Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Threats and Capacities

by Daniel N. Nelson [contact information]

October 2007

NOTE: A footnoted version of this article is available upon request. Email dnelson AT armscontrolcenter DOT org

INTRODUCTION

What is security? What makes us - as individuals, communities or nations - insecure? Although these questions are timeless, they have been central to a vigorous academic debate during the past two decades with significant policy implications. Is the concept of security one of objective reality, or has it been socially constructed?

While acknowledging this debate, I seek to move beyond it. Whether Mearsheimer or Weaver was correct matters less than how we move to the next level of discussion. Perhaps we have now arrived at a consensus - security is not only for states and not only provided by military means. However, we continue to need a broader framework - an equation, so to speak, that denotes security and thus how to obtain it. Even if we securitize too much, we still covet the assuredness connoted by the concept. Indeed, we expect that those who distribute resources will advance, not diminish, our sense of security, at whatever level and however it is defined.

In the following brief essay, I summarize thoughts I have developed in policy, academe, and business. These ruminations do not rise to the level of a theoretical contribution, but do intersect with a wealth of scholarly literature and significant experience in formulating policy. Most often, I chose examples at the level of nations and states; however, my aim is to consider the genesis of security at any level of analysis, and thus to build on the work of many who urge and end to state-centric understand of security.

CONCEPTS

For individuals, groups, a regime, a political system, or a nation and people, threats can be physical or psychological, real or perceived, imminent or latent, internal or external. The degree to which individuals, groups and societies confront economic distress, social malaise, political violence, dangers to environment and health, the specter of armed attack, and the immediacy with which these and other perilous conditions are perceived, all contribute to insecurity unless they can be abated, or capacities enlarged, to achieve a balance.

Thus, security lies at the intersection of threats and capacities. From nations and their organization into states down to individuals, equilibrium between threats and capacities offers the potential of peace and prosperity. When threats exceed capacities, individuals become inviting victimized, communities marginalized, nations colonized, and states dominated; when capacities exceed threats, a classic "security dilemma" ensues.

I therefore define security as a dynamic balance between threats and capacities. For individuals, imminent threat can be balanced with the assistance of friends and family, or by adding financial or physical resources. Threats can also be ameliorated by actions that reduce others' insecurity, reciprocal actions, and negotiated agreements. If states are threatened, they can retreat, give up territory or resources, or offer aid and assistance. They can also negotiate, seek arbitration from a third party, appeal to multilateral organizations, and talk. Threatened states can, of course, also summon powerful allies with large armies or imply asymmetric countermeasures.

The nature of threats - even those that have been socially constructed - has, however, changed irrevocably in the past decade or two. The end the Cold War and 9/11 were significant, but not determinative. In general, threats to individuals, communities, nations, and states are now broader, deeper, and faster. Small groups of Islamic fundamentalists have planned global mega-terrorism from Western European cities or while located in Southeast Asia. At the same time, threats are internal and insidious - penetrating our companies, countries and communications. And, threats are faster because of physical mobility and electronic interconnectivity. A terrorist can withdraw money from ATMs that has been electronically transferred to their account, communicate through coded websites, and email encrypted messages. In these ways, the modalities of threat are as never before.

True, threat is not as much objective as it is perceived. But, at any level of analysis, perception is more powerful than any empirical measurement might indicate.

Ambient threat for a nation or state may be generated by other nations or states. In the twenty-first century, however, cumulative threat is far more likely to derive from forces above, below or within. Indeed, other nations or states are not "the problem" - even if old thinking continues to insist that danger looks like it always did. Principal states or groups of states confront forces bigger and more pervasive threats than their own budgets can address, yet more elusive than their armies or police can target. Criminal syndicates burrowed deeply within society and bureaucracy and transnational links among extremist and anarchist groups both add to social violence, the prevalence of drugs and the danger of terrorist attacks. Ethnic hatreds, massive refugee flows, and ecological devastation and other phenomena lie well beyond what one state could stop with traditional tools of diplomacy, economic sanctions or military action. Speculation about "information warfare" and cyber attacks suggests, as well, that states no longer have borders denoted by territorial control defended with divisions, flotillas, laws or courts. And, most broadly, the world economy and effects of technological diffusion can no longer be redirected through the policies of a major state or alliance.

Threat targets have changed, too. In prior centuries, states anticipated external attack while governments feared destabilization from within. Today, states and governments are no longer the sole or primary targets. Instead, the icons of our material interests are under attack, and the normative bases of democracy are imperiled. Destroying the World Trade Center's twin towers and damaging the Pentagon killed thousands. Such attacks, however, were not intended as a death blow to the American state. Rather, the terrorists struck at symbols of American capitalism and military power. Perhaps, too, their goals extended to a longer-term consequence of mass terrorism - to spread fear, erode tolerance, and weaken constitutional guarantees. In the broadest terms, global threats of the 21st century are those that seek to eradicate the norms, discourse, and culture by which individuals, communities and nations distinguish themselves from others. In that regard, this century has already become the era of identity wars.

