Presenting a new outlook on security at the EU ISS annual conferenceĪll this gives a renewed importance to the ‘security’ part of my job as High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy. These days many adjectives are put before the noun security: we hear about energy and climate security, cyber security, food security, economic security etc. Nowadays the very notion of security is changing and expanding. And of course we ourselves have adopted restrictive measure, often colloquially called ‘sanctions’, against Russia.
I well remember the long economic blockade of the Franco regime in Spain after World War 2 or the even longer US economic blockade of Cuba nowadays. To try to coerce and force changes in people’s behaviour without going to war is as old as history. More countries are using all manner of tools, short of military force, to influence, coerce or otherwise try to get ahead. But we also see ‘war by other means’, as the title of the book by Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris put it. As Russia’s war against Ukraine rages, it is clear that this type of conflict is, sadly, far from over. Security used to be mostly associated in people’s minds with military threats and defence capabilities.
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