From Policy to Strategy: The Quest for a Real National Security Strategy in the Philippines (original) (raw)

Understanding the Philippine National Security Strategy

Understanding the Philippine National Security Strategy, 2016

National security is a concept that seeks for the protection of the interest of the nation state and its people with the state’s sustainability and survival its utmost priority, hence, a strategy to promote it is instructive for every nation. However, in the development of a National Security Strategy (NSS), the people must understand and have a common appreciation of the necessary fundamentals that constitute the framing of such a strategy. National security commands the employment of all the elements of national power: its territory, people and resources, and the use of political, diplomatic, economic and military components. The Philippine government needs to translate the employment and prioritization of these elements into a national security framework towards achieving its national interest of “ensuring its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the well-being of its people and institutions are preserved, protected and enhanced” as mandated by the Philippine Constitution. In framing the NSS, the national interest should then be the precept. However, although universally used, global interpretation of the notion of ‘national interest’ is highly diverse and does not have a fixed definition. Conversely, there is a basic need to contextualize the concept of national interest to better guide the framing of a strategy to promote national security.