The national security – an academic perspective

Defining security encompasses as fundamental notions both risks, threats, and means to acknowledge, prevent and counteract them. The ideological overtones of the concept have generated a series of opinions and points of view regarding security and defining security, based on the fact that in terms of liberalism and neoliberalism, or social democracy – in general, the allegedly right wing/ left wing movements – security (especially internal aspects, public order) can embrace various visions. If the first type of doctrines above-mentioned implies a state preoccupied of assuring free business administration by citizens and the existence of strong associations, made up of independent citizens and volunteers, whose activity may even determine a competition between institutions; others are often pleading for a strong state formula, responsible for controlling, in accordance with the legal framework, all aspects of social life. But beyond these differences derived from ideological orientations belonging to the sphere of politics, both democratic and totalitarian states face, in the current era, a number of risks and global threats, common to some extent. Security can no longer be reduced to the contractual or de facto obligation of the states towards its own citizens to ensure security against external threats undertaken by other state entities. Contemporary social contract between the state and its citizens has more provisions, some of which have been imposed in the collective public consciousness and in international law as axioms.