From Publishers Weekly
Beebe, Senior Africa Analyst for the U.S. Army Deputy Chief of Staff, and Kaldor, director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, illustrate the failures of military might as the solution for insurgencies in global hotspots like Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans. The authors argue that issues of basic human security, such as access to water, power, and medical services, will ultimately turn local opinion and support to whomever can provide it. Focusing primarily on Iraq and Afghanistan, Beebe and Kaldor believe that a challenge to ending the insurgency is the fact that the U.S. and its allies are following the Laws of Land Warfare, or more simply, the rules of war, whereas the insurgents are not; for them, the ends justifies the means. The authors argue that providing for basic security can work in winning hearts and minds, but that basic security isn't enough. Real change will require re-educating people to demand security from their own governments. A shift such as this will happen only if the people want it to, and it will have to take place over many generations.?
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Review
Carroll Bogert, associate director, Human Rights Watch
“The much-abused term ‘human security’ gets a full-body makeover in Beebe and Kaldor’s important new book. They start from the premise that it took Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the U.S. armed forces six years to realize in Afghanistan: ousting even a decidedly abusive government will not succeed without robust and genuine protection of the local population’s human rights. Revolutionary, and complicated, and bound to get people in important places arguing.”
H. R. McMaster, Brigadier General, U.S. Army, and author of Dereliction of Duty
“Due to advances in communications and the increasing availability of destructive weapons, it is clear that the security of Western societies is connected to the security of populations where terrorist threats originate. The authors trace the problem of terrorism and other threats to international security to a lack of human security. They argue convincingly that preventing violence requires addressing the conditions that lead to violence. Their argument that a human security paradigm should serve as the basis for policy and strategy is important and is certain to generate valuable discussion and debate.”
General Sir David Richards, Chief of the General Staff, British Armed Force
“I thoroughly commend this important and readable book. Through a stringent analysis of the wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, the authors bring to life the complex inter-dependences and breadth of twenty-first-century conflict. A profound shift in security thinking is needed if we are to avoid past mistakes. This book explains why and provides a roadmap of what it should look like.”
Rory Stewart, Ryan Professor of Human Rights at Harvard University, and author of The Places In Between
“Mary Kaldor is one of the most thoughtful and impressive analysts of conflict and development alive. From the Balkans to Iraq, I have seen her engage with Marsh Arab communists and U.S. military officers and use her tact, intelligence, and humanity to transform our understanding of the most apparently intractable situations.”
Amartya Sen, professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University and Nobel Prize–winner
“The authors clarify the complex demands of human security, threatened as it is by a great variety of adversities—from disease and penury to violence and tyranny. The book is a significant contribution to a necessary understanding of the human predicament in our time.”
