Postcolonial states and ‘excessive militarism’: The Indian story

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By Swati Parashar

Do all states embrace militarism as a natural condition of their existence? Can militarism in different states be differentiated in content and form? How do states engender security through militarism? How is civilian consent built around militarism, especially in postcolonial states? In an era when populist regimes seem to dominate the political landscape and militarism has acquired new legitimacy and popular appeal, shaping public policy and everyday lived experiences, these questions beg further attention and research.

The unevenness of militarism can be gauged by its absence, its nominal presence, or its excessive occurrence.

In this article for the recently published special issue of Security Dialogue on militarism and security, I first question the ubiquitous deployment of ‘militarism’ in the singular which flattens out any differences in its manifestations across time and space. The unevenness of militarism can be gauged by its absence, its nominal presence, or its excessive occurrence. This variation in the understanding of militarism is necessary in order to understand the different trajectories of militarism both in Western and non-Western/postcolonial contexts.

I further unpack the relationship between militarism and the Indian state embedded in ‘postcolonial anxiety’. Sankaran Krishna (1999) refers to postcolonial anxiety as a persistent desire among Third World states to be considered equal to Western/European models of the enlightened liberal state. This anxiety leads to ‘mimetic constructions’ of the European/Western social order where ‘the story of what once happened in Europe constitutes the knowledge that empowers state elites as they attempt to fashion their nations in the image of what are considered successful nation-states’. Militarism follows the same story.

Vice Chancellor Professor Jagadesh Kumar, along with veterans from the armed forces, pays tribute after instilling the ‘Wall of Heroes’ for fallen soldiers at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in May 2017.

Although ‘postcolonial anxiety’ enables militarism at various levels of governance and state interventions in the everyday lives of the citizenry, in India it engenders militarism not in the immediate aftermath of independence from colonial rule, but as an anomaly since the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization. The globalized world order of the 1990s and the move to democratize ‘security’ in discourse and practice, has led to what I call, ‘excessive militarism’ in India that thrives on the shared consensus between the state and citizens that security is a collective enterprise in which the material and affective labour of militarism must be performed by both sides.

‘Excessive militarism’ helps us understand both the historical evolution of the Indian state and its current obsession with formal military institutions and informal military culture. In recent times, we have witnessed large scale intolerance of any critique of the military and militaristic values which raise questions about the nation-state and its fragile sovereignty. Military culture is steadily making inroads into various aspects of civilian life, including celebration of cultural events and on university campuses. Humanising the soldiers is an important political and cultural project to inculcate military ethics and values among the civilian population.

The conflict between the Maoist insurgents and the Indian state is reflective of the security-development nexus and the excesses of militarism on both sides. Source: The India Today Group.

Moreover, the Indian state has adopted the ‘development’ narrative, presented as a quid pro quo arrangement between the state and the citizens where the latter are obliged to enable, approve and participate in the securing of the state as their primary duty, in return for development benefits. Security is presented as a precondition for implementing developmental assistance programmes, particularly in conflict-ridden areas. The Maoist conflict is a good example where ‘threat’ and ‘security’ is adopted by both the state and the Maoist insurgents, while citizens embrace military logics and military ethos, both to contest the state’s violence and to confer legitimacy on the state. In the existing perpetual state of (in)security and (under)development, militarism’s excesses become both the causes and the consequences of this conflict.

‘Excessive militarism’ helps us understand both the historical evolution of the Indian state and its current obsession with formal military institutions and informal military culture.

The article essentially highlights the gradual transformation of the postcolonial Indian state, from Gandhian ideals of nonviolence, promoting the idea of pluralistic India as a peaceful abode of the persecuted, to the realist ideals of survival though strong military measures. Militarism in India is not a direct response to exceptional circumstances or any singular catastrophic event (such as the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the USA), but a gradual yet steep militarization of all aspects of society, polity and structures of governance. This might be the case in other postcolonial states, which must be analysed in their various contexts.

I hope that the overall conclusion of the article inspires more conversations; how militarism opens up new spaces for understanding the complex state-building processes of postcolonial societies, the fraught and textured relationship between the state and citizens, and the constant tensions and negotiations between civilian lives and military culture.

Taking “Militarism” Seriously in Critical Security Studies- Renaissance of a Concept?

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By Bryan Mabee and Srdjan Vucitec

The word “militarism” has seen better days. Judging by Google Books’ Ngram Viewer, it first entered into the vernacular in the nineteenth century, first in Spanish, then in French, Italian and Russian, then in English and German. The word reached its zenith in these European languages during and after World War II, then slowly declined in every language except in Russian, where it peaked sometime around the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Hebrew, the word has an entirely different trajectory, as it probably does in Chinese as well (our simplified Chinese Ngram View attempt failed). Most interestingly, by the year 2000- the last on offer by Google’s program- “militarism” appears to be falling out of favor across the board.

