What National Security Is (and What It Is Not): Some Ideas Regarding the Constitutional Reform of Article 1 of the Constitution
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A few days ago, the government of President José Antonio Kast submitted a constitutional reform to Congress that seeks to incorporate the concept of “public security” into Article 1. From this, it is understood that the initiative assumes this notion is conceptually distinct from “national security,” already contemplated in the Political Constitution of the Republic (CPR), and therefore must be expressly and distinctly part of the foundations of institutionalism. This document analyzes this initiative in light of the trajectory of the concept of national security in Chile, the premises that have defined it, and argues that the proposed distinction presents two notions as separate concepts that maintain a relationship of inclusion: “public security” is part of a broader concept, which is “national security.”
GOVERNMENT PROPOSAL
The first provision of the constitutional reform in question is explicit in its purpose. It introduces in the fifth paragraph of Article 1, “following the phrase ‘national security,’ the expression ‘and public security.'”1. The rationale was presented by the president himself in a recent radio interview:
“Our Constitution, while it addresses the issue of public security in various articles, does not include it in the first article, in the foundations of institutionalism, where national security is discussed. Now we incorporate ‘national security and public security,’ which also allows for legislative measures.”
José Antonio Kast, T13 Radio, August 10, 20262
Additionally, the Undersecretary of the Interior, Máximo Pavez, stated that the term security in Article 1 of the current Constitution “is a concept from the 1980s linked to national security,” which “is not the same as public security,” so employing the Armed Forces (FF.AA.) “requires a different architecture.”3. Thus, the government thesis rests on two assertions. The first is that national security and public security constitute parallel categories and that, therefore, the constitutional reform would fill a gap. The second is that the current notion of national security responds to an outdated conceptual framework. Both assertions, as will be seen from the genealogy of the concept in Chile’s institutional history, are incorrect.
EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT IN CHILE
During the first half of the 20th century, the terms “security” and “defense” were used interchangeably. The 1925 Constitution used them as synonyms in the face of external threats.4, and the Army Memorial still defined national security in 1953 in relation to “a war emergency.”5. The shift occurred in 1960 when DFL No. 181 replaced the Superior Council of National Defense with the Superior Council of National Security, establishing that “national security was the broader notion that encompassed the functions and responsibilities of national defense.” Its regulations also granted it scope both “internally and externally.”6.
The 1980 Constituent Commission maintained this approach. In the minutes of the Ortúzar Commission, jurist Enrique Evans stated that national security “encompasses and includes internal public order, territorial integrity, internal security, and external security.”7. As a dissenting voice, Jaime Guzmán warned that the concept “cannot be so generic that it encompasses everything, but must be specified.” In the end, the Commission deemed it inappropriate to define it and opted to maintain “a very general and broad notion.”8. The resulting text of the 1980 Constitution reflects that breadth. Article 24 assigns to the President “the internal public order and external security of the Republic,” and Chapter XI assigns to the police “the public order and internal public security,” while establishing that the Armed Forces “exist for the defense of the Fatherland and are essential for national security.”9.
WHAT IS NATIONAL SECURITY
What, then, is national security? According to the conceptualization articulated by the State of Chile itself, it is not an activity or an administrative function, but a condition. A country is secure when its institutions, territory, and population are protected from violent threats, whether external or internal. Various instruments contribute to producing or ensuring that condition. Defense, rooted in the Armed Forces, addresses the external dimension; while public order, managed by the police, responds to the internal. Civil protection, for its part, deals with disasters. The overall responsibility, however, lies at the political level, whose highest responsible is the President of the Republic. Force, whether military or police, constitutes “an effective instrument” to achieve it, “but not the exclusive instrument.”10. It follows that public security is not something distinct from national security, but rather its internal dimension: a subset within a broader category. The same applies to national defense, its external dimension.
Since the return to democracy, defense books have consolidated that conceptual delineation, but over time they have begun to blur it. The 2010 Defense Book warned about the risks of turning national security into “an all-encompassing and omnipotent concept,” as “not every human action (…) should be viewed through a security lens.” Thus, it was the Chilean State itself that, in its official doctrine, cautioned against an excessive expansion of the concept. The 2020 Defense Policy stated that national security encompasses areas “whose contemporary boundaries are becoming increasingly diffuse” given the evolution of threats and affirmed that the Armed Forces “must contribute in qualified cases to internal security.” This is not something new, as it is already expressly considered in the legal framework through states of constitutional exception. Thus, the reform promoted in 2026 implies a rupture and a conceptual displacement of the constitutional text.
Finally, Undersecretary Pavez’s objection to the concept of “national security” may seem plausible. It is true that the term is not neutral in Latin America, as it is associated with the so-called “National Security Doctrine,” under which the concept “acquired an internal dimension, given the historical and political context of the 1970s.”11, However, while there may be some overlap in the words, one corresponds to the needs of the State, while the other pertains to a specific and local policy of this region. Consequently, as an objection to the connotations of a term with a disputed past, the Undersecretary of the Interior’s argument may be valid; however, as a statement about its origin and relevance, it is incorrect. National security has had legal status since 1960 and was updated in democracy in 1997, 2002, 2010, and 2020. What the Executive claims to need—a notion of security that includes the internal dimension—has therefore existed in the official conceptualization of the State for over sixty years.
