Organizational processes and ontological (in)security: Torture, the CIA and the United States
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Author | Brent J Steele |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836716653156 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Cooperation and Conflict
2017, Vol. 52(1) 69 –89
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836716653156
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Organizational processes
and ontological (in)security:
Torture, the CIA and the
United States
Brent J Steele
Abstract
This paper builds upon previous work that has sought to use ontological security to understand
problematic and violent state practices, and how they relate to the securitizing of identity. Yet
like much (although not all) work which has utilized it in International Relations theory, the
application of ontological security theory (OST) to state ‘drives’ has provided only a superficial
unpacking of ‘the state’. Further, while OST scholars have examined environmental or background
conditions of ‘late modernity’, and how these conditions facilitate anxiety and uncertainty for
agents, the content of such factors can be further explicated by placing OST in conversation with
one particular systemic account. Alongside ‘the state’ and ‘late modernity’, the paper therefore
explores several complementary sites shaping the ontological security seeking process of, within
and around states. The paper reads the 2000s re-embrace of torture by the United States by
examining ontological security alongside: (1) the structural level via Laura Sjoberg’s ‘gender–
hierarchical’ argument; (2) the routinized organizational processes (via Graham Allison) of the
US intelligence community and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency; and (3) the narrated
interplay between public opinion and elite discourses.
Keywords
Ontological security, organizational processes, torture, United States
Introduction
In an International Relations (IR) field that seems increasingly fragmented or fragment-
ing, the story of ontological security – a ‘sense of continuity and order in events, includ-
ing those not directly in [one’s] perceptual environment’ (Giddens, 1991: 243) – as it has
been used in IR theory over the recent past is quite remarkable. Since at least Catarina
Kinnvall’s (2004) study, if not the works of Huysmans (1998a) and McSweeney (1999)
Corresponding author:
Brent J Steele, Political Science Department, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
Email: Brent.Steele@utah.edu
653156CAC0010.1177/0010836716653156Cooperation and ConflictSteele
research-article2016
Article
70 Cooperation and Conflict 52(1)
before, we can locate a small but significant group of scholars using ontological security
theory (OST) for a variety of theoretical, analytical, and empirical purposes. Such devel-
opment is impressive considering especially the view often voiced of an entropic field of
IR theory, considered by some to be careening ‘toward what seems to be an increasing
tribalism’ (Vertzberger, 2005: 120). If ontological security theory in IR is indeed its own
‘tribe’, it is definitely becoming a larger one, or at least one inviting enough that other
tribes seem to be noting its presence. This growth indeed provides opportunities, and this
article hopes to take advantage of several of these by further developing the ontological
security story both inside and outside of the state identity processes it has been used to
understand.
The article attempts to achieve three goals. First, it pursues a critical goal by prob-
lematizing the referent and concept of the Self of states, both in terms of destabilizing the
essentialized Self, and the reification of the state as a unit. It seeks to pivot from the at-
times persuasive assessment of those like Paul Roe, who wrote in one study that onto-
logical security research judged and charged the ‘state’ as ensuring the ‘positive’ security
of individuals (Roe, 2008: esp. 785–787). Indeed, like much (although not all) work
which has utilized it in IR theory, the application of OST to state ‘drives’ has provided
only a superficial unpacking of ‘the state’. This article hopes to show how one can take
the OST ‘story’ regarding routines, emotions, narratives, and identity and investigate a
variety of sites around, through, outside of, and between states. While it focuses on one
site – that of organizations within states – it provides some suggestions for other sites that
shape the ontological security of states, conditioning the uncertainty that is a central
feature, according to OST scholars, of late modernity. Thus, this goal is focused on
answering whether, and how, other components or actors within or ‘of’ the state may
approximate the ontological security-seeking process and if so, what implications this
may have for state ‘enactment’ of identity going forward.
This unpacking begins with an empirical phenomenon (the grappling of which is goal
number two of the article) and a set of suggestive insights, derived from the increase and
consolidating support for torture by the US public and in turn many policy elites, support
that indicates if not predicts a return to torture in the near future (Steele, 2013). Torture
and its justifications can also be linked to the broader uncertainties of late modernity,
related to what Simon Glezos has adeptly titled a ‘liberal narrative of speed’ (Glezos,
2011, 2013). Using a modified form of what Daniel Levine has titled a ‘constellar
approach’ – the ‘arranging of multiple perspectives around a particular event or cluster
of events’ (Levine, 2012), I confront this problematic re-embrace of torture via three
complementary locations which shape US identity and the use of torture. These sites
include: (1) the structural level via Laura Sjoberg’s ‘gender–hierarchical’ argument; (2)
the routinized organizational processes (via Graham Allison) of the US intelligence com-
munity and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); and (3) the narrated
interplay between public opinion and elite discourses.
The third goal is both theoretical but also normatively suggestive, and it stems from
my interest and focus in the current article on the second site for shaping US ontological
security. Organizational processes, I aver, not only lead to ‘outputs’ according to ‘stand-
ard patterns of behavior’ (Allison, 1969), but also develop their own identities relation-
ally to the national Self, and to their own actions serving it. The research here thus
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