Sam Bartlett's List: Securitization

• unconventional approach to the question by looking at how contemporary terrorism originates from the desire to construct identify
• international system’s dependence on macro-securitizations
• terrorism, in the context of the Global War on Terror [GWoT], is simply a temporalized and dialectical phenomenon
• installed as the referent object in a pre-existing security framework that works by dividing  “us” and “them”.
• hreat from terrorism largely comes from the need
• macro-securitization, which necessitate the construction of a relationship with an “other”
• necessity of an “other” in Western
• “objective” reality of terrorism;
• construction of terrorism as a threat
• constructed threat; as individuals ‘are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack’
• ‘Al Qaeda represents the biggest threat to the UK’ (MI5, 2013);
• Despite AQ being portrayed as ‘wanting to hurt the West’
• non-Westerners are 38 times more likely to be killed by an AQ
• Animal and Earth liberation fronts have conducted 2200% more terrorist attacks on American soil since 2001
• do not attract the same rhetoric as the GWoT
• claims made by Western governments, such as the UK and US, do not necessarily correlate to the statistics
• the West requires the existence of an “other” in order to form a stable identity
• allows it to practice sovereignty, security and war.
• GWoT into the context of an international epistemological and ontological crisi
• identity
• David Campbell argues, the ‘crisis of international politics is now very much a crisis of representation’ 
• Keohane, who argues that ‘a debate at the purely theoretical level … will take us away from our subject matter’
• the ambiguity of identity has too often been dismissed in order to ‘investigate “serious” questions of international relations’
• When these ‘serious’ questions lead to the U.S. spending $1.28 trillion on counter-terrorism (Stein, 2011), surely they should be questioned?
• The Western state, therefore, needs to constantly practice representation as, to cease ‘would be to expose its lack of prediscursive foundations [and] stasis would be death’ (Campbell, 1992, p. 12)
• The GWoT thus comes from the fear of death
• death of the state
• modern state utilises the heroic practice
• creates an “other” to situate itself against
• Bush’s declaration of ‘you are with us or you are against us’
• identity is created in relation to difference (Campbell, 1992
• ‘difference’ often means ‘danger
• ‘state identity is secured through discourses of danger’ (Campbell, 1992
• fulfilled the criteria of being able to create an “other”
• the GWoT
• construction of terrorism
• Copenhagen School’s [CS] analytical framework of securitization is recognised as the best tool
• this analytical framework
• terrorism has become a macro-securitization
• universalised threat within international relations.
• process of securitization
• ‘an extreme form of politicization’ (Booth, 1994
• CS argues that ‘it is only when an issue is presented as a threat does it become an insecurity, regardless of whether a real existential threat exists’ (Buzan,
• • Key - Explanation of Securitisation
    - in regards to GWoT
• utilise the word ‘security’ is to be responsible for the construction
• Moller
• ‘to speak about security is thought to provide legitimacy for the political actions of the securitizing actor’ (Vuori
• Ole Weaver
• t those in power often attempt to use an issue’s instrument of securitization to gain control over i
• ‘something is a security threat when elites declare it is’ (Wæver, 1995
• • Elitism of Securitisation 
    - GWoT & Egypt 
• introduced to the system level of international relations
• Terrorism, however, has been more than merely securitized
• Macro-securitizations
• macro-securitizations are ‘defined by the same rules that apply to other securitisations:
• To securitize an issue is, therefore, to demand the ‘mobilisation of maximum effort’ (Wæver, 1995
• ‘use of extraordinary measures
• Since 2001, terrorism has successfully  become the ‘dominant macro-securitization around which US, Western and even Russian, Chinese and Indian foreign policy [can]  be co-ordinated’ (Buzan & Wæver, 2009
• situa

  ted the ‘principles of freedom, democracy the market and openness as the referent object
• Buzan, 2006
• referent object
• Macro-securitisations
• allow international relations to impose order and hierarchy to lower security concerns
• Buzan & Wæver, 2009
• tying together ‘several longstanding security concerns’
• structuring ability of macro-securitizations
• Terrorism was quickly transformed into a macro-security concern through discourse
• Bush, 2001
• ultimatum of ‘you are with us or against us’
• atmosphere much like the Cold War
• “choosing sides”’ (Stone, 2009
• Campbell a
• veritable deluge of narratives
• f speech act

  s
• ‘counterterrorism measures
• Government statements
• not mere texts: they create reality’
• the performance of counterterrorism policy
• broader performative act which draws upon a variety of contextual institutional and symbolic resources
• verbal and visual reference to 9/11 is a beeline to the use of extraordinary means
• continuous repetition of the attack in video footage
• As it is not possible to have two macro-securitizations at once it is argued that ‘China as a threat to the US position as sole superpower is perhaps the development most likely to erode US commitment to the GWoT’ (Buzan & Wæver
• , is that security relies on a balance between “us” and “them”
• seeks to illustrate
• To fully understand the size of the threat of terrorism is to be able to recognise that as a threat, it is extremely politicised and relative to other concerns.
• West has sought to securitize the issue of terrorism
• successfully made terrorism a macro-security concern
• explored that the threat from terrorism largely comes from the lack of stable foundations for concepts, such as the state, security and sovereignty
• Ultimately, we have a compulsion for security that we satisfy in reference to an “other”

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• not a single country is yet plainly on course to become a stable, peaceful democracy
• some have come to think the Arab spring is doomed
• the region’s one cohesive force is Islam, which—it is argued—cannot accommodate democracy
• That view is at best premature, at worst wrong. Democratic transitions are often violent and lengthy
• Those who say that the Arab spring has failed ignore the long winter before
• Egypt’s deeper problems were aggravated by the strongmen who preceded them
• given the Arab spring’s uneven progress, many say the answer is authoritarian modernisation
• the despots—always wary of stirring up the masses—have tended to duck the big challenges of reform
• such as gradually removing the energy subsidies that in Egypt alone swallow 8% of GDP
• oil-rich monarchies are trying to buy peace
• some will reply, but Arab democracy merely leads to rule by the Islamists
• Islam, deeply undemocratic
• wrong. Outside the Arab world, Islamists—in Malaysia and Indonesia, say—have shown that they can learn the habit of democracy. In Turkey too
• The problem, then, is with Arab Islamists
• schooled by decades of repression
• core supporters are a sizeable minority in most Arab countries. They cannot be ignored, and must instead be absorbed into the mainstream
• That is why Egypt’s coup is so tragic. Had the Muslim Brotherhood remained in power, they might have learned the tolerance and pragmatism needed for running a country.
• Now it is up to Tunisia, the first of the Arab countries to throw off the yoke of autocracy, to show that Arab Islamists can run countries decently.
• That would not be surprising, for political change is a long game
• The Arab spring was always better described as an awakening: the real revolution is not so much in the street as in the mind
• Egyptians, among others, are learning that democracy
• Getting there was always bound to be messy, even bloody

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