From Securitate to Securitatty

The history of the modern State relies on numerous concepts of law and order, of which Security is fundamental. It was because of what he saw in the English Civil War that Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651) proposed that a violent and chaotic 'State of Nature' should be replaced by a 'State of Government', one previously based on Faith replaced by another based on Reason. Within this polity, it would be irrational to be violent, to surrender to one's passions, but the concept of Public Safety evolved until with Max Weber we had the key phrase that helps define the State as a body that has 'the legitimate monopoly on the use of violence' (Sometimes the word 'force' is used instead of violence).

This meant that in addition to protecting the citizens of the State from external attack, the State would protect the citizens from internal attack -that is, only the State -usually in the form of Law Enforcement- would have the right to use violence inside the State.

What we have been seeing in recent years, is a crisis in both the concept, and the application of this concept of Security.

In Israel, for example, Netanyahu became complacent about Israel's ability to contain the physical threat from HAMAS. Because both rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty in favour of war, and war followed, but because Netanyahu always believed Israel could deal with HAMAS rockets so they would never lose control, we are now in a situation where for the first time since 1948 there is a general sense of insecurity in Israel, while the lack of it for Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank is even worse than it was before October 2023.

This deterioration happened because Likud and its Governing partners, and HAMAS, with the Palestinian Authority as a feeble onlooker, failed to enable the 1993 Peace Treaty to evolve with Israel trading land for peace, and an extension of the rights Israeli citizens have to Palestinians who are, in effect, living in a 'One State Solution', thus returning the core issue to what it was in the 1880s -how do two distinct social groups live with each other in a single political structure?

Lastly, the same one-dimensional view that has created the 'existential' struggle far from having failed and creating an alternative agenda, has allowed both HAMAS and Netanyahu to refuse to admit they failed and are wrong, and instead has increased their commitment to a strategy that has failed, so that everyone is a loser.

Thus, in Russia, Putin initially refused to admit that the terrorists who attacked the Crocus concert hall were Muslims, and even when he did, continued to drag Ukraine into the narrative. Just as Netanyahu became complacent about HAMAS, and he and/or the IDF leadership refused to believe reports prior to October that a HAMAS attack inside Israel was 'imminent', so Putin and the FSB refused to believe the intelligence provided by the USA that indicated an attack inside Russia was imminent.

Putin, obsessed with Ukraine, believed he had contained the threats from Islamist terrorists be they Syrian in origin with grievances shaped by the war on ISIS, or the Islamist cells in the Caucasus seeking revenge for attacks on Chechnya and Dagestan, when in reality for most Russian citizens these threats are more real than Ukraine's attacks, which have mostly been on Russian strategic targets such as power stations and oil depots.

Putin, like Netanyahu has failed at what was one his proudest boasts about the safety of the Russian people, but like his Israeli counterpart, he cannot bring himself to admit he is a failure, just as he cannot admit that the Russian military operation in Ukraine has failed to achieve its objectives.

Both in Israel and Russia, one also wonders if the financial cost is going to undermine economic security -Israel is now more dependent than ever on US financial assistance, while in Russia a war economy that resembles the military build-up of the Brezhnev era that led to the engagement in Afghanistan and the eventual collapse of the USSR, suggests that with miliary over-reach in Ukraine and Syria, Russia's economy is on borrowed time, as well as borrowed money.

But there is also another dimension to this topic, and that is in those countries, like the USA, where the 'legitimate monopoly on the use of force' is challenged by the devolution of arms from official and accountable State (as in Federal and State) bodies to individuals, be they responsible adults, or mentally deranged or politically extreme people with, in effect, licenses to kill.

Not only does this mean that mass murder is now a common occurrence in the USA, just as political leaders preside over failures they refuse to admit, key Americans, Governors in particular, cannot bring themselves to admit that licensing gun ownership at the level they have has not only helped cause those incidents of Mass Murder, it guarantees more will happen, thus surrendering the unique power they had over 'legitimate violence' or force, to unaccountable individuals, while the multiple attempts to amend the law through bans on aspects of arms (types of weapon, ammunition etc) are mostly doomed to failure, with in some cases a devotion to a mis-reading of the 2nd Amendment so perverse one wonders why they bother citing it.

Thus, Security, which was once a fundamental component of an ordered society, is now both an 'essentially contested concept', and in practical terms, and in too many places, non-existent or ineffective, with the core result measured in dead or injured bodies, in too many cases, injuries that will last a lifetime.

Arrogance, and the arrogance of power proceeds down this deadly road, shaped by rigid ideology, religious fervour, most of all a conviction that 'we are right', even when the reality is they are wrong. This is one reason why Liberal Democracy is under threat in parts of the world where it ought to remain the best option we have found for an ordered, and a safe State to live in.

We have gone from a State of Security, to a State where Security is shredded, lying in tatters on bombed out streets, in ruined buildings, in places where people are now afraid to live. We can always hope 'things can only get better', but with the mentality on show in the US, in Russia, in Israel, that hope is being stretched as far as it can go.