INDUSTRY
Why do we need a National Security Journal? This month Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies launches its new National Security Journal, a six-monthly publication featuring contributions from researchers and practitioners. CDSS’ Dr John Battersby explains why the time is right. National Security has always been a domain in which the state has exerted dominance, primarily because a fundamental purpose of the state is to defend itself and its component parts from emerging threats which are bigger than all of us, and which individually we are unable to confront.
This has not meant that the state owns national security exclusively, in fact, quite the opposite. Pre-European New Zealanders did not separate military or civilian spheres, or security from non-security endeavour and Maori people contributed equally to production and protection as needs dictated. New Zealand settler society relied on the British Army for broader-based international security, but it also relied heavily on settler populations for closer security, reflected in the Volunteer and Militia Acts, Volunteer fire brigades and civilian based police forces that emerged in the nineteenth century. In the latter part of the New Zealand Wars, settler and Maori contingents were both contributing to various colonial forces units. New Zealand’s parttime ‘territorial army’ was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century anticipating ‘whole of society’ involvement in security was likely to remain and increase. In the first half of the twentieth century massive security crises were presented by World Wars I and II, and saw the harnessing of entire populations into war efforts not just militarily by conscription, but economically and socially as well. ‘Total war’ required
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‘total effort’ from across society and everything was aligned to the war efforts. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, New Zealand was still drawing out of its population for J-Force in Japan, and K-Force in Korea, as well as running a national compulsory military training programme – selecting men by ballot preparing an augmented infantry division in case of war with the Soviet Union. As the Cold War developed, New Zealand governments opted for smaller professional contributions to limited wars used as vents for the greater East/ West ideological struggle. Governments around the world monopolised information collection and supply, and refined secret services to obtain intelligence above and beyond what ordinary people could see. Intelligence operations - ‘covert ops’ – the longstanding quiet tool of foreign policy – became a well-used lynchpin of many states seeking to avoid public scrutiny of national security activity. Ordinary people were locked out, and components of the private sector were invited in only if needs absolutely dictated. The Cold War defined most of our security sector, military and intelligence infrastructure for a generation. In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, and the Cold War thawed into a hot peace. States held together by coercion fell apart in Eastern Europe, capitalist wealth – despite frequent recessions - outgrew the GDP of many smaller states. Mass media and then social media revolutionised information supply and governments progressively lost the monopoly on intelligence. Even outer space is a sandpit for corporates to play in.
Dr John Battersby of Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies.
Globalisation and the cyber world present challenges to the feasibility of aspects of the nation state beyond anything ever encountered before. Finally the relevance of the general population, and of academic, NGO and private sectors to national security, has returned to what it was before the Cold War took it away from us. In 2019 national security risks are as great if not greater than the crises of the earlier twentieth century. Global warming, rising sea levels and world population growth pose inter-related risks to us all, which we can all see – the issues, and the potential solutions to them, cannot be hidden behind walls of classified information. Moreover, governments do not have solutions to these problems and will not find them without a broader participation of expert and interested sections of our society. Geo-political pressures continue to develop, Chinese influence in the South
October/November 2019
