Taoism and the concept of global security

Global security is typically discussed in the rationalist termsused to articulate contemporary modernism. To restrict analysisto such articulations, however, is to accept the limits anddistortions that this way of being and knowing creates. Thisarticle seeks to transgress these limits, and to compensatefor these distortions. It does so by discussing the conceptof global security from a Taoist perspective. Initially, itmaps what global security means to rationalists. Then it discusseswhat Taoism entails, and compares Taoist and rationalist epistemologies.Then it compares Taoist and rationalist thinking about globalsecurity, defined first in more general, ‘human’security terms, and second in more particular, politico-strategicterms. It concludes by highlighting the significance of theTaoist concept of wu-wei (‘no unnatural action’),and of Taoism as one way in which to contextualise the rationalistconstruction of global security.