CRITICAL EXAMINATION: THE PREMISE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
The review conducted on the concept of national security allows for a rebuttal of the two assertions. The first—incorporating the concept of public security into Article 1 of the CPR—can hardly be sustained because public security has already been conceptually included in national security since 1960.The message itself admits this by recognizing that the reform merely specifies “what until now was only an inference from the current text.”12. The second assertion is even weaker, as national security is not a notion frozen in the 1980s, since successive democratic governments have updated it, and from its original legal formulation, it encompasses the dimension that is now sought to be added.
Therefore, the problem is actually prior. It is not about incorporating a new term, but rather about defining more precisely the concept of national security that already exists.AthenaLab has proposed a criterion to narrow its scope, according to which a useful definition must establish not only what the State can do in the name of security but also “what the State and its institutions should not do.”13. While the concept of national security continues to evolve and its boundaries may be subject to debate, this does not imply that its various dimensions should be treated as independent categories, as public security is part of national security in that it constitutes its internal dimension. Consequently, separating both notions is not only conceptually unnecessary but also disregards how the Chilean State itself has constructed and developed this relationship in its legal framework.
This precision is relevant because recent Chilean politics has multiplied the use of the concept “security.” Economic security and social security are invoked, as if each legitimate aspiration gained greater standing by being dressed in the concept of security. These are valuable objectives of public policy, but they belong to the realm of development and well-being, and therefore not to national security. If everything falls under security, then what is not security? What separates a threat to security from a development issue is “human intentionality and its character of violent use of force,”14, with the potential to cause harm. Thus, phenomena such as terrorism belong to the realm of security. Job precariousness, poverty, or pensions, on the other hand, belong to the realm of development and well-being.
In this way, when the use of the word “security” increases, the concept becomes confused and weakened, which appears to be happening. With this criterion, adding a second undefined term to Article 1 of the Constitution, instead of clarifying the first, confuses it. Updating a concept requires precision, not duplication.
The words of Article 1 are not innocuous, as they delineate responsibilities and guide the use of state instruments. Clarifying what is meant by “national security” and what place public security occupies within it is a necessary condition for each institution, including the Armed Forces, to act within the scope that corresponds to them according to the constitutional mandate and the nature of their function.
KEYS TO OBSERVE
During the discussion of this reform, three aspects should be particularly observed:
- Whether the reform provides greater precision or introduces new ambiguities. In particular, whether the modification merely adds a new term—public security—without clarifying its content or its relationship with the existing one, or whether, on the contrary, it strives to establish more clearly the scope of national security.
- How the relationship between national security and public security is established. That is, whether both notions are treated as separate categories or whether public security is recognized as a dimension of national security, as this definition will largely depend on how the responsibilities of the State in security matters are interpreted.
- What consequences this definition will have on the use of state instruments. Specifically, how the new conceptual delineation affects the responsibilities and competencies of political authority, the police, and the Armed Forces, particularly regarding the circumstances under which each of these instruments should be employed.
ATHENALAB TEAM
NOTES
1 Message from H.E. the President of the Republic initiating a constitutional reform project that strengthens the National Public Security System and creates a new state of constitutional exception due to serious disruption of public security, Santiago, August 2026 (hereinafter, “Message”), unique article, numeral 1). The citations from the text are verbatim.
2 Verbatim quote from the interview with the President on T13 Radio, August 10, 2026.
3 Infogate, “Pavez and the use of the Armed Forces in the fight against organized crime requires a different constitutional architecture…”, August 12, 2026 (interview on Radio Cooperativa).
4 John Griffiths, Theory of Security and Defense in the American Continent. Analysis of the Cases of the United States, Peru, and Chile (Santiago: RIL editores, 2011), p. 375.
5 Griffiths (2011), pp. 446 and 449-450. The 1953 definition corresponds to López Larraín, “Problems of National Defense,” Army Memorial No. 252.
6 The definition corresponds to the Regulation of DFL No. 181, of April 28, 1960, Art. 1.
7 Official Minutes of the Commission for the Study of the New Constitution, session No. 52.
8 Griffiths (2011), pp. 379-380 and 427.
9 Political Constitution of the Republic, Arts. 24 and 101; Griffiths (2011), pp. 426-427.
10 National Defense Book of Chile 2010, Part III.
11 Griffiths (2011), p. 488.
12 Message, section III, “Content of the project.”
13 Marcelo Masalleras, General Considerations for a National Security Architecture of Chile (Santiago: AthenaLab, January 2026), pp. 13-14, citing Kim R. Holmes, “What is National Security?” (Heritage Foundation, 2015).
14 Griffiths (2011). p.488.
