Guns and butter: Why do human security and traditional security co‐exist in Asia?

This paper examines the concept of human security as it applies to Asia, in challenging the dominance of the national security paradigm in Asia. To understand the concept of human security, we may combine the interdependent understandings of freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom from suffering in times of conflict To make the distinction between human security and national security, we may highlight the following three important questions: whose security, security against what, and security in which areas.

Keywords:

• human security
• national security
• defense spending
• conflict
• the Asian nation‐state
• transnational challenges