A distinct trend in international security in the post-Cold War era is the phenomenal rise of non-traditional threats. In recent years, concept of security has broadened, which envisages threats to an individual; to a community besides dealing with threats to state.

Non-traditional security issues include a variety of topics such as climate change, food security, water, energy security, environment, health, financial instabilities, cyber crime, organized crime, terrorism etc.The concept of security has been even expanding to include economic progress, climate change and good governance.

There is a growing view that issues of environment, development, progress, justice, if not addressed in time, could have security consequences.

In 2004, UN Secretary General’s panel identified a cluster of security issues which went beyond the traditional concept of security. The high level panel drew attention to six clusters of non-traditional security issues including large scale human right abuses, genocide, poverty, infections disease and nuclear radiological, chemical and biological weapons; transnational organized crime etc.

Terrorism: The most pervasive challenge to international stability is the one posed by extremist non-state armed groups and by terrorism. With the trend towards globalization and an increasingly interconnected world, these threats and challenges go beyond state systems. The devastating events of September 11, 2001, in the United States, followed by equally shocking attacks in London, Madrid and Delhi, and the carnage in Mumbai 26/11, have starkly underscored terrorism’s global reach and its capability to infringe upon a state’s sovereignty and integrity. The classic cases of terrorism involve hijacking planes or planting bombs in trains, cafes, markets and other crowded places. In the past, most of the terror attacks have occurred in the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and South Asia.

Transnational organized crime operates to a large degree along the models of today’s international businesses. Essentially the same structural evolution in the international community that has accompanied the rapid expansion of a global market, global supply and provision and global distribution has not only benefited international criminal organizations but has helped them to evolve in efficient and profitably ways. In short, criminal organizations are international organizations very much like others. Increased mobility, open exchange arrangements and, not least, the overburdening of customs and international control mechanisms have all contributed to an opening of the horizon of international trade.

The concept of human security emerges from 1994 UNDP Human Development Report which begins with the premise that the large-scale geopolitical conception of security is not adequate. The Cold War model builds upon a fundamental assumption that the wide-ranging threat to the global political order is the most significant threat to the well-being of all individuals. The assumption is not only one of levels, collective versus individual, as is often suggested.

Societal insecurity involves threats to the fundamental make-up of a society. These are aspects such as values, traditions, customs, language, religion, ethnicity, etc. These characteristics of a given group are often referred to as identity. When speaking of societal dimensions of security we thus commonly refer to threats to the identity of a group.

Global poverty is major source of insecurity. Currently, half the world’s population growth occurs in just six countries—India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Among the world’s poorest countries, population is expected to triple in the next 50 years, whereas many rich countries will see population shrinkage in that period. Globally, this disparity contributes to the gap between the Northern and Southern countries of the world. Within the South, disparities have also sharpened, as a few countries have managed to slow down population growth and raise incomes while others have failed to do so. For example, most of the world’s armed conflicts now take place in sub-Saharan Africa, which is also the poorest region of the world. At the turn of the 21st century, more people were being killed in wars in this region than in the rest of the world combined.

Human Rights Issues: Human rights have come to be classified into three types. The first type is political rights such as freedom of speech and assembly. The second type is economic and social rights. The third type is the rights of colonized people or ethnic and indigenous minorities. Since the 1990s, developments such as Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the genocide in Rwanda, and the Indonesian military’s killing of people in East Timor are examples of human rights abuses. These issues have potential to create situations which can create security issues.

Cyber crime is on the increase. Cyber fraud and cyber terrorism is a major threat. US security has implicated a PLA unit in attack on American Corporations.

Energy security: Given the scarcity of energy resources, high energy prices, difficulties of access, transportation and shipping of energy resources, the threat of sabotage, ensuring energy supplies has become a top priority for foreign policy and security establishments. Energy security is linked with maritime security. Today, powerful navies are routinely performing the tasks of protecting sea lanes of communications, against piracy and terror attacks.

The challenge of providing food and water for billions of people is daunting. Climate change, global warming is expected to cause severe draughts & floods affecting agriculture productivity. In any conflict, food, water & energy emerge as salient issues. The idea of water wars may not be accepted as yet, but scarcity of water could lead to migrations with negative consequences. Thus, food and water security are emerging as major issues.

Food and water issues are, in turn, linked with climate change, environment degradation and governance issues. Climate change, regarded as an existential threat in the long term, is being securitized. The projected consequences of climate change such as floods, droughts, sea rise, ice melt and extreme weather events can have serious security implications. For example, the Arctic Sea is melting as a result of which the geo political environment in the region is changing. The quest for hydrocarbons and other resources in the Arctic Sea has intensified. New shipping routes have opened up. India will need to study the impact of Arctic melt-down as its own security & foreign policy.

