Borders and Behaviors: The Case for a New Security Discipline

Dr. Imran Ali Sandano

The world is changing. But universities are slow to catch up. Most security studies still focus on war, borders, and weapons. They treat states as the only thing that matters. But people are facing very different threats today.

Floods, heatwaves, viruses, human trafficking, online hate, and fake news. These are not solved by soldiers or missiles. These problems grow from within societies. They spread across borders. And they don’t stop just because a state says so.

That’s why we need to shift how we think about security, and how we teach it. For decades, security meant protecting land, keeping enemies out, watching airspace, and managing armies. That made sense in a world of Cold War and invasions. But now the big threats don’t come from tanks.

Climate change is causing floods, droughts, and fires. Pandemics don’t respect passports. Extremist ideas travel online in every language. Criminals move money and people across continents. And all of it affects people, not just governments.

So it makes no sense to only study security through the lens of territory. We need to study how behavior, systems, and decisions create or reduce these threats.

Nontraditional security (NTS) looks beyond armies and borders. It asks how things like health, environment, food, water, and cyber issues affect people’s safety. It also asks who is most at risk. Often, it’s the poor, the sick, the displaced, not the powerful.

NTS doesn’t ignore the state, but it says the state is not always the victim. Sometimes, it causes the problem. Through neglect, bad policy, and corruption.

So the real questiones are: what kind of systems make people more secure? And what kind of behavior (by leaders, institutions, or communities) makes them more vulnerable?

Universities shape how people think. They train future leaders, policy experts, diplomats, and journalists. If students only learn about war and geopolitics, they will ignore the real crises people face every day. And if researchers only focus on state conflict, they will miss what’s happening in homes, hospitals, and streets.

That’s why NTS must become a full academic field. Not just one lecture in a course. Not just one week in a syllabus. But a proper area with its own methods, questions, and tools.

I think it must be launched as independent degree program at the BS and Masters level. If not, it must be taught in political science, international relations, sociology, public health, environmental studies, and even computer science/IT.

Because NTS issues cross categories, so the knowledge must cross them too. The big change it may bring to stop seeing the state as the main actor, start seeing people.

I believe that fixing security is not just about stopping an attack. It’s about building systems that work before things fall apart. And we need to ask how global actions (like trade, tech, and aid) create risks in places far away.

Look at COVID-19, it showed how weak many systems are. Health care collapsed in some places. People didn’t trust vaccines, and misinformation spread fast. But the virus didn’t come with a gun. It spread indiscriminately through travel, neglect, and delay.

Now think of climate, rising heat and floods are pushing farmers off land. It causes migration which causes urban pressure, and may cause unrest. None of this looks like war, but it breaks societies just the same.

It’s often made worse by bad planning, poor education, and corrupt leadership. That’s why studying behavior and system matters.

First, universities must create full departments on NTS. Second, governments and donors should fund research in this area. Third, scholars must link across fields like health, climate, tech, crime, and more. Fourth, students should learn to read data, understand communities, and question power. And finally, global institutions must take NTS seriously in policy and practice.

When floods hit, crops fail, and a new virus spreads, actually people suffer. If leaders don’t understand the social roots of these problems, they won’t fix them. If journalists can’t explain the connections, the public won’t demand change. If students never learn this way of thinking, the cycle will repeat.

That is why this is urgent. There will be people who say this is not security. It is just development, social work, and soft issues. Actually they are wrong.

It is believed that anything that puts large numbers of people at risk is a security issue. And ignoring these threats just because they do not involve guns is a mistake we can not afford. The world is not just about borders anymore. It’s about behavior, decisions, and systems. That is what makes people safe or puts them in danger.

Universities need to teach, students need to study and policymakers need to hear NTS. Because if we keep treating non-traditional security threats as side issues, we will keep being surprised by crisis. And we will keep failing the people, we are supposed to protect.