What about within the language of Critical Security Studies (CSS)? Looking at the content of CSS scholarship in textbooks and journals—Security Dialogue included—we see that the word militarism and its cognates are under-provided. Although overlaps exist between militarism on the one hand and “broadened and deepened” areas of security on the other, the word is simply not part of the everyday CSS vernacular. Rather than focusing directly on the continued relevance of the military as a key institution of power, the theoretical and analytical focus of CSS has tended to concern itself with other issues—such as securitisation.

This is now changing. The rise to power of Donald Trump, who once described himself as the “most militaristic person“; the ever-expanding global arms trade; and the growing risk of nuclearized conflict involving North Korea are all bringing the realities of militarism back into the foreground.

We argue that it is essential for CSS to understand militarism in the context of historical sociology. There, the conceptual debate revolves around two basic questions:  how fundamental is militarism to political and social life? And how do we situate our conceptualizations of militarism in historical context?

We argue that it is essential for CSS to understand militarism in the context of historical sociology. There, the conceptual debate revolves around two basic questions:  how fundamental is militarism to political and social life? And how do we situate our conceptualizations of militarism in historical context? A historical sociological perspective can advance established agendas within CSS. Both militarism as a fundamental feature of socio-political life and the production of security are mutually constituted. As such, it is an urgent task to analyse different manifestations of militarism today, their historical trajectories, and their inter-relationships.

To that end, we identify four ideal types of militarism that should be of interest to CSS. One of these, ‘exceptionalist’ militarism, is about the ways in which ‘normal’ politics is suspended for ‘security’ reasons—an ideal type that CSS scholars will immediately recognize. To return to the Trump example again, recall his notorious ‘Muslim ban’ on 27 January 2017. The U.S. president signed this executive order during the swearing in ceremony for the new defence secretary, James Mattis, at the Pentagon, in a press room adorned with military symbols (including an oversized Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military decoration), and alongside an order to increase military spending.

The 2009 US Air Force Thunderbirds fly over Superbowl XLIII in Tampa, Florida. Photo: WikiMedia Commons Public DomainWhat CSS researchers tend to ignore are other types of militarism, namely ‘nation-state militarism,’ ‘civil society militarism,’ and ‘neoliberal militarism.’ Nation-statist militarism is the default (‘normal’) setting for militarism in international and global life, characterised by some form of civilian control over the armed forces and a state-led economic and social mobilisation of ‘destructive’ forces. Trump’s touting of martial values or enjoying Bastille Day military parades with President Emmanuel Macron of France illustrates this type of militarism.

Civil society militarism still derives from a pronounced statism, but thrives on deliberately blurred lines between soldiers and civilians: it is the use of organised military violence in pursuit of social goals that is, as Michael Mann puts it, ‘state-supported, but not state-led’. For example, the Mexico-United States border control ecology, especially in the current Trump era, cannot be understood without an analysis of the so-called vigilante groups who use military hardware and tactics (drones and small planes engaged in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations), and military culture (camouflage outfits, command structure) to ‘monitor the border’.

Finally, neoliberal militarism refers to the configuration of social forces and social relations in which military mobilisation is achieved at once through the framework of socio-economic liberalisation and through the formal division between (professional) soldiers and civilians. The relevant developments are not simply the marketization of defence procurement and of personnel management, but also the rise of private military actors, the privatization and corporitization of military logistics, and the ‘streamlining’ (Trump’s word) of transactions in the international arms market. The neoliberal imagination of freedom and fluidity are key to all of these developments.

By diversifying its understanding of militarism, CSS has an opportunity not only to make a major advance in contemporary scholarship but also inform policy and political discourses that define our moment in history.

“Security and Defensive Democracy in Israel. A critical approach to political discourse” (2015)- Reviewed by Chloé Thomas

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Sharon Weinblum,  Security and Defensive Democracy in Israel. A critical approach to political discourse, Routledge: New York, 2015, 156 pp.: 978-1-138-82380-8 (hbk)

Book Review by Chloé Thomas

The balance between basic rights and democratic principles on the one hand, and security on the other has been a central question of our political imaginary for a long time – even more since 9/11 and the expansion of the war on terror as the main counter-terrorism response. The political sphere, the media as well as the scientific literature have addressed this issue. Scholars have mainly focused on the impact of emergency measures implemented in the name of security on democratic regimes. While often seen as a particularly contemporary issue, this debate is not really new. As Sharon Weinblum reminds us, authors such as Locke and Rousseau already considered the possibility for a regime to bypass its basic laws in times of danger or crisis. Today, our contemporary reasoning still holds this idea that, when endangered, a democracy should be able to subvert basic rights and democratic principles to ensure the survival of the citizens as well as its own.

