Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen New 'Schools' in Security Theory and their Origins between Core and Periphery
Ole Wæver Professor of International Relations Department of Political Science - University of Copenhagen Rosenborggade 15, DK-1130 Copenhagen K, Denmark Phone: +45 3532 3431 Fax: +45 3532 3399 e-mail:
[email protected]
www.polsci.ku.dk/people/faculty/~Waever_Ole.htm
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the March 17-20, 2004.
Panel:
International Studies Association, Montreal,
Geo-Cultural Epistemologies in IR: Thinking Security Differently FD24 Friday 3:45 - 5:30 PM; Sponsor: Convention Theme
Abstract: Debates in security studies in the U.S. and Europe have drifted almost completely apart. In Europe it is common to present the theoretical landscape in terms of, say, critical security studies, the Copenhagen School, traditionalism and feminism. In the U.S. it is more common to see the major debate within security studies as being the one between offensive realism and defensive realism! Previously, almost almost all theore theoretic tical al invent invention ionss in IR were were made made in the U.S. Curren Currently, tly, distinct distinct theori theories es are widely widely associ associate ated d with places places like like Aberys Aberystwy twyth th (Critic (Critical al Securi Security ty Studies), Paris (Bigo's Bourdieu-inspired work) and Copenhagen (securitization). The new European approaches differ not only from security studies in the US, they also stand apart from most work done in other parts of the world. Are these theories peculiarly 'European' and if so, why? The paper aims at explaining the emergence of these these Europe European an securi security ty theori theories. es. The explan explanatio ation n draws draws partly partly on the politic political al contex contextt in the differ different ent region regions, s, and partly on featu features res of the intelle intellectu ctual al fields fields,, International Relations and Security Studies. The theories are also assessed briefly as to their relevance and usefulness. To what extent are they bound to local, European problems or relevant to the issues that are addressed elsewhere and vice-versa for the theories that flourish in the U.S. and the periphery respectively? Can they travel to the other parts of the world in a helpful role?
Recent Recently, ly, a number number of theori theories es or resear research ch progra programme mmess – often often called called ‘schoo ‘schools’ ls’ – have have emerged within European security studies. Although security studies is habitually seen as a sub-fi sub-field eld within within Interna Internatio tional nal Relati Relations ons (IR), (IR), these these ‘schoo ‘schools’ ls’ have have not been been sector sectorial ial manifes manifestati tations ons of the main main theori theories es as define defined d by the over-arc over-archin hing g lands landscap capee or ‘grand ‘grand debates’ of the discipline at large. Nor have they generally been copied from the US. In a discipline (IR) and a sub-discipline/field (security studies) used to American ’leadership’, this sudden fertility of European soil has been a surprise. The debate within and among and across these ‘schools’ has regularly been characterised as particularly fruitful. As noted by amongst other Mike Williams, it is with some surprise that the discipline receives new impulses from security studies, a corner expected to represent the most reactionary and policy obsessed (of a generally reactionary and policy obsessed discipline): over the past decade, the field of security studies has become one of the most dynamic and contested contested areas in International Relations. In particular, it has become perhaps the primary forum in which broadly broadly social social constructivist constructivist approaches approaches have challenged traditional – largely Realist and nonRealist theories on their ‘home turf’, the are in which some of the most vibrant new approaches to the analysis of international politics are being developed, and the realm in which some of the most engaged theoretical debates are taking place. 1
This has largely been a European debate. Important contributions are increasingly coming from both non-Western and American scholars, but the emergence of these distinct theories is widely associated associated with places like like Aber Aberys ystw twyth yth (Cri (Criti tical cal Secu Securi rity ty Stud Studie ies) s),, Pari Paris s (Bigo (Bigo's 's Bour Bourdie dieuuinspire inspired d work) work) and Copenha Copenhagen gen (secur (securitis itisatio ation). n). Why in Aberys Aberystwy twyth, th, Paris and Copenhagen – why not in Amman, Philadelphia or Calcutta? Despite the above cited positive responses to these schools, the point of this paper is certainly not to assume that there is something inherently good or preferable about this particular family of theories and that therefore the causes found should be taken as guidance about what to do in order to emulate emulate this development. development. On the contrary, contrary, it is very likely that theoretical theoretical developments elsewhere are either generally superior or locally more relevant. The intention is exactly to get a clearer sense of the context-boundness of these European theories and schools. Are these theories peculiarly 'European' and if so, why? The paper aims at explaining the emergence of these European security theories. The explanation draws partly on the political context in different regions, and partly on features of the intellectual fields, International Relations and Security Studies. The theories are also assessed briefly as to their relevance and usefulness. To what extent are they bound to local, European problems or relevant to the issues issues that are addressed addressed elsewhere [and vice-versa for the theories that flourish in the U.S. and the periphery respectively]? Can they travel to the other parts of the world in a helpful role?
Michael C. Williams, ’Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and World Politics’, in International Studies 47 (4), 511-531. For similar claims about the vitality and importance of these debates, see Johan Eriksso Eriksson, n, “Introd “Introducti uction” on” in Eriksso Eriksson n ed. Threat Threat Politics Politics:: New perspe perspectiv ctives es on securit security, y, risk risk and crisis crisis Aldershot hot:: Ashga Ashgate te 2001, 2001, pp. 1-18, especia especially lly p. 18 (note (note 1); Jef Huysmans Huysmans,, "Revis "Revisitin iting g management , Alders Copenhagen: Or, On the Creative Development of a Security Studies Agenda in Europe", European Journal of International International Relations Relations, 4:4 (1998) 479-506; Steve Smith, ”The Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualizing Security in the Last Twenty Years” in Stuart Croft & Terry Terriff (eds.) Critical Reflections on Security and Change, London: Frank Cass 2000, pp. 72-101. 1
Quarterly,
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Security studies as a field or sub-discipline The focus of the present paper is on ‘security theory’ as a distinct phenomenon, defined as theory development for the use in security studies. Relatively little has been written on the history and evolution of security studies2, and the recent waves of sophisticated, methodologically self-reflective writings drawing on sociology of science and historiography have almost totally focused on the IR discipline at large. There is less of established conventions about how to view the existing situation in security studies regarding main theories and almost nothing in terms of explanations for their development. This paper will therefore be in relatively uncharted waters and it certainly should be seen as a highly preliminary attempt. Security theory is often linked to IR theory, but correspondence is far from complete. For instance in the 1970s when interdependence theory came close to being the dominant IR theory, it left relatively limited marks on security studies. Therefore, parts of the discussion below will overlap with discussions about IR theory, but the defining criteria will throughout not be the discipline of IR but those theories that are drawn upon in security studies. Much of this happens not in IR/political science departments, but in think tanks, foreign policy research institutes and similar places. Often such policy oriented research is relatively atheoretical or draws on some common sense mix of theoretical fragments, but to the extent that theory is in play, then what theories? Those theories are the empirical material of this paper; the development of these theories is the ‘dependent variable’, and ‘independent variables’ will be sought in both internalist sociology of science inspired approaches and externalist policy related patterns.
The trans-Atlantic split: two different debates Seen in relation to the general discipline of international relations, the sub-field of security studies exhibits an unusual degree of divergence between European and American theoretical developments. In most other fields, scholars on both sides conduct – or at least are aware of – the same debates, even – or exactly – if these might be balanced very differently. One example is the ‘grand debate’ in IR about rationalism and constructivism, where clearly constructivists and reflectivists have an easier time in Europe than in the US, and hard core rational choice is far more influential in the US than in Europe, but research communities on both sides of the Atlantic largely agree about the existence, importance and nature of this debate – only the balance between its two sides differ. Similarly, with the debate in European studies between liberal inter-governmentalism and multi-level governance, where LIG is more American and MLG more European, but almost all ‘European studies’ scholars on either side of the Atlantic knows about this debate and many relate more or less explicitly to it. However, within security studies most scholars on one side of the Atlantic would depict (and teach) the state of the discipline in terms of debates and studies that are not mentioned in David Baldwin, ”Security Studies and the End of the Cold War”, World Politics, vol 48, Oct 1995, pp. 117141; Ken Booth, ”Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist”, in Krause and Williams eds. Critical Security Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1997, pp. 83-120; Patrick M. Morgan, ”Liberalist and Realist Security Studies at 2000: Two Decades of Progress?”, in Stuart Croft & Terry Terriff (eds.) Critical Reflections on Security and Change, London: Frank Cass 2000, pp. 39-71;Steve Smith, ”The Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualizing Security in the Last Twenty Years” in Stuart Croft & Terry Terriff (eds.) Critical Reflections on Security and Change , London: Frank Cass 2000, pp. 72-101; Steven E. Miller (2001): "International Security at Twenty-five: From One World to Another", International Security , Vol. 26, No. 1; Barry Buzan, “Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations", Journal of Peace Research , 21(2), 1984, pp. 109-25. + Snyder + Freedman + Ken Booth, Ethnocentrism book + John Garnett, “Strategic Studies and its Assumptions” in John Baylis, Ken Booth, John Garnett and Phil Williams, Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Policies , London: Croom Helm 1975, pp. 3-21. 2
