking for Social Action (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1971), pp. 46-63.

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 International Security | 152

a single, authoritative determination regarding the nonmilitary dimensions

of security. The polity as a whole is therefore much more responsive to
allegations that a given investment in, say, a commodity stockpile is "inef-
ficient" than it is responsive to the same allegation regarding a given invest-
ment in military forces. Moreover, the alleged inefficiency is far more easily
demonstrated. The situation is similar regarding measures for coping with
the other problems mentioned in this paper: rapid population growth, ex-
plosive urbanization, deforestation, and the like. Here, also, the current
American Adminstration-and much of the public-is committed to "effi-
cient" marketplace solutions rather than to solutions involving international
regimes or governmentally sponsored transfers of resources.

Changing the Consensus

Because of these preconceptions regarding the appropriate role of govern-

mental authority both in defining problems and in proposing solutions, the
tendency of American political leaders to define security problems and their
solutions in military terms is deeply ingrained. The image of the President
as Commander in Chief is powerful. When in this role he requests additional
funds for American military forces the Congress and the public are reluctant
to gainsay him. When he requests funds for economic assistance to Third
World governments, he is much more likely to be disputed even though he
may contend that such expenditures also provide the United States with
security.
Altering that pattern will require a sustained effort at public education. It
is not an effort that administrations themselves are likely to undertake with
any real commitment, particularly in times when the economy is straightened
and when they find it difficult enough to find funds for the military goals
they have set for themselves. The agents for any change in public attitudes
are therefore likely to be nongovernmental.
Over the past decade or so a vast array of public interest organizations
have begun to put forward alternate conceptions of national security. Nearly
all are devoted to particular issues-limiting population growth, enhancing
environmental quality, eradicating world hunger, protecting human rights,
and the like. Some are overt lobbies expressly seeking to alter political out-
comes. Others devote themselves to research and educational activities, but
are equally concerned with changing governmental behavior. Jointly they
have succeeded in substantially raising public awareness of the vulnerability

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 Redefining Security | 153

of the society to a variety of harms nonmilitary in nature, and of the limita-

tions of military instruments for coping with many types of political prob-
lems.
One should not overestimate the achievements of these nongovernmental
organizations, however. Awareness on the part of a substantial informed
minority is one thing. Embodying it in public policy is a very much larger
step. A society's consciousness changes only gradually-usually with the
change of generations. The likelihood is that for the foreseeable future the
American polity will continue to be much more willing to expend scarce
resources on military forces than on measures to prevent or ameliorate the
myriad profoundly dislocating effects of global demographic change. Yet
those effects are likely to intensify with the passage of time. Problems that
are manageable today may prove far less tractable in the future. And while
political will and energy are focussed predominately on military solutions to
the problems of national security, the nonmilitary tasks are likely to grow
ever more difficult to accomplish and dangerous to neglect.

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