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Заказа 123940: Эссе / Философия / “У нас нет времени, чтобы стать самим собой» А.Камю

Эссе
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“У нас нет времени, чтобы стать самим собой» А.Камю
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Пимен Валерьевич Никитин
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etween Core and Periphery (unpublished manuscript, 2004), p. 9. 6 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 6. See also Ole Wæver, ‘Security, the Speech Act: Analysing the Politics of a Word’ (unpublished manuscript, 1998); and Ole Wæver, ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 7 Wæver, ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, p. 24. Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security 329 securitisation is thus far from being open to all units and their respective subjective threats, but rather it is largely based on power and capability and therewith the means to socially and politically construct a threat. In this way the study of security remains wide, but with restrictions pertaining to ‘who’ can securitise, it is neither unmanageable nor incoherent. In addition to these restrictions on who can, and who cannot securitise it is important to note that Wæver is extremely critical of framing issues in terms of security. For him: ‘security should be seen as a negative, as a failure to deal with issues of normal politics.’8 Because of this, he promotes a strategy of desecuritisation, whereby securitisation is reversed and issues are moved out of ‘the threat – defence sequence and into the ordinary public sphere’ where they can be dealt with in accordance with the rules of the (democratic) political system.9 Despite this statement of preference byWæver et al., desecuritisation is left largely under-theorised and open to interpretation. In spite of this negligence, it is however clear that in Wæver’s view desecuritisation is a positive concept – one policymakers should strive towards, and one a wider ‘securitisation studies’ should embrace.10 The Welsh School The Welsh School of security studies works within the tradition of Critical Theory, a critique of the modernist meta-narrative of rational social/political theory. Critical Theory has its roots in Marxism. It has largely been developed by the ‘Frankfurt School’, a group of theorists working at the Frankfurt-based ‘Institute for Social Research’. Amongst the most influential members of the Frankfurt School are Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and more recently, Ju¨ rgen Habermas. Critical Theory is a sophisticated and complex approach to social science research that combines many, at times opposing, ideas under one label. This short section on Critical Theory is not able to do justice to the complexity of the approach. Nevertheless, it is possible to gather the fundamental ideas into one brief and coherent picture. Raymond Geuss has done this convincingly in arguing that Frankfurt School Critical Theory is based upon the following three theses: • Critical theories have special standing guides for human action in that: (a) they are aimed at producing enlightenment in the agents who hold them, that is, at enabling those agents to determine what their true interests are; (b) they are inherently emancipatory, that is, they free agents from a kind of coercion which is at least partly self-imposed, from self-frustration of conscious human action. • Critical theories have cognitive content, that is, they are forms of knowledge. • Critical theories differ epistemologically in essential ways from the natural sciences. Theories in natural science are ‘objectifying’; critical theories are ‘reflective’.11 8 Ibid., p. 29. 9 Ibid., p. 29. 10 Ole Wæver, ‘The EU as a Security Actor: Reflections from a Pessimistic Constructivist on Post-Sovereign Security Orders’, in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds.), International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 253. 11 Raymond Geuss, Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1–2. 330 Rita Floyd The first of these three theses indicates the goal of Critical Theory, namely that critical theorists ultimately seek to emancipate humanity from what they see as the various false and often dangerous consciousnesses of our orthodox concepts and categories. ‘False consciousness’ being the condition whereby human agents ‘falsely objectify their own activity’.12 False consciousness is a result of the modernist way of generating knowledge, which is modelled on the laws of the natural sciences, or in short, positivism. Critical theorists believe that positivism produces non-reflective structures of truth and knowledge – thereby denying humanity alternative conceptions of truth and knowledge. For them, positivist theories – although they present themselves as objective – like all theories, are not void of perspective and intention. In the words of Robert Cox: Theory is always for someone for some purpose. [. . .] The world is seen from a standpoint definable in terms of nation or social class, of dominance or subordination, of rising or declining power, of a sense of immobility or of present crisis, of past experience, and of hopes and expectations for the future.13 Moreover, because positivism objects to these claims and represents itself as a ‘theory in itself, divorced from a standpoint in time, it is the more important to examine it as an ideology, and to lay bare its concealed perspective.’14 This is done by means of emancipation, whereby critical theory seeks to ‘free’ human agents from their false consciousness. Given the very fact that critical theorists ultimately want to emancipate or produce self-emancipation, it is clear that they believe in truth and reason. In order to gain emancipation, critical theorists start from enlightenment ideas of rational knowledge of human interests, and proceed to show that different critical narratives of ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ exist and are possible. In short, critical theory holds alternative narratives of reality – always indicating the potential for change towards a ‘reflective’ society. The starting point for such an alternative society begins with elements of the enlightenment project. Habermas, for instance, sees elements of reason within the enlightenment and consequently builds his theory of ‘communicative action’ on the foundations of a democratic society. On reason in the enlightenment project, Habermas states: I mean the internal theoretical dynamic which constantly propels the sciences – and the self-reflection of the sciences as well – beyond the creation of merely technologically exploitable knowledge; furthermore, I mean the universalist foundations of law and morality which have also been embodied (in no matter how distorted and imperfect form) in the institutions of constitutional states, in forms of democratic decision-making, and in individualistic patterns of identity formation; finally, I mean the productivity and the liberating force of an aesthetic experience with a subjectivity set free from the imperatives of purposive activity and from conventions of everyday perceptions.15 Over the course of the past twenty years Critical Theory, especially in form of the work of Habermas, has made an impact on IR theory.16 The ideas of Critical Theory have also been picked up by security studies, namely by the Welsh School. Like other 12 Ibid., p. 14. 