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a similar overview on the other side and vice-versa. (Obviously, this does not mechanically and fully follow geographical criteria, but the trend is nevertheless clear.) In Europe there is a vibrant debate over a number of competing schools in security studies: critical security studies, the Copenhagen school, radical post-modernists, feminists, Bourdieu-inspired approaches, and more traditional, realist positions. Several of these are not known at all to the majority of American scholars. (In this case, Canada is more European than American and partly simply itself with its own literature on ‘human security’ 3, and therefore the main contrast is not Europe vs. North America but Europe vs. the U.S.) If you turn to the leading academic, American journals in security studies (or look at ph.d. theses written in the US), these debates register only very marginally. 4 The leading debate is instead likely to be seen as the intra-realist debate between offensive and defensive realism 5 (and other distinctions within realism) with numerous interventions refining the theoretical arguments and doing empirical case studies usually through in-depth historical studies. Also there have been major debates over particular hypotheses like the democratic peace 6 and increasingly a debate that looks more like the European debates: the meta-theoretical debate between constructivists and rationalists.7 However, the latter is also the one that most clearly C. Thomas and P. Wilkin (eds.) Globalizaton, Human Security, and the African Experience , London: Lynne Rienner 1999; Astri Suhrke, ”Human Security and the Interests of States”, Security Dialogue, vol. 30:3, September 1999, pp. 265-276; Simon Dalby, Geopolitical Change and Contemporary Security Studies: Contextualizing the Human Security Agenda, The University of British Columbia: Institute of International Relations, Working Paper No. 30, April 2000; Kanti Bajpai, ”Human Security: Concept and Measurement”, Kroc Institute Occasional Paper #19:OP:1, August 2000 (64pp); Edward Newman, ”Human Security and Constructivism”, International Studies Perspectives, 2001:2, pp. 239-252; William Bain, ”The Tyranny of Benevolence? National Security, Human Security, and the Practice of Statecraft” in Global Security, vol. 15:3, 2001, pp. 277-294; Roland Paris, ”Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?”, International Security, vol. 26:2, Fall 2001, pp. 87-102; Nicholas Thomas and William T. Tow, ”The Utility of Human Security: Sovereignty and Humanitarian Intervention”, Security Dialogue, vol. 33(2), June 2002, p. 177-192; Alex J. Bellamy and Matt McDonald, ”’The Utility of Human Security’: Which Humans? What Security? A Reply to Thomas & Tow”, Security Dialogue, vol. 33(3), September 2002, pp. 373-377; Thomas and Tow, ”Gaining Security by Trashing the State? A Reply to Bellamy & McDonald”, Security Dialogue, vol. 33(3), September 2002, pp. 379-382. See also Canada’s ”Human Security Web Site”: www.humansecurity.gc.ca , ”Human Security Network”: www.humansecuritynetwork.org , the Commission on Human Security: http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/ and Harvard’s ”Program on Human Security”: www.cbrss.harvard.edu/hs/ 4 The divergence was maybe already signalled during the 1980s and early 1990s by the very different reception of Barry Buzan’s People States and Fear (1983, 1991). It never made a big impact in the US, while it became a cenral reference, a standard textbook and a modern classic not only in the UK, but generally in Europe (and Canada?). 5 E.g. Sean Lynn-Jones & Steven Miller ‘Preface’, in Brown, Michael, Sean Lynn Jones, & Steven Miller (eds). 1995. The Perils of Anarchy: Neo-realism and International Security . Cambridge: MIT Press 1995. Pp ix-xii; Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition , Ithaca og London: Cornell University Press 1991; Zakaria [review-essay]; Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power - The Unusual Origins of America's World Role, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1998; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics , New York: W. W. Norton & Company 2001; Stephen G. Brooks, “Dueling Realisms”, International Organization, Vol. 51, No. 3, 1997, pp. 445-477; Randall Schweller, ‘Neorealism’s Status Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma’, Security Studies, Spring, 5(3), 1996, pp. 90-121; Randall Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest , New York: Columbia University Press 1998; Charles Glaser, ‘The Security Dilemma Revisited’; World Politics. October, 50 (1), 1997, pp. 171-201; Jeffrey Taliaferro, "Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited," International Security, vol. 25, Winter 2000/01, pp. 128-61; Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy”, World Politics, Vol. 51, 1998, pp. 144-172; Sten Rynning og Stefano Guzzini (2001): Realism and Foreign Policy Analysis, Working Papers 42/2001, København: Copenhagen Peace Research Institute: http://www.copri.dk/publications/WP/WP%202001/42-2001.pdf ; Stephen M. Walt, “The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition” in Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner (eds.) Political Science: The State of the Discipline III , New York: W. W. Norton 2002. 6 Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1993 + ref. to key debates in International Security and elsewhere. 7 Peter J. Katzenstein, ”Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security” in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University 3
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shows the differences, as it will be explained below.
‘Schools’ of security theory in Europe Traditionalism
/
(common sense realism, policy realism
‘Schools’ of security theory in the US
Offensive realism
Defensive realism
Critical Security Studies
other realisms (post-classical, etc etc)
Copenhagen School
Constructivists coming from IR in general
Sociological work by Didier Bigo and
Power and Institutions in International Order (not really anymore the classical IR liberalism
colleagues + risk society
debate over ‘the role of institutions’, but more questions related to the challenges of building a unipolar order - or empire)
Radical post-modernists, feminists, et al
Possible avenues for explanation Elsewhere, I have elaborated more complicated and extensive explanatory models for the developments within IR theory in a particular region or country 8. Others have made parallel arguments or relevant criticisms of my model. 9 Much can be said for or against various suggestions for a complete model (and the Breitenbauch/Wivel one is probably the most consistent and comprehensive), but for the present purpose, I will simplify into an explanation from three factors: •
Intellectual traditions; the dominance of e.g. positivism, historicism or other general orientations.
•
The organisation of the field (in this case: security studies). Generally defined in the model as the delineation of different social sciences, notably the relationship between law, administration, sociology, history, the humanities and political science/international relations. In the present case, much of the focus will be on the relationship between universities, think tanks (strategic studies; foreign policy institutes), peace research and the public (including ‘public intellectuals’).
•
Practical usages: policy issues and the political agenda. This is not meant to re-import either the traditional, semi-positivist view, that reality rests in itself and theories only mirror this, nor the general ‘IR externalist’ understanding of the discipline, according to which, the development of IR can be understood as a reflection of the development in ‘i.r.’ (real world international relations). According to the latter, world war I explained
Press 1996, pp. 1-32; Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, ”Norms, Identity and Culture in National Security” in Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture, op.cit., pp. 33-75; Peter J. Katzenstein, ”Conclusion: National Security in a Changing World” in Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture, op.cit., pp. 498-537; Michael Desch, "Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies," International Security , vol. 23, Summer 1998, pp. 141-70 + debate in International Security, vol. 24:1, Summer 1999, pp. 156-180; Ted Hopf, "The Promise of Constructivism in IR Theory." International Security, V.23, Summer 1998, pp. 171-200; Dale Copeland, "The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay," International Security, vol. 25, Fall 2000, pp. 187-212; Ido Oren, “Is Culture Independent of National Security? How America’s National Security Concerns Shaped ‘Political Culture’ Research”, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 6:4, 2000, pp. 543-573. 8 'The Sociology of a Not so International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations', in International Organization, vol. 52:4, 1998, pp. 687-727, especially pp. 694-6. 9 Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations, Albany NY: State University of New York Press 1998 [+ handbook chapter] ; Stefano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold , Routledge 1998; Anders Wivel and Henrik Breitenbauch, “Understanding National IR Disciplines Outside the United States: Political Culture and the Construction of Internatinoal Relations in Denmark”, draft March 10, 2004, G. Holden – several articles and papers; etc.
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the raise of idealism and somehow the next world war II with equal necessity explained the victory of realism; icy cold war periods caused realism and neo-realism, while détente led to interdependence and Keohane. I – and Brian Schmidt – have explained elsewhere why this kind of explanation does not hold. The interpretations and ‘conclusions’ reached do not follow from events but can only be understood through the ‘discourse internal’ debates – cf. the two world wars that ‘cause’ opposite theoretical orientations. However, the kind of issues a political community is faced with surely does influence the nature of the debate. Therefore, the formulation about ´practical usages´: IR and (more so) security studies are surely used (in any sense of the term) and it is important to have a sense of the challenges and debates a community is preoccupied with in order to understand the nature of the debates and thereby the kinds of research that appear relevant in a given place and time. First, however, a brief summary of these ‘schools’ in Europe, before we turn to explanations:
Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen and elsewhere This section is not meant to give an in-depth or innovative presentation and critical discussion of the theories. They will be only briefly introduced – and the choice of ‘cities’ as metaphor justified – basically to the extent necessary for knowing what to explain , i.e. what is it that is characteristic of these theories and the emergence of which therefore needs to be understood. To what extent the theories are ‘good’, useful, scientifically satisfactory, progressive, etc, is a question for another – or rather many other – days. Aberystwyth has been one of the most important sites for the development of so-called Critical Security Studies .10 Among the three discussed, CSS is the school that has most clearly been a broad movement emerging out of many sources and many places, in Europe and certainly beyond. In this case, the metaphor of a town is therefore more problematic, but especially for the ‘emancipatory’ wing of CSS, the two main figures are located at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth – Ken Booth and Richard Wyn Jones. The defining work of the school, the anthology Critical Security Studies , was edited by two post-Canadians Keith Krause (Geneva) and Mike Williams (then Portland, Maine), but Mike Williams moved to Aberystwyth in 1998. The name ‘Welsh School’ has occasionally been used about this approach.11 CSS has had non-Western participants involved in the development of the theory, and as we will see below (last part of the paper), it is probably the one of the three that most easily works in a non-Western context.
