How does war become a legitimate undertaking? Re-engaging the post-structuralist foundation of securitization theory
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836716648725 |
| Author | Julie Wilhelmsen |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
648725CAC0010.1177/0010836716648725Cooperation and ConflictWilhelmsen
research-article2016
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Cooperation and Conflict
2017, Vol. 52(2) 166 –183
How does war become a
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836716648725
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Re-engaging the
post-structuralist foundation
of securitization theory
Julie Wilhelmsen
Abstract
How does war become a legitimate undertaking? This article challenges the interpretation of
securitization as a narrow, linear and intentional event by re-engaging the post-structuralist
roots of Copenhagen School securitization theory. To uncover the social process that makes
war acceptable, the framework presented in this article is informed by securitization theory
but foregrounds the web of meaning and representation between a myriad of actors in society
to unearth the contents – and changes – in how war is articulated and carried out with public
consent. This matters not only for the question of how war becomes a legitimate undertaking,
but also for the very practices through which the war is fought: the emergency measures that
are enabled in a discourse of existential threat. The article re-visits the Second Chechen War to
illustrate how war is made logical and legitimate to leaders and their publics.
Keywords
Chechnya, identity, post-structuralism, Russia, securitization
Introduction
Securitization theory (ST) has proven extremely productive, inspiring hundreds of schol-
arly works (Pram Gad and Lund Petersen, 2011). According to Buzan et al. (1998: 21)
‘the invocation of security has been the key to legitimizing the use of force, but more
generally it has opened the way for the state to mobilize, or to take special powers, to
handle existential threats’. While this introduction to the framework intuitively looks
promising for someone seeking to understand how violence and war is legitimized,
Copenhagen School ST is inadequate to catch the process that goes on when war becomes
Corresponding author:
Julie Wilhelmsen, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, PO Box 8159 Dep., 0033 Oslo, Norway.
Email: jw@nupi.no
Wilhelmsen
167
acceptable.1 The making of an acceptable war is a much broader, dynamic social process
and has much wider societal ramifications than Copenhagen School ST allows us to
investigate. The aim of this article is to re-engage the post-structuralist themes in the
work of Ole Wæver to create a framework that is suitable for studying how war becomes
a legitimate undertaking and to what social effect.
The post-structuralist approach advanced in this article suggests that the social pro-
cess that enables the legitimate undertaking of violent practices spring from an accumu-
lation of statements that construct a sharp boundary between the Other as an existential
threat and the threatened Self (for key post-structuralist works on Self/Other see
Campbell, 1992; Connolly, 1991; Doty, 1996; Hansen, 2006; Neumann, 1996; Walker,
1990). In a post-structuralist reading, securitization is not one utterance by one actor, but
is produced over time through multiple texts that represent something as an existential
threat. It is a result of an intersubjective struggle through texts emanating from ‘securitiz-
ing actors’ and ‘audience’ over what level of difference and danger to attach to some-
thing and manifests itself in material emergency practices. This is a very different process
from the actor-centric process suggested by Buzan et al. (1998) which indicates a clear
sequence, starting with a ‘securitizing actor’ that securitizes towards a ‘significant audi-
ence’ via a speech act in the Austinian (1962) ‘once said, then done’ (illocutionary) way
and ending with the explicit endorsement of emergency measures. When security is
accentuated as part of a constant and continuing social (re)-construction of reality, as
post-structuralist discourse theory encourages us to do (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), secu-
ritization is conceived of as a gradual, intersubjective process, not as an instant, indi-
vidual and intentional event.
