Ties that bind: DfID and the emerging security and development agenda

Abstract

The security and development nexus is on the public agenda of policy-makers and analysts as never before. It is becoming an article of faith that security and development are ‘inextricably linked’. The content and confines of the security and development agenda, however, are contested and confused. As one interviewee put it, ‘it's as if security is the new development and development is the new security’. This paper sets out to map the landscape of the development and security agenda in order that it might be navigated better. The focus is on how policy debates in this area are shifting, rather than on how these shifts are being implemented on the ground. Particular reference is made to the Department for International Development and its Strategy for Security and Development—an analysis of which throws into relief the tensions between the two spheres. It is argued that understanding the linkages between security and development must involve more than simply asserting that either one necessarily encompasses, requires or reinforces the other. Statements on security and development must be scrutinised against basic questions, not least whose security is at issue.

Acknowledgements

Assistance from Joanna Macrae, who gave advice on the paper in her previous capacity as HPG's Coordinator, is gratefully acknowledged. All faults are, however, my own. This study was funded by the ODI's Innovation Fund but the views expressed are the author's and not necessarily ODI's. Study completed May 2005.

Notes

 1. UN, A More Secure World, viii.

 2. Rothschild, ‘What is Security?’

 3. Greater weight is given in this paper to how development is embracing and being affected by security concerns rather than the other way around. None the less, given that the two areas are progressively becoming more interdependent both dimensions are touched upon. The relationship between security and humanitarianism or military and non-military actors is outside the scope of this study.

 4. DfID, Fighting Poverty to Build a Safer World.

 5. UN, A More Secure World.

 6. UN, A More Secure World, viii.

 7. UN, A More Secure World, 3.

 8. Faust and Messner, Europe's New Security Strategy, 15.

 9. Solana, A Secure Europe in a Better World, 2. The reverse possibility, that development is a pre-condition for security, is not discussed.

10. OECD, The Security and Development Nexus, 5.

11. Benn, ‘The Development Challenge in Crisis States’.

12. Writing in 1950, Lasswell, for example, prefigured modern calls for policy coherence when he noted that, ‘our greatest security lies in the best balance of all instruments of foreign policy, and hence in the coordinated handling of arms, diplomacy, information and economics’. Cited in Baldwin, ‘Security Studies and the End of the Cold War’, 130. The same author cautioned against ‘conceiving of national policy in terms of foreign divorced from domestic policy’., 132. On the pre- and early Cold War antecedents of the current version of the security and development nexus, see Macrae, Aiding Recovery?, 11–13; Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars.

13. Waever, ‘Security: A Conceptual History for International Relations’; Baldwin, ‘Security Studies’.

14. See Lund, ‘What Kind of Peace is Being Built’.

15. Cramer, ‘Homo Economicus Goes to War’; Uvin, ‘The Development/Peacebuilding Nexus’.

16. Duffield, Global Governance, 117.

17. Rothschild, ‘What is Security?’

18. Rothschild has shown how the notion of security as an issue for individuals and not just states harks back to mid-seventeenth century European thought. Liberal political thought has long been concerned with security as suggestive of living without fear of personal violation: ‘the new political rhetoric of human security in the 1990s is also the old rhetoric of natural or international rights’ (8).

19. UNDP, Human Development Report, 1994, 22.

20. UNDP, Human Development Report, 1994, 23.

21. See, King and Murray, ‘Rethinking Human Security’.

22. Duffield, Global Governance, 37.

23. Stewart, ‘Development and Security’.

24. Stewart, ‘Development and Security’, p. 2. The World Bank's Voices of the Poor study is a frequent reference point for arguments that security is development. Voices of the Poor emphasised how poor people consider high levels of anxiety and fear as being hallmarks of their poverty. See, Narayan et al., Voices of the Poor. A related point made by other commentators is that the high levels of violence that inheres in much of what is called ‘peace’, forces us to re-examine and neat dichotomy between peace and war. As Keen puts it, ‘what exactly is the difference between peace and war in circumstances where peace institutionalises violence and where war involves forms of covert cooperation and tacit non-aggression between ostensibly warring parties?’ , ‘War and Peace: What's the Difference’, 19.

25. An increasing body of literature has emphasised the functionality of violence and the need to consider not just the costs but also the multiform benefits of conflict and insecurity that various local and international constituencies derive from such conditions. The presentation of conflict simply as development in reverse is also in many ways unhelpful. See, especially Keen, Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone.

