​​​​Corina Dragotescu​

   When I started the International Security Studies (ISS) program I thought, like many other people, that the international security concerns only the elites, and means mostly those aspects related to the violent conflicts, or what is called the binomial “peace-war”. The ISS program taught me that Security is a multidimensional issue that applies to every citizen from any country. Moreover, I have discovered that the climate changes and the terrorist acts can equally be threats to the international security, even if usually people perceive only one of them like being a real danger. Some of these threats may appear in unexpected forms. Sometimes the battle for fresh water, or for land, transforms resources in a weapon. Globalization changed the way in which people react or gain support on different causes and the governments must find the right answer for what seems to be a constant battle between good and evil, in more and more fluid situations The most interesting thing is that the governments themselves can become factors of destabilization when the democracy is not consolidated. Equally, a democracy itself may have a diffusion effect. This effect is amplified by new technological developments where the information broke any physical limits or censorship. The boundary line in this battle is never easy to find, and the ISS program explores and explains all these aspects. What I particularly liked was that new courses were added during the semesters, which opened another window to knowledge. The program is dynamic and well connected with the new geopolitical evolutions. My goal in this program was to open my horizon about the topic of International Security for a better understanding of International Relations.

 

   I grouped some of the courses in pairs, like in a mirror: Democracy and Peace (Pol 528A) and Comparing US and EU Democracy Promotion Policy in the MENA Region (Pol 559A); Strategic Nonviolent Conflict (Pol 516A) and How Terrorism Ends (Pol 520A); Emerging Powers in the Global System (Pol 567A) and Natural Resources and International Security in Latin America (Pol 562A); American Foreign Policy (Pol 555) and Media and International Affairs (Pol 553A). Finally I added a course which I believed that it should have been the starting point of the program, Security, Evolution of a Concept (Pol 561A), but unfortunately was among the last courses I took.

 

   The main finding for me, in Security Evolution of Concept (Pol 561 A) was that Security is more than a concept and it is actually a fact of life. The Security concept changed during the time from the classical war-peace approach, to a more humanized one with human rights as part of security concept. If we speak in terms of aggression, security is no longer just a domestic problem, but an international one. As the course revealed the globalized insurgency redefines the concept of security. The enemy is not only in the battlefield, it might be anywhere. The modern concept of Security has its origins in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted after World War II. All the states needed to comply with the Declaration for assuring the human rights between their borders, as an immediate imperative of stability. What is not working in a state from the human right perspective can become a threat for another state. These days we witness the Syrian war case when the mass migration is a direct consequence of the violation of the Human Right Declaration and the International Humanitarian Laws. I think that the 28th article of Human Right Declaration is the foundation for the modern security concept: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized” (UN website). Anything or anybody that shakes this foundation stone is a threat to security. “Peace, security, development and human rights are foundation of fair and stable society” (UNDP website).

 

   From this point of view, which offers us a different perspective on Security as a modern concept, we can observe that democracy and peace are fundamental conditions in assuring the International Security.

The course Democracy and Peace (Pol 528A) identified the link between these two components, democracy and peace. The questions are not if democracy is the only solution for peace, but how can it be spread. Can democracy be imposed? Is it an imposed democracy durable, or not? And what kinds of actions are better for consolidating a democracy? The interesting problem is that even if we talk about democracy which seems to be the one of the oldest concept in the world, there is not an universally accepted definition: “democracy itself is not a coherent ideology - it sets forth a value system, but not one that supports specific socio-economic and political program” (Ottaway, 43). The literature which we studied in this course pointed that there are some basic elements which shape the democracies: free election, free competition and accountability, and they are interrelated. For example free elections are just a condition, but they alone don’t assure a democracy in a state. The pair course which I related with, Promoting Democracy in MENA (Pol 559A) sustained with examples what I learned, because I had an academic overview about the outcome of the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, the free election in MENA did not lead to democracies at the first moment, or even not at all. The lack of accountability from the elected people to their citizens and especially the absence of the rule of law led to more instability. There is a main debate around the democracy construction expressed through gradualism and sequencing theories. One, the sequencing assumes that democratic institutions are preconditions for a democracy, the other one says that the institutions must be built at the same time with other components of a democracy. Other way the democracy itself would be on hold: “Democratic gradualism is different from sequencing (...) It involves reaching for the core element now, but doing so in iterative and cumulative ways rather than all at once” (Carothers, 25).

