National Integration and National Security: The Case of Yemen

Abstract

Threats to the national security of a state can take a variety of forms. These include not only military pressures but also economic, political or ideological pressures as well as appeals based on historical affiliations or ethnic factors. The important point here is that states define ‘national security’ in different terms, depending upon the issues, circumstances, events and resources which they deem important. In one state, security may be defined in military terms because the state has no major demographic or economic issues/problems which materially affect the domestic distribution of political forces; in another state, however, threats to the stability of the currency, or to the balance of domestic forces based upon, say, a religious division, may be considered of far greater importance to ‘national security’. It is, then, useful to disaggregate the term ‘national security’, and discuss the specific features of a given state which appear to its elites and current leaders to offer the opportunity to others of intervening or threatening the society and its economy, as well as its political institutions.