Genghis Khan, Mongolia and the Theory of Human Security

China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 6, No. 4 (2008) p. 81-102
© Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program
ISSN: 1653-4212

Genghis Khan, Mongolia and the Theory of
Human Security
Robert E. Bedeski*
ABSTRACT
By 1279, the Mongols ruled nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface. To understand
the origins of that remarkable empire and the political dimensions of its founder,
Genghis Khan an anthropocentric methodology and theory of human security is
used. The core of the theory is that man’s will to survive is at the core of social
and political institutions. The theory is applied to Mongol nomadic society and
the career of Genghis Khan, and explains the unique characteristics of the Mongol
state – an entity which was global for its time, and influenced the development of
Asian states for centuries.

Keywords • Genghis Khan • Mongol Empire • Anthropocentric Theory of Human
Security.
Introduction
Origins of the modern state system are often attributed to the Peace of
Westphalia (1648), while evolution of the Western state itself traces a
lineage from Greek and Roman precursors. The European tradition of
discourse generally restricts itself to thinkers who addressed essential
ideas of state formation and developments which contributed to its
emergence. As seapower and imperial expansion on a global scale
proceeded during and after the Age of Discovery, the system of nation-
states was imposed on the rest of the world.1 Until the sweeping
decolonization that occurred after World War II, Japan was the only
non-Western state to achieve equality with the original and exclusive
Euro-American club. Today, as the United Nations moves to establish a
world order based on equality of nations, and the U.S. struggles to retain
hegemony in the face of challenges from China, Russia, and domestic

* Robert E. Bedeski is Visiting Aung San Suu Kyi Endowed Chair in Asian Democracy,
University of Louisville, Kentucky.
1 This narrative is disputed in John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise & Fall of Global
Empires, 1400-2000. (London: Penguin Books, 2007).

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economic problems, the post-Cold War international order hangs in
balance.
Global empires – in the sense of including the major societies of the
world known at the time – are not new in history. But while Rome held
sway in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and Chinese empires
since Qin controlled the lands of modern China as far as Central Asia
and the Himalayas, only the Mongols ever ruled practically all of
continental Eurasia. By 1279, the Mongols ruled nearly a quarter of the
earth’s surface.2 While a Eurocentric view of history treats the Mongol
empire as an epiphenomenon - a plague that caused much devastation and
suffering - the further east one travels from the Danube, the more
prolonged its influence. Russia, for example, was ruled for two centuries
by descendants of Genghis Khan. They destroyed the primacy of Kiev,
and set the stage for emergence of Moscow, by appointing the Russian
Orthodox Church as collector of taxes for the Mongol regime.3 In China,
grandson Kubilai Khan established the Yuan dynasty and a pattern of
rule much more centralized than any rulers since the Qin dynasty.
By any measure, a global empire lasting more than a century and a half
deserves careful analysis, and especially its impact on state formation in
subsequent history. As Jack Weatherford writes4:

In American terms, the accomplishment of Genghis Khan might be
understood if the United States, instead of being created by a group of
educated merchants or wealthy planters, ha been founded by one of its
illiterate slaves, who, by the sheer force of personality, charisma, and
determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people,
created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal
religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, marched an army
from Canada to Brazil, and opened roads of commerce in a free-trade
zone that stretched across the continents. On every level and from any
perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments
challenge the limits of imagination and tax the resources of scholarly
explanation.

The purpose of the present essay is to inquire into the origins of that
remarkable empire and the political dimensions of its founder, Genghis
Khan5. He was undoubtedly one of the most influential men of the past