CSS argues, that we as researchers should avoid seeing the world through the eyes of the state as implied by using the concept of ‘national security’ as key category. The state is often the problem as much as the solution, and the aim of research has to be defined in relation to human beings, not an institution. The best way to conceptualise security in a way that ties it in with people instead of the state is to define it in terms of emancipation . Ken Booth, "Security and Emancipation", Review of International Studies, 17:4, (1991), pp.313-327; Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds.) Critical Security Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1997; Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, “Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies: Politics and Methods”, Mershon International Studies Review, vol. 40, supplement 2 (1996), pp. 229-254; Keith Krause "Critical Theory and Security Studies: The Research Programme of 'Critical Security Studies'", Cooperation and Conflict, 33:3 (1998), pp.298-333; Richard Wyn Jones, Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner 1999; Bradley Klein, "Politics by Design. Remapping Security Landscapes", European Journal of International Relations, 4:3 (1998), pp.327-346; Bradley S. Klein, Strategic Studies and World Order: The Global Politics of Deterrence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Lene Hansen, "A Case for Seduction? Evaluating the Poststructuralist Conceptualization of Security", Cooperation and Conflict, 32:4 (1997), pp.369-97. 11 Steve Smith, “The Increasing Insecurity”; op.cit.; Alex J. Bellamy, “Humanitarian responsibilities and interventionist claims in international society”, Review of International Studies, vol. 29:3, 2003, pp. 321-40. 10
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By implication, the concept of security becomes used in a rather classical sense, but on a different referent object: it is about ‘real threats’, only the real-real ones against real people and not the allegedly real ones voiced by the state. In this respect, CSS sometimes comes to sound rather objectivist in its concept of threats and security, and its political agenda comes close to classical ‘critical peace research’ of the 1970s Galtung-Senghaas brand that used to be strong in Northern Europe (Scandinavia and Germany). This is the part of CSS that thinks of the meaning of ‘Critical’ in terms of ‘capital C-capital T’, Critical Theory, i.e. Frankfurt School, early Habermas inspired thinking with a drop of Gramsci and maybe Kant. Others think of ‘critical’ in a more inclusive sense where CT is only one possible format, and CSS as a broad movement therefore includes also other forms of theory that is critical, even if it is not Critical Theory, i.e. feminism, normative theory and post-structuralism. In practices, the majority of these “non CT ct” writers are found somewhere on the IR continuum from constructivism to post-structuralism, e.g. much work on the social construction of threats and self-other relations.12 CSS in its broad sense shows no clear ‘boundary’ towards the Copenhagen School. In some sense, it is artificial to have Krause, Williams and Wæver located in different ‘schools’ 13, whereas the difference between the approaches of Booth and Buzan is probably clear enough. Therefore, at the cost of downplaying in this context some of the most interesting crosscutting writings, focus will – when discussing schools – be on the most distinct versions and therefore on the ‘Welsh school’ in its emancipatory format. Writers like Williams, Huysmans, Krause and Hansen are however important to keep in the picture not least as representatives of the broader debate around and across these schools.
Strategic Studies and World Order, Cambrdige Univesity Press 1994.; Simon Dalby, Creating the Second Cold War , Londno: Pinter 1990; Bradely Klein, ‘Politics by Design. Remapping Security Landscapes’, European Journal of International Relations 4 (3) (1998), 327-346; David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity , University of Minnesota Press 1992 and 12
Bradley S. Klein,
not least the epilogue to the second, revised edition (1998, pp. 207-227); chapters in Krause/Williams by Dalby and Klein; articles by Jim George, etc etc etc. 13 On a personal note, an element that I find particularly important and thought-provoking is one which RBJ Walker and Mike Williams have in different ways contributed to: The traditional concept of security is not just a product of un-imaginative, positivist mainstream scholars with too close relationships to state policy. Adopting a materialist ontology and a positivist epistemology was an early modern security strategy, or in a sense a strategy of de-securitisation: the narrow concept of security meant to restrict the resort to violence and defence to only the state and only in relation to physical threats which was an important element of the order creating process of removing these instruments from diverse groups and individuals in the feudal order and from religious and identity referents in the religious and civil wars of the 16 th and 17 th Century. That is: to limit violence and establish peaceful order, it was imperative to narrow the security logic to the minimalist reference of state and war. Thus, the concept of security is not an isolated question and certainly not a purely academic one of post-positivist progress, but a thoroughly political question tied in with the whole modern political language of state, sovereignty, community and identity. To widen or in other ways redefine the concept of security is therefore not an innocent matter of simple conceptual improvement, but a political move not to be carried out light-heartedly but with full awareness of the implications of unpacking the Westphalian parcel of political concepts, peace and order. Cf. R B J Walker, “The Subject of Security”, in Krause/Williams, pp. 61-82; Michael Williams, "Comment on the 'Copenhagen Controversy'", Review of International Studies, 24:3 (1998), pp.435-441; Michael C. Williams, "Security and the Politics of Identity", European Journal of International Relations, 4:2 (1998), pp. 204-225.
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The so-called Copenhagen School14 in security studies is built around three main ideas: 1) securitisation, 2) sectors and 3) regional security complexes. In this brief presentation, I will focus on the first, because securitisation is what defines most distinctly the school in a metatheoretical sense. However, it is worth remembering the other key ideas not least because the tensions and interactions between these three explain much of the dynamics in the development of the theory. 15 ‘Sectors’ refer to the distinction between political, economic, environmental, military and societal security. The concept of ‘security complexes’ points to the importance of the regional level in security analysis and suggests an analytical scheme for structuring analysis of how security concerns tie together in a regional formation. 16 Part of the background for the Copenhagen School was the debate in politics and security studies in the 1970s and especially 1980s over a wide versus a narrow concept of security. The ‘everything becomes security’ worry of tradtionalists, was met by the argument that with a clearer sense of what makes a security issue a security issue, it is possible to extend the net widely and look for security in all sectors and with all possible referent objects. It is
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The name ‘Copenhagen School’ was coined by Bill McSweeney in a critical review essay which turned into an exchange: Bill McSweeney "Identity and security: Buzan and the Copenhagen school", in Review of International Studies 22:1 (1996), pp.81-94; Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver "Slippery? contradictory? sociologically unstable? The Copenhagen school replies", in Review of International Studies 23:2 (1997), pp.143-52; Bill McSweeney "Durkheim and the Copenhagen school: a response to Buzan and Wæver", in Review of International Studies 24:1 (1998), pp.137-140; Mike Williams "Comment on the 'Copenhagen Controversy'", in Review of International Studies 24:3 (1998), pp.435-441; Bill McSweeney, Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999. The Copenhagen School is usually taken to refer first of all to the work done since 1985 by the “European Security” research group at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, notably its series of collective books: Egbert Jahn, Pierre Lemaitre, and Ole Wæver Concepts of Security: Problems of Research on Non-Military Aspects, Copenhagen Papers no. 1, Copenhagen: Center for Peace and Conflict Research 1987; Ole Wæver, Pierre Lemaitre and Elzbieta Tromer (eds.) European Polyphony: Perspectives beyond East-West Confrontation, London: Macmillan 1989; Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, Pierre Lemaitre, Elzbieta Tromer, and Ole Wæver The European Security Order Recast: Scenarios for the Post-Cold War Era, London: Pinter Publisher 1990; Ole Wæver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre Lemaitre, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, London: Pinter Publichers 1993; Barry Buzan, Jaap de Wilde, and Ole Wæver, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner 1998; Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security, Cambridge University Press 2003. The most thorough review of the school in this respect is Jef Huysmans "Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, On the Creative Development of a Security Studies Agenda in Europe", in European Journal of International Relations 4:4 (1998), pp.479-506. For important reflections on the origins and context for the emergence of the school, see also several chapters (and especially the editors’ introduction to) Stefano Guzzini and Dietrich Jung (eds.) Contemporary Security Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research , Routledge 2004. Especially in Scandinavia but increasingly beyond, a lot of ‘applications’ have been done, but also many critical comments and revisions have been published. See Johan Eriksson, ‘Observers or Advocates? On the Political Role of Security Analysts’, i Cooperation and Conflict , 1999:3; Iver B. Neumann, "Identity and the Outbreak of War : Or Why the Copenhagen School of Security Studies Should Include the Idea of 'Violisation' in Its Framework of Analysis", International Journal of Peace Studies, 3:1 (January 1998), pp. 7-22; Hansen, Lene (2000) "The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School," Millennium , vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 285-306; Albert, Mathias (1998): ‘Security as Boundary Function: Changing Identities and 'Securitization' in World Politics’, International Journal of Peace Studies 3 (1): 23-46; Ceyhan, op cit.; Williams, ‘Words, Images’, op.cit. 15
Sectors and regional security complexes stem from Barry Buzan altough the main reference now is to collective Copenhagen School books ( Security, A New Framework from 1998 and Regions and Powers in 2003, respectively). Securitisation comes from Ole Wæver but also here the main reference is now a collective book ( Security: A New Framework ). 16 The concept of regional security complex was introduced by Barry Buzan in People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, Harvester Wheatsheaf 1983. The concept is at the centre of the most recent book from the project group in Copenhagen: Buzan & Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security, Cambridge University Press 2003.