 

   All these debates reflect the different styles of foreign policies and different approaches in promoting democracy. Comparing US and EU Democracy Promotion Policy in the MENA Region (Pol 559A) gives us answers about the differences between US and EU even these two political actors have the longest democratic history and shared values. The literature finding is that US “is commonly perceived as “pushing” democracy and that EU is smoother in democracy promotion. EU has as main instruments the enlargement process, trade and European Neighborhood Policy, or as it is named the “stick and carrots”. The US instruments in “pushing” democracy are the trade, military intervention and development aid. Actually, the US promotes democracy more through coercion and EU through conditionality. The course analyzed the countries from MENA space, but overall is about the methods and the outcome of imposed democracies. The Democracy and Peace course (Pol 528A) taught us that “imposed democracy are often imposed under suboptimal structural conditions for their survival” (Greig & Enterline, 169) and also that domestic environment is extremely important, including the “collective memories” because a prior history of democracy may be the foundation for a future one. The main role belongs to the civil society and “promoting civil society development is key to democracy building” (Carothers and Ottaway, 4).

 

   A well-structured and active civil society leads to the civil resistance acting as a social resonance membrane. The Strategic Nonviolent Conflict (Pol 516A) course explains how the civil resistance works, what are the conditions in which they occur, the internal dynamic and the results. A part of course describes that the International support for some groups in civil movements may lead to success or failure. Broadly, we can speak about civil resistance when groups of people, at least 1000, are involved and they are using tactics outside of conventional political process. The largest civil movements occur rather in non-democratic regimes, or in those ones where there is a fracture between government and citizens. What is important for a non-violent movement is the mass participation based on micro foundation and diversity. The most important condition for a successful nonviolent movement is the formation of Social Movement Organization (SMO). According to McCharty & Zald the SMO role is to structure the movement. Overall the scholars are agree that “nonviolent resistance campaigns are more effective in getting results and, once they have succeeded, more likely to establish democratic regimes” (Chenoweth & Stephan, 10). For me it would be very interesting to watch what will happen with China and Cuba and in the aftermath of Arab Spring, looking through the lens of non-violent campaign and transition for democracy.

​

   At the opposite side, as an extreme tool is the terrorism which uses violence and other tactics outside of political process, with different purpose: ”Contemporary terrorism tends to spring from a strategy of mobilization (…) Mobilization of disparate audiences provides the best opportunity for terrorism to delegitimize the most advanced nation-state” (Cronin, 201). Even if there is more than actual there is not an accepted definition of the terrorism. Anyway, the most definitions based on factual studies pointed that violence against innocent civilians, for spreading fear, is a major characteristic. Harmon Christopher offers an accepted definition of terrorism: “Terrorism is the deliberate murder maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends. This definition applies to both domestic and international terrorism” (Harmon, 2). We notice that the embedded points in the accepted definition are the use of violence, the intention of spreading fear and political objectives. What is also generally accepted is that the target groups are always noncombatant groups and that the terrorists are non-state actors. Sometimes they may become state actors with international recognition as it was in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) case. As a mind exercise the How Terrorism Ends (Pol 520A) course is very challenging because it makes you think from the end to beginning. Basically, using some patterns you need to make a projection of the end, for finding the best counterterrorism strategy for each group. It is also very interesting to learn about the relations of democratic governments with their electorate in their fight against terrorism. There are many nuances and a lot of fine tuning. It is a paradox but the democracies are more vulnerable to terrorism than the autocracies.

 

   The threats which a democracy faces don’t make it less valuable for the states or for International Security. I learned on American Foreign Policy (Pol 555) that the more democracies will be, the more security for American citizens it is. This is the core of promoting democracy and the core of American Foreign Policy. As a person born and raised outside US was very helpful to learn about the American values and how can be these democratic values protected. The US National Security documents helped me to distinguish between two major political currents, starting from the “our 4 P’s” of US Foreign Policy, Power and Peace, Prosperity and Principles. The Bush Doctrine was centered on identifying and destroying the enemy outside the US border: “We fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to arrive in our country” (Bush NSS, 2006). Obama Doctrine was built around the exemplary model, not on the missionary one: “Our strength and influence abroad begins with the steps we take at home (...) Our national strategy begins at home” (Obama NSS, 2010). These two approaches make the difference in using diplomacy as a tool in a World which is still in a transition from bipolar to multipolar power.

