2 March 2011

Week 2: The Academic Field of Security StudiesIR 522 Security Issues in Global Context - Instructor: Dr. Bezen Balamir Coşkun

Contents

✤ SECURITIZATION: WHAT MAKES SOMETHING A SECURITY THREAT

The word “Security”

✤ All sorts of questions might be asked about the word security. 

✤ What does it mean to be secure? 

✤ Who is doing the securing? 

✤ Who or what is being secured? 

✤ Dictionary definitions are of no help.  Dictionaries tell us that security involves something (anything) which promotes

safety or protection.  But, from what?  And, toward what end?  Perhaps security exists on a spectrum, from some

nominal, taken-for-granted level to some extreme, high-alert level.  Perhaps it is a process (more or less of it exists), and

further, perhaps it is normative (good and bad forms of it exist).  When security is considered a process that is subject to

moral evaluation, this is the idea or concept we call SECURITIZATION.

Securitization

✤ Securitization, as a concept, originated from the writing of Ole Wæver (1995), a Danish professor of the Copenhagen

School of international relations which is part of the constructivist perspective in social science, which holds that some

things don't really exist in material reality, but only exist as social constructs in peoples' minds because people tacitly

agree to act as if something existed. 

✤ Most constructivists analyze international relations by looking at things like goals, threats, fears, cultures, or identities --

in short, the kinds of things which exist subjectively in peoples' minds.  Another good read on the subject is the edited

volume by Katzenstein (1996), which uses constructivist critique, like McSweeney (1999) to attack notions of national

security and national interest as being too closely based on a state-centric approach. 

Securitization

✤ Most constructivists hold that anybody can put the adjective "national" in front of something for rhetorical purposes,

and government officials often do so for rallying people behind some foreign policy.  Constructivists hold that state

interests are not "discovered" but constructed.  National security policy is not "formulated" by rational actors, but is

instead shaped by contested identities and other social factors such as the norms and cultures within a society.  Balzacq

(2005) has called these three things (identities, norms, and cultures) the "three faces" of securitization (agency, audience,

and context). 

• identities -- the ways that individuals label themselves

• norms -- rules that are socially enforced, whether written or unwritten

• cultures -- the ways people classify, codify, and communicate their experiences

Securitization

• A constructivist approach, however, has both advantages and disadvantages.  The main advantage is it opens up new

vistas for ways of seeing things, particularly new types of fear-driven and anxiety-laden threats.  The main disadvantages

include downplaying of the importance of realistic threats, casting negativity over any attempts at generalizing, and

seeing culture conflict where integration is the pattern.  However, constructivism forces us to not only consider a wider

variety of threats, but gives us ways to better understand the concept of securitization.  It is a five-stage, sequential

model, which can be portrayed as follows:

• defining (some problem as "deviant") -- the equivalent is defining something as a security issue

• prospecting (for some medical discovery) -- an equivalent is dusting off some old intelligence report

• claims-making (of one's interest group) -- the equivalent being some powerful interest group backing the idea

• turf-battling (over who "owns" the issue) -- the equivalent being a politician using strong rhetoric

• designating (the matter in law or legislation) -- the equivalent is the passing of authorization to use force       

Securitization

✤ This model of SECURITIZATION describes the process of real-life actors "interpreting"

and "re-interpreting" things so that some audience becomes convinced, in a particular

context, that what was once a non-security problem must now become a security problem. 

  

High & Low Security Threats

✤As Hough (2004) points out, there is the "high" politics of state security (those things which ordinarily require military

action) and the "low" politics of health, welfare, and other issues (which don't ordinarily require military action). 

Other than describing variable access to the ear of a Commander in Chief, this distinction is mostly a matter of relative

prestige among and between policymakers and policy advisors.  Far more useful may be the distinction Hough (2004)

makes between "wideners" and "deepeners" because this distinction assumes the broadened conception of security that

the Copenhagen School or constructivists take for granted.  Not all security threats are military threats.  Not all security

threats involve nation-states.  Not all security threats are political or ideological, as with "haves" exploiting the "have-

nots."  Indeed, more people have been killed in human history by things which don't involve nation-states or military

conflicts at all.  It may seem unorthodox to think of security this way, but it's exactly how the "wideners" of the

Copenhagen School see it -- hurricanes and earthquakes as being pretty much a threat in the same sense as a military

attack.  A typical "widener" definition of a security threat is as follows:

A Widened Definition of Security Threat

✤It is only clear that by the late 1990s, the field had accepted a conventional wisdom that threats and vulnerabilities can

arise in non-military contexts, or as Buzan et. al. (1998: 5) put it: "as existential threats to a referent object by a securitizing

actor who generates endorsement of emergency measures."  Exactly what constitutes an "existential threat" is anyone's

guess.  Hard threats exist that need little "redefining."             

✤The 1990s saw contributions by the "deepeners" who advocated a notion of human security (Falk 1995).  This notion directly

attacks the line that only the state can be a securitizing actor.  Security is a human condition, and the people, not their elites,

should be the ones who say when their insecurities are being addressed.  In what is now a popular buzzword, "human security"

holds that a people-centered view of security is necessary for global stability.  The United Nations embraces this view in the

form of their United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the largest multilateral source of development assistance in the

world.  Today's security threats do go beyond defense threats and include poverty, economic inequality, diseases, human rights

abuses, environmental pollution, and natural disasters. 

