What was at stake was not only the health and economic vigour of the entire region but also its environmental and political stability. The classical conception of security in world politics is rooted in Walter Lippmann's famous contention that security is about the possession by a state of a level of military capability sufficient to avert the danger of having to sacrifice core values, if it wishes to avoid war, and is able, if challenged, to maintain them by victory in such a war. This traditional conception of security is now being challenged by the emergence of new issues. As military threats have subsided or disappeared, other threats, especially environmental ones, have emerged with greater clarity. It is thus possible to argue that environmental care is an essential component of national or international security.
Armed force is impotent in the face of ecological breakdown.
It is relentless ecological degradation, rather than any external enemy, which poses the gravest threat to international and national security today. The global system that was viewed as a balance of power can now be seen as more of a spider web of highly interdependent states with finite resources. Any negative impact in one part of the web undermines the viability of the whole. Clearly, any aspect which threatens the survival of the planet and its human and non-human inhabitants should be treated as a security threat. Ultimately, international security has to rest on the elimination of the real scourges of humankind - hunger, disease, illiteracy, poverty and deterioration of the earth's life systems.