Senator DALE BUMPERS (Ret.): Hello, I'm Dale Bumpers.

The term "human security" first appeared in the 1993 United Nations Human Development Report. It refers to a new standard of security that emphasizes the universal wellbeing of individuals. Six years later, spurred by scenes of fleeing refugees and stories of brutal human rights violations, the United States and NATO attacked Yugoslavia to force the return of the ethnic Albanian Kosovars.

Unlike the war in the Persian Gulf, the war in Kosovo was not waged to expel a foreign invader, nor was it to secure vital strategic resources. There were no vital national interests in Kosovo comparable to those in the Persian Gulf. Instead, this was the first time military force had ever been used to resolve an internal human rights issue within another nation. The war in Kosovo was justified on the basis of the concept of human security.

President BILL CLINTON:

"We cannot simply watch as hundreds of thousands of people are brutalized, murdered, raped, forced from their homes, their family histories erased, all in the name of ethnic pride and purity."

NARRATOR: What are the long-term implications of this new concept of security? Will the United States change its policies to face the challenges of the next century? And, if so, how?

["America's Defense Monitor" program introduction.]

NARRATOR: The standard of human security is based upon an individual's access to food, water, medicine, education, and freedom from human rights abuses.

OSCAR ARIAS: Since the early 1990's, the Human Development Report published by the UNDP has been talking about human security.

NARRATOR: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oscar Arias.

President ARIAS: You know, education, health care, taken in terms not only of GNP per capita.

NARRATOR: The concept of human security goes back to the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which states: "Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care, and necessary social services. Everyone has a right to education."

By focussing on the wellbeing of individuals, this new concept of security reverses traditional notions of state sovereignty.

Jessica Matthews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

JESSICA MATTHEWS: And now what countries more and more see, and what their citizens more and more demand, is a country where security is defined as a job, adequate nutrition, adequate health, security from other forms of external threat, like ultraviolet light from the ozone hole or threats that an individual can't protect themselves against. And that's a profound change because what it says is that my security does not come primarily from the state downward, it comes from me upward, and the security of the country is the aggregate security of all of its citizens. It's a very different concept.

NARRATOR: Human security is also different from the traditional idea of national interest and could alter the role of nation states.

ROBERT KAPLAN: For the last 300 years or so, foreign policy practitioners have thought about security in terms of nation-states, one nation-state versus the other.

NARRATOR: Journalist Robert Kaplan, author of the forthcoming book, "The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War."

Mr. KAPLAN: And this has given rise to the notion of "power politics."

NARRATOR: Kaplan sees new trends that may alter traditional notions of power politics and national security.

Mr. KAPLAN: Increasingly, we're seeing the weakening of nation-states. We're seeing the weakening from the top by global corporations, international trading groups, and we're also seeing the weakening at the bottom through wars, refugee migrations, civil conflict, and the like.

NARRATOR: During the Cold War, the threats were real but predictable. The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was based on the traditional concept of state-centered security, based on strategic balance and the integrity and preservation of governments and borders. Each side had strictly defined ideas of what its national interests were and built a huge military apparatus in case its national security interests were threatened. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a new set of challenges emerged.

Michael Renner, Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute:

MICHAEL RENNER: Human security, really the idea is that we need to move away from the idea that our security, our wellbeing as a society is threatened primarily by some foreign invader that stands ready to cross the border if we let down our guard. I think that's, of course, the old idea that took center stage during the Cold War and, of course, was also very prominent even before the Cold War.

NARRATOR: The definition of national security and the use of military power have increasingly moved away from the state-centered doctrine of the previous era.

Mr. RENNER: It's very clear that many conflicts now are taking place within a given country's borders and not so much between different countries. And these kinds of conflicts go very much to the root of what human security is talking about -- the social, economic and environmental conditions that affect how well people live, what their future prospects are, whether they see a sense that they can actually move ahead, have jobs, have an income, have a future, in a sense, or whether they need to struggle to retain jobs, to have enough wherewithal to feed their own families, to have the land that they need to grow food, to basically have the kinds of natural resources on which we all depend to carry on and to survive.

