Mainstream ‘Western’ discourses on security often located the Western world at the centre of analysis, and the global south societies were seen as full of rogue states and potential sources of threat to liberal democracy, global capitalist interests and Western values. A critical factor was the way in which some of the underlying assumptions were used to justify division of the world into the ‘west versus the rest’ and intervention in various forms. The article does a critique of some of the dominant security discourses in the context of their significance to the global south. The political, cultural and economic transformations in the global south societies and their subaltern position within global power configuration were shaped by their colonial experiences, and these in turn reflected their security situations and these factors are often ignored in mainstream security thinking. This poses serious questions about the relevance of Western notions of security and implications on world peace.