13 Robert W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders’, Millennium, 10:2 (1981), p. 128. 14 Ibid., p. 128. 15 Ju¨ rgen Habermas, ‘The entwinement of myth and enlightenment’, New German Critique, 26 (1982), p. 18. 16 For a good overview, see Thomas Diez and Jill Steans, ‘Habermas and IR’, Review of International Studies, 31:1 (2005), pp. 127–40. Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security 331 critical approaches theWelsh School sets out from a criticism of conventional security studies, particularly realist theories of security. The Welsh School begins their critique by arguing that in the changed post-Cold War world state-centric realism can no longer satisfactorily explain the complex web of world politics. In an article from 1991 Booth foresees the end of the Westphalian system of sovereign states, arguing that the post-Cold War world order is best viewed as an ‘interregnum’ between the old – the state system and the new – an emerging (borderless) world community.17 The disintegration of the state – for security issues at least – is seen as advantageous as it is the state that is at the heart of much insecurity. As Wyn Jones argues: In very many cases and not only in the disadvantaged South, the arms purchased and the powers accrued by governments under the guise of protecting their citizens from interstate war are far more potent threats to the security of those citizens than any putative foreign enemy. Eschewing the statism of mainstream security discourse, proponents of Critical Security Studies recognize that, globally, the sovereign state is one of the main causes of insecurity: it is part of the problem rather than the solution.18 For theWelsh School, the realist understanding of security as ‘power’ and ‘order’ can never lead to ‘true’ security. The security dilemma at the heart of realist thought by its very nature renders some (states) secure and others (states) insecure, as one state’s security is another state’s insecurity. Insecurity thus remains as much part of the system as security. For theWelsh School this is unacceptable. For them ‘true security can only be achieved by people and groups if they do not deprive others of it’.19 Regarding the question how this ‘true’ security is to be achieved, the Welsh School – in accordance with the premises of Frankfurt School Critical Theory – argues that an alternative reality is possible, if security is understood as emancipation. 20 To understand the connection between emancipation and security it is worth citing Booth in the original: Emancipation is freeing people (as individuals and groups) from the physical and human constraints, together with poverty, poor education, political oppression and so on. Security and emancipation are two sides of the same coin. Emancipation, not power or order, produces true security. Emancipation, theoretically, is security.21 The concept of the Welsh School and its conceptualisation of security as emancipation is, as the proponents themselves acknowledge, easier said than done. For them, unity within the academy on the meaning of security as emancipation is a crucial precondition for the concept’s adoption in the real world. Emancipation could begin from within the academy. The Welsh School views mainstream security studies as fiercely guarded by those traditionalists eager to secure their own position and status. Booth, who refers to himself as a ‘fallen realist’, is optimistic and argues that it is possible to move beyond the traditional and towards a critical approach to IR, as any ‘academic subject is ultimately what we make of it’.22 The aim is thus to free 17 Ken Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, Review of International Studies, 17 (1991), pp. 314–15. 18 Richard Wyn Jones, ‘Message in a Bottle’? Theory and Praxis in Critical Security Studies’, Contemporary Security Policy, 16:3 (1995), pp. 310 (emphasis added). 19 Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, p. 319. 20 Ken Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice’, International Affairs, 67:3 (1991), pp. 539. 21 Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, p. 319 (emphasis added). 22 Ken Booth, ‘Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist’, in Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds.), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Case (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 92. 332 Rita Floyd ‘mainstream’ colleagues from their false consciousness of seeing security as belonging to the state and the military. In order to achieve this, critically minded academics/ intellectuals should wage a Gramscian ‘war of position’ against their mainstream counterparts, always relying on the hope that their (emancipatory) argument will prevail. Thus, unlike any other theorist in IR the Critical theorist takes an active part of the production of the social world they observe. Although the conceptualisation of security as emancipation is a promising contribution to security theory, there are problems with the theory, most of which stem from its normative conviction. Hence, the biggest problem with Booth and Wyn Jones’ approach is where does security stop? Neither of the two theorists offers guidelines for when an issue is not a security issue, always implying the more security the better. If however, all issues are framed in security terms, what then is the value of framing anything as a security issue? The theory clearly misses a ‘Wæverian’ limitation of who can and who cannot securitise. In the latest book Critical Security Studies and World Politics (2005) Booth again fails to tackle this problem, even though it receives some indirect attention. Hence, Booth argues that security is not only about survival, but rather it is about survival and some basic human needs which enable human becoming. His definition reads as follows: Security in world politics is an instrumental value that enables people(s) some opportunity to choose how to live. It is a means by which individuals and collectives can invent and reinvent different