ABSTRACT
This chapter examines four alternative referent objects of security: the nation-state; international society; people; and ecosystems. It notes the ethical assumptions, upon which these discourses are based, their prominence in contemporary political practice and international relations thought, and their ethical assumptions and implications. The chapter suggests the imperative of defending a choice of referent object on ethical grounds, while arguing that the ethics of defining security also is determined by the politics of securitisation and the pragmatic possibilities of particular security discourses being articulated and embraced in practice. It suggest, it is difficult if not impossible to assess the moral implications of securitisation without linking such dynamics to the referent defined as being in need of preservation. Despite this, attempts to engage directly with the meaning and scope of security in International Relations in the waning years of the Cold War demonstrated little attention to the question of whose security was under consideration.
