When countries issue laws and legislation, establish legal rules and regulatory procedures related to the maintenance of their national security, along with establishing the executive authorities necessary to implement and execute them, and further create regulatory agencies besides their affiliated bodies and institutions, they aim to ensure and maintain their national security, in addition to protecting it from actions that could be exploited by hostile powers.
Achieving National Security in its comprehensive sense requires actual structuring of all forms of exercising democracy and freedom among members of society, in a way that achieves – to the greatest extent – tangible security for all elements of the state’s National Security, as a deficiency in any of its controls will lead to damage to the entity of the state and its position among other countries, which requires that the comprehensive concept of National Security be an “integrated whole”, which its elements interact with each other, and each of which is closely linked to the other in order to secure the state against any threats or penetration attempts aimed at undermining its stability and threatening its structure.
Risks and threats:
New generations of unconventional wars are considered one of the most dangerous types of harassing by hostile forces, as these forces seek to employ them to slowly blow up the targeted state, sabotage and weaken it using tools, means and internal entities loyal to them, either directly or indirectly, and with or without intent and awareness, leading to demonstrating the inability of the institutions and agencies of this targeted state to perform their functions, manage its resources, or control its borders or citizens, for the purpose of causing it to fail and destabilize, then imposing a new reality that takes into account the interests of these hostile forces and achieves their strategic goals, through Creative Chaos, the term that is used in conjunction with the occurrence of any crises, disturbances, or security, economic, societal, or political threats…etc.
By considering the history of states, we will notice that the oppressive component of any state’s prestige is stronger in influence and more present than the moral and legal component, which causes state institutions to become of a frightening and violent nature rather than majestic, and hence to be unable to give any coherent social or national meaning, or a justification for this violence without merging any partisan interaction or institutional action, hence the result becomes the “Nationalization” of the state, the depriving of its public status, and the deterioration of its prestige, in a way that the hostile forces seek to exploit and promote through provocative elements and oppositional movements through various social media networks, relying on exaggeration of some events, or turning the facts into rumors and lies, undermining the importance of trust in the “state of law” that has been established amongst the societal segments of the targeted state, while enriching the conviction with the false claim that it is a state in which the law has become either obstructive or a mean to legitimizing injustice.
The concept of state sovereignty and prestige:
In this context, we first note that the concept of “state prestige” requires, primarily, the presence of two elements:
The first is “dread and fear”, that is, the fright that the state instills in its individuals, in a way that prevents them from challenging its regulatory regulations or violating its legal rules, which is proven by the widespread certainty and conviction that if they do so, they will receive a deterrent punishment (special deterrence). Their memory may remind them of this punishment in all the precedents in which the sanctity of the state and its individuals was violated (general deterrence).
The second is “appreciation and respect”, which are two sides of the same coin, meaning that the feeling of appreciation for the state’s actions is a feeling that emanates from these actions’ commitment to fixed legal values and abstract general rules, as well as serving a general goal that goes beyond the interests of those in charge of them. Respect is also linked to seriousness in applying the law; when behavior and punishment themselves are governed by a law that applies to all similar cases and is serious in its implementation, it inspires respect amongst individuals, while lack of respect and loss of appreciation are linked to the prevalence of exceptions, favoritism, moodiness, or chaos.
Thus, the state loses its prestige when the two elements of this prestige decline, and it becomes unable to gain the loyalty of its citizens or create a balanced concept of prestige that restores the element of respect in it, especially amid the spread of discourse interactions through social media, based on empty slogans calling for more forms of freedom, in an ignorant and unconscious imitation of democracies that have proven to be lacking when examining their origins and applications in many countries.
In light of this overview of the current situation, in addition to the general intellectual context, hostile states and their concealed elements seek to destroy the idea of “legitimacy and generality” as the basis for the structure of any state and to establish “chaos” in the behavior of individuals, so that each of them seeks to rescue himself, by linking with those officials or other societal forces that would benefit him, and not with its neighbors and partners, which contributes to the collapse of society’s values, due to fear and little conviction in the state and respect for its institutions as it does not value them.
On the other hand, the phenomenon of disloyalty and lack of belonging is merely a manifestation of deeper problems that have grown and taken root outside the framework of society. Therefore, it is not easy to develop radical solutions, as this requires serious work to prevent its spread, and continuous efforts to limit the spread of its negative effects temporarily. Especially in light of the incitement witnessed by social media networks against weak social and youth segments, and the contemporary comparisons with other Western democracies.
Loyalty cannot be produced and employed in life if it is not true, sincere, and exchanged. These conditions will not be met if agencies and institutions, both governmental and non-governmental, fail to consider the interests of their citizens, represent them honestly, and fully commit to their rights, freedoms, and dignity. Achieving participation, accountability, transparency, and preservation of the rights of citizens, along with honest representation of them and their aspirations, are among the most prominent gains of rational democracy that will secure the integration between citizens and their state and affirm their sincere loyalty to it.
In conclusion, the diversity of national achievements and projects that Egypt is witnessing, which have been implemented in various fields and sectors over the past ten years, are the greatest evidence that Egypt is on the right track. Building our new republic, in addition to the existing effective initiatives and efforts, requires addressing some legislation that relies on a series of executive and supervisory initiatives in order to deal in an integrated manner with new developments, preparing for the state’s transition to live within a historical national moment, consistent with local and international reality.
Accordingly, it is important to recognize the role of various types of media and social media networks in creating serious and comprehensive community awareness of the requirements for maintaining national security, in an equivalent manner with the nature of society and the characteristics of globalization. The citizen in a democratic society, although he has the right to know, is restricted by what is imposed by considerations of good democracy, as well as considerations of safety and security of the country, as applied by ancient Western countries, which necessarily require that the citizen have a degree of security and societal awareness that makes him comprehend and aware of this diversity, variation, and difference in the new sorts of threats to his national security.