Do you agree with the view that over-widening of the concept of ‘national security’ has made it a more amorphous concept? Discuss. (2011, 40 Marks)
Barry Buzan called security an “underdeveloped” concept, and Arnold Wolfers an “ambiguous symbol”. Since the 1980s it has been widened from military threats to economic, societal and environmental ones, and deepened from the state to the individual. Whether this has made it amorphous, shapeless and unable to discriminate, depends on whether the widening is disciplined or merely rhetorical.
The case that it has become amorphous
- Loss of coherence. Stephen M. Walt (“The Renaissance of Security Studies”, 1991) defined the field as the study of the threat, use and control of military force; adding pollution, disease or recession, he warned, would destroy its intellectual coherence.
- Category error. Daniel Deudney (1990) argued that environmental degradation is unintended, diffuse and slow, unlike the deliberate, rapid threats militaries are built for; calling it “security” brings in the wrong institutions and a zero-sum, nationalist mindset.
- Human security as “hot air”. Roland Paris (2001) found the concept so expansive that it could guide neither research nor policy: if everything threatens, nothing ranks first.
- Securitisation creep. Every issue relabelled as security invites secrecy and emergency powers into ordinary policy, the danger the Copenhagen School itself warns against.
- Sovereignty fears. Mohammed Ayoob and many developing states see broad security language as a licence for selective intervention by stronger powers.
- Policy symptom. Governments use “comprehensive” security freely, yet India has still not issued a published National Security Strategy ranking its widened threats.
The case against
- Widening tracked reality. A narrow definition could not register the threats that actually kill people: COVID-19, climate shocks, and the 645 million people hungry in 2025 (SOFI 2026). The 2026 Hormuz restrictions, which put at risk some 45% of India’s crude imports, showed energy to be a genuine security sector.
- Specification, not shapelessness. David A. Baldwin (“The Concept of Security”, 1997) showed that security can be pinned down by asking: security for whom, of which values, from what threats, by what means, at what cost. A specified concept is broad but not vague.
- Method disciplines breadth. The Copenhagen School (Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, 1998) limits security to issues presented as existential threats that justify extraordinary measures, and Buzan’s five sectors give the wider field a structure.
- Productive results. The narrow human-security agenda produced the Ottawa Convention on landmines (1997), and General Assembly Resolution 66/290 (2012) gave human security an agreed definition.
- The core survives. Record world military spending of $2,887 billion in 2025 shows that widening has not displaced military security; the two coexist.
An assessment
The view is partly right. The concept becomes amorphous when it is used as a political slogan to raise an issue’s rank without saying whose security is at stake or what follows. The contested 2021 Security Council draft on climate and security, vetoed by Russia, with India voting against, shows the cost: states could not agree whether climate belonged in the Council at all. India said the draft sought to securitise climate action and pull it away from the consensus-based UNFCCC, a Southern objection to stretching security over development issues.
Conclusion
Over-widening has made “national security” looser in political use but not necessarily amorphous in analysis. The remedy is not to shrink the concept back to armies but to specify it every time, in Baldwin’s terms, and to treat securitisation as an exception that must be justified.