BELGRADE SECURITY FORUM 2013

Esta es mi solicitud de colaboración en el Belgrade Security Forum 2013, que tendrá lugar en Belgrado  del 19 al 21 de septiembre. El tema de esta tercera edición del encuentro es: ¿Están los Estados en de-construcción?

BELGRADE SECURITY FORUM 2013

“Is the state under (de)construction? Risks and responses from the Balkans and beyond"

To the question “Is the state under (de)construction?” I would answer YES, but firstly I would need to find the common meaning of “deconstruction”, something that I understand as a process which is working between construction and reconstruction, a transformation at the end. The states are transforming again, but this is something that started to happen recently so we cannot appreciate yet the changes that it will bring to the next generations. Anyway, this transformation is not the first neither the main transformation which is happening in the XXI century. The deconstruction of the states is just the result of a previous deconstruction in the societies, a change from the base I would say, since we should remember that the societies are the ones that make the states have sense.

The configuration of the states has been changing since their birth, something that happened all along the history due to different factors and in different ways. But there is something in the change that is happening now that makes it different.. During the past, the changes were isolated and developed in different forms depending on the single factors that affected single societies, but now we are talking about a global idea of change.

Internet, the new technologies, the social networks (blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr…), the digital data, the citizen journalism… have created a new way of sharing information, regularizing the access to the information, making the changes be global, making a world connection. All this things mean more than we usually realize. Now we can know about the shortcomings and benefits that our own societies and states have, because we can compare it with neighbouring states. We have tools to learn further than the states teach us. We are freer and more independent and this is the base of the social mobilization and the shift to a global and international state based on the real power of the societies. Thanks to the protests of the past we are what we are nowadays, but the demonstrations of the present and the future can be much more. In recent years we have seen how people took to the streets in Ukraine's Orange Revolution or in Moldova with the "Grape Revolution", or the successive demonstrations in the "Arab Spring", movements that were followed in Europe and in other parts of the world.

I think the international social agents who handle the states are already aware of this change in the social attitude and the emergence of a new society mobilized and globally connected whose actions have great potential and an uncertain future. What is clear is that states must adapt themselves to these changes that society requires and that the international security policy and the agents involved (militaries, police diplomacy) will have to work according to it. Although, eventually, the states will remain the guarantors of the global stability, as the humanity is based on this organizational structure that may experience changes but never disappear.