2 The Mongol Empire at its greatest extent included Mongolia, China, most of Russia,
southern Siberia, parts of Burma, and all of Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, Iraq, Georgia,
Armenia, Persia, and Central Asia.
3 Matthew Raphael Johnson, “Russia and the Mongol Yoke”
<http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3204> (January 25 2009).
4 Jack Weatherford, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. (New York: Crown
Publishers, 2003), xviii.
5 I will use this spelling since it is the version most commonly used in English. Less
common is “Chinggis Khan”.
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millennium, although his impact has largely been interpreted as destroyer
of ancient civilizations. In Mongolia his memory has been revived after
decades of repression by Soviets. Their memories of the “Tatar yoke”
plus concerns that Mongolian nationalism could be revived to oppose
Soviet domination were factors, and in addition, Josef Stalin’s ruthless
policies too closely resembled Genghis Khan’s methods to allow
comparisons. The role of Genghis Khan as founder must be given equal
weight with his reputation as destroyer. A picture of his early career
emerges in the Secret History of the Mongols6, which gives us a fuller
picture of the man and his trials. Scholars in the West and Mongolia are
reinterpreting the impact of the Mongolian empire. In this essay, I wish
to focus on the state-building career of Genghis Khan, who almost single-
handedly began the most global empire up to that date, linking Europe
and Asia into a single unit – an empire which had a major part in
initiating the modern world.
To accomplish this, I use a methodology and theory developed in my
book on the Chinese state.7 The essence of this theory is an
anthropocentric view of human security – that man’s will to survive is
the core of his activities and constructs, including social and political
institutions. By applying the theory to a nomadic society, limitations
and further possibilities can be revealed. With the early biography8 of
Genghis Khan (Temujin) available in the Secret History, the three levels
of human security – biological individual, social person, and political
actor – can be addressed. Equally important is to discover the key
characteristics of the state founded by Genghis Khan, since it ultimately
exerted major influence on modern Eurasian states. The Mongol empire,
so to speak, may have been the “Big Bang”, or at least a catalyst, that
transformed the major Asian kingdoms into the forms that greeted the
European challenge in the nineteenth century.
The Anthropocentric Theory of Human Security
At this point it is necessary to lay out a framework for analysis of the
Genghis Khan state-building phenomenon, using a human security
perspective. The concept of human security was introduced around 1994,
as a more humanized approach to past exclusive focus on national
security by most countries – the jealous guarding and protection of state
territory and interests, which often produced conflict and war. Human

6 Francis Woodman Cleaves, Secret history of the Mongols: For the first time done into English
out of the original tongue and provided with an exegetical commentary (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1982).
7 Robert Bedeski, Human Security and the Chinese State: Historical Transformations and the
Modern Quest for Sovereignty. (London: Routledge, 2007).
8 An imaginative re-creation of the early years of Chinggis Khan is provided in Conn
Iggulden, Genghis: Birth of an empire. (New York: Delacorte, 2007).
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security brought the state back to its original and primeval mandate – to
protect its citizens from harm and weld them into collective action for
long-term security. However the twentieth century state has proved to
be the most efficient killing machine in history – tens of millions of lives
were destroyed in wars, while an estimated hundred million more were
murdered by their own Communist governments.
Rather than proceed with the state-centric approach to human security,
I will elaborate the core elements of the anthropocentric theory developed
to analyze the development of the Chinese state.9 From Hobbes onward,
Western political theorists have tended to focus on the state as a great
machine, needing constant maintenance and adjustment. Its glorification
in the twentieth century, fed by nineteenth century nationalism, reduced
men into cogs in the machine. Human security attempts to humanize
the "machine", and bring it back to serving people rather than becoming
more efficient. However, without understanding the human origins of
the state and its original purposes, it remains an untamed creature with
bestial potential. The anthropocentric theory of human security can
provide an escape from this dilemma by identifying the key sources of
security – the individual and society as well as the state play crucial roles in
security, so a balanced consideration of these three levels of protection is
important in establishing the available hierarchy of security sources.
If a theory is to have validity, it must apply to more than one case, so
I have chosen to understand the formation of the Mongolian state under
Genghis Khan as demonstration of the theory. The biography of Genghis
Khan amply illustrates key features of the anthropocentric theory– his
journey from "individual" to "person" to "ruler/citizen"10 demonstrate key
features of the theory, as will be elaborated below.
Theories of Human Security
One goal of human security is to use the strengths of the Modern
Sovereign Nation-State to provide effective security to people, as
opposed to enhancing the power of the state while claiming to serve the
population. However, much of the discussion and implementation of
human security has been framed in terms of delivering state benefits to
people who have been denied them, either because of breakdown of states
or conflicts.

