Existential security: towards a security framework for the survival of humanity

Abstract

Humanity faces a growing spectrum of anthropogenic existential threats—risks that have their origins in human agency and could cause civilizational collapse or human extinction. The paper develops ’existential security’ as a new framework for security policy to guide action on these threats. ‘Existential security’ takes humankind as its referent object, the survival of humanity as its core value, anthropogenic existential threats as the principal dangers, comprehensive capabilities and mutual restraint and resilience as the means and modes of protection, nation states and global political institutions as the key security actors, and an intergenerational timeframe for security policy. It differs from national security and human security as security frames in several respects, and is necessary because its referent object is humanity as a whole, and its principal threats are those posed by human behavior. – AI-generated abstract.