Peace & Stability Operations Journal Online
Thinking Strategically About Security Sector Reform
by Dr. Harry R. Yarger
Today, a population’s expectations of the state for “security” are
greater than national defense and protection from unlawful use
of force internally. Expectations also include the social freedoms of economic opportunity, employment, education, health
care, intellectual freedom, justice, and social mobility. Cultural
form may vary by state, but the parameters of a modern social
contract are clear and you need to look no further than the
Arab Spring to see it. Security as a broader concept is not a new
idea and was instrumental in the success of the western democracies in the struggle with communist ideology:
Security is, after all, a derivative value, being meaningful
only in so far as it promotes and maintains other values
which have been or are being realized and are thought
worth securing, though in proportion to the magnitude
of the threat it may displace all others in primacy.1
This broader concept of human security created the conditions
for the U.S. led democratic liberal capitalist globalization that
ultimately exposed the fallacy of the Soviet communist system
and contributed to its collapse. Security Sector Reform laid the
foundation for the West’s success and economic development,
democratization, and globalization were its essential companions.
Since the end of the Cold War, the nation states’ monopolies
on the use of force and their legitimacy are being challenged in
ways, on a level, and at a pace never experienced before. The
information, communications, and transportation systems of
globalization have “awakened previously nascent or dormant
desires for identity and equity” to challenge the legitimacy of
the state at home and abroad.2 Notwithstanding the legitimate
grievances of some ethnic groups and other disadvantaged
members of many states’ populations, globalization presents
unprecedented opportunities and capabilities to political opportunists, ideologues, criminals, and others who would gain
advantage from insecurity and instability within a particular
state or the international order. A number of states have been
unwilling or unable to adjust to potential threats or issues of
equity. They neither provide traditional sec W&