#10 The Concept of National Security (ym)

     According to The Report of the Commission of Human Security by United Nations published in 2003, stated that "[human security] means using processes that build on people's strengths and aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military, cultural system that together the people's building blocks of survival." Therefore, I think "human (national) security" can mean anything, and anything can be a security issue. The statement above indicates that environmental and cultural problems are also being the part of securing a country, and security also means that the culture in a country is not destroyed. Therefore, I can conclude that "human security is not a concern with weapons, but it is a concern with human life and dignity." Taking an environmental issue as an example. there is a possibility that people are migrating to a country because of natural disasters. This will affect the stability and security of a country.

     However, if the countries want to protect the basis of the country's security (in terms of preventing invasion etc...), then we should have a narrower definition of "national security". It is true that both the National Security Strategy and NSC-68 used broader definition of "national security", and that is probably because the Untied States is trying to include the citizens to agree in these documents and to unify the country. Also, during the class on Monday, we have concluded that the definition of security is examplanding as time passes (publication dates for the National Security Strategy), and it has been expanding from a military perspective to basically everything. One of the reasons for this expansion, is because of the advance in technology and the increased scale of international space (i.e. cyber space etc...).

     During the class on Monday when the other blog groups were reading the board, I was reading the National Security Strategy of Japan and comparing the two contexts. It was obvious that both the Untied States and the Japanese National Security Strategy defined "national security" broadly. However, some of the comparison and interesting points were that the Japanese document mentioned the "U.S.-Japan alliance" as their second key strategy to secure their country. Rather than mentioning he military aspects, "national security" for the Japanese was to have enough skills to effectively analyze the international society and also having improvements in technology in such fields like economics and defenses.

     Therefore, overall, I agree to Wolfers argument of "national security" can mean whatever one wants it to mean, and in principle to anything can be an issue of national security. I really hope we can compare the National Security Strategy between different countries (with good translations, of course). It was fun personally comparing the content between the United States and Japan...!☺️