NARRATOR: If indeed the idea of security is changing to meet new circumstances, the transition has not been an easy one. Some scholars are skeptical about using human security as a framework for future foreign policy decisions.

William Greider, journalist and author of "One World, Ready or Not" and "Fortress America."

WILLIAM GREIDER: See, I don't know quite what people mean when they say "human security." Do they mean there are certain crimes against humanity that we will not tolerate, that we will send military force to intervene? That was the alleged rationale for bombing Kosovo and Serbia. But then if that's the standard, why didn't we do something in Rwanda? Or, for that matter, why didn't we do something long before the present moment in Indonesia? This was not a secret. People of many stripes were sounding warnings about the situation in the military in Indonesia, and particularly East Timor, long before any blood was shed.

NARRATOR: So far, the lack of consistency in deciding where to intervene has led to criticism that the concept of human security will not work as a framework for US foreign policy.

Mr. GREIDER: So, I think it's a very phony rationale for selective use of military power when it suits us. That's not law, that's not principle. It's a government picking and choosing where it decides to engage.

NARRATOR: Questions of when and where to act will become more difficult as we move into the 21st Century. New international threats that transcend political or geographic boundaries likely will force policymakers to continue to think in terms of human security and to act internationally.

President ARIAS: We are not addressing the basic challenges that humanity is confronting. We are not dealing properly with so much poverty, inequality, disease, illiteracy, terrorism, environmental degradation, droughts. We are not addressing those challenges.

NARRATOR: A decade after the end of the Cold War, the US finds itself at a crossroads. We will have to decide whether to act alone or cooperate with international institutions. The extent to which the United States will be willing to participate is still unclear.

The vast majority of scientists agree that global climate change will be one of the main challenges in the next century. This, along with the growing population, pollution, and the growing income gap threaten the most basic principles of human security, such as access to food, water, and shelter. Competition over these resources is a huge potential source of instability.

Mr. RENNER: The issue of climate change is one that no country, no community, no individual can really escape. In essence, it will be a global phenomenon, although of course going from region to region, you will find different ways in which global climate change impacts on agriculture, on the ability of human settlements, habitats to go on, to survive. But it is an issue that affects everybody.

Beyond that, there are issues that are more regionally and locally focussed. And I think some critical ones involve water scarcity and the issue of croplands, how well we maintain our soils, our productive soils, what we do to forestall soil erosion, and other trends that will more and more present a problem in terms of being able to grow sufficient amounts of food.

NARRATOR: Local water disputes threaten the stability of nations, but cross-border conflicts threaten entire regions.

Mr. RENNER: Take the Middle East, for example, where the water resources are in dispute between Turkey, Serbia and Iraq. Once it comes to the level where central governments are involved, it is much more likely that violent conflict will break out and will have very severe consequences. So, I think we should already take some lessons from the much smaller-scale, very limited kind of skirmishes that we see happening in many places.

NARRATOR: Global climate change may produce more severe weather and regional disasters, such as Hurricane Mitch produced in Honduras. The need to forestall these types of catastrophes is at least as important and perhaps less costly than mounting relief efforts once they have struck. To prevent further climate change, the industrialized world will have to take the lead.

Ms. MATTHEWS: As we've seen in the last year, the costs of a climate out of equilibrium can be enormous. So, I believe that over the next decade, there will need to be kind of in the background a global effort to commonly address that issue, as well.

NARRATOR: Basic human rights, including freedom of religion, freedom from torture and political persecution, and the right to live without being subject to arbitrary violence are increasingly threatened by the worldwide trade in weapons. Small arms almost always become the last resort of people who do not have access to the basic necessities of life.

Mr. RENNER: I think we also need to realize that there is an interplay between conflicts that may be generated within society because of these discontents, inequities, and so on, and on the other hand, the very easy availability of weapons. Because if there is discontent, if there are grievances that go on unaddressed, it is more than likely that people at some point will resort to violence in order to rectify a situation that they see as unjust, where they face a situation that they cannot bear going on and on and on with it. So, if we do address the social, economic, environmental issues that confront us but do nothing about weapons availability, I think we only do half a job.

