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Pauline Ewan discussed, in a recent issue of Politics, how the human security debate is stymied by conceptual and definitional weaknesses, and how it is politicised in conventional security studies. In response, this article takes a different approach and develops from the critical security literature a working conceptualisation and definition of broad human in security. It proposes as one example of objectively identifiable and measurable dimension of human insecurity the largely preventable high rates of under five mortality (U5M) and demonstrates its origins in the socially constructed international system. In this way, it responds to Ewan's remarks concerning the need to debate subjectivity and historical (and contemporary) political determinism in order to circumvent the unending 'circuitous debates' that stymie the development of human security.

Many states partially relinquish sovereignty in return for physical protection from a more powerful state. Mainstream theory on international hierarchies holds that such decisions are based on rational assessments of the relative qualities of the political order being offered. Such assessments, however, are bound to be contingent, and as such a reflection of the power to shape understandings of reality. Through a study of the remarkably persistent US-led security hierarchy in East Asia, this article puts forward the concept of the 'epistemic community' as a general explanation of how such understandings are shaped and, hence, why states accept subordinate positions in international hierarchies. The article conceptualises a transnational and multidisciplinary network of experts on international security – 'The Asia-Pacific Epistemic Community' – and demonstrates how it operates to convince East Asian policymakers that the current US-led social order is the best choice for maintaining regional 'stability'.