… Weinblum discards the classical opposition between security and democracy and invites us to understand these two concepts as social constructions… According to her, we shouldn’t conceive of security and democracy as fixed realities but rather as the products of a discursive competition…

Following critical security studies, Weinblum discards the classical opposition between security and democracy and invites us to understand these two concepts as social constructions. She argues that such an opposition narrows the scope of the two notions and can be used to justify current restrictions of democratic principles in the name of counter-terrorism. According to her, we shouldn’t conceive of security and democracy as fixed realities but rather as the products of a discursive competition. In this book, drawn from her PhD thesis, Weinblum explores the competition of narratives – defined as “spoken exchanges knitting phenomena into a plot with a beginning, middle and end” (p.18) – developed in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, during the debates around the adoption of new or revised security measures during and after the second intifada. She identifies two competing narratives, namely a dominant narrative constructed around the notion of defensive democracy – where democracy is framed as a regime guaranteeing the existence of the nation-state of the Jewish people – and a counter-narrative, more marginal, based on the respect of basic rights and democratic principles. The two narratives offer different understandings of what security and democracy mean and compete to shape the debate.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/412Y6GT0clL._SX313_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

A constructivist approach that is directly inspired by the Copenhagen School is developed in the first chapter of the book. It briefly presents the theoretical background of the research, and particularly demonstrates how the securitization approach can be useful to deconstruct the classical security-democracy opposition. The author completes this approach in at least two ways. First, she tackles the usual criticism of securitization theory’s tendency to focus solely on the authorized speakers and dominant discourses. Studying the debates held in the Knesset, composed on a very proportional basis, Weinblum also considers more marginal voices that otherwise could have been ignored – to the point of constructing a counter-narrative based on the discourse of a single representative. Second, she also addresses the ambiguous relations between speech acts and context by acknowledging the importance of an existing discursive structure enabling and constraining the various possible discourses.

Chapter 2 describes the larger discursive context in Israel – constraining the different possible narratives – as well as the main actors able to address security issues. One of the book’s great assets is its unique understanding of the security context in Israel. Given the state’s peculiar relation to security matters, this detailed analysis is highly valuable. Indeed, in the Israeli social imagination, the Jewish state is constructed as a vulnerable actor that has no choice but to defend itself against permanent enemies. However, the downfall of such a specific case-study might be found in the difficulty of drawing any general conclusion from this research. Still, as Weinblum herself argues, it is a relevant case to explore the broader relations between security and democracy because it sheds light onto a democratic state discussing measures similar to those adopted by other contemporary democracies in the name of counter-terrorism.

… If Weinblum strives to draw attention to marginal voices, the book overlooks their role in the construction of the dominant security narrative in Israel. Counter-narratives are reduced to a form of contestation and criticism responding to but never actually challenging the dominant narrative…

The next three chapters present the results of Weinblum’s research. They cover the debates in the Knesset about different laws arranged into three large debates, namely the relation between security and freedom of speech, the notion of enemy and its articulation with the democratic regime and finally, the link between terrorism and the right for Palestinians to reside in Israel. For each theme, several laws are analyzed and each time two to four different narratives are exposed, showing how members of the Knesset understand and defend or criticize these laws. Each debate highlights two competing coalitions of narratives: on the one hand, the dominant narrative of defensive democracy supporting the laws necessary to face the (permanent) existential threat Israel and its democracy are facing; and on the other, counter-narratives arguing the laws themselves constitute a threat to democracy as they restrict basic rights and democratic principles. The author thus substantiates her theoretical claims: democracy and security are not immutable realities but are instead social constructs that can be subject to contestation and criticism. However, while very informative of the different narratives’ content – particularly the defensive democracy narrative – the research leaves aside the potential processes of co-construction. If Weinblum strives to draw attention to marginal voices, the book overlooks their role in the construction of the dominant security narrative in Israel. Counter-narratives are reduced to a form of contestation and criticism responding to but never actually challenging the dominant narrative.

Because discourses have direct implications on actors and their environment, the last chapter discusses how the defensive democracy narrative has impacted the democratic regime in Israel. It shows how democracy is restricted to a vulnerable regime whose main raison d’être is the survival of the Jewish state and its citizens. Here, as laws get passed, democracy is transformed into a regime that protects the majority by restricting the rights of a disloyal and threatening minority. Hence, restricting rights becomes part of normal politics and is integrated into the democratic regime.

As a direct application of securitization theory to the relationship between democracy and security in Israel, this book will be of much interest to scholars interested in critical security studies. However, Weinblum doesn’t elaborate much on the main concepts and theories in critical security studies and seems to be addressing an already informed audience. The global Israeli security background being well-documented, scholars working on the security policy of Israel itself will also want to read this book to understand Israel’s crucial relationship with security. Finally, the book’s deconstruction of the democracy-security opposition and its exposition of debates around emergency measures will be of interest to scholars working on today’s hot security topic of counter-terrorism.

“Politics of Anxiety” (2017) – Reviewed by Jessica Auchter

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Eklundh, Emmy, Andreja Zevnik, and Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, eds, Politics of Anxiety. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.