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necessary to be able to discriminate and separate security issues from non-security. Only by having a clear sense of what is security , is it possible to open up without being swept away. The real functions of the term, the powers of the concept, are found where it is employed in political practice. Language users implicitly follow rules for what is seen as meaningful statements. This approach does not entail conducting opinion polls and asking people what they think security means, nor asking philosophers what would be the most logically consistent definition, but analysing actual linguistic practices to see what regulates discourse. What do practitioners do in talking security? In security discourse, an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object (traditionally, but not necessarily the state). 17 The designation of the threat as existential justifies the use of extraordinary measures to handle it. The invocation of security has been the key to legitimising the use of force, and more generally opening the way for the state to mobilise or to take special power — eg. using conscription, secrecy, and other means only legitimate when dealing with ‘security matters’. “Security” is the result of a move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue as above normal politics. To register the act of something being securitised, the task is not to assess some objective threats that ‘really’ endanger some object, rather it is to understand the processes of constructing a shared understanding of what is to be considered and collectively responded to as a threat. The process of securitisation is a speech act . It is not interesting as a sign referring to something more real: it is the utterance itself that is the act. By saying the words, something is done (like giving a promise, betting, naming a ship). It is by labelling something a security issue that it becomes one – not that issues are security issues in themselves and then afterwards possibly talked about in terms of security. 18 Thus the exact definition and criteria of securitisation is the intersubjective establishment of an existential threat with a saliency sufficient to have substantial political effects. A characteristic feature of the CS is its scepticism towards ‘security’. It has often antidemocratic and anti-creative implications. The usual ‘critical’ strategy of widening security has a problem when it accepts the underlying assumption of the mainstream approach that ‘the more security the better’ and extends this to still more areas. Securitising environment, identity and religion subsumes these areas under a problematic rationality. In contrast, the CS sees security as a negative, as a failure to deal with issues as normal politics. Ideally, politics should be able to unfold according to normal procedures without this extraordinary elevation of specific ‘threats’ to a pre-political immediacy. De-securitisation is the optimal long-range option, since it means not to have issues phrased as ‘threats against which we have countermeasures’ but to move them out of this threat-defence sequence and into the ordinary public sphere (or the economy, or letting religion be religion 19, or what other mechanisms it is then left to). In a conflict resolution perspective, the way forward is often de-securitisation
Barry Buzan, Jaap de Wilde, and Ole Wæver, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998; Ole Wæver, "Securitisation and Desecuritisation", in On Security, Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.) , New York: Columbia University Press 1995, pp. 46-86; Wæver, “Securitisation: Taking stock of a research programme in Security Studies”, paper presented to PIPES, Chicago, February 2003. 18 J L Austin, How to do things with words, 2nd ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 1975 (1962); John R. Searle ( Speech Acts: ... ); Jürgen Habermas ( Universal Pragmatics ...); Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc ....; Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative , Routledge 1997; B. Honig, “Declarations of independence: Arendt and Derrida on the problem of founding a republic”, American Political Science Review, vol. 85:1, 1991, pp. 97-113; John Forrester, The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida, Cambridge University Press 1990, especially ch. 7. Pierre Bourdieu, … 19 Carsten Bagge Laustsen and Ole Wæver, “In Defence of Religion: Sacred Referent Objects for Securitization", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol.29 no. 3, 2000, 705-739. 17
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rather than the production of more security, cf. the case of European integration (the Monnet method).20 Paris has been the main site of a distinct theoretical development, mostly inspired by Bourdieu and other sociologists, with a dose of Foucault and a thorough commitment to detailed, empirical investigations of actual practices by various agencies – practices that often reveal patterns and processes different from those one find by studying official discourse. Didier Bigo is the main figure in this development and ‘his’ journal Cultures & Conflits has published a number of important works in relation to this research programme. 21 Also Jef Huysmans who have written extensively on the different new ‘schools’ have clarified and elaborated important assumptions and implications of the ‘Paris approach’. 22
Empirically, Bigo has amongst other things shown how internal and external security merge as agencies compete for the gradually de-territorialised tasks of traditional police, military and customs. Also they jointly produce a new threat image by constantly connecting immigration, organised crime and terror. In-security is largely a product of security discourses and security policy. Bigo starts from a conception of a ‘field’ and its actors and ask what they do. If done simplistically, the actor-based approach could easily become something close to conspiracy theory. But by now this work has evolved into a very elaborate and unusually well documented mapping of practices notably also at the micro level by the various agencies involved on the security field. An important advantage of this approach is that it better than others includes routine practices and even deviation from official policy, i.e. it is less oriented to discourse and more to all practices of agencies. It is obviously a quite demanding task, if you have to penetrate these various agencies and agents – from police and other bureaucracies to private security companies — and their more or less hidden, Ole Wæver, ‘Insécurité, Identité : une dialectique sans fin’ in Entre Union et Nations: L’État en Europe , ed. by Anne-Marie Le Gloannec, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po 1998, pp. 88-137. (English version as ‘Identity and Insecurity Unlimited’ as chapter 10 in Wæver, Concepts of Security, University of Copenhagen 1997.) On the question of security dilemmas and security systems in the societal sector, see also Wæver, ‘Identity, Integration and Security: Solving the Sovereignty Puzzle in E.U. Studies’, in Journal of International Affairs, vol. 48:2, Winter 1995, pp. 389-431, and ‘European Security Identities’ in Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 34:1, March 1996, pp. 103-32. See also: Paul Roe, "The Intrastate Security Dilemma: Ethnic Conflict as a 'Tragedy'", Journal of Peace Research, vol. 36:2, 1999, s. 183-202; Paul Roe, “Misperception and ethnic conflict: Transylvania’s societal security dilemma”, Review of International Studies, vol. 28:1, 2002, pp. 57-74; Pierre Hassner, ‘Beyond Nationalism and Internationalism’, Survival , 35:2 (1993); Gidon Gottlieb, Nations without States’, Foreign Affairs, 73:3 (1994); Ted Gurr, ‘Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System’, International Studies Quarterly, 38:3 (1994); Kristian Gerner, ‘From the Black Sea to the Adriatic: Ethnicity, Territoriality and International Security’, Security Dialogue, 24:1 (1993); Roxanne Lynn Doty, ‘Immigration and National Identity: constructing the nation’, Review of International Studies, 22:3 (1996) 235-55. 20
Didier Bigo, Polices en résaux, l’expérience européenne, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po 1996; Bigo, ‘L’Europe de la sécurité intérieure: penser autrement la sécurité’, in Anne-Marie Le Gloannec (ed.) Entre Union et Nations, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques 1998, pp. 55-90; Bigo, "Security(s): Internal and External, the möbius ribbon", paper presented at the annual convention of ISA, Toronto March 199? (is published, but where?), Bigo, “Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease”, Alternatives , vol. 27: supplement, Feb. 2002, pp. 63-92; Bigo, “When two become one: internal and external securitisations” in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds.) International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration, London: Routledge 2000, pp. 171204; Bigo, Didier (2002) “To Reassure and Protect, After September 11” on web-page by the Social Science Research Council “after September 11”, http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/bigo.htm ; Ayse Ceyhan, ’Analyser la sécurité: Dillon, Waever, Williams et les autres’, in Culture et Conflits no. 31-32, Automne-hiver 1998; Ayse Ceyhan and Anastassia Tsoukala, “The Securitization of Migration in Western Societies: Ambivalent Discourses and Policies” in Alternatives , vol. 27: supplement, Feb. 2002, pp. 21-40; Huysmans, “Defining Social Constructivism”, op.cit.; Claudia Aradau, “Migration: The Spiral of (In)Security”, Rubikon e-journal, March 2001, http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/claudia1.htm ; Claudia Aradau, ”Beyond Good and Evil: Ethics and Securitization /Desecuritization Techniques”, Rubikon e-journal, Dec 2001: http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/claudia2.htm . 22 Jef Huysmans, … in Cultures et Conflits … + “Defining Social Constructivism” + … 21
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transnational networks, but it has the great advantage of being able to keep up with a society increasingly characterised by professionalisation and technical rationalisation, where specific social positions are privileged in relation to ‘doing security’. Other participants to this debate are notably ‘traditionalists’ to the one side and ‘hard-core post-modernists’ and feminists to the other. By ‘hard-core post-modernists’, I mean those who most actively criticise security as such. By linking more directly to Nietzsche and Heidegger, they question why at all we are concerned about security. Only the timid and unambitious strive for security – better is to live interestingly and less predictably. Also the point by Derrida and others about the typically modern longing for fixity and predictability can be used here. Better would be to face the Other and what is truly different as an exciting challenge.23
On the one hand, it is quite easy to ridicule this in the institutional setting of security studies, because is obviously appears a rather ‘academic’ approach. Try to tell policy makers: “September 11? Terrorism? How exciting! You should take this as an interesting chance to develop and change and experience difference.” Not very promising. On the other hand, exactly the post-911 debate shows the relevance of this radical position, because ultimately an inescapable question in relation to terror is to what extent we can learn to live with a very unwelcome danger like terror. Any strategy for erasing the threat of terrorism – and therefore any attempt to securitise terrorism as a totally unacceptable risk which leaves us in mortal and intolerable danger until removed – is deemed to drive us all into a vicious circle of increased insecurity and counter-productive security strategies. Terror can only be dealt with if not totalised as a threat, and thus ultimately any promising strategy has to have an element of learning to tame one’s own worries. Ironically, this approach therefore has some immediate policy relevance, but at least in the short term, it has usually (maybe with the idiosyncratic exception of James Der Derian) not been able to forge ties with policy research and has thus remained a debate limited to ‘high theory’. Feminists have done much work on security thinking. 24 Often, the usual divisions within feminism (standpoint, Marxist, liberal, post-modern, etc) show up in this work too, and accordingly different parts line up close to some of the already mentioned schools, while other parts are more distinct. Quite a bit of the feminist work comes close to Booth type CSS (which is not surprising given the strong influence of feminism on Booth’s thinking): individual security should be given priority, state security is over-emphasised by traditional, masculinist scholarship, and sometimes it is also stressed how the very forms of theory and study is male science. 25 Other parts of feminist work is more post-structuralist and stress the articulation of concepts of gender, nation and security (often inspired by Elshtain) 26. This scholarship is an important part of the broader debate, but it is not easy to define a distinct position at present and it is therefore treated as part of the larger debate, not as a school. Finally, an emerging debate within these mostly European security circles is about ‘risk society’. The literature that developed originally among mostly sociologists and primarily in 23
James Der Derian, ”The Value of Security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard” i Ronnie D. Lipschutz, ed. On Security, New York: Columbia University Press 1995, pp. 24-45; Michael Dillon, Politics of Security: Towards a Political Philosophy of Continental Thought , London: Routledge 1996; Costas Constantinou, “Poetics of Security”, Alternatives , vol. 25:3, 2000, pp. 287-306; Anthony Burke, “Aporias of Security”, Alternatives , vol. 27:1 (2002), pp. 1-27; Andreas Behnke, “’Postmodernizing’ Security”, paper presented at ECPR Joint Session of Workshops, Mannheim, 26-31 March 1999. J. Ann Tickner, Gender and International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving global Security, New York: Columbia University Press 1992. Add many more ref. 25 Cf. Booth, ”Security and Self”, op.cit. 26 Lene Hansen, Rape/Bosnia article in Feminist Journal , several articles in special issue of Cooperation and Conflict especially the Swedish one on conscription, etc etc. 24
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relation to environment and production systems, obviously meet at some point the concerns of ‘security studies’, especially as security widens beyond the international into various ‘domestic settings’, and risk simultaneously spreads to becoming allegedly the predominant mode of society’s self-reflection.27 How and where these two logics meet and what it implies is very much an open question and a debate that has only just begun, but it should tie in relatively smoothly with some of the existing concerns in the European security debate. --An aside on the term ‘schools’ : The pattern is not totally consistent, and one can find the term applied to e.g. realism (the realist school), but mostly the main theories that are seen as constituting the core debates at the centre of the discipline (i.e. leading circles in the US) are not referred to as ‘schools’. There is no constructivist school, Wendtian school or YaleChicago school. This is not only because these (American born) theories are seen as too wide-spread – i.e. going beyond any locality – because it is generally understood also that ‘the English school’ is not about scholarship in England , but a specific tradition of work referring to certain referent points (Wight, Bull, and the whole ‘British Committee’); and the Copenhagen School keeps being used as a name despite the fact that with growth in applications (and the government’s closure of COPRI, the school’s original home), a decreasing fraction of its work comes out of Copenhagen. Nor, is the nature of the different efforts distinct enough that one could claim that ‘school´ gets used when something is not systematic enough to be a theory or a research programme. Probably, the implicit linguistic rules here are that a school is not a major competitor, i.e. it is not one of the parties to the main debate(s) that define the discipline, but still of a certain independent and continuous existence (cf. the English School). Thus, there is an element of repressive tolerance built into the term. --To sum up, what is characteristic of these ‘European schools’ of security studies, the following can be a first attempt 28: Shared: •
Reflections on the concept of security as such, i.e. 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 face hard ethical dilemmas as security actor.
