Forum Journal

Security is an increasingly contested concept in terms of referent object and the scope of issues covered in its conceptualization and provision. Traditional approaches have addressed the survival of states in a hostile operating environment focusing on questions of war and peace from the perspectives of national or systemic interstate security. Even if traditional approaches can be seen to have functioned reasonably well within the limited parameters of the old state-centric operating environment, they have fallen short in addressing new challenges to state and international security that do not originate from state actors. They have also proven to be very limited in their ability to embrace nontraditional security (NTS) perspectives relevant to the provision of human security for vulnerable individuals and groups, or biospheric security. Furthermore, there is a lack of understanding and consideration of the intersections and interdependencies between different levels of security analysis and policy provision. This paper, therefore, advocates a holistic model of understanding of the mechanisms of the contemporary security operating environment, and comprehensive policy prescription to address old and new security challenges, traditional and NTS issues, and the spillover between them.