In the balance between threats and capacities on which security depends, capacities have changed dramatically in form and function. My use of this term is not coextensive with "power"; rather, capacities are resources, often latent and diffuse - present but unapplied by an actor. When capacities are purposefully developed and applied as part of a state's strategy, they become elements of power. Security is a universally desired outcome, and capacities can deter threats although latent and diffused.

At the level of states, military strength was seen primarily, if not solely, as the key ingredient of a state's response to threats during the 19th and 20th centuries. In Europe, this was concretized by the confrontation between opposing mass armies that faced each other across the Fulda Gap during the Cold War, with strength gauged by the number of tanks, artillery pieces, and divisions. Today, however, it is clearer than ever before that the size and equipment of armed forces are far less important than their modernity, mobility, and motivation.

Capacities also rest on far less tangible qualities. Political capacities are those defined principally by one's leadership quality and credibility, as well as the diplomatic skill that one possesses and utilizes. Economic capacities, once gauged solely through extensive measures of growth and gross product, are now vested in intensive development of information technology and productivity. Social capacities, too, may be decisive if stability and consensus are long-term traits. And, normative capacities cannot be ignored; those who act on the international stage are surely more able to affect outcomes if they are perceived as honest, just and equitable.

Among large and modern states, capacities are proportionately greater than other states in the contemporary international system. But, by no means are the resources of such cases either complete or uniform. As Joseph Nye discussed, and as was apparent in earlier attempts to quantify states' "power," the capacities of great powers from which power is sought are highly varied and partial. We can, however, recognize that resources in economic, social, political and military realms can gain credibility and utility if they are more autonomous, unique, large, flexible, durable, and qualitatively superior. Self-sufficiency in microchips or satellite imagery can be, therefore, a highly useful and applicable resource. A unique missile defense system, a very large army, a small but flexible police strike force, long-term economic or political stability, advanced or precise technology, or social cohesion - any or all can add to capacities that may be deployed as a balance against real or perceived threats.

Among major states or the early 21st century, however, capacities are increasingly missing the mark. The sheer weight of accumulated indicators can no longer pin down security. Or, to put it another way, states that pursue a "national security strategy" through capacity-driven behavior, building instruments of power from latent capacities, create armies, defense industries and an intelligence infrastructure that have limited applicability. Much of the surge in peacekeeping, peacemaking and humanitarian interventions, NATO's metamorphosis and enlargement, and other trends, in retrospect, may be understood as new activities for old capacities. As the Iraq War grinds on into its fourth year, for instance, American brigades are increasingly less assets than targets and the need for political, diplomatic, and normative skills are being called for in a desperate search for a way out.

These diverse and complex threats and capacities must be balanced to achieve security. Thus, I view security as affected by these two macro-variables that can be manipulated but not fully controlled by policymakers. My approach contrasts with theories in which the focus continues to be on power, notwithstanding a departure from the inflexible realism of the past. Joseph Nye talks about "soft" and "hard" power, but power nonetheless. An analyst to the left - Walter Russell Mead - has written about "sharp," "sticky," and "sweet" power. These evocative typologies identify commonsense attributes of states - an ability to affect behavior of others subtly via culture, ideas, messages, and preferences that bend others' behavior. Yet, their focus remains on the purposeful conversion of diffuse capacities into instruments of influence, and thus power.

Neo-conservative apologies for the world's antipathy towards the United States, and specifically the U.S.-European distancing since 2001, are numerous. Robert Kagan, perhaps, was the most popularized of these - reducing foreign policy debates and cultural divides to merely a difference in power: American is powerful, Europe is weak. This simplistic notion, offered in a very short book, was sold to countless people susceptible to uncomplicated explanations of discomfiting events and processes.

My argument is not, nor should it be, as straightforward. Instead, capacity does not power qua military force or economic output. Rather, as I have used the term, capacities are often latent and diffused resources linked to security only insofar as one obtains a balance between threats and capacities. Demonstrating that these capacities are fashioned as overwhelming instruments of power will not ensure security.

ALTERNATIVES

As a consequence of this outlook, I see two fundamental security alternatives for policymakers. The real world exhibits neither as ideal types; rather, security strategy tends to interweave elements of both, to a greater or lesser degree. For heuristic purposes, however, two starkly different strategic paths can be identified. First, one can identify a capacity-driven security strategy characterized by aggressive interactions, social orthodoxy, and a high devotion to developing instruments of strength. A strategy driven by capacities is one in which the morality of one's own action is paramount, and where one's behavior is said to embody some higher authority.