Niklas Luhmann: “Risiko und Gefahr” in Soziologische Aufklärung 5. Konstruktivistische Perspektiven . Westdeutscher Verlag, Obladen 1990, pp. 131 – 169; Ulrick Beck, Risk Society. Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage 1992; Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, ”Reflexive Security: NATO and International Risk Society” in Millennium, vol. 30:2, 2001, pp. 285-309; Shlomo Griner, ”Living in a World Risk Society: A Reply to Mikkel V. Rasmussen”, in Millennium , vol. 31:1, 2002, pp. 149-160; MVR reply in Millennium …; Zygmunt Bauman, In Search of Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press 1999; Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World , Cambridge Polity Press 2001; Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age , Cambridge: Polity Press 1991; François Ewald, “Insurance and Risk” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller eds., Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1991, pp. 197-210; François Ewald, ”Two Infinities of Risk” in Brian Massumi (ed.) The Politics of Everyday Fear , Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press 1991, pp. 221-8; Claudia Aradau, ”Beyond Good and Evil: Ethics and Securitization /Desecuritization Techniques”, Rubikon e-journal, Dec 2001: http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/claudia2.htm ; Ole Wæver, ”Security: A Conceptual History for international relations”, paper presented at ISA and BISA 2003. 28 One could also sum up in terms of theorists. Maybe: Aberystwyth: Habermas, Gramsci, Cox. Copenhagen: Waltz, Schmitt, Austin and Derrida. Paris: Bourdieu, Foucault, Weber. 27
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Aberystwyth: •
widening
•
emancipation
•
social construction of threats; self/other relations
Copenhagen: •
securitisation: the political construction of security issues.
•
desecuritisation: ‘security’ is not good but at best a minor evil, while most often our aim should be to limit the rhetoric of security and its accompanying politics of exceptions and emergencies.
•
distinguish between securitising actors and referent objects.
Paris: •
internal and external security merge.
•
Security agencies.
•
Praxis over discourse
And now to the explanations of all that:
Philosophy, money and institutions As presented above, this will be attempted in terms of three levels: 1. Intellectual traditions. 2. The organisation of the field. 3. Practical usages: policy issues and the political agenda. The first level is almost too easy in this case. It is obvious, that the European debates are more ‘reflectivist’ or ‘post-positivist’ than the American ones. The spectrum of metatheoretical positions probably does not differ much between the US and Europe (and many individuals move back and forth), but the median point does. Therefore, the seemingly similar debates, that could be seen as being about ‘constructivism meets security studies’ on both sides, turn out very differently. In US security studies, it is about a distinct type of mainstream constructivism that orients itself towards the canons of science among rationalists, where much (but far from all) constructivism in Europe blends in with more radical positions. Accordingly, the debate mostly in International Security over the role of constructivism in security studies 29, turns out to be about “assessing the importance of ideas in security studies”, i.e. ideas and identity conceived as variables and judged in strict causal terms. Also the participants explicitly engage in laborious efforts to define a ‘conventional’
Michael Desch, "Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies," International Security , vol. 23, Summer 1998, pp. 141-70 + debate in International Security, vol. 24:1, Summer 1999, pp. 156-180; Ted Hopf, "The Promise of Constructivism in IR Theory." International Security, V.23, Summer 29
1998, pp. 171-200; Dale Copeland, "The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay," International Security, vol. 25, Fall 2000, pp. 187-212; Theo Farrell, 'Constructivist Security Studies: Portrait of a Research Program', International Studies Review, 4, 1, 2002, pp. 49-72.
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constructivism as distinct from a ‘critical’ constructivism.30 This striking contrast in the elaboration of seemingly similar impulses illustrates the difference in context and normality. This meta-theoretical difference in turn is already well-explained by previous contributions to the literature on ‘sociology of IR’ and other writings on the social sciences. The explanation has many layers including deep ones around the historical constitution of national identities, where Dorothy Ross convincingly has argued that the American historical consciousness – the way the American nation is constructed in time, the millennial belief in American exceptionalism – was served best by naturalist social science and threatened by historicist approaches.31 Abstract and ‘scientific’ social science is therefore a repeated preference in US, even when this comes in new forms for each wave. To this can then be added later inclinations related to the fascination with technology and progress (Thorstein Veblen; Stanley Hoffmann). Positivist inclinations were supported also by ‘level 2´ factors related to the formation and delineation of the different social sciences 32. Finally, the Cold War period strengthened this pattern further due to the social role of IR and security studies in Cold War policy – and the ensuing funding. This blurs into the second level, but before we continue systematically to this, it is necessary to pause a bit and complicate this simple and familiar story about positivist Americans versus post-Positivist Europeans: The two sides differ not only in terms of meta-theory (positivism/post-positivism) but also about IR theory (realism or not) and methodology (historical case studies or other methods). Also, it is necessary to focus on how security studies differ from IR in general in the US and Europe respectively. Realism remains much more central in U.S. security studies than it is in both general American IR/IPE (IO as well as ISQ type) 33 and than it is in European security studies. Within American IR, security studies has its distinct style . In security studies (as represented primarily by the journals International Security and Security Studies), the dominant form of research is more historical, less oriented towards formal rational choice than in IO-style IR.34 This is not an instance of ‘traditionalism’ a la second debate (Hedley Bull) where judgment is seen as integral to research 35, because a journal like International Security is at least as insistent as IO on strict causal and ’positivist’ social science. This shows in the actual publishing record but maybe more revealingly in places like the instruction sheet for contributors. It asks a potential author to sum up (at least for herself) her argument in an arrow diagram because if this is not possible, the argument is not clear yet. This implies that an argument necessarily takes the form of propositions about cause-effect 30
Here, it probably also plays a role, that the field of practiced policy research in the security field is more closely ‘disciplined’ and specialised in the US. Therefore there are few constructivists (very few radical constructivists), whereas it is possible to be both a post-structuralist and a policy researcher (and government advisor) in some European countries (partly because of a different game over the status of different disciplines, partly simply because of less specialisation/division of labour in smaller countries). 31 Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, Cambridge University Press 1991. 32 See the work of John Gunnell and others – a summary is found on pp. 713f of Wæver, ‘The Sociology’, op.cit. 33 As noted by several authors, (neo)realism has long been present in general IR (not-specifically-securityoriented) discussions mostly as a ghost: Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, a very large part of theoretical arguments were justified as critiques of neo-realism, but to actually find a self-defined neo-realist at an ISA meeting or in the pages of IO, was not that easy. Obviously, this meant that neo-realism was influential in shaping debates but in a much more in-direct way than within security studies, where it remained something like the orthodoxy. 34 Michael Brown, Steven E. Miller and Seam M. Lynn-Jones (eds.) Rational Choice and Security Studies: Stephen Walt and His Critics, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Cf. also the statistics in Wæver, ’The Sociology of a Not so International Discipline’, especially figure 3 (p. 702) and Table A1 (p. 727). Unfortunately, these statistics include only IO and ISQ, not IS and SS, but I think it is clear that the distribution between different meta-theories in the ’non-security’ journals differ markedly from what one would find in the security journals. 35 Hedley Bull, 'International Theory: The Case for the Classical Approach', in World Politics, 3 (1966), 361377. See also the recent attempt to elaborate this methodological stance: Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States, Oxford, Clarendon Press 2000(?).
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relations among a few factors (and not e.g. writing structured history, deconstructive interventions or normative IR). The debate between offensive and defensive realism is illustrative of this: it is phrased in terms of general IR theories, and of a kind where clear behavioral hypotheses can relatively easily be deduced, and thus in-depth, historical case-studies is a fruitful method to evaluate the competing theories – and to refine them by modifications, complications and often combinations. The preference is -- in contrast to IO – for not too abstract and arcane theories and a relatively clear discussion of what state behaviour to expect. Usually, the immediate policy relevance is clearer – and in recent years especially: what should we expect of other great powers and major regional powers? When will they turn aggressive and expansionist, and when will they be status quo powers? In principle, the offensive/defensive realism debate could also be the basis of how to think about the current US position, but interestingly this is relatively rare36 and US policy is more often linked to the debate about the role of power (empire) vs. institutions (and soft power) in international order. Generally, the preferred ‘style’ is cause-effect knowledge about security relevant issues based on historical case studies (or more rarely: large-n data). It is not possible to explain patterns of security theory purely at the level of intellectual traditions. As we have seen above, questions about organisation and usage have already started to creep into this first part of the discussion, and in order to get to grips with these layers, lets first zoom in a bit more systematically at the differences in form between security theory in the two settings (i.e. condense the results of the previous section) and from there try to distil out the elements of an explanation, because to start from the explanatory factors, there are too many options for where to start – funding patterns, institutions, linguistic divides – and it is therefore more fruitful to work backwards from patterns that get gradually clearer:
Contrast The US
Concept of security not interesting (only delineation)
Concept of security as continued centre of reflection
General IR theories applied and competing
Specific theorising about security
Narrow military focus
Broad econ-political approach
Rationalist theories; but in soft version often using historical case studies
Degrees of reflectivism/constructivism
General reflection as part of political process in society on fundamental questions of selfdefinition and self-shaping.
