The events of 9-11 brought home to Americans the startling degree of security they had been experiencing - by making clear that such security might never be theirs again. In the wake of 9-11, many Americans have been willing to sacrifice privacy and other rights, expend tens of billions of dollars, and make war on countries across the globe - in order to ensure a level of security at home that may not be objectively possible.
But despite the incalculable damage done by the terrorists, questions of security should be seen through an even larger lens. If we are willing to erode civil liberties, the national budget, and relationships with other nations over the question of security, then we should be willing to examine what truly comprises our future security, and how those things are endangered.
This section addresses many of the aspects that, in an uncertain world, comprise "security". Are we secure if we have no water? If our children are uneducated? If the health of ecosystems like rivers, oceans, fisheries and forests are threatened? If wars in distant countries cause massive migration, disease, and political instability? Is it possible to maintain "security" in political or economic systems perverted by black markets or corporate malfeasance?
How can we maintain infrastructures of trade, travel and tourism, if many parts of the world are sources of untreated, poverty-supported disease? On an increasingly connected planet, can we make individual parts of it "secure" while the rest becomes increasingly unstable? And if highly motivated terrorists use low-tech methods like box-cutters and hijackings, what good are missile-shields and massive security forces, unless in their use they destroy the quality of life we wish to protect?
We live in a complex system that has never been seen before in its dimensions, interactions, and sheer scale. A system where interactions of politics, economies, ecologies, human nature, and survival exist in an explosive and unpredictable amalgamation. Could it be that real security lies, first, in understanding these interactions and ourselves, and secondly, through that understanding, correctly assessing and predicting risks...understanding as the basis of a genuine and sustainable security?
These pages do not pretend to lay out all the connections between system interactions that will determine both our future course and our security or lack of it. What they do is to touch on some of the many real facets of security that should be considered in the larger picture of where we place resources, how we address differences, and what priorities we set for the future. These and more will shape the world we will live in, secure or not.
© 2002 v1.0 Valerie Gremillion
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