Cross-Border Threats to Human Security
Human beings are all mortal and are vulnerable to risks at various stages of their lifetime. Nobody can be safe from malignant diseases, sudden accidents, loss of job, separation from family and other serious contingencies. While many risks we encounter are idiosyncratic, others are what economists call âsystemicâ risks that pounce on groups of people all at once. 1 A multitude of individuals and households can be adversely affected by a serious and pervasive calamity such as a large-scale natural disaster , an epidemic, a financial crisis or a war. When a risk becomes reality, it may inflict grave anxieties and acute deprivation on ordinary people, ruining past achievements in human development or the expanded range of choices people have come to enjoy, built up over several decades (Sen 2003).
This introduces the paradigm of human security, a framework of public action to cope effectively with crisis situations that intensify the âsources of unfreedomâ (Sen 1999, 3â4). The goal of human security is to secure basic freedoms for everyone in the face of present and future risks and threats , by combining top-down protection and bottom-up empowerment . The most revolutionary feature of the human security paradigm is that the referent of security has shifted from the state to the individual human being. Layers of government, international organizations, donor agencies, business, civil society , religious communities and other organizations are all expected to contribute to this end: securing freedoms for individual human beings (CHS 2003; Kaldor 2007).
In the present volume, âEast Asiaâ is defined as a group of nations consisting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries, China , Japan and South Korea . This region has experienced dynamic economic growth and has enjoyed relative peace in the sense that we have not had large-scale âhot warsâ involving nation-states in recent decades, more precisely, since 1979 (Tønnesson 2017). However, just like the entire global society, the East Asian region has been haunted by a number of serious threats to human security, which have been well examined in works such as Elliott and Caballero-Anthony (2013), Howe (2013), Jonsson (2009), Nishikawa (2010), Peou (2009), Song and Cook (2015), Teh (2012), Tow et al. (2013), and Watson and Pandey (2005). The list of serious threats that the region faces, as well as that of prescriptions to cope with them, are almost endless.
In this introduction, we classify various threats to human security threefold, according to their proximate causes (Tanaka 2015 and Chapter 2 of this volume). The first category is the threats coming from the âphysical systemâ of the earth. The Pacific Ring of Fire and the Eurasian seismic zone are conducive to massive shakings of the surface of the earth, and to gigantic tsunami when seismic waves run through the ocean, as demonstrated in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 (nearly 250,000 fatalities), the Sichuan Earthquake in 2008 (nearly 90,000 fatalities), and the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 (nearly 20,000 fatalities). There are also hundreds of active volcanoes in the region. In addition, typhoons in the Pacific Ocean and cyclones in the Indian Ocean devastate the coastal areas of the region very often. In 2008, some foreign countries attempted to organize a military rescue operation into Myanmar when many people were imperiled by Cyclone Nargis (that eventually claimed the lives of more than 140,000). The islands of the Philippines are also shaken by the frequent landfall of typhoons. Finally, there are dire predictions that climate change and resultant floods and droughts may wreak havoc on agricultural production and threaten food security .
The second category is the threats coming from the âliving system ,â such as the spread of infectious diseases, many of which are mediated by the organic bodies of humans and animals. Major diseases that have demanded urgent responses in East Asia include human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) , severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian flu. A serious disease that broke out in another region, such as the Ebola hemorrhagic fever, could have been transmitted to East Asia in the absence of protective efforts. In the meantime, cases of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) have been reported in several East Asian countries. Regional cooperation is indispensable to control these epidemics as they spread through the cross-border migration of people and animals, and the circulation of goods. Enhanced connectivity of people and goods may endanger peopleâs health and well-being , given the rapid pace in which the global and regional economy is being integrated.
The third category is those threats directly coming from the âsocial systemâ of human beings, such as wars, violent conflict , terrorism, land grabbing, economic crises, human trafficking and an exodus of refugees . After World War II, the region witnessed major conflicts such as the Korean War, as well as the prolonged wars in Indochina directly involving the USA , Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China . The continued division of Korea and the tension in the Taiwan Strait are graphic examples of the lingering legacy of the Cold War, and North Koreaâs brinkmanship diplomacy toying with nuclear missiles has been a real threat to human security in the region. Setting aside ideological confrontations, serious inequality and ethnic minority issues can be found in the borderlands, for example, in the interior regions of China, Okinawa in Japan , Mindanao in the Philippines , Aceh in Indonesia , and in the South of Thailand . These are all highly sensitive issues in their national political contexts. On the other hand, as the economies in East Asia are more and more closely connected, the effects of a possible economic crisis will be felt in every corner of the region. The idea of a human security that attaches a high value to peopleâs welfare was openly advocated by Mr. Keizo Obuchi, the then Foreign Minister of Japan, in Singapore in May 1998 after the Asian Financial Crisis hit the region (Kurusu 2011).
The case study chapters of this book are arranged from those addressing natural disasters to those dealing with human conflicts based on this classification of sources of threats to human security. The earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago, the first living organisms appeared about 4.0 billion years ago, and the first Homo sapiens was born only about 3 hundred thousand years ago. These ultralong-term historical layers lie behind the three systems of the present age.
At the same time, it is important to note that the hazards emanating from these three systems are closely connected to each other. For example, there is no âpureâ natural disaster ; the casualties from natural disasters like floods and earthquakes hinge on the quality of social systems , including self-help activities at the level of neighborhood communities, as well as the quality of environmental planning and civil engineering . Climate change occurs at the level of the physical system but is clearly an outcome of industrial activities of humans. It is also known that a large proportion of the deaths during famines and violent conflicts is due to the outbreak of infectious diseases in relief camps. 2 Despite these entanglements, as Akihiko Tanaka indicates in Chapter 2, we have a clear division of academic disciplines corresponding to the three systems: the physical system is the subject of physical and chemical sciences and engineering; the living system is studied by biological, medical and ecological sciences; and the social system is researched by the social sciences and the humanities . Human security provides a powerful raison dâetre for multidisciplinary collaboration between experts with those academic backgrounds. Although the three systems (the earth, the ecosystem and human society) can be harmful to individual human beings, it must be noted that they are also beneficial and even...