Security: Individuals and Leviathans

What is human security and how does it fit in the current world order? The United Nations (UN) proposed human security in 1994 at the end of the Cold War. The approach makes the individual the primary referent of security, a dramatic shift from what it had been previously, especially during the Cold War: the state. This paper demonstrates that human security resembles Western liberal notions of governance. In Western liberal tradition, individuals cause the state to exist for each of their several basic needs and interests, which constitutes a relationship between a state and its people. Human security is a UN prescription for governing constructively on behalf of the interests and needs of people.\nThe research method is qualitative. The line of approach begins with Western political traditions of security and governance then focuses on security thought and practice during the Cold War. The paper operates on a Western history assumption: security requires a leviathan, an enforcer. The paper then considers the different world orders that have been established by Western nations, from the Treaty of Westphalia to the UN, suggesting these have been inadequate leviathans, unable to enforce their specific principles on their own. However, member nations in each of the world orders enforced the principles as they understood them and sometimes succeeded in maintaining that order. Case studies finish the paper and examine how humans and nations behave at their respective levels of security: from individuals coalescing into a state in Jamestown to states organizing into the Congress of Vienna. The upshot of the 1975 Helsinki Accords is considered for its effect on the Cold War and how human rights unraveled the might of the Soviet bloc. The final case study examines how the U.S. and like minded nations are behaving currently on the world stage.\nThe argument converges on how the United States (U.S.) and other liberal Western nations are enforcing liberal notions of governance in many places around the globe. These nations are currently behaving as a de facto leviathan when and where they can, especially with regard to protecting individuals from organized violence, an important tenet of human security. This behavior became possible when the Cold War ended. The prime superpower and like minded nations are currently operating in a relatively permissive environment in accordance with their liberal political traditions. However, as the world becomes more multipolar, these Western liberal nations are likely to be restrained from being the leviathan. The paper concludes with questions: without a de facto leviathan, what will happen to the concept of human security and to international security?\n