9 Bedeski, Human Security and the Chinese State, Chapters 4-5.
10 While a ruler of a state always has far more security resources at his disposal than the
ordinary subject or citizen, these cannot transcend the current level of technology and
organization within his society. His security is also enhanced by the fact that he
personifies the state, and thus takes on an iconic and even sacred status. So except for the
sacral dimension, the ruler enjoys security protections similar to subjects/citizens
different in degree more than in kind. In a state, only the ruler and government can
legitimately initiate and wield force.
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In contrast to the state-centric approach of UNDP-conceived human
security,11 I have formulated a human-centred, or anthropocentric, theory
of human security, based on three levels of life-protection: individual,
social and political. Starting at the individual level, each human being –
and indeed every living animal organism – has powers of perception,
movement and defense which enhance survival. These powers are
enhanced with maturation and experience, and can largely be attributed
to evolution of each species. Complex societies provide an additional
level of protection, through family and other bonds. In society, the
individual becomes a person, and acquires an additional layer of protection.
Collective and learned behavior strengthens social solidarity which
enhances protection of the individual as person. Social bonds emerge out
of the repetition of human events of birth, dependency, division of
labour, family formation, conflicts, and death. A common language,
division of labour, and shared territory further reinforce common
identity and cooperation.
A third, and more complex level of protection is provided by the
formation of the state. It is artificial – totally a human creation through
will and reason, though it often takes on the camouflage of spiritual
qualities through myth and philosophy12. The common elements of a
state are government, a people and contiguous territory. Government is
an identifiable set of institutions assembled to protect and administer the
territory and population of the state. In the state, the persons who
comprise the society occupying its territory, are transformed into subjects
or citizens. Citizens/subjects within the state have this additional layer
of security as well as further obligations and a layer of identity which
entitles them to state protections. Exercising a monopoly of force and
legitimating that force under law, the state controls the military, police
and courts. When operating democratically and according to law, state
force significantly reduces harm and conflict within its borders. If the

11 Links to the full report can be found at UNDP, “Human Development Report 1994: New
Dimensions of Human Security” <http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1994/>
(September 10 2008).
12 Hegel wrote: “The spiritual individual, the nation - in so far as it is internally
differentiated so as to form an organic whole - is what we call the state. This term is
ambiguous, however, for the state and the laws of the state, as distinct from religion,
science, and art, usual ave purely political associations. But in this context, the word 'state'
is used in a more comprehensive sense, just as we use the word 'realm' to describe spiritual
phenomena. A nation should therefore be regarded as a spiritual individual, and it is not
primarily its external side that will be emphasised here, but rather what we have
previously called the spirit of the nation . . . in short, those spiritual powers which live
within the nation and rule over it. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, p. 96.
Quoted in Z. A. Pelczynski, Political community and individual freedom in Hegel's philosophy of
state.
The State and Civil Society (Cambridge University Press, 1984),
<http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/pelczyns.htm>
(January 25 2009).
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state exercises that force merely to protect power-holders or to eliminate
persons or groups who are seen as obstacles to a “higher vision”, then the
results can be considered major violations of the human security
guarantees implied by state membership.
State-centric Human Security
The notion of human security was given currency by the UNDP and
several middle power advocates, including Japan, Norway and Canada,
and emerged as a “buzzword” among international organizations,
occasionally replacing development as describing the primary mission.
Conceptualizing human security has largely followed the Western
pattern of discourse in emphasizing only two levels of protection, while
giving priority to the state. Unwritten is that individuals, who are to be
protected, are mere clients and beneficiaries – projecting the welfare state
on a global scale. While the welfare model has much merit, it is
inadequate on at least three counts:

• Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk
may behave differently from the way it would act if it were
fully exposed to the risk. Moral hazard arises because an
individual or institution does not bear the full consequences
of its actions, and therefore has a tendency to act less
prudently than it otherwise would, leaving another party to
bear some responsibility for the consequences of those
actions. By providing – or promising to provide –the
necessary protections for life in the forms of healthcare,
employment, housing, and income, the welfare state
contributes to the atrophication of prudent self-protection at
the individual level, and to the redundancy of social
institutions (especially the extended family) which nourish
the security derived from collective action.