ideas about being human.23 Booth continues in stating that self-inflicted risks – like those experienced by an extreme sports person – do not belong to what he perceives of as security threats. Security threats rather lie with those issues which are not self-inflicted, often stemming from social inequality and underdevelopment. Since neither human needs, nor threats to individual security are explicitly defined it is still not clear when normal politics ends and the need for security begins. The possibility of compatibility Within the discipline of International Relations (IR), or more specifically the subdiscipline of security studies, security is regarded as being an ‘essentially contested concept’.24 The contestedness of ‘security’ arises naturally as the meaning of security is not an ontological given, but changes across time.25 Since security has no constant meaning, the concept means something different for every school of thought within security studies. Security’s meaning is dependent on questions of epistemology, ontology and methodology underlying the respective school of thought. 23 Ken Booth, Critical Security Studies and the Study of World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner, 2005), p. 23. 24 Walter B. Gallie (1956), cited in Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, p. 7. 25 Ken Booth, ‘Critical Explorations’, in Ken Booth (ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner, 2005), pp. 1–18; Ole Wæver, ‘Security: A Conceptual History for International Relations’, unpublished manuscript, 2002; Ole Wæver, ‘Peace and Security: Two Concepts and their Relationship’, in Stefano Guzzini and Dietrich Jung, Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 51–65; Emma Rothschild, ‘What is Security?’, in Dædalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 124:3 (1995), pp. 53–9. Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security 333 The study of security can roughly be divided into ‘traditional’ and ‘nontraditional’ conceptualisations. ‘Traditional’ hereby refers to those approaches to security that adhere to a positivist social science. Here, security is ‘traditionally’ about military security, with the state being the referent object of security – that which is to be secured. In recent years, other sectors, such as the environment, have been incorporated into the traditional security studies agenda, always, however, within the traditional threat and defence nexus. During the Cold War traditional security studies was pretty much all there was to the study of security. Today, this approach, although challenged, remains dominant particularly in the United States. ‘Non-traditional’ refers to those conceptualisations of security with a reflectivist epistemology. For these approaches, the military understanding of security still matters but is not privileged over other sectors of security. Furthermore, the referent object of security includes, besides the state, the individual, the global, the local and/or specific groups. At its most extreme, security threats can thus stem from almost anywhere, endangering almost anything. Non-traditional ways of thinking about security have become particularly popular with the end of the Cold War, and in its diverse forms have been developed mainly in Europe. Developments in security studies from traditional to non-traditional are not autonomous of developments in IR theory. On the contrary, to a certain extent these developments are mutually constitutive. Traditional conceptualisations of security prevailed throughout the height of the Cold War until the 1980s, when IR theory was dominated by the so called inter-paradigm debate26 – the debate between neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. Wæver, in his account of debates in IR theory, classifies the inter-paradigm debate as the ‘third debate’,27 thereby differing from other theorists’ conceptualisations of the great debates in IR, most notably Lapid’s 1989 account.28 Lapid’s third debate corresponds to Wæver’s fourth debate in IR theory, which had its beginning in the early 1980s. Following Wæver’s classification, the fourth debate is the debate between rationalist and reflectivist IR theory. With the advent of the fourth debate, conventional IR theory found itself challenged by work concerned with ‘the problematic of subjectivity in international politics rather than the international relations of pregiven subjects’.29 Reflectivist approaches to IR thus set out to problematise orthodox conceptualisations in IR theory – particularly realism. Some of the most influential reflectivist writings during that time dealt with the subject of security; laying the path for the widening of the spectrum of security studies.30 This widening process was helped along greatly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, or 26 Michael Banks, ‘The Inter-Paradigm Debate’, in M. Light and A. J. R. Groom (eds.), International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory (London: Pinter, 1985), pp. 7–26; Michael Banks, ‘The Evolution of International Relations Theory’, in Michael Banks (ed.), Conflict in World Society: A New Perspective on International Relations (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1984), pp. 1–21. 27 The so-called first debate in IR was that of idealism versus realism in the 1940s, and the so-called second debate was that of behaviouralism versus traditionalism in the 1950s–1960s. 28 Ole Wæver, ‘Figures of International Thought: Introducing Persons instead of Paradigms’, in Ole Wæver and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 1ff. 29 David Campbell, Writing Security, 2nd edn. (Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press, 1998 [1992]), p. viii. 30 Richard K. Ashley, ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’, International Organization, 38:2 (1984), pp. 225–86; Rob B. J. Walker, ‘The Prince and the Pauper: Tradition, Modernity and Practice in the Theory of International Relations’, in James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 25–48; James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro, International/ 334 Rita Floyd more precisely by the failure of orthodox IR theory and therefore traditional security studies to foresee the end of the Cold War. As Hugh Gusterson points out, what was of interest here, particularly for non-conventional IR scholars – bearing in mind that none of the different schools of thought within IR did, and not all even aim at prediction – was rather the overall failure of the positivist research project.31 After all, it was the premise of Waltz’s structural realism to ‘explain and predict continuity within the system.’32 On the back of this failure of positivist IR theory, ‘critical’33 approaches to IR gained