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Security Gone Wild
By James
<http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.aspx?GUID=ee97ba34-ff05-4d17-8
d2b-4be8cbca08e8> Carafano
Fox News | Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Weapons proliferation is a growing threat, but the spread of nuclear weapons
technology and ballistic missiles may not be the gravest danger facing free
people everywhere. The biggest problem could well be governments that
increasingly want to classify every global challenge as a "security" issue.

In the wake of World War II, "national security" became a popular term of
art. In 1947, the U.S. government created a National Security Council in the
White House based on the idea that protecting the nation from its enemies
required more than just military force.

All the elements of national power (political, economic, diplomatic, etc.)
had to work together to keep Americans safe, free and prosperous. It also
was understood that nations competed on more than battlefields. Enemies had
to be confronted in places such as the marketplace and minds of peoples.

When the Cold War ended, many began to question the old defense paradigms.
Increasingly common wisdom argued that national security meant protecting
the nation from all kinds of ills. Thus, whatever the danger of the day, it
became a "national security" problem. Potential pandemics, such as SARS and
bird flu, for example, required the same treatment as enemies of the state.

To make matters more confusing, international organizations such as the U.N.
have created terms such as "human security," arguing for a collective
responsibility to keep people free from want and fear.

Human security suggests international organizations have the right to order
states to intervene when the collective wisdom of these unelected bodies
considers it appropriate to meddle in a nation's internal affairs.

The upshot is that, increasingly, everything centers on security. The
problem with that approach is the tendency, in dealing with security
interests, to centralize power and decision-making, and restrain individual
freedoms and free markets.

The centralization of power is worrisome enough in time of war (remember the
hyperbole over the Patriot Act.) Now at the same time folks who cried foul
over creating a Department of Homeland Security to fight terrorists that
want to kill us want to make their pet projects security issues, too.

Dealing with the world's challenges as a threat to national security often
produces destructive results that may be more of a threat than the ills
allegedly being addressed. It turns out abandoning the checks and balances
that govern free societies often wind up depriving people of liberty and
making their material condition worse, not better.

We are in such a vicious cycle right now. Hysterical concerns about "energy
security" have prompted governments to offer enormous subsidies and mandates
to produce "bio-fuels." Next came frenetic demands to deal with global
warming - and more government emphasis to expand bio-fuels, regardless of
the balance of the costs and benefits.

In the end, the rush for bio-fuels has done nothing to stem the rising price
of gas or affect global climates. It has, however, coupled with the
increasing cost of a barrel of oil, helped drive up the cost of growing
food.

China, for example, has mandated a benchmark of producing 15 million tons of
bio-fuel by 2020, replacing almost 10 percent of its demands for oil. The
rush by China and other countries into corn-based ethanol has led to a
doubling of the price of the grain worldwide in less than a year and a half.

In turn, governments are concerned about "food security," to the point that
some are banning exports of rice to ensure adequate supplies and keep prices
down. Government interventions are helping create a food crisis, not stem
one.

Meanwhile, long-standing government interventions from agricultural
subsidies to export barriers prevent global markets from adjusting quickly
to global needs.

World leaders could learn a lesson from all these statist policies - driven
by popular fixations about the danger of the day, demanding that governments
do something. When doing something becomes treating every problem through
the rubric of national security, tragic mistakes get made.

Energy and food are problems of the marketplace - best solved by markets,
not by government intervention that warps market behavior. Instead of
learning these lessons, many argue that interventionist policies are even
more important than ever.

Making every global challenge a security issue trumps free markets and
limits personal freedoms. The concept of national security needs to be put
back in the box, reserved for moments of peril in dealing with people
(either states or non-states) who threaten through the use of violence to
take away the political freedoms that governments are supposed to protect.

Security shouldn't become an excuse to take away the power of individuals
and communities to decide how best to cope with the challenges of life.





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