Book Review by Jessica Auchter

Politics of Anxiety, edited by Emmy Eklundh, Andreja Zevnik, and Emmanuel-Pierre Guittet, is arguably one of the better applications of Lacan in the field of International Relations (IR), following on engagement with Lacan by various scholars who have sought to introduce his work to the IR discipline (Epstein 2011, Solomon 2015, Tomsic and Zevnik, eds, 2016). As a volume, it is well-anchored in its engagement with Lacan, seeking specifically to rethink existing discussions around the topic of anxiety. The editors argue that most discussions of increased anxiety in our world tend to rely on either economic explanations that blame capitalist crises; or on problems relating to economic inequality; or on political explanations that argue security risks have actually increased. Hoping to move beyond these sorts of arguments, they instead frame anxiety via two key logics that structure the contributions of the volume. First, a security logic that involves an anxiety that paralyzes the subject. Second, a resistance logic that mobilizes and liberates subjects by positing alternative futures and governing practices.

… As a volume, it is well-anchored in its engagement with Lacan, seeking specifically to rethink existing discussions around the topic of anxiety…

Anxiety itself is theorized as an affective notion where the object of anxiety is elusive yet nevertheless poses a threat to the ego. J. Peter Burgess’s theoretical framing chapter offers an excellent genealogy of concepts in Freud and Lacan, and posits anxiety as affective, and substantively different than the emotions it provokes. This chapter in particular, and the volume as a whole, offers insights that will be of interest to scholars of affect and emotion. However, there is a missed opportunity to distinguish between fear and anxiety especially since Freud is quoted as referencing both castration anxiety and fear of castration, implying a difference between the two.

Henrique Tavares Furtado’s chapter is the stand-out one because it offers a succinct theorization of anxiety, its contemporary manifestations, and how it relates to other concepts recently in vogue in IR, such as trauma. He argues that in ‘trauma talk’ violence is posited as essentially incomprehensible, which is similar to the way anxiety lacks an object of reference and raises the dilemma of unrepresentability. That is, both trauma and anxiety rely on psychoanalytic ideas that depict events as lacking in original meaning. There are also some interesting connections between Furtado’s notion of trauma as disrupting linear time and Norma Rossi’s chapter. In it, Rossi describes the temporal dimension of anxiety as a triple temporality where the present is a result of the interweaving of the past and future. Further, by drawing on a historical explanation related to the violence of the last two centuries and its specific qualities, Furtado’s chapter also provides the strongest justification in the book for why a psychoanalytic framework is necessary for examining anxiety.

The volume also brings together the concepts of security and resilience in the discussion of risk management, as in Mark Neoclous’s chapter on how the management of anxiety has become a way of mediating the demands of an endless security war. Neoclous focuses on the way resilience as a policy relies on an anxious political psyche that is always prepared for the coming attack. Through an examination of European counter-terrorism strategies, the chapter by Guittet and Fabienne Brion also articulates how security is increasingly defined as risk management. Similarly, Carsten Baran’s chapter addresses risk management related to corporate resilience during flu outbreaks in Germany.

Much of the latter part of the book focuses specifically on the economic components of anxiety in the context of neo-liberalism. Japhy Wilson’s chapter is an excellent analysis of neoliberalism as an obsessive neurosis and anxious social fantasy that structures reality against the traumatic proximity of the Real of Capital, which is most directly confronted in moments of economic crisis. Rossi similarly argues that neo-liberals claim that they act as responsible mediators between economic anxieties and authoritarian economic and political solutions proposed by the far right. In doing so, Rossi demonstrates how far right actors enter into a relation of mutual constitution with neoliberal politics.

… the volume could have used greater theoretical attention to the subtle, but important, distinctions between fear and anxiety…

Throughout the volume there is some blurring of fear and anxiety, as well as of emotions and affect, making some of the chapters more limited in their contributions. And while each of the chapters still works well in its own right, they do not always fit together within the larger remit of the volume. Paolo Cossarini’s chapter on emotions and austerity protests in Europe is a focus on emotions rather than on anxiety-as-affect, and thus anxiety plays a more implicit role that seems less connected to the anchoring chapters of the volume. Similarly, Rossi’s chapter, while an interesting discussion of far-right parties in Europe, seems to be focused more on fear because there is an object, as opposed to the way anxiety has been defined earlier in the volume as existing without one. Baran’s chapter also seems to be focused on fear rather than anxiety. If anxiety does not have an object, then how can a risk assessment designed precisely to measure the possibility of an event occurring come to invoke anxiety? Or does it actually invoke fear? Unanswered questions like these suggest that the volume could have used greater theoretical attention to the subtle, but important, distinctions between fear and anxiety.

The book raises a host of interesting questions that can be taken up by future scholarship, such as: What is the relationship between anxiety and the related concepts of fear, trauma, suspicion, risk, and terror? If anxiety is affective, what emotions does it trigger and how do those manifest? What political logics does anxiety itself allow for? Are there limitations to a psychoanalytical approach to anxiety? What are the implications of depicting anxiety as a neurological/ psychological issue rather than as an embodied or material one? How is anxiety embodied in contemporary global politics? To what extent is anxiety a novel contemporary phenomenon, or simply a modern manifestation of logics and dynamics persistent throughout history?