36
Europe
Instrumental knowledge to assist in handling policy tasks
See some elements of this in Mearsheimer,
The Tragedy, op.cit. 15
One major difference is that on the US side, reflections on the concept of security play no integrated role in research . Such considerations are at most involved in delineating the field and thereby locating the questions about which then to gain empirical, causal, historical and theoretical knowledge.37 If an article is defined as security analysis, this will typically mean that at most the reflection on this status consists in defining security studies as being about e.g. “the study of the threat, use and control of military forc e”38 and therefore a theoreticalempirical study of causes of war is relevant or the strategic use of sanctions might with a little more difficulty be justified too; the concept of security is not present in the analysis as such. In the European debates, questions about the concept of security became the launching pad for a general attention to the self-reflective nature of the discipline, i.e. that the discipline not only studied security, but it also had its own concepts of security and thereby its own security practices. ‘Doing security’ therefore implied to reflect on the practice of speaking in the name of this concept. This pointed towards a general attention to the close connections between (sub-)discipline, theory, concept and the studied object (all called something like or with ’security’). A partly related, second difference is that in Europe, a particular debate emerged that was organised at first within and because of the particular questions related to security , but which increasingly influences more general IR debates. In the US, influences clearly went the opposite way: the theoretical positions within security studies derive from general IR debates. This is probably most easily seen in the case of the debate on constructivism. The main salvo from the constructivists, the Katzenstein volume 39, was launched explicitly as a move in a general IR debate where constructivists found that it was time to prove their worth on the home ground of realism: security. Most of the contributors were not primarily working in fields or institutions traditionally seen as ’security’. In contrast to earlier periods such as ’the golden age’ of security studies in the 1950s and 1960s, it is today not particular challenges, needs or debates within security studies that motivate theory development. 40 In the context of American IR, this change is valued. It is generally assumed to be a sign of maturity to get away from particular theories and debates in sub-fields and instead develop general theories that are in turn applied to different fields like European integration, international security or This is particularly clear in The Culture of National Security , where Katzenstein (“Introduction”, op.cit, pp. 7-11) argues the strategic rationale of employing a narrow concept of security in combination with the new approaches, because – again – if you can beat the traditionalists in their home field, it is evidently easy later to transfer this gain to the new fields that are already home turf for the new approaches. Implicitly, the question of concepts of security is here reduced to a question of ‘issues’, whereas the meta-criticism raised by Critical Security Studies, the Copenhagen School and others does not register. This is the approach to the concept that frames the book (it returns on pp. 523-528). Almost as an aside, Jepperson et al (“Norms, Identity”, op.cit) reflect (pp. 72-75) on the possibility that different theories reflect external developments and suddenly the discussion employs a logic very close to securitisation/desecuritisation when it explains why various issues have been defined as on or off the security agenda as the result of political processes. Similary, Steven E. Miller, ("International Security at Twenty-five: From One World to Another", International Security , Vol. 26, No. 1 (201), pp.--) show in a grand overview of 25 years of International Security , how at best the widening debate register as a question of a re-drawing of the boundary of the issue area and meta-theoretical pluralism is proven by articles on the causal impact of norms, i.e. as a question of what variables to include as independent variable. 38 Stephen M. Walt ‘The Renaissance of Security Studies’, International Studies Quarterl y, 35, (1991), p. 212. The debate on wide vs. narrow concept had much American participation in the early phase, but it is widely seen as dealt with by now. Jessica Mathews, 'Redefining Security', Foreign Affairs, 68:2 (1989); Richard Ullman, "Redefining Security", International Security 8, 1 (1983):129-153. Famous anti-wideners include Stephen Walt "The Renaissance’ op.cit. and – through a mostly different route – Daniel Deudney, "The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security," Millennium, 1990, Vol. 19: 461-476. 39 Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics , New York: Columbia University Press 1996. 40 The golden age is presented by David Baldwin as the 2 nd of 4 phases of security studies, see: David Baldwin, ”Security Studies and the End of the Cold War”, World Politics, vol 48, Oct 1995, pp. 117-141. 37
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trade disputes.41 The new European theories developed in relation to public discussions about security and attempts to develop specific theorising for this purpose. Thus, these theoretical developments were the product of complicated, personal processes of political and theoretical choices and settling or coming to terms with one’s role in-between academia, expertise and citizen/public intellectual.42 It is often stated that IR research in the US is more closely connected to policy than in Europe43, but this is only partly true: Relevant research is more systematically promoted through various channels in the US, and quite large sub-systems (primarily thinktanks) are very directly linked to policy. Also academic journals like International Security have a more implicit policy orientation expressed by frequent discussions in terms of what ‘we’ (the US) should do, where equivalents are much more rarely found in any European academic journal. However, the disconnect between large parts of academic IR and policy circles is also very significant in the US, and European research typically has a broader concept of politics, not only as policy advice. These represent different understandings of ‘relevance’. The bottom-line on this point is that the European theories developed as an integral part of struggling with security issues, the American ones much more detached as part of academic debates between various explanatory theories. This in turn is in the American optic the most policy relevant, because the role of the analyst is to provide the relevant knowledge of causeeffect relations that enable the optimal policy decision. Politics and knowledge are not seen as that separate in the European context, where the researcher as participant in the process thinks more in terms of ethics, dilemmas and choices. As we have now zoomed in on the relevant form of knowledge in the two situations and the relationship between researcher and policy-makers as two important ‘intermediate variables’, it becomes possible to think more systematically about plausible explanations of the present pattern. Follow the money, is often a good advice, and funding patterns are probably an important part of the story. Another major part is the structure in which research is organised along the spectrum from policy oriented think tanks to ivory tower academe. The US seems to be marked by [what seems to me to be] a relatively strong division of labour between universities and think tanks.44 Theoretical research is the task of university researchers, of which some try to be policy relevant, also do policy pieces and direct their research towards those questions that are meaningful for key policy questions. Think tanks, on the other hand, seem to be under a heavy pressure for doing extremely practical, straightforward research and researchers there usually do not stray too much into theorising, not even in the application/utilisation sense. This pattern does not create the distance/interaction tension which in the European case has often been the room for innovation, i.e. beyond the grip of the discipline and its constant ‘grand debate’ repetitions and yet enough in contact to engage and influence. This is closely linked to patterns of funding, where in the US relatively In relation to European integration studies, this argument is made forcefully by Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht , , NY: Cornell University 41
Press1998, pp. ##. 42 Ken Booth, ”Security and Self”, op.cit.; Jef Huysmans, 'Defining social constructivism’, op.cit. 43 Notably, Stanley Hoffmann, “International Relations, An American Social Science” Dædalus, vol. 106, 1977, pp. 41-60. 44 An expression of this is, that relatively few scholars move back and forth, or at least it is hard to think of that many leading scholars in academic IR who have spent a major part of their career in think tanks or similar policy oriented research institutions. Most of the important counter examples are probably about either figures who have dual affiliations (Charles Kupchan, e.g.), or about units within established universities that are designated to policy orientation and manage to attract money of the policy kind for research within universities and drawing on faculty for that purpose (e.g. Harvard).
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much is distributed via competitive grants. The individual researcher is therefore mainly exposed to the pressure of a large ‘market’ and weaker direct social presence pressure from smaller institutions. I.e. researchers from all over compete in relation to general criteria for what is relevant and interesting, whereas this kind of research at the inter-face of theory and security policy relevance is less located in small and medium sized (maybe ad hoc) institutions, where in Europe the balance is more towards the latter. [I do not have data on this, and I have to investigate it in more detail to see if this actually holds – so far it is quite impressionistic.] In Europe, there seems to be much more of a continuum of academically oriented research institutes that are nevertheless not part of a university. Places like the Max Planck Institute in Germany and CERI in France, but maybe in the present context, most importantly the role of peace research45. It was clearly more than influential in relation to Copenhagen and especially relevant for Ken Booth in Aberystwyth, but much less so in Paris. Here, however, the French tradition for public intellectuals plus the very different relationship between IR and other disciplines, i.e. the closeness to sociology, explains a lot instead. Institutes such as the peace research institutes were in-between in the sense of being policy oriented but not a-theoretical. It is of course a long story how peace research changed with different intellectual and policy frames over the decades and its strengths and weaknesses were different in different periods,46 but especially in relation to the 1980s and early 1990s, it is interesting how scholars who were clearly relating to IR as their discipline, worked differently when relating also to peace research – either because employed there or because active e.g. in movements like Pugwash. More than peace research as a grand project, this probably has to do with the sociological micro-mechanisms, the social conventions within peace research institutes – roughly what kind of argument you can use towards each other where questions of relevance and political implications are a legitimate part of the game in a way which is not common within a political science/IR department, while on the other hand theory is part of the picture in a way that differs from establishment think tanks. It is not that peace research in itself and with its own rules and self-understandings ensure ideal conditions for intellectual innovation, often the contrary. But the location of individuals at the interface of peace research and IR is often productive. When people with a disciplinary IR reference develop new ideas while located in peace research or some other inter-disciplinary context, IR scholars are inclined to credit this to IR and see the alternative affiliation as coincidence. But when it becomes common that a considerable part of the new ideas come from people in odd locations, it becomes unconvincing to write this off as coincidence, and the mechanism might have more to do with the way disciplinary mechanisms work within IR as a discipline and therefore a need for distance. Totally trans-disciplinary institutes that refuse all relationship to the old disciplines and insist on only the subject matter easily become too instrumental and without a basis for self-reflection, but the situation with dual disciplinary definitions can be helpful in both stimulating new thinking and delivering a disciplinary selfreference within which to express these ideas. The third level of an explanation then is about the kinds of policy challenge that the different research environments are exposed to. One can not fully and solely explain from there. The 45
Ole Wæver, “The Strange Successes of Scandinavian Peace Research: Why the inter-twined disciplines of Peace Research and International Relations develop differently in the US, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe”, Presentation at the conference “In Search of Peace in the Twenty-First Century” in Seoul, January 25, 2000, organised by the Korean Peace Research Association the Korean National Commission for UNESCO; Stefano Guzzini, “’The Cold War is what we make of it’: when peace research meets constructivism in International Relations” and Guzzini/Jung “Copenhagen Peace Research” (as well as other chapters) in Guzzini and Jung (eds), Contemporary Security Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research , London: Routledge 2004. 46 Wæver, “The Strange Successes”, op.cit.
