Security, The State and Development

The security of a society is directly proportional to the level and quality of freedom the constituents of that society enjoy. Freedom here is not the license, which obtains in a predatory economics of a jungle. To this end, a society becomes secure in direct proportion to the level of freedom it enjoys. The freer a society is, the more secure it is. Where freedom reigns, people are freed from primordial fears like the Hobbessian “fear of violent death”, which gives them the base upon which to work to free themselves from hunger, poverty, ignorance and disease. And this obtains in its fullness only in a democracy. To this end, the security forces or apparatus of any nation could only serve the structures of democracy where true democracy reigns. It is a basic feature of a democracy to bring all the forces within it to serve to its protection and advancement. Not so in other political constructs that ape the Machiavellian utopia, where the Prince only schemes to latch eternally unto power, even if the whole society goes to hell.

Security is the protection of freedom. It is a guarantee of a community’s value and social legitimacy infrastructure from internal erosion or external corrosion consequent upon unwarranted assault. It is never a circumscription of liberty. It is its advancement. Every political metaphysic worth its salt is obliged to construe security as the canonization of freedom. It is the guarantee that what we value and have cause to cherish, are not eroded by the forces or dynamics contrived by caprice, without rhyme, reason or without due recourse to law. It is a defence of freedom.

To this end freedom and security are not mutually exclusive terms or facts. Security either becomes the canonization of liberty, or it is primeval tyranny elevated to the ontological level. Security cannot essay to deny man his fundamental freedoms without losing its essence. In the light of this, the state’s monopoly of violence and its sophisticated apparatus can never be wielded in defence of tyranny, without injuring freedom. This inheres in the fact that the social contract designed and vested this monopoly on the government, not only to enforce compliance with the obligations imposed on it by the social contract; but to guarantee individual liberty, fundamental freedoms and the right to an environment free from let or compulsion; where no one would ever be compelled to live in the shackles of human chameleonic whims.

Security guarantees that we live only within the ambits of the law, and not that of man. It is the rule of law. To that end, Whenever the instruments of security rises to violate the fundamental freedoms that gave it meaning and significance, then it paves way for the enthronement of tyranny. In the theoretic arena of the social contract, society gave up individual right to deploy violence; coagulated them into a political responsibility and vested it on the Leviathan to exercise on behalf of the community. But when a State violates freedom under the pretext of security, it either declines into a tyranny or anarchy. In tyranny, the state stagnates. In anarchy, the state fails.