Finally, Michael Dillon’s concluding chapter is a musing on modern sovereignty that takes as its starting point the same questions that motivate the other authors. Dillon’s chapter is a good one, and very much in the spirit of a volume that raises more questions than it answers. In that same vein however, it is less effective as a concluding chapter and those readers looking for a final word that can somehow tie together the various disparate ideas of the volume may be left dissatisfied.

References:

Epstein, Charlotte, ‘Who Speaks? Discourse, the subject, and the study of identity in international politics,’ European Journal of International Relations, 17, 2, 2011, 327-350.

Solomon, Ty, The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015.

Tomsic, Samo, and Andreja Zevnik, eds, Jacques Lacan: Between Psychoanalysis and Politics. London: Routledge, 2016.

Debunking the Security Myth of Military Might

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By Vitoria Basham

Using and maintaining military force as a means of achieving security:  a flawed idea?

In my recent article published in Security Dialogue I critique the longstanding idea that military force and the maintenance of strong armed forces provides security. This idea forms part of the social contract between liberal democratic states and their citizens, whereby individuals agree to abide by laws, and so relinquish some of their freedoms, in exchange for order and security. Taking the UK as my focus, I suggest that when we pay closer attention to how gender, race and class shape different members of society’s lives, there is a problem with this assumption that using and maintaining military power enables the state to make all of its citizens secure. Indeed, the old adage that military force equals security can be challenged because military interventions and maintaining a strong military capability can actually make some members of the population more insecure. For example, maintaining a strong military capability often entails trade-offs with other spending needs such as social security and welfare provision. Investing in the former to the detriment of the latter, can mean that the poor and sick become more vulnerable. Moreover, women disproportionately take on caring roles for children and sick and elderly relatives when the state retreats from providing key services.

…the old adage that military force equals security can be challenged because military interventions and maintaining a strong military capability can actually make some members of the population more insecure…

By looking particularly at the UK’s involvement in recent airstrikes over Syria and at attendant debates on Syrian refugees I also explore how particular groups within society are disadvantaged by policies of military intervention that seem to rely on drawing racialized boundaries around the UK and fostering suspicion and hostility towards racial minorities. These ideas can make the wider population question who belongs, generating hostility towards migrants and asylum seekers fleeing military violence but also to people within society who may come to be seen as a drain or scourge on that society just because they look like ‘the enemy’. Therefore, by paying closer attention to the gendered and racialized aspects of militarism, security is revealed to be, at best, partial.

Syrian refugee children in Lebanon, give the peace sign (Photo: Eoghan Rice)- Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Finally, my article tries to highlight why we should all be much more concerned as citizens about the military interventions and the maintenance of military power that the state carries out in our name on the assumption that these practices make us more secure. Though liberal democratic populations often reject the kind of militaristic fervour often exhibited by the state when it calls for military intervention and the prioritisation of military spending, I argue that we need to be much more attentive to our ambivalence towards the militarism (waging war and constantly preparing for it) of the state. This is because militarism can thrive and go unchallenged just as much when it becomes seen as a normal feature of a chaotic world as it can in societies that fervently celebrate it. If the outcome of militarism, as I suggest is insecurity for citizens of other nations where our military intervenes and citizens within our own society, this is all the more urgent.

 

Confronting the Colonial- Even in Critical Studies

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By Maria Eriksson Baaz and Judith Verweijen

At a time when colonial revisionism is seemingly on the rise and articles calling for re-colonization are published even in renown critical journals (though clearly and comfortably not without controversy), turning a critical eye towards ourselves as ‘critical’ scholars might be seen as ‘navel-gazing’ or even as dangerously diverting precious energy. While such interjections are certainly valid, we suggest that the recent trend of intensified pro-colonialism and racism calls for even more self-reflection also among self-proclaimed critical scholars (including ourselves). Rather than simply situating the problem elsewhere, we need to be vigilant about our own (inescapable) complicity – also by probing into how we (unintentionally) might reproduce the images inscribed in the work that we oppose.

“Socrates Looking in a Mirror”. Metropolitan Museum of Art Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Our concern arises not only from theoretical contemplation, but also from our experiences as scholars within critical military and security studies who mainly research armed actors in the DR Congo. Our analytical point of departure tends to be Congolese armed actors themselves, rather than transnational security fields or external interventions (like counter-terrorism programs or international private security firms). This focus regularly triggers the sense of being the odd one out both in journals and at conferences. Africa clearly occupies a marginal place not only– as many scholars have argued–in more mainstream International Relations and the related fields of security and military studies, but also in the scholarship we name ‘critical’.

… much literature on militarism in Africa construes it as ultimately imposed by ‘the West’– thus locating agency predominantly in ‘western hegemonic forces’. Africa is cast in such literature mainly in the role of the (passive) ‘victim’, the theatre in which imperialist plays are acted out…

But our concern is not only with marginality. As scholars researching Congolese armed actors we struggle with the question whether the tools offered by ‘critical’ frameworks really ‘fit’. For instance, can the toolbox of governmentality be helpful in understanding militarization in the DRC and the way this process affects those ‘in-between’ the civilian and the military, like army wives?

