A more comprehensive security policy for RI

Anak Agung Banyu Perwita, Bandung

For Indonesia, like any other nations of the Third World, national security poses a serious dilemma. Unlike developed countries, developing countries must balance the complex and often contradictory requirements of socioeconomic and political development with problems of internal stability and the requirements of national defense.

For these countries, a concept of national security that focuses primarily on the international threat system and its overt manifestations of wars and violence, ignoring domestic well-being, is inadequate on conceptual, policy and pragmatic grounds.

The outbreak of separatism, the fear of terrorism and at the same time, the dramatic rise in cases of child malnutrition in Indonesia are clear examples of the complex security problems that Indonesia has to deal with today. The need to have capability to counter all these kinds of non-traditional security threats will, then, depend on the capability to define what security is all about.

In today's international relations, threats to security are not only military in nature, but it also include non-military threats such as transnational organized crimes, environmental degradation, cultural erosion, terrorism, food and health problems.

Further, the changing security environment also has five dimensions in the concept of security, namely: The origin of threats from external to domestic and from state to global, the nature of threats from military to non-military threats, and the changing response from military only to non-military means. Two other factors are the changing responsibility for security from states to also include non-states, and the core values of security from national to global and from state to individual (Benjamin Miller, 2001).

In other words, the broader meaning of security will cover a set of aspects: from an exclusive focus on territorial security to a greater emphasis on human security, and from security through armaments to security through sustainable human development.

UNDP, in its report Human Development Report (1994), has identified seven dimensions of human security that should be included in security policy, such as economic security (e.g. freedom from poverty), food security and political security.

The above report show how such dimensions are interrelated and if one dimension is not addressed appropriately, another is bound to be affected. The low economic security of the majority of Indonesian people generally results in low food and health security as we have witnessed today.

As a result, a national security strategy should include all strands of the wider security issues and clearly articulate objectives and priorities of more comprehensive national security interests. A holistic understanding of all aspects of security then becomes the national security imperatives for Indonesia.

The first imperative is that the successful national security strategies and policies in the global era require much closer coordination between the political, economic, law enforcement, health and environmental policymaking actors in Indonesia. It will not involve only governmental agencies but also non- governmental organizations and academicians.

The second imperative will involve the non-military instruments of domestic and foreign policy. This requires more robust funding to achieve key national policy goals and work in a much better balance with military institutions. It is not merely focused on the use of military power as an instrument of policy but incorporated with other non-military means to achieve comprehensive security. The combination of policy instruments is needed to counter the various types of threats and the nature of threats.

The last imperative will involve the growing new awareness of every policy makers in local, regional and national level to the historical, cultural, religious, environmental, technological and other aspects of domestic and world affairs than they have been to date. This is mainly because national security policy has, at least, two important dimensions: Physical and psychological.

To conclude, a more comprehensive national security policy deals with all security problems faced by a nation-state, the policies and programs and also the governmental processes through which the policies and programs are decided upon and carried out. To borrow the words of political analyst Rizal Sukma, a more comprehensive national security policy will include democracy, development, diplomacy and defense (or the 4D's) in a more systematic way, and more sustainable.

This is mainly due to the fact that the ultimate goal of a comprehensive national security policy is to protect the vital core of Indonesian lives, which addresses political, social, environmental, economic, military and cultural values and to provide Indonesian people with the building blocks of national survival, livelihood and dignity. This will also mean that our national security policy will be more integrated and proactive than defensive and reactive.

The writer is the dean of the school of Social and Political Sciences at Parahyangan Catholic University in Bandung.