Most writers agree that security could be a ‘contested concept’. There's an accord that it implies freedom from threats to core values (for each people and groups) however there's a significant disagreement concerning whether the most focus of inquiry ought to get on ‘individual’, ‘national’or ‘international’ security. For a lot of the conflict amounts, most writing on the topic was dominated by the thought of national security, that was mostly outlined in militarized terms. The most space of interest in each lecturer and states individuals attended air the military capabilities that their own states ought to develop to trot out the threats that sweet-faced them. Additional recently, however, this idea of security has been criticized for being partisanship (culturally biased) and too narrowly outlined. Instead, variety of the latest writers have argued for associate degree swollen conception of security outward from the boundary of parochial national security to incorporate a variety of different concerns. Barry Buzan, in his study individuals, States and worry (1983), argued for a read of security which has political, economic, societal, environmental additionally as military aspects and that is additionally outlined in broader international terms. Buzan’s work raises fascinating and vital questions about whether national and international security issues are often compatible and whether states, given the character of the international system, are capable of thinking in additional cooperative international and world terms.

This target the strains between national and international security isn't accepted by all writer on security. There are people who argues that the stress on the state and inter-state relations ignore the basic changes that are going down in world politics particularly within the aftermath of the conflict. For some, the dual processes of integration and fragmentation that characterized the present mean that ways more attention ought to tend to ‘societal security’. In line with this read, growing integration in regions like Europe is undermining the classical political order supported nation-states, going nations exposed among larger political frameworks (like the EU Union) (see Ch.25). At constant time, the fragmentation of assorted states, just like the Soviet Union and European country, has created new issues of boundaries, minorities, and organizing ideologies that are inflicting increasing regional instability (Waever et al. 1993: 196). This has crystal rectifier to the argument that ethno-national teams, instead of states, ought to become the centre of attention for security analysts.

At a similar time, there are different commentators WHO argue that the strain on national And international security is a smaller amount acceptable as a result of the emergence of an embryonic international society within the post-cold war era. Just like the ‘societal security’ theorists, they purposed to the fragmentation of the nation-state however they argue that additional attention ought to tend, to not society at the ethno-national level, however to international society. These writers argue that one in all the foremost necessary modern trends is that the broad method of economic processes that are happening. They settled for that this method brings new risks and dangers. These embody the risk related to such thing as act of terrorism, a breakdown of the world medium of exchange, global warming, and also the dangers of nuclear accidents. These threats to security, on a planetary level, are viewed as being mostly outside the management of nation-states. Solely the event of a world community, they believe, will handle this adequately.