momentum. Within security studies these were, amongst others, the Copenhagen School and the Welsh School of security studies. As the first section of this article has aimed to show, these two schools of the study of security are very different indeed; however, regardless of these differences it is possible to draw out some general commonalities between the two schools. These are: • Reflections on the concept of security as such, [that is,] as interesting in itself and not only a matter of delineation or pre-analytical definition. • Concern with the issue of possible widening as contradictory and political. • Security as practice. • Self-reflection: one’s own practice as security analyst is implicated in the politics of security and as such one faces hard ethical dilemmas as security actor.34 Despite these shared assumptions there has been little exchange between the two schools thus far, something that can partly be attributed to the epistemological differences of the respective theories. These epistemological differences influence the meaning of security for the different schools and are responsible for what the security analyst can do. These epistemological differences then are as follows: for the critical theorists of the Welsh School security is a normative concept, that when reconceptualised as emancipation frees people from the ‘physical and human constraints’ providing them with true (human) security. For Wæver and the Copenhagen School, on the other hand, the analysis of security has no normative connotations and they are interested in security merely for what it does, as opposed to what it can or ought to do. In the 1998 book Security: A New Framework for Analysis it has been made clear that securitisation theory has no ‘emancipatory ideal’.35 This said, however, in the same paragraph it also says: Such an approach [read: the Welsh School] is therefore complementary to ours; it can do what we voluntarily abstain from, and we can do what it is unable to do; understand the mechanisms of securitisation while keeping a distance from security [. . ].36 Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, NC: Lexington Books, 1989). 31 Hugh Gusterson, ‘Missing the End of the Cold War in International Security’, in Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall (eds.), Cultures of Insecurity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 323. 32 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 80. 33 This follows Keith Krause’s and Michael Williams’ small ‘c’ distinction in Critical Security Studies (1997), where critical security studies refers to all those approaches critical of the mainstream. This includes Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, postmodernists, post-structuralists, some versions of feminism, constructivism and the Copenhagen School. 34 Ole Wæver, Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen New Schools in Security Theory and the Origins between Core and Periphery (unpublished manuscript, 2004), p. 13. 35 Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 35. 36 Ibid., p. 35. Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security 335 With regards to what exactly it is that the Welsh School can do, that securitisation cannot do, Wæver is clearer in 2003. He argues that: The big contrast to Critical Security Studies [read: Welsh School] is that the analyst cannot step in on behalf of actors who do not speak security and tell that really their main security problem is this or that, only they suffer from false consciousness. Speaking from some general emancipatory ideal, Critical Security Studies [read: Welsh School] can deal with exactly the blind spot of the Copenhagen School and thus the two might be complementary.37 Wæver’s assertion that the two schools might be complementary is crucial, thus not only does it ‘legitimise’ theorising in such a direction from a securitisation point of view, but rather it implies that a strategy in which the two approaches were combined would be a good thing. Overall it is this idea that this article tries to capture. Thus, a combination of the two schools is not only possible, but rather it is advantageous for at least three reasons. First, it is believed that the more unified the critical schools of security are, the stronger an alternative they can offer to the mainstream of security studies; second, the more united the academy the more adoptable are its ideas for policymakers (EU or otherwise), and third, a combination of the two schools into a larger approach paves the way for a more critical engagement with security on part of the security analyst, allowing for normative – but denying infinite – conceptualisations of security. Since the first two reasons are self-explanatory the following will engage in more detail only with the third one here. The advantage outlined under the third point comes as a result of recognising what Jef Huysmans has pointedly called the ‘normative dilemma of speaking and writing security’. This dilemma is the idea that the analyst in writing (speaking) about a particular social reality is in part responsible for the co-constitution of this very reality, as by means of his/her own text this reality is (re)produced. For Wæver – as for most analysts – such a critique is substantial as the school ‘reproduces the security agenda when it describes how the process of securitisation works’.38 With perhaps the only comfort being that this is true for all constructivist security analysis, as is their ‘particular understanding of language [that] makes any security utterance potentially securitising’. 39 Consequently, no such utterance is ever ‘innocent or neutral’. In Huysmans’ words: Like a promise is an effect of language, that is, of successfully making the promise, a security problem results from successfully speaking or writing security. It is the utterance of ‘security’ which politically introduces security questions in a publicly contested policy area. Thus, if successfully performed the speech act makes a security problem.40 In other words, in writing or speaking security, the analyst him/herself executes a speech act, this speech act is successful if the problem raised becomes recognised as a security problem in the academy and/or in the wider policymaking discourse. Until now, for the Copenhagen School, the only way is to ‘accept the normative dilemma 37 Ole Wæver, ‘Securitisation: Taking Stock of a Research Programme in Security Studies’ (unpublished manuscript, 2003), p. 23, emphasis added. 38 Jef Huysmans, ‘Migrants as a Security Problem: Dangers of ‘‘Securitizing’’ Societal Issues’, in R. Miles and D. Thraenhart (eds.), Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion (London: Pinter, 1995), p. 69. 