Migration encompasses security issues along a number of axes. It includes people who move both within and across national boundaries, internal and international migrants respectively. It refers to people moving out of choice and those who are forced to move, and people moving for political, economic, social and environmental reasons, or a combination of these factors. It also includes people at all stages of the migration cycle – from departure through living and settling abroad to return, as well as their experiences en route, for example in transit countries. Like a number of other security challenges, migration-related insecurity increased significantly following the end of the Cold War. And like so many the events of 911 have intensified awareness of and debate about migration. The migrant is more easily construed today as a potential national enemy than earlier, and the subsequent securitization of the migrant and migration in general has had enormous consequences for both individuals and states.  The relationship between security, insecurity and migration is also linked, to greater or lesser degrees, to human and narcotics trafficking, and associated international criminality. It is safe to say that this ‘security- migration nexus’ has since 11 September 2001 served political interests more or less unrelated to actual migration flows. Thus, the effects of security responses to the perceived insecurity of demographic changes stemming from migration are often unintended.

The most important illegal organized activity surrounds the global distribution of narcotics. The illicit drug trade is among the largest industries in the world with the major Columbian cocaine cartels and the Asian opium cartels dominating activities. A correlation has also been made between the production and trafficking of illicit drugs. Human trafficking takes a number of forms. By definition, it involves moving men, women and children from one place to another and placing them in conditions of forced labour. Trafficking of women for the purposes of prostitution is bar the most comprehensive both in terms of numbers of individuals and financial exchange, rivalling the global narcotics and arms trades. The last decade has seen a tremendous increase in the production and trafficking of drugs in and from Afghanistan. In 2007 Afghanistan produced a record 8,200 metric tons of opium, double the total amount of 2005, and accounting for 93 per cent of the world’s entire production of opiates.

Drug profits are a key source of financing that sustains extremism and terrorism. Linked with drug trafficking is the emergence of criminal groups and networks that oversee the safe passage of drugs through Afghanistan and Central Asia to markets in Europe. The link between criminal groups and terrorism is illustrated by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The IMU, both a criminal and terrorist organization, appears primarily concerned with financial gain and successfully used terrorism in the early 2000s to maintain and secure routes for transporting narcotics.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Securing Central Asia’s Borders with Afghanistan, September 2007.  Reconnecting India and Central Asia major export route Afghan opiates.  From these southern Central Asian states, smuggling routes converge on Kazakhstan, which has no less than four main routes through which the drugs reach Russia and Europe. 

The flow of small arms weapons has grown continuously in the last decades to become a worldwide security crisis. Small arms have a number of particular attributes that make them well suited to worldwide proliferation. They are relatively inexpensive, they are easy to maintain, and they are portable.

At the heart of individual security is the notion that a people-centered view of security is not only necessary in ensuring the rights and dignity of the individual, but also in securing national, regional and global stability. In protecting the rights and development of the individual, security can be ensured on a much broader scale. In this respect, health security represents an integral component of individual security and is inextricably linked to the other categories that characterize it – that is, economic, food, environmental, personal, community and political securities.  Other new and poorly understood diseases such as Ebola virus, Hantavirus, and hepatitis C have emerged, while old diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever and cholera have mutated into drug resistant forms that are difficult to treat. Epidemics among animals have major economic effects. Bird flu shut down supplies of poultry exports from several Asian countries. Such epidemics demonstrate the growing interdependence of states making their borders less meaningful than in the past and emphasize the need for international cooperation.

The non-traditional security issues are thus quite diverse in character but still have some commonalities. These reflect the changing nature of crises in the twenty-first century. They are complex, inter-connected and cannot be addressed by any single government.

History demonstrates that many security threats would never have grown into a fully-fledged problem, if they had been identified and addressed at an earlier stage. Today, leaders and societies have to act as early as possible to reduce the probability that risks develop their potential of turning into serious threats for to regional or global security. It is vital to identify potential scenarios where terrorism, insurgency, nuclear proliferation or cyber-attacks could evolve from being abstract and hypothetical menaces into posing real and severe problems — and seeking tangible solutions for prevention.

Dealing with many of these non-traditional threats to security requires cooperation rather than military confrontation. Military force may have a role to play in combating terrorism or in enforcing human rights, but it is difficult to see what force would do to help alleviate poverty, manage migration and refugee movements, and control epidemics. Indeed, in most cases, the use of military force would only make matters worse.

Far more effective is to devise strategies that involve international cooperation. Cooperative security may involve the use of force as a last resort. Cooperation may be bilateral, regional, continental, or global. It would all depend on the nature of the threat and the willingness and ability of countries to respond. Cooperative security may also involve a variety of other players, both international and national—international organisations (the UN, the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, the IMF etc.), nongovernmental organisations

The international community may have to sanction the use of force to deal with governments that kill their own people or ignore the misery of their populations who are devastated by poverty, disease and catastrophe. It may have to agree to the use of violence against international terrorists and those who harbour them. Non-traditional security is much better when the use of force is sanctioned and applied collectively by the international community rather than when an individual country decides to use force on its own.

The response to these challenges must be multi-disciplinary and engage the four main groups of actors: local, national, regional and international.

Local and national agents, such as those dealing with healthcare, education and policing, will need to be strengthened to enhance their capacities of detection and containment when dealing with infectious disease or terrorism, for example.

Porous borders, difficult terrain and increasing migration and the movement of people, arms and ideas require a more cohesive regional approach in Asia that will require innovative cooperative measures to protect national interests.

To that end, it will be important for organizations like UNO, ASEAN and SAARC to strengthen and further develop their internal relationships but also maintain active channels of communication and institutionalize cooperative mechanisms.