The Sense of National Security:A Neglected Dimension in National Security Studies
The concept of security has traditionally been regarded as an objective state of national existence,free from danger or threat to the nation.However,the psychological perspective holds the view that security is a feeling or sense,and danger is an effect of in-terpretation or personal perception,which cannot exist independently of those to whom it may become a threat.The sense of security,therefore,depends on national leaders'per-ceptions of threats,which may be a misperception of actual threats due to idiosyncratic differences.While the belief systems of national leaders form the foundation of their security perceptions,simplistic categorizations and attributions,heuristic reasoning,such as histori-cal analogies,metaphors and other typical cognitive mechanisms serve not only as the pri-mary means through which leaders perceive threats and form a sense of security,but also as the intrinsic mechanisms of misperceptions or unmotivated bias in assessing national security threats.Domestic politics is the external mechanism of motivated bias or misperception of national security threats.The misperception of national security threat may be an underesti-mation or an exaggeration of the real threat,both distorting the sense of national security,leading to wrong policies,and undermining the objective national security in the end.The realization of national security strategic goals requires not only the elimination of objective national security threats,but also the unrealistic subjective feeling of insecurity.The latter calls for avoiding misperceptions of national security threats by policymakers and incorpora-ting psychological factors into national security studies by scholars.
the sense of securitymisperception of national security threatheuristic rea-soningnational security strategythreat perception
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