This article contributes to the efforts by the ‘second generation securitization theory
post-Copenhagen School’ to specify and developed the theory into more distinct and
coherent variants of securitization and to make it applicable to understand a wider range
of cases and situations (Balzacq, 2005, 2011; Croft, 2012; Donnelly, 2013; Floyd, 2010;
Hagmann, 2015; McDonald, 2008; Salter, 2008; Stritzel, 2007, 2014; Taureck, 2006;
Vuori, 2008). But it also differs from the core contributions to this second-generation
literature. On the one hand, Stritzel (2007, 2014) and Balzacq (2005, 2011) respectively
bracket what they call potential ‘internalist’ or ‘philosophical’ variants associated with
post-structuralist traditions and champion an ‘externalist’ and ‘sociological’ version of
ST. On the other hand, Croft’s (2012) and Hagmann’s (2015) works dovetail theoreti-
cally with the post-structuralist reading of ST which is presented here in that they
emphasize the productivity of discourse and the identity dynamics implicit in securiti-
zations, but they also depart from this contribution in important ways.2 Because they
want to understand foreign policy production in general and how securitization effects
everyday life, both Hagmann (2015: 17–18) and Croft (2012) are uncomfortable with
post-structuralism’s focus on radical binary oppositions when theorizing the production
of identity and, consequently, ST’s focus on posing threats as ‘existential’. But for the
purposes of understanding how war becomes acceptable, the focus on radical otherness
and existential threat is crucial. The launching of violent measures on a scale such
as war against an object, a territory or a social group hinges critically on representations
of radical otherness. Similarly, while Hagmann (2015: 18) draws on ST despite the
strong emphasis on the way in which naming threats as existential gives way to
168
Cooperation and Conflict 52(2)
extraordinary – that is, norm-breaking – powers, this framework draws on it because
of this emphasis on extraordinary force. War and violence is necessarily dramatically
norm-breaking, particularly when it is levelled by the state against its own citizens, as
in the case presented in this article. How such extraordinary force is enabled in a dis-
course of extreme difference and danger is the key to understanding how war becomes
acceptable.
The article begins by outlining how post-structuralist ideas on policy production can
be used to re-phrase securitization as a co-constitutive process of legitimation, and argues
in favour of substituting Austinian speech act (1962) with a post-structuralist under-
standing of discourse to foreground intersubjectivity. Picking up on and specifying this
broader outline, the article then moves on to show what post-structuralist insight does to
ST, with an eye to addressing the question of how war becomes a legitimate undertaking.
I expound key concepts and relations in securitization, namely representations of exis-
tential threat to a referent object; emergency measures; and audience acceptance (Buzan
et al., 1998: 26), offering post-structuralist re-interpretations of these concepts. This will
imply zooming in on signifying practices, the changing identity constructions implicit in
these practices, and their logical and legitimate expression in material emergency prac-
tices, but also broadening the focus of study to how referent object identity and actor-
hood are (re-)produced through securitization, and how the putative ‘audience’ contributes
to this process. Where possible, the writings of Wæver, Buzan and de Wilde are revisited
to find support for these re-interpretations.3 By way of a conclusion I draw out some
general points on securitization and war.
I use the Russian securitization of Chechnya as a terrorist threat from 1999 onward to
illustrate how a post-structuralist framework can be applied to understand a case of
acceptable war. The Second Chechen War (1999–2001), which was accompanied by
emergency measures as far-reaching and brutal as those employed during the First
Chechen War (1994–1996), found resounding endorsement in all strata of Russian soci-
ety. It was made acceptable to Russian leaders and their publics through a one-sided and
frightening discourse which represented ‘Chechnya’ as an existential threat to an inno-
cent and victimized ‘Russia’. This discourse emanated from official Russian texts, but
also from journalistic, expert, political elite as well as historical texts via intersubjective
processes where both ‘securitizing actor’ and ‘audience’ participated. In the course of
this collective ‘securitizing attempt’, not only were extreme emergency measures against
Chechnya and Chechens enabled and legitimized, but the boundaries of Russian identity
(the referent object) were also redrawn and Prime Minister/President Vladimir Putin
became empowered as an actor.
Securitization as a discursive co-constitutive process of
legitimation
The core insight of Copenhagen School ST is that issues can become ‘securitized’ when
‘securitizing actors’, by means of rhetorical strategies, elevate them to the status of an
existential threat to a referent object and when a significant audience accepts this repre-
sentation of the issue (Buzan, 1997: 5–28). This process...
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