On National Security and Terror - Essay Example

On National Security and Terror As such, this essay stands in agreement with Giorgio Agamben’s ideas that a government or state with an excessive focus on minimising or controlling the eruption of terror, fear and discord could very much create other problems or issues which could eventually generate the kind of society which it initially wants to prevent. The issue of controlling rather than suppressing terror, fear and discord among highly-industrialised nations such as the United States in attaining national security is discussed using a speculative line of thought, including some potential problems of undergoing such measures, especially in performing a variety of precautionary measures done in the faith that these will abate the expansion of terrorism in the country (Davies, 2008, p. 74). It is imperative that humanitarian efforts be made to prevent terror, fear and discord rather than merely controlling these three since disregarding any of these along with basic human rights could cause potential issues, wherein at some point state instability could happen through the government’s illiberal implementation of law, order and justice for the pursuit of total control, creating disturbances eventually leading to governance closely-similar to terrorism and further breakdown of the national security.

The efforts of maintaining national security and peace created several trading-offs, and some were seen as a potential source of fear and mistrust. For example, in the war against terrorism, the US Bush administration gave greater importance to counter-terrorism efforts for peace and security, while consequentially downgrading education and health. Such precautionary measures and over-emphasising potential endangerment to most lives can cause people to choose security over liberty, even if the actual dangers were mostly blown out of proportion (Newman, 2004, p. 571). For the government this is a crucial way of ensuring the maintenance of public safety against “unwanted aliens” while suppressing mass protests, and showing how such people are admonished to prevent others from doing similar actions while delineating who to discriminate against, in effect preventing actual wars against the government and its constituents(Gregory, 2004, p.

191; Moore, 2007, p. 142). From an outsider’s point of view, this seems like tyranny disguised as governance, especially when there is a greater need to provide assistance to parties that sustained damages in the process (Aradau, 2007, p. 10). Nevertheless, it is a part of the main premise of national security pursuits to hold it important above anything else to maintaining peace and unity among greater numbers of people. While providing security to most citizens is the primary goal, issues can arise due to the way such efforts are made, which could result to violation of basic human rights, which in effect could become the source for chaos and the consequential threat to security.

If not mediated immediately, an uprising or disruption of order can arise, which is also a threat to national security (Newman, 2004, p. 571). In pursuing near-total control over the entire nation’s security, measures such as the US “War on Terror” are seen a modern manifestation of a new form of national defence, along with some issues such as political tensions with other countries due to overstepping of bounds (Norman, 2010, p. 2). Even if the US says that it is liberal in decision-making, the fact that there is heavy reliance to exclusion measures for the sake of