A more comprehensive security policy for RI

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.