39 Jef Huysmans, ‘Language and the Mobilization of Security Expectations: The Normative Dilemma of Speaking and Writing Security’ (unpublished manuscript, 1999), p. 26. 40 Ibid., p. 8. 336 Rita Floyd as a dilemma, as it cannot escape that its own security writing risks to contribute to the securitisation of an area’.41 The argument made in this article, however, seeks to change this logic of mere acceptance of this normative dilemma, as a combination of the Welsh and the Copenhagen Schools of security studies is believed to enable the analyst to speak and write security more critically, as opposed to just speaking and writing security. To paraphrase Wæver, a combined approach is believed to enable the securitisation analyst to step into the security equation and on behalf of the actors encourage some securitisations/desecuritisations and renounce others – depending on whether or not they are seen as positive or negative. The approach proposed here does not mean that it is necessary to share the view that a securitisation analyst must be political,42 only that by means of this approach the analyst can be political. Being political, however, is secondary or supplementary to securitisation as it ‘can never replace the political act [that is securitisation] as such’.43 In other words, the analyst does not make the initial securitisation, the securitising actor does. In a wider realm of what Wæver has called ‘securitisation studies’ being able to be political is nonetheless useful, exactly because the constructivist analyst cannot escape the normative dilemma of speaking and writing security.44 Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security Considering the two brief overviews of the different schools provided in the first section, it could be argued that Wæver has an overly negative conception of security, whereas Booth and Wyn Jones have an overly positive conception of security. This article will aim to show that what form security takes is entirely issue-dependent, leaving both camps having something important and valid to contribute to the study of security as both camps can potentially be right. Issue-dependent hereby does not mean that, for example, all securitisations in one particular sector are always positive (negative) – indeed this article will show how differently securitisations in the environmental sector can turn out – it rather means that every incidence of securitisation is unique. Since this is the case, however, security in general is neither as good nor as bad as the two camps argue, but rather it is a mixed bag. In the approach proposed here, principles that determine whether a securitisation is positive or negative can only be derived by considering what would have been the alternative solution. Given that for the Copenhagen School, securitisation is nothing but ‘an extreme version of politicisation’,45 the question to consider in evaluating the nature of securitisation must be: did the securitisation in question achieve more, and/or better results than a mere politicisation of the issue would have done? It is important to note here, that ‘more and better’, is not equivalent to the success of the speech act (successful securitisation can still be negative), but rather it refers to 41 Ibid., p. 18. And, in recognition of this fact, see also Ole Wæver, ‘Securitizing Sectors? Reply to Eriksson’, Cooperation and Conflict, 34:3 (1999), pp. 338. 42 Claudia Aradau, ‘Security and the Democratic Scene: Desecuritization and Emancipation’ (unpublished manuscript, 2004). 43 Ole Wæver (2005), ‘The EU as a Security Actor’, p. 252. 44 I have written about this in more detail, in Rita Taureck, ‘Securitisation Theory and Securitisation Studies’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 9:1 (2006). 45 Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework, p. 23. Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security 337 whether the consequences of, and the gains from, the securitisation are preferable relative to the consequences and gains from a politicisation. The idea that the moral rightness (or wrongness) of a securitisation depends on its consequences corresponds to what in moral philosophy is known as a consequentialist ethics. Consequentialism46 referring to a set of moral philosophies, which hold ‘that the rightness of an action is to be judged solely by consequences, states of affairs brought about by the action’.47 Or, put slightly differently ‘a consequentialist theory [. . .] is an account of what justifies an option over alternatives – the fact that it promotes values.’48 These premises capture well what is meant by positive and negative securitisation in this article, for the adjectives positive and negative do not refer to the relative success of the speech act that is securitisation, but rather to how well any given security policy addresses the insecurity in question. The approach introduced in this article will henceforth be referred to as a consequentialist evaluation of security. In moral philosophy the idea that the moral rightness (or wrongness) of an action is attributable to its consequences alone is of course contentious (see also fn. 46). The question that arises is thus, why, in the evaluation of security/ securitisation, focus on consequences as opposed to, for example, rights as 46 The term consequentialism was coined by Elisabeth Anscombe in her 1958 essay ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Philosophy, 33:124 (1958). Anscombe’s essay is a strong critique of (at the time modern) English moral philosophy, which she identified as collectively subscribing to the consequentialist principle whereby the moral rightness of an action is dependent on its consequences. Anscombe was strongly opposed to this principle, for she read consequentialism to mean that, ‘a man does well [. . .] if he acts for the best in the particular circumstances according to his judgment of the total consequences of this particular action’. (Ibid., p. 9, emphasis added.) For Anscombe this subjective judgment of consequences is opposed to the Hebrew-Christian ethic where ‘there are certain things forbidden whatever consequences threaten, such as choosing to kill the innocent for any purpose, however good.’ (Ibid., p. 10 emphasis in the original.) For this and other reasons, for Anscombe thus what is morally right (wrong) cannot possibly be determined by an act’s consequences, and she herself worked in the tradition of so-called virtue theory whereby moral rightness is not sought in consequences of actions, but rather ‘in describing types of character which we might admire’. Greg Pence, ‘Virtue Theory’, in Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005 [1991]), p. 249. For a critique of consequentialism along Anscombe’s lines see also Thomas Nagel ‘War and Massacre’, in Samuel Scheffer (ed.), Consequentialism and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988[1979]), p. 51–73. It should further be noticed that Anscombe as the originator of the term consequentialism differentiates between consequentialism and utilitarianism. For her this difference lies in the consequentialist’s ‘denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned’, whereas, for example, the hedonistic utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill concerned itself with the intended consequences of the maximisation of happiness only, and would thus never have contemplated the calculation of murder. Be that as it may, today utilitarianism is widely regarded as a form of consequentialism and Bernard Williams, for example, argues that ‘any kind of utilitarianism is by definition consequentialist’. See, ‘A critique of utilitarianism’, in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams (eds.), Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 79. Today consequentialism takes many forms – including the many variants of utilitarianism – all of these agreeing on the basic principle that the moral rightness of an action is to be judged by its consequences. It is precisely this principle to which deontologists (besides the virtue ethics of scholars such as Anscombe, consequentialism’s main contestants) object. Thus deontologists reject the consequentialist view whereby the right is defined as that which maximises the good. In its place they propose a theory ‘that either does not specify the good independently from the right, or does not interpret the right as maximising the good.’ John Rawls A Theory of Justice (London: Harvard University Press, 1971) p. 30. Or, as Charles Fried puts it ‘for the deontologist, [. . .] the right is prior to the good.’ Fried cited in Nancy Davies, ‘Contemporary deontology’, in Peter Singer (ed.) A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005[1991]), p. 206. 47 J. J. C. Smart (1973), ‘An outline of a system of utilitarian ethics’, in Smart and Williams (eds.), Utilitarianism: For and Against, p. 13. 48 Philip Pettit (2005 [1991]), ‘Consequentialism’, in Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, p. 235. 338 Rita Floyd deontologists would have it, or indeed virtues, as virtue theorists suggest? Much of the answer to this question already lies in the argument of this article. Thus it is not only this author’s opinion that the key to security evaluation lies with its consequences, rather scholars from both the schools discussed above, with their respective positive and negative views of security, themselves already focus on what they take to be the consequences of security. That is to say these scholars themselves are consequentialists. However, and as this article aims to show, the consequentialism proposed by them is neither very balanced nor, in the long run, particularly helpful, as in both cases, consequentialism is constricted by the nature of their respective theoretical frameworks. Frameworks, whereby one promotes security as emancipation, therefore generating a necessarily positive view of security, whilst the other school’s framework for analysis is void of emancipation altogether, therefore partial to a negative view of security. That security is neither always positive nor negative but rather issue dependent is the key hypothesis of this article. If this hypothesis holds true we are – as a discipline – much in need of a more balanced and indeed critical evaluation of security than proposed by either school, a provision of which is the purpose of this article. Given what has been said so far it should have become clear that the herewith proposed consequentialist evaluation of security is also the key to rendering the above-mentioned ‘normative dilemma of speaking and writing security’ less important, as it enables the analyst to critically evaluate his/her speaking and writing security, rather than his/her simply speaking and writing security. This approach thus enables the previously solely analytical securitisation analyst to step into the security equation and on behalf of the actors encourage some securitisations and renounce others, depending on the moral rightness of the respective securitisation’s consequences. It is precisely at this point where the emancipatory nature of the Welsh School’s security studies becomes crucially relevant for a consequentialist evaluation of security, for – under this approach – it is the task of the analyst to fight ignorance (or, put differently, false consciousness) on the part of existing and/or potential securitising actors and inform (or better enlighten) them of the best possible actions. But how does the analyst know what the best possible actions are?Or, put differently, with what standards in mind are the consequences to be evaluated? Is it enough to problematise securitisation by elites for elites, and make majority consensus the measuring unit behind the principles for positive/negative securitisation? One should think not. Although it is useful to assume, that the narrower the interest group behind the securitisation, the more likely it is to be negative, this cannot be ascertained as the only general principle. After all, majority consensus does not prevent the effective securitisation of something that is morally/ethically wrong. But how to determine what is morally/ethically right? In security studies, one way of doing so, is by entering the evaluation of positive/negative through the discourses of security prevalent in the different sectors of security. Here, by working out the specific security relations in the competing discourses that make up the individual sector – who or what is the referent object of security, who is the securitising actor and what is the nature of the threat – it should be possible to determine the most and the least advantageous strategies in addressing insecurity; thereby determining which approach to security (in the individual sector) is the best (most positive) all-round – morally, ethically, effective – strategy. A consequentialist evaluation of security thus postulates the maximisation of genuine security as its overarching value. The Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security 339 invocation of values itself is perfectly legitimate, particularly considering that ‘every moral theory invokes values such that it can make sense to recommend in consequentialist fashion that they be promoted or in non-consequentialist fashion that they be honoured’.49 Positive and negative securitisation/desecuritisation in the environmental sector in theory It exceeds the scope of this article to lay out the specifics for positive/ negative thoroughly for all five sectors to security as identified by Buzan, to