In a new article in Security Dialogue that is part of a special issue on militarism and security, we query into the use and signifying work of the concepts of militarization and securitization in relation to Africa scholarship. We suggest that the ways in which these concepts are applied and not applied risk reproducing familiar colonial imageries that we as critical scholars tend to locate elsewhere. Paradoxically, we argue, this reproduction occurs partly through the very commitment to reveal continued imperialist/neo-colonial relations. As such, our reflections recap earlier debates in postcolonial studies, where some warned that the field risks reproducing Eurocentrism by overstating the power of Europe/‘the West’ as the origin of history and as the all-pervasive force shaping social and political developments elsewhere.

As detailed in the article, much literature on militarism in Africa construes it as ultimately imposed by ‘the West’– thus locating agency predominantly in ‘western hegemonic forces’. Africa is cast in such literature mainly in the role of the (passive) ‘victim’, the theatre in which imperialist plays are acted out. A similar pattern can arguably be traced in some of the critical literature on securitization and Africa. This work addresses and conceptualizes securitization as something that characterizes ‘Western’ policies and practices enacted ‘upon’ Africa and sometimes pays limited attention to how securitization processes are co-produced and enacted by African actors themselves. Such a focus might contribute to recycling the classic imagery of passivity and the colonial idea of an Africa that only exists in relation to ‘the West’.

Signification is also at work through the concepts and approaches we use and do not use. As we discuss in the article, certain theoretical approaches and tool-boxes associated with supposedly ‘advanced (neo)liberal societies’ (like securitization) are rarely employed in relation to African actors. This selective use of theoretical concepts and tools threatens to reinforce portrayals of particular (supposedly) ‘liberal’ and ‘universal’ values, like freedom, human rights and democracy – in a familiar colonial manner – as exclusive properties of ‘the West’. This, in turn, produces Africa as a place where only brute force reigns, while concealing the ways in which ‘western’ societies also heavily rely, in Barkawi’s words, ‘on coercive power, deployed at home and abroad.’

Obviously, given the contradictory workings of colonial discourses – and thus the problematic nature of both discourses of ‘African’ Otherness and those of universalism and sameness (often termed ‘Eurocentrism’) – there are no easy answers to the dilemmas surrounding theory application. Neither do we propose to stop revealing continued imperialist/neo-colonial relations. We simply suggest that we, as (self-proclaimed) critical scholars intensify our scrutiny of our conceptual, topical and methodological choices – and continue to explore the possibilities to research otherwise.

Performativity of Security in Military Interventions

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By Elke Krahmann

Many actors have embraced performance as a measure for the effectiveness and legitimacy of their international governance activities, ranging from the United States government to the World Health Organization and the World Bank.

In my recently published article in Security Dialogue, “From performance to performativity: The legitimization of US security contracting and its consequences,” I discuss why this approach is inherently problematic. I argue that the linking of performance to the achievement of publicly desirable ‘outcomes’ is not as simple and easy as it is portrayed. On the one hand, there is the question of how we can measure and attribute the outcomes of specific policies, activities or services. On the other hand, there is the more fundamental issue of how intended outcomes should be defined. What are ‘security’, ‘health’ or ‘development’ if we want to conceive of them as outcomes?

Taking the commercial provision of security during the US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples, I argue that even in expert discourses there are at least three different understandings of ‘security’. Each implies different outcomes and performance measures. Thus, security has variously been defined as: (1) the absence of harm, (2) perceptions of safety, and (3) security capabilities and strategies, such as deterrence, protection, resilience, preemption and avoidance.

Since the last appears to fit best the demands of attributable and measurable performance ‘outcomes,’ security capabilities and strategies have become the mainstay of US security contracts and contractor assessments. Security strategies and capabilities can be easily specified, observed and counted. Specific activities and capabilities can also be directly and exclusively attributed to individual contractors. However, this conceptualization directly equates activities and capabilities with security as an outcome. Instead of assessing the actual results of security services, deterrence or protective strategies and technologies are used as substitutes. In short, this conception of security replaces outcomes with a focus on ‘performativity’, i.e. the repetitive execution specific strategies and capabilities which are simply equated with the intended results.

Blackwater Security Company MD-530F helicopter in Baghdad, 2004- Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Instead of contributing to perceptions and experiences of security, some of the security activities demanded of US contractors have actually undermined them because contracting officials have disregarded local culture in their definition of ‘suitable’ security activities and capabilities

Performance assessments have thus shaped the provision and experience of security in Iraq and Afghanistan in two problematic ways. First, government officials and security have failed to see that they are not analysing the actual outcomes of contracted security services. As a consequence, contractors have been able to get away with behaviour that has had negative impacts on the local security environment. Excessive uses of force by firms such as Blackwater or Aegis have been noted, but the companies have been repeatedly rehired because of good ‘performance’ assessments.