• The welfare state atrophies the protective resources of
individuals. Industrialization and modernization have
brought immense benefits to citizens in terms of health and
longevity, while at the same time making beneficiaries
increasingly dependent on the infrastructure, resources,
complex division of labour, and technology over which no
single person or group has control. One result is the
diminishing of basic survival skills. Place the average
urbanite into an Alaskan wilderness, where his networking,
auto-driving, computer, cell-phone and other technical and
social skills have no value, and his chances of surviving are
near zero. On the other hand, victims of natural disaster in
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developing countries, once the initial crisis has passed,
recreate their social networks and use materials at hand to
resume livelihoods.

• Third, the welfare state restricts the protective resources of
society. Modern governments have evolved into efficient
and complex machines, and perform best when democratic
principles are applied – including accountability. Where
liberalism once stood for freedom of individuals, it has
morphed into a persuasion calling for statist solutions to
practically every problem, from birth to death, and much of
life in between. The school of thought that espouses “Asian
Values” implicitly recognizes the omission, but overplays its
hand by stressing collective existence and reducing the
importance of individuals.13 Moreover, in practice, the new
Confucians have espoused state solutions to a broad range of
social and economic problems, just as many self-styled
conservatives have muted their objections to state
interventions in the U.S. and Canada.
Anthropocentric Theory of Human Security
In an earlier work14, I described a theory of human security which
initiates security as the life-protecting drive and resources of the
individual. The theory identified three levels of human protection, with
biological self-preservation as most fundamental. This theory is
summarized as follows:
Formula One: Human security of an individual in pre-society nature
HSi = Wi + F + Ki + Ei
or,
The pre-social individual’s human security, [HSi] is the aggregate of an individual’s will and
physical capacity to survive [Wi], Family inputs[F], Knowledge [Ki], and natural
environment [Ei].
Formula Two: Human security of a person in pre-political society
HSp = (HSi +/- Ls + Ks + Os +/- Es) +/- (SF)
or
The human security of a person in a socially defined group is equal to that person’s

13 For a discussion of Asian Values, see Takashi Inoguchi and Edward Newman "’Asian
Values’" and Democracy in Asia,” <http://www.unu.edu/unupress/asian-
values.html#INTRODUCTION> (January 25 2009).
14 Bedeski, Human Security.
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individual human security, plus or minus the liberty he acquires or surrenders with
membership in society, plus the access to socially-generated cultural and technical
knowledge, plus obligation/loyalty to other persons in his social network, plus or minus the
effects of a social economy, and plus or minus the average effects of the social friction
coefficient.
Formula Three: Actual sovereignty of a state = Total security available
Sa = (HSp+ Op), +/- Ep, Kp, +/- M, PF, +/-ER
or
The actual sovereignty [Sa] of a state is a function of:
1. The sum of the human security of all persons who are counted as citizens [HSp]; and the
cumulative intensity of obligations of each citizen to the state [Op];
2. The performance of the political economy [Ep],
3. Specialized and usually esoteric political knowledge [Kp], drawn from experience and
history, and utilized for the establishment, preservation and expansion of state power;
4. The coercive institutions of the state – primarily the military [M] – to defend it against
external enemies and internal rebellions;
5. The coefficient of (domestic) political friction [PF]; and
6. External relations [ER] may be either positive or negative in their effect on actualized
sovereignty.
Formula Four: Actual human security of one citizen in a state
HSc = Sa/population = Sa
or
The human security of an individual/person as citizen [HSc ] of a state is equal to the
actual sovereignty of the state [Sa] (derived in Formula Three), divided by the number of
citizens who are protected by that state. This operation calculates the average actual
security available to each citizen or semi-citizen (those persons who do not have full
citizenship privileges but claim protection of the state because of residence, relationship to a
full citizen, or other considerations).

State sovereignty is equivalent to state security – before a state becomes a
“thing unto itself”, it is accepted by its encompassed population as an
association of mutual protection. Without that acceptance, or social
contract that embodies justice, the state is, as St. Augustine wrote, “a
great robber band.”15