26. Stewart, ‘Development and Security’.

27. Goodhand, ‘Enduring Disorder and Persistent Poverty’.

28. See World Bank, Breaking the Conflict Trap. For an insightful critique of this position, see Menkhaus, ‘Vicious Circles and the Security and Development Nexus in Somalia’.

29. Collier, ‘Security and Development’, 2.

30. UN, A More Secure World, 14.

31. Solana, A Secure Europe, 5.

32. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, v.

33. Straw, ‘Failed and Failing States’.

34. Christian Aid, The Politics of Poverty.

35. Woods et al. , ‘Reconciling Effective Aid and Global Security’, 31.

36. Waever, ‘Security’.

37. Prins, ‘AIDS and Global Security’, 939–940.

38. Cited in Dalby, ‘Contesting and Essential Concept’, 5.

39. See also Deudney, ‘The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security’.

40. Abrahamsen, ‘“A Breeding Ground for Terrorists’”.

41. Woods et al., ‘Reconciling Effective Aid’, 20.

42. Freedman, ‘International Security’, 6.

43. Wolfers, ‘“National Security” as an Ambiguous Symbol’, 483.

44. Berdal, ‘Security and Development’, 2.

45. Paris, ‘Human Security’.

46. Duffield and Waddell, ‘Securing Humans in a Dangerous World’, 20.

47. De Waal and Abdel Salam, ‘Africa, Islamism and America's “War on Terror” After September 11’, 233.

48. Menkhaus, ‘Somalia, State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism’.

49. Kreuger and Malecková, ‘Education, Poverty and Terrorism’.

50. Cramer, ‘Conflict and the Very Poorest’.

51. Goodhand, ‘Enduring Disorder’, 637.

52. Goodhand, ‘Enduring Disorder’, 637; Miller, 2000.

53. See, for example, Short, ‘Security, Development and Conflict Prevention’; UK, White Paper on International Development.

54. Macrae and Leader, Shifting Sands, 19.

55. Blair, ‘Doctrine of the International Community’.

56. From 2001, DfID has collaborated with the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office through the Global Conflict Prevention Pool and the Africa Conflict Prevention Pool. The Pools reflect efforts to realise ‘joined-up government’ by bringing the comparative strengths of aid, defence and diplomacy instruments to bear on conflict prevention. In relation to the Pools and issues of funding arrangements, roles and responsibilities, see IDC, ‘Conflict and Development’.

57. Porteous, ‘British Government Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa under New Labour’, 285–286.

58. The Strategy is one document amongst a raft of government initiatives that relate closely to security and development questions. See Strategy Unit, Investing in Prevention; DfID, Why We Need to Work More Effectively in Fragile States. In the aftermath of the Iraq war, the UK also set up an inter-departmental unit for ‘Post Conflict Reconstruction’, located within DfID, designed to help stabilise environments in the wake of hostilities (principally in situations involving British troops). See IDC, ‘Conflict and Development’.

59. Faust and Messner, Europe's New Security Strategy, 11.

60. DfID, Fighting Poverty to Build a Safer World, 3.

61. DfID, Fighting Poverty to Build a Safer World, 24.

62. See, Baldwin, ‘The Concept of Security’.

63. Krause and Williams, ‘From Strategy to Security’, 34.

64. DfID, Fighting Poverty, 8.

65. It is notable that the Strategy does not address the security implications of HIV/AIDS or environmental factors. This was justified on the grounds of maintaining a feasible workload and not replicating initiatives elsewhere in DfID. As the following comment from a DfID official suggests, however, there may also have been a decision that development interests risked being unduly compromised: ‘In terms of non-traditional security threats such as HIV/AIDS or environmental factors, I don't think that it serves development actors to talk about them as “new security threats”. The costs are considerably greater than the benefits. When you bring in “security” you bring in different actors who are very far removed from development practice.’

66. Baldwin, ‘The Concept of Security’.

67. Woods et al. , ‘Reconciling Effective Aid’.

68. ‘How’, asks Woods, ‘should the UK government square their longer-term goal of reorienting multilateral institutions to pro-poor policies and their increasing reliance on those institutions to fulfil both security and MIC lending’. Woods, et al. , ‘Reconciling Effective Aid’, 24.

69. See also IDC, ‘Conflict and Development’, 23.

70. DfID, Fighting Poverty, 12–13.

71. DfID, Fighting Poverty, 18.

72. Benn, ‘A Shared Challenge’.

73. Picciotto, ‘Aid and Conflict’, 543.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Waddell

Nicholas Waddell is a Research Officer with the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).