For states, a capacity-driven strategy leads to interventions, a global policeman role, the construction of rapid reaction forces and, ultimately, a doctrine of pre-emption. Great powers are the most frequent adherents of a strategy of capacity; yet, small countries can do the same. Israel is a case in point - where the ability to effect devastating retribution is given proportionately far greater emphasis than reducing the probability of attack.

"Threat abatement," by sharp contrast, pursues security primarily via collaborative diplomacy. Strength, while not ignored, is but one tool among many - and not the means of first resort. Threat abatement accepts both social pluralism and moral relativism. A security strategy that emphasizes threat abatement regards peacekeeping not as post-conflict battlefield policing, but as armed and unarmed deployments to keep the peace when there's a peace to keep. Of course, robust peacekeeping requires a commitment to early warning mechanisms, ensuring that one can act before violent conflict emerges. And, where peacekeeping fails, a threat abatement strategy relies first on multilateral sanctions and collective means.

In the world of policymaking, neither of these security strategies exists alone. Political actors in a large, aggressive dictatorship will invariably resort to raw capacities far more quickly than small, passive democracies. Yet, security for individuals, groups, or states requires the use of both strategies - ensuring a dynamic balance between threats and capacities.

The relentless pursuit of capacities that exceed all perceived adversaries is the genesis of a security dilemma - a phenomenon long-noted by students of international relations. Seeking complete, total and permanent security itself produces threat. Massive capacity that exceeds anyone else creates the imbalance that inexorably leads to others' efforts to counter-balance through an arms race (as we saw in the Cold War), or through asymmetric responses as we increasingly have witnessed in the past couple decades. The techniques of today's terrorists and "rogue states" are asymmetric responses to otherwise overwhelming power. Jihadists and Kim Jong Il cannot be excused, but their behaviors can certainly be explained as they turn whatever they can lay their hands on into weapons to weaken a perceived enemy that they cannot otherwise defeat.

THREATS, CAPACITY, and DEFEAT

But, the greatest peril of a capacity-driven security strategy lies in its affinity with defeat.

Prosaically defined, defeat is being compelled to act to one's own detriment. Defeat requires no opponent; it lies within. Defeat, in my view, becomes more likely as the dependence on the development of power from capacities increases. A compulsion to convert capacities to power - more weapons, faster growth, physical perfection - is a harbinger of defeat because of the traits with which it is fully intertwined: ignorance, arrogance, paranoia and greed.

A capacity-driven security strategy enforces an approach to international relations that suggests we do not have to know anything about the rest of the world because we can dominate it. Those with overwhelming force at their disposal do not pause to learn of their own ignorance of warlords, ethnic and religious divisions, and cultural identities that certainly will complicate and resist domination.

The same capacity-driven strategy tends to generate arrogance: Arrogant power is debilitating, as it suggests that those with power are powerful because they deserve to be. Might makes right, and force is justified by its possession.

Paranoia is the irrational fear of others and is quite distinct from a rational fear - the latter present when there is incontrovertible evidence of imminent threat. Assumptions that threat exists, and the willingness to construct evidence to support such irrational fear, go hand in hand.

And, a fourth trait that pre-ordains self-defeat is greed - when the use of power is employed to enhance the private benefits or well-being of certain acquaintances of those in power.

Security sought through capacities alone is a path towards self-defeat. Ignoring that threat-abatement and capacity enhancement must be simultaneous tools promotes and exacerbates ignorance, arrogance, paranoia and greed. The powerful do, indeed, fall on their own swords, relentlessly seeking security in ways that erode trust, alienate friends, and foster desperate acts by enemies.

Battlefield victories and triumph over others' armies can be obtained by the powerful. But, if propelled by ignorance, arrogance, paranoia and greed, such victories almost inevitably will turn into agonizing defeats.

LESSONS?

For all that they may intervene in far flung corners of the world, rattle their sabers, or throw around their economic weight, powerful actors are neither very strong nor very secure. Some have far greater capacities than others. But their insecurity derives less from having too few capacities than from a failure to abate threats. Transfixed by the flamboyance of their militaries on parade, or compelled to advocate economic growth and territorial control, rulers still push the same old buttons of power no matter whether they work or not.

And they do not work well at all. In large, muscle-bound states, the state itself may be weak, i.e., lack sociopolitical cohesion. In that condition, trying to push the buttons of power may precipitate a performance crisis from which a regime, government and system will not recover. But, even a strong state that is also well-endowed with the accouterments of industry and armies, has no guarantee of security.

A few years ago, it might have been possible to tell a weak state from a strong state based largely on the degree of sociopolitical cohesion. But, just as the capacities of such modern, complex states to control society and to extract labor or material from it had risen to unprecedented levels, the "security agenda" (Barry Buzan's term referring to the scope and inclusiveness of matters linked to a state's overall security) expands once again, ratcheting up the threshold of threats. The Soviet Union had the world's largest nuclear arsenal, but rotted from within - a weak state with huge military and industrial capacities that were irrelevant or counterproductive to its political survival. Or, to put it another way, the security of such a system rested on the amount of threat within itself, not its accumulation of military-industrial muscle.

