Re-Constituting NATO

Transcription

1 Re-Constituting NATO Paper prepared for presentation at the ECPR Joint Session Workshop Theorizing NATO April 2009, Lisbon/Portugal Gabi Schlag Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main Under construction comments are most welcome! Introduction The concept of security practically and theoretically has tremendously shaped our thinking about the main forces and pattern of international relations. While military defence has been the predominant political challenge during the heydays of the cold war, human security and energy security describe the most recent moves within the field of security. It seems that the references of security have widely changed. However, the key grammatical structure of security, i.e. the protection of a threatened referent object by extraordinary means, is remaining unchallenged. Security institutions, most obviously a military alliance like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), are closely connected to these changing references of security. While NATO s double goal during the cold war was to civilize relations between its members and protect each member against a (likely military) attack of its main enemy, the Soviet Union, the alliance is nowadays engaged in global peace-keeping missions 1, part of a worldwide war on terror, and entangled with cyberspace and energy security. 1 The presence of NATO troops focuses on the Balkan, Afghanistan and a training mission in the Iraq. 1

2 The unexpected survival of the transatlantic alliance after the dissolution of the Eastern block is commonly described as a key puzzle for IR. Debates between realists forecasting the dissolution of the alliance and liberals as well as social constructivists relying on the durability of institutions have dominantly shaped research on the transatlantic alliance in the 1990s. However, the exclusive focus on causes and explanations based on a methodology of testifying preestablished hypotheses has narrowed our understanding of the alliance s security dynamics to mono-causal explanations, either notions of a balance of power and threat or a security community with durable shared norms and values. Unable to describe and understand the contradictory trends of NATO s reconstitution, common approaches such as realism, institutionalism and social constructivism are exclusively fixed on large-scale transformations, external forces, and law-like explanations. How actors are constituted in the first place and change is made possible are rather marginalized research topics. While most scholars would prefer to speak of the alliance s transformation from collective defence and nuclear deterrence to global conflict management and rapid reaction forces, I will address the questions of NATO s re-constitution in this paper. By re-constitution I understand those practices which enable to speak of the alliance as a collective and capable actor authorized to act for someone, even a larger entity such as the West. This question is often framed in terms of NATO s identity. I prefer the term re-constitution because it underlines the procedural and contingent dimension of identity formations. Then, identity is not something an actor (persons, groups or organizations) inhabit but a set of re-productive practices and structures of signification which are able to change. The paper will proceed with a short overlook concerning key theoretical approaches which address the formation and trans-formation of NATO. A central dividing line within recent research on the Atlantic alliance can be drawn between those approaches which mainly rely on a positivist set of causal explanation and those which are interested in a rather constitutive understanding of NATO. The later is a quite diverse field of research addressing questions of identity and power, language, practices and processes. The second part of the paper deals with securitization theory and how its conceptual repertoire may be helpful to understand the re-constitution of the transatlantic alliance more systematically. I have selected three cases détente, NATO s out-of-area debate and energy security in order to empirically map the field. Last but not least, I will sketch out some questions and avenues for further research in the conclusion. 2

3 Why NATO is Still Alive Theoretical Approaches Since its foundation after the Second World War, the question of NATO s existence has strongly formed the evolution of IR as a (scientific) discipline. While neorealists focused on NATO s ability to counterbalance and deter an Eastern threat (Walt 1990), varieties of institutionalism were interested in understanding the institutional design and evolution of the alliance (Haftendorn/Keohane/Wallander 1999). However, NATO seems to losing its centrality within the discipline as an object of theoretical reflection. Although the alliance has been a central object of political contestation, current conceptual debates on power, legitimacy and order are increasingly addressing alternative institutions and organizations, mainly the European Union (EU). In the heydays of NATO research most scholars discussed the question whether the transatlantic alliance would survive or collapse after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Mostly liberals argued that the Atlantic alliance was certain to carry on through institutional adaption (Ikenberry 2001: , Keohane 1992: 25, Wallander/Keohane 1999: 34), while realists believed that NATO s time would be over sooner or later (Walt 1990: vii; Waltz 1990: 210; Mearsheimer 1990: 75-76). Hardly anyone would doubt, that an organization called NATO is still alive, even expanding its geographical and political scope. But is it still the Atlantic alliance founded in 1949? While recent research on NATO has mainly explained the durability of institutions, fewer scholars are interested in the question of the re-constitution of the alliance. The former camp includes institutionalists and most social constructivist; the latter group is more diverse including strands of poststructuralism and critical security theory. Institutionalist and constructivist explanations of NATO s survival Offending the neorealist prediction of NATO s demise, Celeste Wallander argues that [i]nstitutions persist because they are costly to create and less costly to maintain (Wallander 2000: 705). She emphasizes that institutions may have the ability to change their goals in order to persist. These changes are dependent on the assets of an institution, i.e. its rules, norms and procedures. Institutions composed of general assets may better comply with changing circumstances than institutions with very specific and specialized rules, norms and procedures (Wallander 2000: 706). Although Wallander s rationalist (and positivist) framework helps to explain why institutions persist or vanish according to transaction cost calculations, it says little about how the alliance is constituted as an actor, how these processes elapse and relate to 3

