Regional Security Complext Theory and Insulator States

concepts such as ‘hearts and minds’. Instead, Buzan explains that ‘the nature of security defies pursuit of an agreed definition’.69 Likewise, for Ken Booth, the challenge of defining security in this contested form is that it ‘is a condition, like health or status, which defies easy definition and analysis’,70 so, the provision of security might be described most simply as the ‘absence of threats’.71 Hence, security can be ‘life threatening’, but can also be ‘life altering’, and is consequently a relative concept.72 When using this meaning, the threat of something as seemingly trivial as a tax increase in an affluent 64 Ibid., 485. 65 Buzan, People, states, and fear, 10. 66 Steve Smith, “A Conceptual Overview of Security in a Globalizing World” (presented at the International Studies Association, Honolulu, 2009), http://convention2.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/0/8/7/p708 78_index.html#citation, (accessed April 3, 2011). 67 Lake and Morgan, Regional orders, 21. 68 Ibid. 69 Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda For International Security Studies In The PostCold War Era., 2nd ed. (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 16. 70 Ken Booth, Theory of world security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 97. 71 Ibid., 100. 72 Ibid., 101.