ABSTRACT
This chapter examines conflict and cooperation in their relationship to Physical Quality of Life. The Tranquility Index, reflecting cooperative and conflictive behavior, was drawn from Professor Edward Azar's Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB). COPDAB is an extensive, computer-based library of longitudinal daily international and domestic events/interactions. The complexity and ambiguity of national security make difficult an assessment that captures all aspects and dimensions of it—the behavioral aspect, the structural aspect, the objective dimension, the subjective dimension, and the interrelations among these aspects and dimensions. Consequently, for any national security policy to be successful and effective it has to encompass both the domestic and external elements of threat. Domestically, it has to advocate strongly democratizing political and social relations for the country, or security will be at risk. The criterion by which the selection of the actors was made is their identity as non-European Third World countries.
