State security or human security and the security debate in international relations: An Icelandic perspective

Author: Jakob Þór Kristjánsson

The intent of this paper is to analyse the concept of security and to show how the international security debate influenced Icelandic security policy in the late twentieth century. Traditional definitions of security – which focus on state actions and concentrate on power politics, emphasising state power and military might – dominated the security debate from the late 1940s. In 1980s and after the Cold War in the 1990s it became more popular to focus on human/individual security: emphasizing economic security, societal security, environmental security, political security, poverty, human rights and cultural security. This has been termed as a broadening of the security concept.

The article is available here. Mirror hosted by Nexus.