4 practices of re-production on a micro-level. How are we able to speak of NATO as an institution, even as a collective (security) actor? The question of NATO s collective identity is closely linked to a conceptualization of the Alliance as a security community. While realists argued that NATO was founded as a military alliance counterbalancing the USSR, Deutsch (et al.) emphasizes the peaceful change of nation state relations according to the formation of a community in the transatlantic area. The absence of force as a legitimate instrument and the institutionalization of political relations founded a community of mutual trust and common interests. Most prominently, Adler and Barnett (1998) have furthered the security community framework in order to explain the absence of war between states, i.e. security cooperation and peaceful change. Recently, Emanuel Adler has renewed the community approach by including practices as an explanation of the expansion of security communities (Adler 2008). Here, Adler suggests that peaceful change is based on individual expectations and dispositions which are institutionalized in practices. In order to explain the spread of institutions, he argues that practices make possible actor s socialization and persuasion and ultimately their rational calculation (Adler 2008: 196). Adler considers that the institutionalization of self-restraint accounts for the social construction of rationality and normative evolution (Adler 2008: 197). NATO s transformation after 1990 is then explainable by the successful expansion of cooperative security practices once used within the alliance context (Adler 2008: 208). However, Adler s rhetorical connection of constitutive practices and the explanatory mechanisms causing the substance of social structure, i.e. communities, is confusing. He mostly takes social structures and communities as taken while emphasizing the transformative power of practices. The link between the conceptual dense description of his practice approach and the issue of NATO s transformation remains a bit too artificial. The foundation of NATO as a value community an interpretation Adler supports poses one of the most prominent depictions of the alliance. Thomas Risse argues that not the Soviet threat created the Alliance in the first place but the shared liberal, mostly democratic norms and values of the founding states. Thus, cooperation among democracies describes the core rationale of NATO s existence rejecting the neo-realistic argument about the dominance of military power and threat perception (Risse 1997). Although the value community thesis may sound convincing, Helene Sjursen has criticized that it is problematic to conceptualize NATO as a community of liberal democracies for two reasons: First, NATO as an institution lacks a democratic mandate causing tensions between the so-called democratic foundation and the day-to-day practices of the Alliance. Second, without a cosmopolitan law NATO cannot convincingly refer to foundational 4

5 principles of justification (Sjursen 2004: 688). Sjursen concludes that NATO can be perceived as an organization governed by multilateralism or bilateralism; but describing the Atlantic Alliance as a community of democracies is mistaken. The cooperation of democracies does not lead inevitably to a community based on liberal values. Social constructivism (and its main opponents) proclaimed to explain change in a more sophisticated manner by focussing on the constructiveness of world politics. Adler and Risse argue (or their arguments imply) that the durable collective identity of the Atlantic alliance has enabled its continuity based on shared norms and values. Even NATO s geographical enlargement is explained with the impact of norms. For example, Alexandra Gheciu analyses the mechanisms of how NATO teaches liberal democratic norms of security in Eastern Europe. Thus, the social power of the Alliance forced Eastern candidate states to change their concepts of interests and identity in order to comply with NATO s interpretations (Gheciu 2005). Beyond paradigmatic lines: NATO in the focus of poststructuralism and critical security studies Most social constructivist work on the Atlantic alliance has been criticized for their compliance bias, their reified concept of collective identities and their naïve (uncritical) reliance on NATO talk 2. Bially Mattern argues that the security community framework advocated by Adler and Barnett shies away from making a clear statement on the epistemological relation between security and identity (Bially Mattern 2000: 301). Lingering between constitutive and causal explanations Adler and Barnett (as well as Risse) are unable to clarify how security and identity relate to each other. While Adler and Barnett seem to privilege causality, