Dear Sir,
News reports (Caribbean Net News, January 29) indicate that Mr Bernard Kerick will indeed assume the position of a national security adviser to the Government of Guyana. Readers may recall that I supported the President’s decision to make this appointment.
In making the case for this appointment last August, I suggested that President Jagdeo had displayed what I termed Responsible Pragmatism. Now that Mr Kerick is on board, Responsible Pragmatism must continue in the actual practices of delivering security to the nation. Allow me to elaborate.
Two broad frameworks of security may be delineated for our discussion. The first, which may be called the National Security Framework, relies on various combinations of strategic and tactical defense, fire power, mobility, and intelligence. This is essentially a military approach, and it relies heavily on a preponderance of force to achieve security objectives. The second approach falls broadly within the Human Security Framework. In this approach, there is a more expansive understanding of ‘threats’, and accordingly, a more nuanced employment of resources to achieve the desired security objectives.
Mr Kerick needs to appreciate both of these approaches because, ignoring the latter, normally produces legitimacy deficits and deepen human insecurity for some segments of the population. Reliance on the former usually ends up in exacerbating the instability already on the ground. One critical issue is the relationship between the use of force and legitimacy.
The relationship between force and legitimacy may be specified in terms of the following: (1) who is using force? (2) against whom? (3) by whose authority? (4) in what magnitude? (5) for what purpose? and, (6) in whose interest?
The answer to these questions might seem transparent in the case of Guyana, but that is only if there is broad-based political consensus about the nature and sources of threats to security. Mr Kerick might very well discover that the situation is rather complex. The key problem is this – while some segments of the population see the state as the source of security, other segments construct it as the source of their insecurity. The problem is compounded on account of languages of racialization.
In this situation, Mr Kerick should avoid any rush at militarizing the security policy. His emphasis should be on strategic confidence-building; conflict-resolution mechanisms between state and civil society, and among civil society groups; border security aimed at interdicting illicit trafficking in small arms and light weapons, and illicit drugs; well trained units to root out economic corruption; revamping training of the police and military; careful attention to force structure and deployment; tactical coordination between the police and military; actionable intelligence; and, inter alias, strengthened accountability within the police and GDF.
Mr Kerick needs to fully understand the structural and relational underpinnings of two forces – freedom from fear, and freedom from want.
Dr Randy Persaud |