NARRATOR: As the world's largest seller of arms, the United States has a moral responsibility to help end the widespread availability of weapons.

President ARIAS: Who is the enemy now? That's what I keep asking my friends in the United States. Because it's quite sad for me to see the US Government subsidizing arms exports, arms exports to many countries in the developing world. And they know quite well that by spending on arms, we are perpetrating poverty. They know quite well that the children in the United States, in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, everywhere, what they want and what they need are schools and health clinics, not tanks, fighter jets, armed helicopters, missiles.

NARRATOR: One way to ensure a basic standard of human security and a civil society is to establish democratic principles. However, as interventions in Haiti, in Somalia, and the recent referendum in East Timor demonstrate, exporting democracy is difficult.

Mr. KAPLAN: Human beings in all these countries are not intellectuals, they don't think about human security. They don't think about universal values. The only people who think like that are the intellectuals who are interviewed by visiting Western journalists and diplomats and others who go and they latch on to people who are the most educated members of the society who think like they do. So, there's this elite around the world that thinks about a concept called human security.

What human beings actually think about -- 90 percent of them at least -- is how do I get the most for me and my family or my extended family. And what I've seen of that is that these people will put up with any kind of tyranny if it means a better material stability and quality of life for their immediate relatives.

NARRATOR: One of the most pressing questions in the future will be whether the United States will act as a world power unilaterally, exerting influence and force without regard to other nations, or play a smaller role as part of a larger coalition like the United Nations.

Ms. MATTHEWS: We have a big debate coming in this country about how do we assure our own security. If it is in -- by saying, well, we are so powerful and we think we are so benign that we should simply make our own set of rules, then I think a great deal of what has been built over the last 50 years will come apart.

Mr. KAPLAN: Like it or not, we're all stuck with each other in this world, and whatever we do affects the outside world to a much greater degree than what the people of any other nation does. So, we no choice but to be internationalists. The only intelligent argument could be about the degree of internationalism. Isolationism is simply not an option. It's a 1920's word that has no more relevance today.

NARRATOR: In the last decade, economic globalization has become the principal reason for redefining the term "national security." The spread of technology, rapid flows of capital, and the emergence of international currency markets have been both an economic boon and a source of regional instability.

The economic downturn in Asia caused nations like South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia to suffer severe recessions that forced millions out of work. In Indonesia, the economic woes sparked riots and demonstrations that brought down the government of President Suharto after 32 years in power.

Mr. GREIDER: The power of the global marketplace itself, and particularly global finance, can literally trump the sovereignty of a local government.

NARRATOR: Globalization has created great wealth, but that wealth has been distributed unevenly. The growing income gap within countries and among nations threatens the standard of living of the poorest nations by concentrating resources in a small number of wealthy nations.

President ARIAS: If that gap keeps increasing because we don't educate our children in the developing world, because we spend our scarce resources on arms and keeping huge armed forces which are not needed instead of training more teachers and nurses and doctors, I don't know what sort of world will our children live in.

Ms. MATTHEWS: We will have a world in which basically 10 percent of the population is consuming something like 90 percent of the resources, producing 90 percent of the science and of the new innovations and of the wealth -- consuming 90 percent of the resources, so you have this island of wealth in a great sea of poverty. That I think will lead to political instability and ultimately violence.

NARRATOR: The United States has played a major role in promoting the globalization of commerce. The question is: Does America have a responsibility to help alleviate the problems created by this process?

Mr. GREIDER: We above all the rich nations are responsible for the consequences of that because we above all have been the promoter, the generator of the globalization and its benefactor and guarantor. I mean, when you look at who props up the system in the hard places, it's the United States. And who advances the new trade agreements? It's the United States. So, it's a little late in the day for Americans to say this is not our problem.

NARRATOR: The key question at the turn of the century is what role military power will play in resolving conflicts and ensuring security.

Mr. KAPLAN: The power of the military is going to increase. There's a basic contradiction of our time: We live in an age of democratization. But at the same time, militaries and security services are increasingly powerful within governments themselves. Throughout the world we have a kind of facade of weak democratic governments that behind the scenes are being run or manipulated or incredibly influenced by various military people.

