Global Security and Economic Well-being: A Strategic Perspective

The end of the Cold War has wrought havoc among Western students of strategy as well as among and to the political institutions of the post-war period. Many erstwhile ‘strategists' have decided that it is more correct for the 1990s to become specialists in security, even global security. This paper examines critically, in strategic perspective, the purported connections between economic well-being and global security. The proposition that a strategic, more broadly a ‘realist’, perspective either neglects or discourages ethical considerations is also discussed. There is less than meets the eye to claims for a rising pre-eminence for economic issues vis à vis a global security, while the very concept of a global security is more attractive than it is useful.