Second, my findings show a problematic disconnect between security understandings and expectations of the international professionals who define contractor performance criteria and those of host state populations. Instead of contributing to perceptions and experiences of security, some of the security activities demanded of US contractors have actually undermined them because contracting officials have disregarded local culture in their definition of ‘suitable’ security activities and capabilities. The heavy armour and the visible deterrence measures demanded in US security contracts, for instance, have done little to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi and Afghan civilians who have been traumatized during years of conflict.

The Soldier We See

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By Julia Welland

In contemporary Britain, the figure of ‘The Soldier’ is increasingly visible.

S/he (although the figure is, of course, nearly always a ‘he’) appears in documentaries, in art and museum exhibitions, in Armistice Day commemorations, guarding the 2012 Olympics, in ‘boot camp’ exercise regimes, in schools, as the ‘real heroes’ of reality TV programmes such as X Factor, in charity campaigns, on food and drink packaging, and the list goes on… As the annual hand wringing over the politics (or ‘un-political’) poppy not/wearing reveals, the soldier and the job they do appears to occupy an increasingly important – and visible – role in British society.

We should care about what bodies and stories are being made visible and told and whose are being ignored.

In my latest Security Dialogue article ‘Violence and the Soldiering Body’, I argue that this increased visibility is central to how the British public came to know and understand the recent military campaign performed by the British armed forces in Afghanistan and the violence that took place. Unlike the Gulf War and Kosovo intervention in which it was the military technology as opposed to military bodies that captured the public and media’s attention, the ‘hearts and minds’ campaign of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan meant that the British (and American) public were flooded with images not of high-tech military weaponry, but a more ‘humanised’ looking war: soldiers patrolling wearing soft hats, soldiers interacting with local Afghans, and soldiers taking an active role in reconstruction efforts. The British public were also invited to ‘get to know’ these soldiers through all manner of mediums (television programmes, museum exhibitions, military memoirs…) that located not only a soldier’s potential war-fighting prowess, but also their personal traits, familial relations and even sense of humour. At the same time, the British public were confronted with the violence of the conflict through the highly public and publicized repatriations of killed soldiers and the increasing numbers of disabled and disfigured soldiers returning from the frontline – both frequently a result of the use of improvised explosive devices by the insurgent groups they were facing.

Children Welcoming Home Hampshire Troops -Photo: Cpl Adrian Harlen RLC/MOD- British National Archives Wikimedia Commons

I argue that this increased visibility of a humanised and familiar British soldier, as well as the violences they endured, has produced particular effects. First, through the continued and increased attention given to British soldiering bodies and experiences, the bodies and experiences of Afghans who have lived in and through the (on-going) conflict for sixteen years are relegated to the sidelines or ignored altogether. This includes the estimated 26,000 Afghan civilians who are thought to have died a violent death and the thousands more who have died indirectly or suffered ill health due to exacerbated effects of poverty, malnutrition, lack of sanitation and poor access to healthcare that the conflict has increased and caused. Second, that this highly visible figure of ‘The Soldier’ can often bear little resemblance to the lived experiences of those who have inhabited the role. For veterans who face homelessness, alcohol and substance abuse, or simply feel their experiences are not being heard, this hypervisibility of an idealised soldier does not reflect their own day-to-day life, either on combat operations or back in the UK on ‘civvy street.’

Just as making invisible the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead during the Gulf War and the growing numbers of civilian victims of drone strikes, when a particular body is made increasingly visible, it is likely performing important work in constructing and narrating a particular story. With Afghan civilians continuing to live through extreme violence and political uncertainty, and British veterans being confronted by diminishing state support we should care about what bodies and stories are being made visible and told and whose are being ignored.

Agamben, Hobbes, and Rethinking Security in the Messianic Key

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By Sergei Prozorov

Contemporary critical security studies increasingly turns to the problematic of political theology. This interest and inquiry into the theological origins of today’s political concepts and categories enables more effective critical interventions in contemporary politics. “Messianism” is one of the less explored aspects of political theology in security studies.

While its connotations of a fundamental rupture and the coming of something radically other appear to be of little relevance to the problematic of security, this article explores the implications of rethinking security in the messianic key.

In my recent Security Dialogue piece, “Like a thief in the night: Agamben, Hobbes and the messianic transvaluation of security,” I focus on Agamben’s reinterpretation of Hobbes’s Leviathan in Stasis, which restores an eschatological dimension to this foundational text of modern security politics. Hobbes’s commonwealth has been traditionally read as a secularized version of the katechon, a force that restrains the state of nature while drawing on its resources. Instead, Agamben argues that for Hobbes, the state is neither the analogue of God’s kingdom on earth nor the katechon that delays its arrival, but the profane power that will disappear when the kingdom of God is established on earth.

Drawing of frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan- c. 1650 Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

The Hobbesian state is thus in principle incapable of attaining the peace and security that it claims to provide, perpetually producing insecurity and violence in the guise of protection.

Rather than read Hobbes’s theory in the familiar terms of the exchange of liberty for security, Agamben insists that the Hobbesian commonwealth ensures no such trade-off and the Leviathan and Behemoth, order and disorder, remain entwined to the point of indistinction in every secular order. The Hobbesian state is thus in principle incapable of attaining the peace and security that it claims to provide, perpetually producing insecurity and violence in the guise of protection.