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first and second level have carried much of the long-term effects, whereas the third is more time-bound, but it is a more recent re-enforcement of patterns, and it is worth a thought to what extent even these ‘critical’ European approaches are helped along by being politically ‘useful’ and ‘relevant’.
The geopolitics of Western security theories At least in relation to future developments, it will help to have a look at the policy challenges that face Americans and Europeans respectively. The relevant questions are not at the level of the short term political situation or a specific political administration or government – it should be larger patterns. This will here be attempted through a world politics analysis derived from Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT).47 A regional security complex was originally defined by Barry Buzan as “A group of states whose security problems are so closely intertwined that they can not meaningfully be understood independently of each other”. 48 More recently, it has been reformulated in securitisation terminology as “A set of units whose major processes of securitisation, desecuritisation, or both are so interlinked that their security problems cannot reasonably be analysed or resolved apart from one another.” 49 The basic idea is to look at the regional level formations that are often the level which mediates global and domestic level factors. The security of the world so to say falls in chunks.
This is clearly a non-American theory, because the US as the global level actor par excellence is prone to see unified global interpretations of the world – after ‘the Cold War’ comes ‘the Clash of Civilisations’, ‘unipolarity’, ‘the war on terror’ or ‘globalization’. However, such neat summaries of world politics will increasingly fail as the world becomes more diversified – there will be no alternative to taking the detour around the different stories from different regions where security increasingly unfolds in different forms in terms of the dominant units, the main sectors and the nature of security issues. Seen from all other places than the US – and to some extent a few other global powers – the main security issues will be regional. After all, it is not so surprising that most often the main threats come from neighbours or other local forces, because most threats travel more easily over short than over long distances, and only great powers transcend this logic to some extent, and even they have to grasp the regional dynamics because otherwise they do not know how to engage other actors who are tied to this logic. A major claim of the theory is that the interaction between global and regional actors happens on terms set by the regional actors to a much larger extent than expected by IR theories that usually privilege the top-down perspective. In contrast to the emphasis on global powers in understanding e.g. Middle East politics, it is usually the lines of conflict generated by actors in the region that open the possibility of penetration by external actors – and then typically along lines defined by indigenous conflicts. The different RSCs differ along various important dimensions. The basic pattern is relatively stable . There are a limited number of - therefore significant - external changes of RSCs (boundaries) – which is quite fortunate, because the theory would be less informative if the 47
Thus it is an explanation based on a Copenhagen School interpretation of the world, which implies a certain element of circularity or maybe a fractal format, where a pattern re-appears at different levels. The different theories – with special attention to US-European differences – are partly explained by a security analysis carried out by one of the European theories, a theory which is not only European in origin, but where the European (or at least the non-Americanness) can be clearly discerned in the theory itself. Some might see this element in the structure of the paper as problematic, others as unavoidable and some maybe even as a merit. 48 Buzan, People, States and Fear , … 49 Buzan et al, Security: A New Framework , p. -- and Buzan & Wæver, Regions and Powers, op.cit., p. --
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RSCs where constantly mutating, or for that matter is they were totally static. Regarding internal order, it is striking that quite a lot of RSCs are more or less centred , rather than accord with the common IR expectation of balancing systems of sovereign equality. Crucial developments are not parallel : the regions become ‘increasingly regional’ in terms of form, i.e. security ‘is about’ different things, have different actors, etc. In most regions the analysis point to one or a few open questions that will determine their future course. Charting the total security map has to cover three areas: global level, regional level, global-regional interplay. However, even such an analysis has to have some conception of the global level. According to RSCT, the global structure is “ 1 + 4 + regions “. The debate on global structure has become constricted by a simplistic conception of polarity that stems from the failure to distinguish regional from global that derive from the Eurocentric period when the global powers were also the dominant powers of one region, the European. A regional balance of power was also the global, and polarity was seemingly a simple concept. The discipline did not reflect systematically on the meaning of the shift of terminology from great power to super power – was it just normal inflation, or just a bigger great power? – and the implications of a shift to global level polarity were not worked out. Therefore, today, we have a tendency to discuss polarity as either multipolar or unipolar and everyone excluded from that level are ‘regional powers’, but surely that will not do. The US is not dominant enough to constitute unipolarity, and especially not, if that is to imply that e.g. China and the EU are purely ‘regional powers’. Nor is multipolar very appropriate when Super powers: 1 (USA):
Has global reach and all-round power Great powers: 4 (China, Russia, EU, Japan)
Potential super power. Included in considerations about global power (possible coalitions). Has influence beyond its own region. Regions with regional powers: currently 11.
The powers in each region constitutive of regional polarity are regional powers. one power is so much more equal than everyone else. It is necessary to distinguish between super powers and great powers.50 A super power has global reach and power in all sectors – and there is only one such today, the US. But there are four great powers, China, Russia, EU, Japan. They are contemplated as potential (or recent) super powers, they have influence beyond their own region even if not in all others, and first of all – the defining criteria – they are included in considerations about global power by other powers (e.g. in terms of possible coalitions). The structure among these two kinds of powers make up the global power structure, and therefore it is today “1+4” (and the most likely alternative is probably neither bi- nor multipolarity but “0+x”, a non-superpower structure coming about most likely by US abdication from a global role). 51 Finally, ‘regional powers’ are all those who define the Buzan and Wæver, Regions and Powers, chapter 2 and in more developed in Buzan, The United States and the Great Powers, forthcoming Polity Press. 50
51
Huntington’s concept of ‘uni-multipolarity’ captures some of the same dynamics of ‘1+4’: it is not only a mix of unipolarity and multipolarity, but a very particular one: the unipole thinks the system is unipolar and acts accordingly, while the great powers thinks it is multipolar – or surely: should be – and they act accordingly. Obviously, this promises trouble!
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polarity structure of a RSC, be that as the central power in a centred complex or as the two or more in a bi- or multipolar region. The US position is clearly unique and it defines a quite particular agenda. The US is not a member of other regions than North America, but as a swing power it will pretend to be member of other regions like Europe and East Asia. It generally resists narrow regionalisation that excludes it from regions and tries to counter this with thinner hyperregionalism (FTAA against South American regionalism, APEC against exclusive Asianism, and increasingly usage of NATO and other trans-atlantic attempts to weaken the EU). Similarly, a global agenda serves to maintain the pre-eminence of the US and avoid the gradual strengthening of other centres of power. Equally, it serves to maintain US mobilisation of global involvement, which is no simple thing given the deep-seated domestic suspicion against foreign involvements and strong stateness. Intensive securitisation of some global level threat is therefore a natural US attraction. From EU-Europe, the security problem looks much different. The EU is the centre of its own RSC. This RSC is structured and stabilised by European integration, and thus a politicaleconomic strategy has proven remarkably successful in creating a security community. 52 Thus, it is understandable – as pointed out with a negative twist by Kagan 53 – that Europeans tend to favour in this respect a broad concept of security, i.e. look for political-economic means and regional formats for security when thinking about e.g. ways to deal with violence in and from the Middle East. Simultaneously, Europeans are often ‘security sceptical’ when faced with the American agenda about a global ‘war on terror’. The European constellation of security issues is among the most non-conventional of the world’s region: many different issues are on the agenda from environmental over ethnic identity to integration as either problem or solution, but the one that is almost totally missing is classical state-threatens-state security issues. Therefore, Europeans are on the one hand involved in complicated security issues within the broad agenda, and on the other hand used to having to select and judge among issues that are controversial as to their securityness. Thus, a debate about what are security issues and what are not has become an open and active part of the security order itself. Beyond Europe, the EU as a great power has unavoidably effects on neighbouring regions in terms of power spill-over. Therefore it has to decide how to administer this – not whether to have effects. It further has to decide whether and what global role to play. The structural preference will most likely be for an inter-regional rather than global role, but the war on terror and US policy might change this. The tension between the one super power (the US) and the four great powers is structural – not only as the press usually depicts it a reflection of ’envy’, ’naïvety’ or ’arrogance’. NATO will increasingly be influenced by the power struggles between American anti-regional and 52
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: Power, security and community, London: Routledge 2000, pp. 250-94; 'Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community' in Emanuel Adler & Michael Barnett (eds.) Security Communities, Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 69-118; ‘Europe’s Three Empires: A Watsonian interpretation of post-wall European security’, in Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins (eds.), International Society After the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered , published by Macmillan (in association with Millennium ) 1996, pp. 220-60. Robert Kagan, ”Power and Weakness”, Policy Review, June & July 2002, Number 113, pp.; cf. Ole Wæver, ‘Widening the Concept of Security -- And Widening the Atlantic?’ in Bo Huldt, Sven Rudberg & Elisabeth Davidson (eds.) The Transatlantic Link: Strategic Yearbook 2002 , Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College 2001, pp. 31-48. 53
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European anti-unipolarism. Because the security problems in Europe are unconventional, it looks from the US – where security is always linked to military concerns – like the Europeans are without security problems and therefore it is a question only if they will face up to the new risks beyond Europe or insist on their European non-security oriented ‘paradise’. Europe is not just a slower part of the West. It has a different kind of security problems, driven internally and internal/external like all other regions. This will continue to disappoint the US! The US Agenda is to protect the position as the one super power, which means to avoid ’peer competitors’ and define a global agenda, which keeps regional agendas in check. To securitise terror is therefore a key instrument. The substance of knowledge needed (especially before 911) was first of: When will regional powers turn aggressive? (Second probably came: How will our power work? Can we build a stable empire? On power alone?) One should maybe expect more interest in terror as such, its roots. But with the outlook before 911, it was understandable that the debate on how powers decide whether to be status quo seekers or expansionist would be central, i.e. the offensive/defensive realism debate. From a perspective of top-dog and potential intervenor in various parts of the world, the form of knowledge needs is empirical knowledge through case studies and cumulative, general theory. (The concept of security serves only to delineate the field of empirical knowledge.) This in contrast to the European agenda, where there is a need to reflect and select among various claims about security status for various issues. On the one hand, one needs a cautious widening and securitisation/desecuritisation constellation in order to create Europe and hold it together, but on the other hand as a power that watches 1+4 from below, there is also an interest in avoiding to be controlled by a global agenda, i.e. to want less securitisation. The concept of security is therefore at the centre of reflection - and self-reflection, which involves then the role of the security analyst, because security becomes defined as an inherently problematic practice.