 

   In this new context of finding new paths media has an important role in balancing the public opinion with government’s actions. It was really a surprise to find in Media and International Affairs course (Pol 553 A) that US media already experienced what EU media lives today. It is about a triple pressure: from public which seems to be more and more informed through new media, from the media business owners who ask only for profit and from politicians who want unconditional sustain for each and every action. This crises in American media, which is an universal one, was profoundly affected by Bush invasion in Iraq. What happened then is still a wound for media history. On short, after 9/11 nobody had the courage to question the Iraq invasion, so the public was misinformed with fragmented news. The US opposition voices were substituted with foreign voices and the media was one-sided. In terms of coverage, the literature agrees that it was a failure. At the time even the Democratic Party was divided about the Iraq invasion, so they could not gather a critical mass for debate and all these pushed the public away. The media techniques utilized by the governments at the time were very well explained, in the course, which pointed that yellow journalism became the new rule in approaching the information. “Hard times for hard news” (Stacks, 1) is what happens nowadays with media and this affects the voters behavior and the support for the governmental policies. The conclusion is that media must be reinvented as a watchdog of democracy.

 

   This necessity of redefine the media rises the next question about the new emerging power: should be an emerging power always a democracy? The study of Emerging Power in a Global System (Pol 567A) focused on two countries India and China and offered us opposite example. China is a huge economic power without democracy and India is a democracy, a space opened to other cultures, and an economic power. The main finding for me was that even India started slow with political tumultuous on the path of economic growth, the democratic past experience helped it to be steady on this road without shocks. Meanwhile China must face not only the requirements given by the rapid economic expansion but also the internal pressures for democratization. This means that in China’s case every change in the political system will have some effects in the economic field. My works have focused on China because it has much more internal adjustments and challenges than India. China partially changed its economic system moving from a centralized communist economy to a free market, still controlled, and tries to handle the pressure of the middle-class which rose from this economic growth and now has claims related to human rights. China does not seem ready to offer these, yet. For China feeding its population first, was more important than giving them the right to free elections. Even so the government was pressed to relax some of the internal interdiction, like free movement or having the second child.

 

   For me, Natural Resources and International Security in Latin America (Pol 562A) is linked to Emerging powers, because the history of Latin America is related to democracies and autocracies at the same time. The multiple crises which Latin America faced helped us to understand that International Security depends to a large extent on the governments’ capacity to secure the access to critical resources. Water, Land, mineral and oil resources are at the same time a security provider and a threat. The “resources curse” can bring the economy into crisis through an unbalanced development (Dutch diseases) and therefore may lead to social instability. In Latin America the basic human rights, like right to water or sanity are in some places almost absent and the citizen participation in the governance is weak. Basically, the renter states which have enough financial resources don’t need the citizens’ taxes and that broke the linkage between them. The accountability is almost nonexistent. The big challenge for Latin America is to maintain the market economy, which was imposed by IMF after the crises hit the continent, and assure the well-being to its population.

 

   The International Security Studies program was for me like a breath of fresh air at a time when I did not know how I could further grow professionally. I changed my perspective on external events, and I realized that what was happening on the other side of the world could affect me directly. The fact that I took courses on different areas of geopolitical interest helped me to open a new approach, more coherent and sustained by solid arguments. For me, sometimes, is vital to understand and make a projection on an event in less than 5 minutes and ISS also helped me with that. To be there, in the front seat of the news, means many, many, study hours, sometime years, in order to keep up the knowledge standard. I need to be able to explain in a nonacademic language all that I learned, for a more accurate analyses delivered to the public. It was a program that strengthened me as a political analyst and through it I discovered the love of learning in an academic way.

 

 

Work Cited

• Bush - National Security Strategy, 2006, retrieved from US Department of State http://2001-2009.state.gov

• Carothers Thomas, 2007, «The “Sequencing” Fallacy», Journal of Democracy Volume 18, Number 1, pp. 12-27

• Carothers Thomas and Ottaway Marina 2000, The Burgeoning World of Civil Society Aid

• Chenoweth Erica & Stephan Maria, 2013, Why Civil resistance Works, Columbia University Press, print edition

• Cronin Audrey, 2009, How Terrorism Ends, Princeton University Press

• Greig J. Michael & Enterline Andrew J. (2014), The Durability of Imposed Democracy, International Interactions, 40:2, 166-190

• Harmon, Christopher. 1992, “Terrorism: A Matter for Moral Judgement”, Terrorism and Political Violence 4(1): 1-21.

• McCarthy John and R. Zald Mayer, 1977, Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory, American Journal of Sociology

• Obama - National Security Strategy, 2010, retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov

• Ottaway Marina, Ideological Challenges to democracy, retrieved from UofA

• Stacks John, 2003, Hard Times for Hard News: A Clinical Look at US Foreign Coverage, Sage publications, World Policy Journal, Vol 20, No4, Winter 2003/2004, pp12-21

• UN, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, retrieved from http://www.un.org

• UNDP, Press Release, May 28, 2015, retrieved from http://www.undp.org