This diagnosis is confirmed by the contemporary transformations in the governmental rationalities of security that increasingly problematize the costs and inefficiency of security apparatuses and seek to devolve both the costs and provision of security to the subjects themselves through privatization, responsibilization and the ethics of resilience. And yet, the privatization, devolution or abolition of many of the security functions of the state do not entail its withering away. It is as if Leviathan not only learned to coexist with Behemoth, but also succeeded in making this coexistence the basis of something like an ‘ethics’ of eternal insecurity.

If pure security is unattainable, should critical security studies simply renounce security altogether? I argue that this would be counter-productive, since it is only from the perspective of security that the state could be judged and found wanting. The messianic approach affirms neither a pure security that cannot be attained nor the insecurity that no one could possibly want, but rather security from security, safety from the harm that comes with being secured by the Leviathan that always uncannily resembles Behemoth. Security is something that we desire and demand but, having seen that our demands lead to nothing more than insecurity, we are now content to be secure from it. Messianic security thus is a modest and transient – but still perfectly real – experience of relief from being secured.

Robot Wars

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By Ian G. R. Shaw

There isn’t a day goes by without predictions—wild, wacky, and horrifying—about the future of warfare. Robots stand at the centre of so many of these prophecies.

Although robots have existed for decades, and even longer in the human imagination, recent leaps in artificial intelligence (AI) promise to break with old limits. Robots that are no longer soldered to factory floors, are now crawling on the ground, whizzing in the sky in swarms, or skimming the seas. Robots are thus set to rewire the exercise and spaces of state (and non-state) power. The who, or rather, the what, of warfare is shifting. What’s not yet clear is how.

In 2013, the US Navy’s X-47B became the first autonomous drone to land on an aircraft carrier. Photo by Timothy Walker. Wikimedia Commons

Academics have written extensively on how drone warfare has transformed sovereignty, territory, and power. But autonomous robots—rather than simply remotely piloted systems—are qualitatively different from the Predator and Reaper drones of the war on terror. Autonomous AI enables robots to act for themselves, severing their dependency on humans. Will these future robots revolutionize the battlespace and upturn the logics of organized violence? Or will they simply exacerbate pre-existing modes, geographies, and infrastructures of world politics? And how will the US military project its dominance in the robotic age? These types of questions motivated me to write my recent Security Dialogue article, “Robot Wars: US Empire and Geopolitics in the Robotic Age.”

How are robots changing the fields of reality in which power and violence are exercised?

I’ve long been fascinated with robots. Whether good or bad, our cultural perception of robots is suffused by decades of science-fiction. Think Terminator, or Robocop, or Ex-Machina. These kinds of fictional robots, with steel skeletons and artificial flesh, fascinate us precisely because they press against our humanity. As these humanoids get closer to who we are, the ethical and moral quandaries only intensify. And on the battlespaces of the future, these quandaries may indeed be commonplace. But we are not there yet. We remain at the dawn of war in the robotic age. Which is why it’s so interesting to investigate the futurologies conjured by the US defense community. What’s important is not whether these military futures will actualize—but the type of work they do now: facilitating research, investment, and pre-emptive strategic changes.

My article attempts to theorize the looming robot wars. As a political geographer, I’m keenly interested in what we might call a spatial or worldly understanding of robots. That is, on a deep ontological level, I ask: How are robots changing the fields of reality in which power and violence are exercised? To answer this, I construct what I term a “a more-than-human geopolitics” to examine how robots are materializing new security worlds. This framework narrows to focus on how robots are shifting the logics and infrastructures of US empire. The term empire highlights the dominance of the US military in world politics—together with the geohistories of the US as an empire-state. But what of empire in age of robotic proxies?

A swarm of swallows. Photo by US Fish and Wildlife Service. Wikimedia Commons.

I answer this by constructing three spatial concepts: (1) Swarm-space; (2) Roboworld; and (3) the Autogenic Battle-Site. Animated by advanced and autonomous AI, an important new robotic geography will be the non-linear swarm-spaces of miniaturized drones cooperating in emergent, atmospheric formations. Mass, it appears, is back: yet mass in future conflicts mirrors the swarms of bees, fish, ants, and birds in the natural world. After exploring the planetary basing strategies of drones in Roboworld, the final part of the paper examines the autogenic battle-site. This is the name I give to the robotic battlespace of the future: where robots don’t simply respond to the directions of pilots, but autonomously generate, target, and neutralize threat conditions in real-time.

In short, robots will materialize new geographies of state violence. This evolves conflict from the discrete battlefields of old wars, the eventful battlespaces of new wars, to the robotic battle-sites of swarm wars. In the conclusion of the paper—A Robot Empire—I discuss some of the consequences that robot wars will have for accountability. The risk is that democracy is alienated from the act of killing—on the loop, but no longer in the loop. An empire of indifference fought by imperial robots.