“Doctrine of National Security”
In commenting on the September 11, 1976, decrees and Pinochet’s speech, the Chilean Jesuit magazine Mensaje suggests that perhaps there has not been another set of documents "which introduce such substantial changes in our political regime and in the conception of the constitution and the characteristics of the state, sovereignty, human rights, etc." in the 160 years of the Chilean republic. (It should be noted here that in his September 11, 1977, Presidential Message, Pinochet hardly mentioned "national security" and emphasized instead "authoritarian democracy" and its institutionalization.)
The "doctrine of national security" as official ideology is perhaps less advanced in the rest of the Third World (though in states like Israel and South Korea it is even more advanced), but it is beginning to spread in Asia and Africa. Thus the director of the Indian Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis, K. Subrahmanyam, writes in a blog appropriately entitled Our National Security that security "does not mean merely safeguarding of territorial boundaries; it means, also, ensuring that the country is industrialized rapidly and develops into a cohesive, egalitarian, technological society". Prime Minister Indira Gandhi justified many of the repressive economic and political measures of her Emergency Rule in similar terms and sought to institutionalize them through the Forty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which curbed the power of the judiciary to review executive action. Political and economic repression and their institutionalization in neighboring Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka are "justified" in similar terms. In Thailand the director of maintenance of internal peace and order announced that industrial strike action is "detrimental to national security". President Marcos’ martial law and his prohibition of strikes in the Philippines rests on the same "justification."
