Photo Credit: Eric Morse of RCMI
On Oct. 15, Dr. Greg MacCallion of Australian National University discussed his new book National Versus Human Security: Australian and Canadian Military Interventions, at a book launch sponsored by the Graham Centre and the Royal Canadian Military Institute.
He opened with the observation that the term “human security” has been criticized since its inception as too amorphous in nature for an operational concept. Critics argue that making the security of every individual the object of our concern is to paralyse policymakers’ ability to set priorities. Moreover, when he began his research into human security, he was told that the concept was dead, because no state employed it as part of its declaratory foreign or defence policy.
What MacCallion found was more complicated. In his research into recent Australian and Canadian military interventions, he found, for example, that Australian and Canadian forces in Afghanistan were involved not only in military operations, but also in a range of non-military activities, such as constructing schools, medical centres, or waste facilities. Yet when he asked military, political, diplomatic, political, and development representatives if they were doing human security, the answers were negative. Their primary concern was security from military threats, but they acknowledged a practical need to pay attention to non-military threats to the security of the population.
Key interviewees acknowledged the limitations of traditional national security approaches; that human security was a necessary though insufficient condition for mission success; and that human security was a reflection of their national values. Their efforts demonstrate that prioritising the security of individuals through non-military means can be developed in the field during military interventions, without prior policy direction. Once human security was evident in the implementation phase, both governments increasingly used human security justifications in their declaratory policies. “Human security is dead,” MacCallion concluded. “But long live human security.”
Because MacCallion is an employee of the Australian Ministry of Defence, he cautioned that he spoke in a purely personal capacity, and that nothing he said reflected the official position of the Australian Government.