Page 22 - the SyI Quarterly 8

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Delivering Security in a Complex World
Delivering Security in a Complex World

By Prof Alison Wakefield PhD CSyP FSyI

The concept of security has permeated multiple realms of policy
and scholarship, though interpretations vary enormously. Most
applications focus on deliberate physical threats. Yet, as the Global
Trends forecasts [1, 2] published every few years by the US and UK
governments emphasise, politicians, policy-makers and practitioners
cannot ignore wider ‘human security’ concerns that address the
most basic human needs and are the basis for the United Nations’
Sustainable Development Goals.

Thought about in these broad terms, the subject of security
presents a bewildering array of issues. My book ‘Security and Crime:
Converging Perspectives on a Complex World’ [3] embraces security
in all its forms, and is intended to help the reader make sense of
these, as well as their own position in relation to the bigger picture. It
is structured around different dimensions of analysis, moving from the international to the regional,
national, local and individual domains, as well as extending into the cyber, corporate and maritime
spheres.
A major theme of the book is the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), a term being used to refer to the
advanced stage of industrial development that we are now entering, significantly impacting the ways
in which humans live, work and relate to each other. Having started early in the new millennium,
facilitated by the internet, using the power of digitization and information technology to enable all
dimensions of production to be connected in real time, it is bringing about an unprecedented speed
and scale of innovation and change.

It also presents significant challenges: global risks and threats are becoming more varied, complex and
catastrophic. The latest edition of the US Global Trends study, published in March of this year, paints
a formidable picture of the global security challenges we are likely to face in the coming decades,
grounded in five overarching themes:
• Shared global challenges which, as with COVID, may lack a human perpetrator, and can intersect
and cascade in unpredictable ways;
• Fragmentation, since a more connected world does not mean a more cohesive world and can
mean quite the opposite for communities, states and the international community;
• Disequilibrium, since the so-called international system is not set up to mitigate effectively the
global challenges now faced;
• Greater contestation within communities, states and the international community as a result of
fragmentation and disequilibrium; and
• Adaptation, identified as the priority for the many actors in the international system, and the
source of future advantage.
In the search for solutions, the interdisciplinary endeavour of complexity theory, the focus of the
last chapter of my book, is becoming increasingly influential. It reflects the fact that, in complex
systems, changes in outputs are not necessarily proportionate to inputs. Small influences can have
large effects, as captured in the popular metaphor of the ‘butterfly effect’. The Global Trends reports
highlight how governments remain overly focused on old problems and are inadequately structured
for the complexity of today’s risk landscape.

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