By comparison, the United States is still in the business of global leadership and acts like the sole remaining "superpower." But the victor of the Cold War and guardian of the world's freedom for almost fifty years confronts defeat in Iraq, cannot pay for its foreign policy establishment, is unable to slow or much less halt the drug trade, remains at the pinnacle of murders per capita among advanced industrial countries, and mutely accepts social stratification that excludes tens of millions from health care and educational opportunities. Perhaps the United States is a strong state relative to others, but the direction of its internal evolution might be questioned even by the most ardent patriot.

Externally, the stronger the state, the more it is likely to be engaged elsewhere and thus become enmeshed in tensions, disputes or conflicts. And, because strong states are not necessarily democratic, the potential for bellicosity is high. In other words, strong states may not be good news for security - their's or their neighbors.

When the strength of the strongest actors wanes, there is still no good news. Hemorrhaging political legitimacy, ebbing social cohesion, faltering economic momentum, or a combination of these deadly ills for states, can be harbingers of conflicts, cold or hot. The potential for violent conflict between the largest, most well-endowed states may increase not when Great Powers cease to be great but when leaders of principal states fear that their domain may soon become less great. When a loss of capacity can be foreseen or inferred, e.g., due to the diminished availability of resources such as energy supplies, water, lines of commerce, etc., confrontations and military clashes are more, not less, likely. Where oil and gas are available or anticipated - in the Caspian Sea or South China Sea, for example - Russia, China, the U.S. and clients in those regions may confront each other.

The genesis of rivalries among the largest powers stems, in part, from ebbing power or from the increasing irrelevancy of some kinds of capacities. When perceived, such a trend can prompt desperate last stands to protect control over essential resources. From such a cornered-animal psychology, we have little protection.

Insecurity follows from an inability to use resources that states typically accumulate - wealth, military assets, cultural influence, diplomatic skills - to address threats of the new millennium. Capacities that states garner are fungible when threats are unequivocal and univariate (i.e. primarily and consistently of one type). When capacities can be mobilized and targeted at one kind or source of threat, its effects can be deterred or defeated. But the convenient image of a "communist menace" emanating from one command post in the Kremlin is long past.

States or associations of states discussed above have done well at utilizing capacities to create large armies, extract resources to foster extensive (bigger if not more efficient) economic growth, and mobilize society through hierarchy or coercion. They do much less well, or ignore completely, the mitigation of internal or external peril through negotiation, arbitration, the redistribution of material or political resources, confidence-building, and peacekeeping.

Because states are capacity-driven, relations between and among the most powerful will have less and less to do with twenty-first century security. Indeed, states may get in the way. Were the United States and other principal states to plan military forces and economic development into the 21st century thinking only of worst-case scenarios, then we are likely to get the international environment for which we plan. When states persist in utilizing capacities as resources for power projection, the global environment responds as other actors restructure their capacities in similar fashion. By shunning the international system's interactive character, we may be blinding ourselves to promising insights regarding how capacity-driven policies "construct" threats which, if not thought to be balanced by further capacities, generate dangerous behavioral consequences.

Balancing threats and capacities will not soon be done without states. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to do it with them. More and more, states are the harbingers of global insecurity, whether "rogue" actors or Great Powers. For supranational and subnational agents to pursue peace and prosperity, getting around the obstacle of states that traffick in arms, harbor criminals, enlarge inequalities, or suppress expression has become a raison d'etre.

Left to their own devices, states conduct bilateral relations, and form associations or alliances based on balance of power machinations among territorially-defined sovereign actors - a calculus offering counter-threat to deter and defeat, not a path to avoid conflict. States using power, guided in a vague fashion by presumed national interests, lurch toward an illusive security, trying to accumulate the capacities they know best. And, as they do so, the biggest and most capacity-endowed states inexorably generate security dilemmas for the next generation; as the ratio of threats to capacities falls, what had seemed a chimera of security for one becomes a harbinger of threat for others. The more one actor stockpiles capacities, the more neighbors will begin to exhibit "security envy."

Opportunities and solutions lie elsewhere - with shared resources and inclusive institutions to confront global problems. Balancing threats and capacities, not ensuring that one's own strengths exceed all adversaries, is a twenty-first century route to the next century's security challenges. No longer utopian, but urgent and pragmatic, this wider security perspective for the twenty-first century may allow states to retain a place in the quest for a balance between threats and capacities by becoming agents of threat-abatement instead of capacity enhancement. But, to do so, there's much to be learned and few signs that we are ready to begin.

Dr. Daniel N. Nelson is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and President of Global Concepts & Communications, Inc.