Non-state actors calling the shots

It is this failure that gives opportunity to non-state actors to influence behaviour and to reduce the relevance of state officials.

Although NGOs and civil society entities are influential, it is those settling international security scores that have affected collective behaviour.

They have taken the power to determine lifestyles and collective sense of public security from government officials.

This shift is particularly pronounced in the United States.

For instance, non state actors in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, forced Barack Obama to talk of “irreconcilable truths.”

While receiving the Nobel for “peace”, he tried to invoke the “just war” argument that was at best tenuous.

In part, the anguish is because, like many countries, the United States is caught trying to respond to purported enemies who keep on moving to new conceptual theatres of conflict that had not been thought about.

The consequence is that, in the name of security, life styles are regularly reorganised across the globe to fit the dictates of those actors.

Being made to take off shoes, clothes, and to forgo liquid medicine in international flights became a norm.

And when a Nigerian youth introduced a new level of insecurity at Detroit, installing new gadgets for electronically scrutinizing a passenger’s anatomy were accepted as a security necessity.

This makes George Orwell’s 1984 appear to be simply 25 years late as “big brother” takes over, and privacy is thrown out of the window.

Although Obama denies it, non state actors seem to be calling the shots and it is also happening in other countries as non-state actors force change in lifestyle.

Reputed piracy money from unstable Somalia has increased the level of poverty in Kenya by making property prices beyond the reach of ordinary Kenyans.

The presence of a Jamaican in Kenya led to destructive riots in Nairobi.

The confidence that used to exist in states has disappeared because non-state actors are calling the shots.