ABSTRACT
The varieties of international security have expanded enormously over the last two decades. We now hear reference to many types of security, including economic, food, health, environmental, political, maritime and energy. It would seem that security can be preceded by virtually any subject on the political agenda. There are two characteristics of the term ‘security’ that impact considerably on the political use of the word as a key organizing concept. First, security is a state of being that would be difficult to attain fully. How could a person or society ever claim to be 100 per cent secure? This leads to a second characteristic of the term as it is used in contemporary Western political discourse: security is regarded as an unequivocally good thing, an ideal to which to aspire. This might sound too obvious to be worth mentioning until one realizes that it need not necessarily be the case. A sixteenth-century sermon referred to people as ‘drowned in sinnefulle securitie’,1 while Shakespeare described security as ‘Mortals cheefest Enemie’.2 Security is, then, something to which many people and governments aspire but which, mercifully according to Shakespeare at any rate, none can ever fully attain.