exemplify; however, the following will show what such a spectrum, from positive to negative, might look like in the environmental sector. At this point it is important to note that the spectrums from positive to negative might differ strongly in the individual sectors. Particularly because in the other security sectors, the analyst is likely to deal with different groups of human beings, as opposed to a non-human entity like the environment in the environmental sector, principles for positive/negative, in evaluating consequences, will have to take into account the relational nature of security, whereby one actor’s security is another actor’s insecurity. This article must thus merely be seen as a first tentative stab into the direction of a security evaluation that aims to utilise the role of the analyst as an inevitable securitising actor, by focusing on the consequentialist dimension of securitisation/desecuritisation. Before outlining the positive/negative spectrum in the environmental security sector, it is necessary to explain what the environmental security sector entails. In the environmental security sector there are numerous conceptualisations of environmental security, making ‘environmental security’ an essentially contested concept. As for all security studies, the differences in the way environmental security is conceptualised are based on the following central underlying issues: Security for whom? Security from what? And who provides security? On the basis of these underlying issues, it is possible to group the numerous individual approaches into two50 overarching distinct schools of thought on environmental security. 51 The first school constitutes the majority of the literature and focuses on existential threats to the state caused by an ill-functioning environment, the link between environmental degradation and/or environmental scarcity and the onset of intrastate and interstate conflict, and on the role of the military in the provision of environmental security.52 This broad approach 49 Ibid., p. 237. 50 It should be noted here that is possible to identify a third broad school concerned with the relations between the environment and security. In this approach, ‘environmental security’ moves away from both state-centric and human-centric interpretations of environmental security, in that it is argued that what is to be secured is the environment per se. Anthropocentric interpretations of security are to be replaced by eco-centric interpretations of security, as both humans and the state are seen as a threat to the health and stability of the natural environment. This conceptualisation of environmental security is commonly referred to as ‘ecological security’, and therefore – despite the close relation – falls outside the environmental security sector. 51 Terry Terriff, Stuart Croft, Lucy James and Patrick M. Morgan, Security Studies Today (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 118; and Richard A. Matthew, ‘Introduction: Mapping Contested Grounds’, in Daniel Deudney and Richard A. Matthew (eds.), Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999), p. 14. 52 For advocates of the various strands within the state centric environmental security discourse, see Jessica Tuchman Matthews, ‘Redefining Security’, Foreign Affairs, 68:2 (1989), pp. 162–77; Richard 340 Rita Floyd to environmental security has two main characteristics: first, the state is the referent object of security; and second, the state is the provider of security as environmental security. This state-centric approach to environmental security is very much in line with the mainstream approaches to International Relations theory, in which the focus is on the security of the state, and where security is ultimately about state survival. The second main perspective in the literature conceptualises environmental security as non-violent environmental/demographic security.53 In this understanding the referent object of environmental security is the individual and the nature of the threat stems from the dangers of long-term environmental degradation, such as global warming, species extinction, pollution of air and water, loss of biodiversity and ozone depletion, that are non-violent in character. In this approach, environmental security can be usefully defined as: ‘The process of peacefully reducing human vulnerability to human-induced environmental degradation by addressing the root causes of environmental degradation and human insecurity’.54 This conceptualisation of environmental security argues largely against the linkage between environmental degradation and conflict, and against the national and state-centric provision of security. Instead, this approach to environmental security is founded on concerns about issues such as ecological interdependence, the unsuitability of the state system for addressing transnational problems, human rights and joint value systems. In this understanding, the nation state is no longer a sufficient provider of environmental security, but rather shifts the concept of environmental security away from national to common or global security. This approach to the concept of environmental security is thus directly opposed to the state-centric understanding of environmental security, arguing instead that the concept is ultimately more compatible with the concept of human security. In the literature, this second approach is commonly referred to as the ‘human security approach to environmental security’.55 Ullman, ‘Redefining Security’, International Security, 8 (1983), pp. 133ff; Norman Myers, Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Stability (New York: Norton, 1993); Thomas F. Homer-Dixon and Val Percival, ‘The Case of South Africa’, in Paul F. Diehl and Nils P. Gleditsch (eds.), Environmental Conflict (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001), pp. 13–35; Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, ‘Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases’, International Security, 19:1 (1994), 5–40; Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, ‘Global Environmental Change and International Security’, in D. Dewitt; D. Haglund and J. Kirton (eds.), Building a New Global Order: Emerging Trends in International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 185–228; Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, ‘On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict’, International Security, 16:4 (1991), pp. 76–116; Robert Kaplan, ‘The Coming Anarchy.’, in G. O. Tuathail; Simon Dalby and P. Routledge (eds.), The Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge, 1998 [1994]), pp. 188–96; Ken H. Butts, ‘Why is the Military Good for the Environment?’, in Jyrki Ka¨ko¨nen (ed.), Green Security or Militarized Environment. (Brookfield: Dartmouth Publishing, 1994). 