A Widened Definition of Security Threat

• On terrorism -- people-centered interventions are needed to address underlying problems, get at the root causes, and make

concessions as to rebuilding infrastructure, redirecting investment, and setting up programs for inclusion and reconciliation

• On disease -- empower public-private partnerships and other global actors to take a role in prevention, education, and

communication, eliminating states from the picture who only want to protect their economies and tourism industry

• On global warming -- climate changes are a "threat multiplier" and activism is needed to change peoples' attitudes from apathy

into action

• On poverty --  address gender asymmetries in livelihoods and support microcredit initiatives to enable poor people to participate

in economic activity

• On natural disasters -- utilize more humanitarian intervention, even if it violates principles of state sovereignty

    Human security obviously has more meaning in a local rather than global context.  For instance,

opinion polls of Europeans by the EU show that most Europeans feel more frightened by organized crime and the

possibility of nuclear power plant accidents than terrorism.  U.S. policy officials involved in the war on terror should not

be surprised when other nations (in other contexts) don't seem to "get it" in the same way the U.S. does.  Those who agree

that terrorism ought to, indeed, be a priority threat for all nations often charitably use the word "strategic" to describe

such prioritization. In all fairness, human security is an emerging field and has yet to develop ways to prioritize threats. 

Realism

✤ Those who defend the traditional nation-state approach to security are called realists.  It is important to understand their position and (shall we

say) "old-fashioned" way of declaring something a security threat.  Using the word "strategic" is old-fashioned in this sense, and it references not

just the need for a military definition (security studies being the study of the threat, use, and control of military force), but the idea that a threat is

something which threatens national security interests. 

✤ Historically, it is a very old idea that a state should protect its citizens from threats, and in return, citizens should provide their loyalty.  You may

know this idea as a popular version of what is called the SOCIAL CONTRACT, an idea in political philosophy which can be traced to the 1651

book, Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes.  Realists tend to think anarchy would result if this contract were violated, but realists have had many

defectors from this position.  For example, what is sometimes called the Welsh school of critical security studies, and best represented by Booth

(1991: 539), holds that "security and emancipation are two sides of the same coin; both are needed, in both theory and practice, to create stable

security."  By comparison, the Copenhagen school, best exemplified by Buzan et.al. (1998) strictly rejects the idea of nation-state military

solutions for almost any threat.  As discussed in a previous lecture on the Academic Field of Security Studies, many realists today have formed, or

are forming, their own departments of "war studies" or "strategic studies."  The neorealist Mearsheimer (1995) holds that the only proper

subject matter of security studies ought to be the safeguarding of "core values" that a state holds dear.  The neorealist Walt (1991) regards the

proper subject matter as anything which leads a nation to prepare for war.

    Not all realists hold hard-line views.  Some have a more widened orientation. Nye's (2004) "soft power" approach, for example, represents a kind of

mix between realist and constructivist (widened) views.  Soft power denotes the non-military dimensions of state power, particularly the kind

rooted in information technology, or "keeping on top" of the Internet-driven information age.  Some countries, like Canada, for example, have

embraced a different constructivist (deepened) view, and set for themselves such goals as to become the world's leader in land mine removal and

reform of the U.N. 

National Security & Vital Interests

• See Table 1 A Rank Order of National Security Threats

National Security & Vital Interests

✤ No one would seriously advocate military attack in retaliation for embarrassment or differences of opinion.  However, no

one wants to wait stoically for annihilation while weapons of mass destruction are stockpiled.  Each nation is expected to

use negotiation via its diplomacy system to prevent aggravations, humiliations, and grievances from escalating, but only

democracies tend to honor this system, and a variety of other political systems ignore it.  Some nations tend to take action

in the face of humiliation; and other nations are notorious for acting militarily on differences of opinion.  There is also

the matter of dissuasion (a subtype of deterrence) which applies when there is one remaining superpower in the world (a

hyperpower).  Additional burdens and responsibilities befall such a power.  The current US-UN regime (if it could be

called that) is based on a preference for alliances or coalitions, but America's history of unilateral action has also

displayed a reliance upon strategies of destabilization, deterrence, and dissuasion.  In real politics (realpolitik), there is

an inherent connection between the notion of "threat" and the notion of "vital interest."  The following are the standard

vital interests of any country, particularly the United States:

• Protecting the territory and population of the homeland

• Preventing the emergence of a hostile coalition

• Ensuring freedom of the seas, lines of communication, airways, and space

• Ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources

• Deterring and defeating aggression against allies and friends

Threats & Challenges

✤ Many liberals, pacifists, and others refuse to participate in the "threats discourse" because

they think it's fearmongering.  They prefer the word "challenges" instead.  A good

exposition of this viewpoint is contained in Abbott, Rogers & Sloboda (2008) who attempt

to answer the difficult question about what are the biggest threats in the world today. 

They argue there are five (5) of them: climate change; terrorism; competition over

resources; marginalization of the world's population; and global militarization. (See Table

2)

The Prioritization Problem

✤ In many ways, thinking about which threats or challenges are the biggest in the world today is a prioritization problem.  Clearly, there is

a consensus that multiple challenges exist, and the only real way of measuring the response is to look at how much money states

appropriate toward such problems. 

✤ some security issues can be compartmentalized in terms of whom is the most threatened, or whom exactly benefits; but others cannot. 

Some threats are Munich-type (attempting to negotiate only leads to massacre); others are not.  At different levels, perceived threats may

seem as real as the "life or death" threats that governments say are realistic. 

✤ Some coercive diplomacy moves and humanitarian interventions are more an act of charity than a response to a security threat. 

Military threats are, likewise, subject to not being readily apparent much of the time (although even a liberal hawk would agree that no

attacked nation should let its dead go unanswered).  What's needed is some way to measure what nation states allocate their money on. 

✤ As Krause and Williams (1996) point out, questions about what is to be secured and by whom and how are likely to continue in debates

over the construction and practice of "securitization."