Telemedicine as a tool for improving human security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 155

has, today, greatly declined in several global regions, including the Arctic
(Human Security Report 2005). It is highly improbable that any Arctic state
will turn to war as a means of resolving conflict. Arctic regional security is less
based on fear than it is on cooperation.
The 'realist' school and its approach to international politics and security
has been frequently criticized. This traditional approach, critics say, failed to
predict and explain the end of the Cold War. It also is an approach that over
time (and particularly with the advent of neorealism) has not been interested
in, let alone adequately accounted for, what security means at the individual
level. Furthermore, it does not take into account the behaviour of the states
in the international system as a synthesis of collective human behaviour. The
reality, that state interests are usually a reflection of the views of the elite, is
often overlooked. These views are products of the elite's construct or percep-
tions of what constitutes threats to the survival of the state, and what will be
required to maintain their elite position within that state. The behaviour of
the state may therefore be viewed as a means of protecting the elite's position
in society, while the elite may not care for the rest of the society. By acting
this way, the elite may be failing to guard the human rights of other state citi-
zens. In examining matters of security in the Arctic, there is a case to be made
for applying a broader approach than that of the traditional realist approach to
security studies. By broader, I am referring to the need to extend the analysis
into sectors such as the economy, the environment, and issues of culture and
national identity, and include the perspectives of a broader range of citizens.
Buzan et al . concluded:
the liberal project does seem to have succeeded in marginalizing military
security and along with it the approach of traditional security studies.
But in so doing it has raised new security problems that can only be han-
dled in a multisectoral framework.
(1998:212)
It was a bold step for the Copenhagen school, represented by Buzan et al. ,
to push the debate to include more sectors (beyond the military and state)
to better understand how security operates and is practised. Their revised
definition of the security complex stems from the need that when study-
ing security matters in one sector, it is important to keep in mind that
all sectors are interdependent. For example, globalization of the world
economy has impacts on the environment that leads to concerns about
'sustainable growth'.
Buzan et al .'s development of the notion of security complexes harmonizes
it with 'the extended definition of security' as:
a set of units whose major processes of securitization, desecuritization,
or both are so interlinked that their security problems cannot reasonably