53 For advocates of the human security approach to environmental security, see Simon Dalby, Environmental Security (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Edward A. Page and Michael Redclift (eds.), Human Security and the Environment (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002); Jon Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security (London: Zed Books, 2001); Jon Barnett, ‘Destabilizing the Environment-Conflict Thesis’, Review of International Studies, 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 271–88; Jack A. Goldstone, ‘Demography, Environment and Security’, in Paul F. Diehl and Nils P. Gleditsch (eds.), Environmental Conflict (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001), pp. 84–108). 54 Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security, p. 129. 55 Deudney and Matthews, Contested Grounds, p. 14; Terry Terriff, ‘Environmental Degradation and Security’, in Richard H. Shultz, Roy Godson and George H. Quester (eds.), Security Studies for the Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security 341 In accordance with what is stated above, the evaluation of the different approaches to environmental security must focus on which approach best addresses environmental insecurity, as opposed to, for example, which approach can easier be put into practice, or worse, the security analyst’s personal preferences. Given that environmental degradation, unlike traditional military security issues, knows no territorial boundaries, it appears that the state-centric approach to environmental security is inherently limited. This is not to rule out the possibility of environmental conflict constituting a serious security issue in our time, but rather that focusing entirely on environmental conflict as environmental security, only superficially deals with one symptom of environmental degradation, without alleviating the root causes of such conflict such as, for example: overpopulation. Similarly environmental stewardship by the military is a worthy and extremely necessary cause and should be part of any military’s cause of conduct, but to make this the sole meaning of environmental security, again does not address nationwide, let alone global, environmental insecurity; particularly given that environmental security efforts by the military are commonly restricted to military installations only. The second – non-state-centric – reading of environmental security, on the other hand, seeks to address the root causes of environmental insecurity, focusing on the ecological interdependence between man and nature, and on the global nature of environmental issues; in a holistic approach offering cure through change, as opposed to a mere treatment of symptoms. Given all that has been said here about the nature of environmental insecurity and the different strategies of environmental security, it appears, that – as a general rule – the more narrow (state-centric) the focus of the environmental security strategy in question, the less promising its results, and vice versa. Putting this into the language of a consequentialist evaluation of security, mainstream approaches to environmental security (such as military environmental security and the environmental conflict thesis) must, for the most part, be seen as negative; whereas broad conceptions of environmental security must be seen as positive. This said, however, it is always necessary to consider the security relations in the individual case, as it is of course possible that, circumstances allowing, a state can securitise the environment under its jurisdiction in a positive way, provided that the state subscribes to a broad interpretation of environmental security. In sum, a positive securitisation can be defined as an intense political solution that within the margins of moral rightness, and preferably based upon the political interest of the majority, benefits a security problem (here environmental insecurity) and deals with it faster, better and more efficiently than a normal politicisation does, offering a just and useful alternative. If positive securitisation is partly dependent on majority consensus and partly on just ethical conduct, then logically negative securitisation occurs in the absence of the latter of the two, or both combined. Less abstractly put, negative securitisation can be defined as an intense political solution that benefits the few; and/or with a, too narrow focus to address the underlying problems of the prevailing insecurity. Naturally, such a negative securitisation is mostly chosen by those who it benefits, more than often, the securitising actor. Like securitisation, desecuritisation must also be evaluated in relation to politicisation. Here, however, the criteria are more easily derived and for the environmental 21st Century (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1997), pp. 253–87 at 254; Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security, p. 122. 342 Rita Floyd sector at least a desecuritisation is seen as positive simply when the issue re-emerges on the political agenda, for example, leads to a politicisation; and it is seen as negative when it drops off the political agenda altogether (desecuritisaton as depoliticisation).56 In this consequentialist evaluative approach to security, the analyst in making an evaluation of a particular securitisation, must always determine the nature of the security relations in relation to the alternative – politicisation – and determine whether or not the securitisation achieved a better overall policy than the politicisation could have done. To reiterate, this evaluation of positive/negative does not result from the analyst’s personal preferences, but rather must follow a rigorous analytical and practical evaluation of what kind of security best addresses insecurity; thereby seeking to deconstruct the power/knowledge dimension some see as inherent to all social processes, both on part of the analyst and within the discourse. Positive and negative securitisation/desecuritisation in the environmental sector as applied Security, unlike any other concept in world politics, has the power to catapult a formerly neglected issue to the top of the political agenda, where it can be dealt with swiftly, irrespective of democratic rules and regulations. This mobilisation power of security is of central interest to this article, as it is here where the Copenhagen School and the Welsh School can be brought together. This is because both Wæver and the Welsh School scholars recognise the ‘mobilisation power’ of security as a force unlike any other in world politics. Thus, Wyn Jones speaks of the ‘mobilisation potential u
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