A new northern security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 39

like 'danger', 'threat' and 'risk', indicating that many aspects of security are
taken either as a threat or risk (e.g. cross-border threats and environmen-
tal hazards and catastrophes). Consequently, there are also discourses about
what is meant by threats and risks and whom they affect, e.g. community/ies,
(sub)region(s) or country/ies. Therefore, before discussing different stages of
security in the circumpolar North and defining what might be a new type of
northern security, different concepts of security need to be briefly discussed,
as well as threats/risks.
Traditional security mostly means national security, i.e. security-policy
and security from the perspective of the state (generally meaning a nation
or unified state), guaranteed if needed by the military. It can also be called a
weapon-oriented security or 'a unilateral competitive national military secu-
rity' (Newcombe 1986). This means that a state's or nation's security and
stability, as well as its peace, is guaranteed by the military or a deterrence of
military use. Security guaranteed by the power of the state and its military
organizations is the core of the unified state system, which is correspond-
ingly the most fundamental part of the 'anarchic' international system, and
thus very much consistent with traditional theories of International Relations
(see Waltz 1979). Behind this thinking is the idea that a state would like to
have hegemony over a geographical region and its natural resources, and, if
required, it is prepared to use military power to attain and maintain it. This
approach of security has traditionally dominated circumpolar geopolitics and
international politics in the North, largely due to the Cold War.
The security concept was changing globally during the second half of
the twentieth century. Despite ongoing regional and civil wars and a few
annual inter-state wars, there were also significant changes to what the tra-
ditional concept of threat and security entailed, including alternative or
so-called 'soft' issues of traditional security. These included trans-boundary
pollution, nuclear accidents and other environmental catastrophes, infectious
diseases (such as HIV/AIDS), illegal immigration as well as organized and
international crimes (such as drug and human trade). In the 1980s, several
UN commissions started discourses to define security in a different, alterna-
tive and more comprehensive way that would incorporate these soft issues.
Reports on security also launched new approaches and concepts of security
like common security (Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security
1982) or comprehensive security . The goal of these terms was to have a broader
agenda of security by including the traditional military sector and also social,
economic and environmental sectors into a security complex (see Huru
2004:42). This was also the case in the European North, the former 'military
theatre' of the Cold War period, where one of the aims was to have a new
security discourse by introducing 'soft' security parallel to 'hard' security (see
Heininen 1999b).
Comprehensive security can emphasize either environmental security or
human security, or both together. The concept of environmental security