NARRATOR: Kaplan believes that the expanding influence of America's military stems from the need to respond to crises around the world.

Mr. KAPLAN: Because increasingly, foreign policy is technical. It involves relief and rescue operations of one sort or another, dealing with environmental emergencies, earthquakes, whatever, and the military is the only group in Washington that has the technical know-how to know how to actually effect such a policy on the ground. So, because they're the ones that know how to do it, they will increasingly have a role in shaping the policy itself.

NARRATOR: Once a crisis occurs, the military can play an important role. If, however, future international security is more dependent upon the basic elements of human security, it calls into question the wisdom of continuing massive military spending. Money spent on the military might be better spent on creating the kinds of institutions that can respond to humanitarian disasters and head off future crises.

President ARIAS: How can we live a 21st Century of peace in a world where out of six billion, 50 percent of them earn less than three dollars a day, 1.3 billion people earn less than one dollar a day, almost one billion people are illiterate, 70 percent of them are women, 1.4 billion people have no access to potable water, 40,000 children die each day of malnutrition and disease, while at the same time we spend $800 billion on arms in defense?

Mr. RENNER: If you accept the idea that the primary challenge to security now does not stem from foreign armies waiting to invade, but rather from social, economic and environmental challenges, the issue of social fabric, conserving the natural environment, and so on, when we look at the kinds of programs, efforts and responses that we can undertake in response to these kinds of challenges, we find that it may well be possible to spend a fraction of the world military spending -- perhaps on the order of $200 billion a year or so -- and we'd be well on the way then to resolving a lot of these issues, or certainly turning around the kinds of very upsetting trends that we are now witnessing.

NARRATOR: At the turn of the century, we find a world in transition. The problems that threaten security, economic progress and the stability of nations are often made worse by the application of military force. However, a failure to address these problems now could force the United States to use military power later at a greater cost of lives and money.

Mr. GREIDER: If we really wanted to build an international order that's sustains the peace and allows the development of democracy, and human rights, and so forth, we would be back at the table taking on the arduous task of negotiating law that people will accept around the world. We are not doing that. And I fear that we're heading down the road, whether it's two years from now or ten years from now, in a terrible collision where this contradictory role is exposed quite vividly, where we want people to follow us and we're the ones standing outside the international legal system.

NARRATOR: The wealthiest nations cannot expect their borders to protect them from some of the emerging threats to human security.

Ms. MATTHEWS: The rich will not be able to live securely in a world like that for a variety of reasons. We won't be able to deal with climate. We won't be able to deal with corruption. We won't be able to deal with the drug trade. We won't be able to deal with diseases that are now coming across our borders -- drug-resistant TB, drug-resistant infections, malaria and other tropical diseases that move with climate change. We live in a world where the threats don't respect borders. So, a world of violent disparities in wealth and wellbeing is also one that won't be so great for the wealthy.

NARRATOR: The United States cannot afford to ignore these security threats much longer. In an era of globalization, it's clear that we need to act cooperatively and soon before these trends become security problems.

President ARIAS: The main concern at the end of the 20th Century is that I don't think we can live a more peaceful 21st Century with the ethics of the 20th Century.

Mr. KAPLAN: I think the world is no more stable or unstable than it's been at other times in history. But because there are now six billion of us, rather than just one billion of us, say a 100 years ago or whenever it was, the magnitude of problems is much greater.

Mr. GREIDER: You can't establish a world in which people are respected by their own governments and are entitled to some set of universal rights -- that is, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion -- you're not going to achieve that with a gun barrel, you're just not. You're going to achieve it, if you can do it at all, through law.

Mr. RENNER: We now still do have the time to make changes in our intensive resource consumption, to get off the environmentally destructive path that we're on. But if we lose another few decades, the same task will be much, much harder.

Ms. MATTHEWS: If we decide, as I think we're now -- there's certainly evidence that we're heading towards a very unilateral role -- not isolationist, but the typical kind of hegemon -- then I think things look pretty grim. If, instead, we decide that our security rests on leadership -- that is, leadership that has followers and requires acting together, then I think the picture is pretty bright.