15
Herbert A Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of Saint Augustine, 127.

<http://books.google.ca/books?id=THxuqTME5mMC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=St+A
ugustine+state+brigand&source=web&ots=gn4dOuKogh&sig=L0Yti6wms_w5g5zZfwq2y
A9Su6s&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA127,M1> (January 25
2009).
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In contrast to the state-centric or Asian-values model of human
security, our theory addresses the hierarchy of protections that has
evolved to extend life expectancy of men over history. In the next
section, we examine how one life telescoped this development – from
individual in harsh environment through personhood in nomadic tribal
society to ruler of a state. While Genghis Khan’s status as ruler gave him
a level of security enjoyed by no other subjects in his empire-state, he was
also vulnerable to a wide range of threats, including assassination and
coup, not faced by his subordinates, or followers. Most important, the
transformation of his tribal confederation into a state provided a major
increment of security for all who participated by significantly reducing
what I have termed the coefficient of political friction (PF).
Genghis Khan’s Life – Demonstrating the Anthropocentric Theory of
Human Security
The anthropocentric model begins at the level of the biological human
being, equipped with the primeval instincts of all organisms to live and
pursue self-protective behavior. Humanity has evolved self-protection
into the highest and most successful adaptations to environment, and the
will to live Wi and fear of death remain the primitive core of individual
human security. To this is added acquired knowledge Ki and intelligent
responses to the environment Ei, including tools and technology.
Society provides the second level of protection for individuals. The
nuclear family F is the bridge between the individual and society, and
assigns personhood that provides both protection for dependent infants
and children. Family is the foundation for kinship society which is
characteristic of all except the most modern and urbanized societies.
Shared experiences, territory, and bloodlines add a layer of protection for
individuals – bestowing personhood on individuals in a way that allots
obligations and protections. The social celebration of the birth and
naming of an individual is simultaneously a bestowal of personhood and
the acknowledgment of an obligation to protect a defenceless infant. As
he matures, he will take on obligations to protect others in his family and
reference group. Much of this takes place below the level of conscious
decision or deliberation, and can be described as learned behavior that is
natural and organic. This social web of obligation and mutual protection
is the foundation of Confucian social philosophy and behaviour codes.
In contrast to the organic nature of society, the state is a constructed
artifice. Its sustenance requires continuous conscious inputs and
resources. In turn, the state deliberates and allocates, prepares and
disposes the wide array of resources which must generate human security
benefits for its citizens, whether in medicine or national defense or
welfare. In the twentieth century, however, the state, ruled by various
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types of governments, has become so efficient and powerful that it lost
sight of its human security roots and obligations. The totalitarian
phenomenon, whether Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or the former
Communist “People’s Republics”, had the common feature of single-
party states which submerged the rights of citizens and subordinated
populations to the welfare of the state itself, embodied in the leading
party.
But the collapses of weak states or seizures of control by military
junta or conspiratorial groups, have been, or have led to, events of
considerable devastation, civil war, genocide, and general anarchy. The
rational solution seems to be installation or imposition of modern,
democratic governments to remedy the lethality of the modern state.
Japan and Germany defeats in war, and installation of constitutional
democracies have succeeded comparatively well in two countries where
semi-democracy had provided foundations for modern democracy,
facilitated by American and Allied occupation. Today, the new challenge
is to democratize the Moslem world. However, where elections have
been held, fundamentalist parties have often met success, and subverted
the democracy which brought them to power.
The Nomadic Individual in pre-Society Raw Nature
Starting from the point of the individual human preserving his own life,
we will see that Genghis Khan not only demonstrated the viability of this
theory in his own life narrative, but actually willed it by almost personally
creating first a Mongolian state, and then a vast global empire which
brought tens of millions of subjects under a single regime. The paradox
of the Mongolian empire – and of all states – lies in the combination of
the lethality of its genesis, and the protections that are offered or
provided once the state has achieved stability and order.
Mongolia started as the creation of one man, who survived life trials as
child and youth, formed partnerships and alliances, attracted nomadic
warriors, nurtured meritocracy, defeated and absorbed adjoining states,
removed old elites and rulers, established government administration and
communication infrastructures, and generally improved the lives (i.e.
human security) of imperial subjects. We can observe the contradiction
of state lethality and state benefits by application of the anthropocentric
theory of human security by retracing the evolution of Genghis Khan
through his serial creation of security resources.
From the standpoint of human security theory, the individual Mongol
nomad demonstrated a sophisticated knowledge of his harsh
environment to which he had to adapt. His rigid code of kinship gave
individuals status and protective personhood in the mobile society of the
steppes. He mastered skills which were transformed into military assets
when coordinated by the leadership of a great Khan. The biography of
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