Natural Security for a Variable and Risk-Filled World

Abstract

The twenty-first-century faces a range of severe threats to security including conflicts with non-state actors, emerging diseases, natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and climate change. This diverse set of problems would benefit from a common solution framework that can illuminate their root causes and be applied broadly to security analysis and practice. One such framework is evolutionary biology. 3.5 billion years of biological evolution have led to an enormous variety of security solutions that nonetheless share a key commonality: natural security is adaptable. Organisms in nature achieve adaptability through a decentralized organization where threats are detected and responded to peripherally, by managing uncertainty and turning it to their advantage, and by extending their adaptive capacity through symbiotic partnerships. This essay demonstrates how the basic tenets and many of the specific strategies of natural security systems can be applied to the analysis, planning and practice of security in human society. A case study from the IED attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is used to show how organizational structure, uncertainty, and symbiotic relationships all play a role in both creating and ameliorating security threats.