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And the rest of the world? The theme of this paper is not the global situation and I do not intend to pretend any general expertise or a total overview of the situation in the whole world. However, I will try in this final section to reflect briefly on the relevance of the above categories and explanations as developed for the US-European differences. Do they explain the situation in ‘the periphery’ regarding the amount and character of security theory – and what would be the most relevant and realistic forms of security theory to emerge outside the core? What about the first level: Intellectual, meta-theoretical and theoretical traditions? It is obviously impossible to summarise in a few paragraphs what general intellectual outlooks are influential for the different segments of the major part of the world. One way to get closer to an answer is to merge this with a discussion of the second layer, organisation. As pointed out by most of the surveys done of the state of IR in ‘the third world’, a major feature is the dominance in many places of a relatively narrow security agenda. Some pressing policy challenge – India-Pakistan conflict for instance – creates a demand for policy research delivering classical strategic studies work of utility for this strategic relationship. In a situation of limited funds for research, it has often been the situation, that more ‘luxury’ concerns were marginalised in the more targeted part of research by hard core strategic studies, which has meant until recently a dominance of ‘low theory’, ‘common sense’ realism. 54 Simultaneously, on the university side, the situation was determined by the status of IR as an imported discipline and therefore a predominance of a copy format for IR theorising. This has been most systematically shown by Kal Holsti 20 years ago55, but more recent case and country studies generally confirm the relevance of this observation. 56
Thus, returning to the question of intellectual orientations: Obviously there are powerful philosophical traditions in many countries and regions that are at variance with US style positivism, just think of strong cases like Indian philosophy or Islamic thinking about international affairs. The implications of such traditions for international thought was occasionally touched upon, but this basically, unfolded separately in other departments and institutions, while IR remained Western oriented and defined by Western theories. Several countries have witnessed more recent attempts to develop self-consciously independent ‘schools’ within IR theory. Obviously it has been a strange experience for Chinese 54
Stephen Chan, “Cultural and Linguistic Reductionism and a New Historical Sociology for International Relations” and “Beyond the North-West: Africa and the East in International Relations Theory”, both reprinted in Chan’s Towards a Multicultural Roshamon Paradigm in International Relations: Collected Essays, Tampere Research Report no. 74, 1996. 55 K. J. Holsti , The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory, Boston: Allen & Unwin 1985; -56 Hiroshi Momose, “International Studies as an Educational System in Postwar Japan – an interpretation”, N.D.; Vinay Kumar Malhotra and Alexander A. Sergounin, Theories and Approaches to International Relations, New Delhi: Anmol Publications 1998; Takashi Inoguchi and Paul Bacon, “The study of international relations in Japan: towards a more international discipline”, International Relations of the Asia Pacific , vol. 1:1, 2001, pp.1-20; Ersel Aydınlı and Julie Mathews, “Are the Core and Periphery Irreconcilable? The Curious World of Publishing in Contemporary International Relations”, International Studies Perspectives, vol. 1:3, Dec. 2000, pp. 289-303.
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scholars to hear about ‘schools’ named after still more marginal places like England or Copenhagen, while there was still no generally recognised ‘Chinese school’. 57 There is a clear trend at present towards developing in still more places distinct approaches that are both related to the IR tradition (as defined by the centre) and drawing on unique cultural and political conditions. So far, however, this has mostly been quite ‘top down’ in terms of what schools to foster – sometimes for almost representational or prestige reasons – whereas actual work on specific security issues have mostly happened with in the traditional policy oriented circles and these have been dominated in many major countries by old-style strategic studies. Much of the pressure for change out of this pattern has come from policy – or maybe more: politics – reflections about relevance. As argued by several of the papers in our series of panels at this ISA conference, we are faced with a striking misfit between IR theory and third world reality.58 The discipline’s focus on sovereignty, inter-state war and abstract theory is confronted by a reality of multiple over-lapping political and social systems, conflicts that are primarily internal or transnational and a need to integrate everyday life and IR knowledge.59 The traditional concept of security is obviously questioned in this process too.
However, it is less clear what kind of security studies is growing out of this. Some has linked up to – and indeed contributed to Critical Security Studies. And indeed there should seem to be many connectors here, notably the focus on the actual lives of people, and the organising concept of emancipation.60 As noted by Donald J. Puchala, “By far the most prominent, and indeed the most powerful, theme in Non-Western narrative today is Emancipation”.61 This should imply quite a good fit with CSS. On the other hand, the implicit opening for all kinds of widening is often problematic in situations where security arguments are often (mis)used by rulers and elites for domestic purposes. There is a need to be able to counter this, which should point to a Copenhagen School attitude to securitisation and desecuritisation. Especially in Latin America, there is a wide-spread consciousness about the ways security rhetoric has been used repressively in the past, and therefore a wariness about opening a door for this by helping to widen the concept of security. 62 ‘Chinese school’ paper ….; see also Gerald Chan, Chinese Perspectives on International Relations: A Framework for Analysis, Macmillan 1999, notably ch. 10 on “Towards and IR theory with Chinese 57
Characteristics”. 58 Stephanie G. Neuman, “International Relations Theory and the Third World: An Oxymeron?” in Neuman ed. International Relations Theory and the Third World , Macmillan 1998, pp. 1-30; Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.) Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory, Palgrave 2001; Amiotav Acharya, “The Periphery as the Core: The Third World and Security Studies” in Krause/Williams, Critical Security Studies, op.cit., pp. 299-328; Arlene B. Tickner, “Seeing IR Differently: Notes from the third world”, forthcoming. For a somewhat contrasting view of the relevance of different Western security and IR theories for Asian security, see Muthiah Alagappa (ed), Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences, Stanford Univesrity Press 1998, especially Alagappa’s own chapter (a book in the book): pp. 1-111 and 611700. 59 For the latter point, see particularly Tickner, “Seeing IR Differently”, op.cit. 60 Ayoob and Acharya in Krause/Williams; Acharya’s book; 61 Donald J. Puchala, “Some Non-Western Perspectives on International Relations”, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 34:2, 1997, pp. 129-134, quoting p. 131. 62 G. Pope Atkins, Latin America and The Caribbean in the International System, 4th edn, Westview 1999, p. 103; Rut Diamint, “Demilitarizati on and the Security Agenda”, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Buenos Aires, September 11-12, 2000; Nº10, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Working Paper , http://www.utdt.edu/cei/papers/papers_seguridad/diamint.pdf ; Ole Wæver, “Security agendas old and new, and how to survive them”, paper prepared for theWorkshop on “The Traditional and the New Security Agenda: Inferences for the Third World”, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Buenos Aires, September 11-12, 2000; Nº6; Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Working Paper,
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More interesting than these attempts to export European security schools to the third world is the question whether the conditions are ripe for indigenous security theory – cf. the reflections above about the contrast between US and Europe and the role of specific kinds of research institutions and environments – and what kinds of theorising are emerging in relation to the specific kinds of challenge facing non-Western countries. [And this, I will surely be much better able to write some lines about after our panels and the many promising papers, I look forward to reading.]
Security Studies between core and periphery – between power and peace? This paper has shown how a European ‘family’ of security theories has emerged that differs quite markedly from the form of security theory that dominates in the US. This has been explained partly from the general intellectual climate with more hospitality to historicist and reflectivist approaches, partly from the institutional and financial structure with more room for institutes in-between full policy orientation and clean university theory. Partly driven by the specific policy challenges of the European situation, and enabled by the institutional set up, forms of knowledge are deemed relevant that are very different from what counts as knowledge in the US. In the latter case, it is primarily generalisations about cause-effect relationships validated by historical case studies, whereas the European security theory are much more part of the ethico-political dilemmas related to reflection and self-reflection around the inherently contradictory and problematic concept of security. One, maybe overly elegant, conclusion could be established by linking back to an old Buzan article from 198463: “Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations". Here, Buzan argued, that the discipline of IR had been excessively driven – and torn – by the extreme concepts of power and peace, both making the condition of anarchy a too extreme and black-boxed factor: either an absolute condition to surrender to (and play circular games of power) or a condition to be removed before any meaningful aims could be set (peace). Against this Buzan posited the possibility of degrees of anarchy (mature and immature) and a policy and theorising of security as the most fruitful agenda. Bringing this rather abstract and general argument into historical and geographical specificity could lead us to this conclusion about the differences between theorising in the US, Europe and the non-Western ´periphery’: The ‘guiding stars’ differ: In the US, power is (increasingly!) the measure that shapes policy (whether the overwhelming US position of power is a possible source of order, is a key discussion and has become the panacea for major parts of the US research community); in the ‘periphery’ it is peace – not that it is at hand, but narrow security is often seen as unrealistic, because un-stable, and only with a realisation of broader and deeper aims – peace – can actual security be realised. Only in Europe, the concept of security in all its contradictory character works well as a paradoxical guiding star?
Word Count: 10.306 http://www.utdt.edu/cei/papers/papers_seguridad/paperWaever.PDF . 63 Barry Buzan, “Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations", Journal of Peace Research, 21(2), 1984, pp. 109-25.
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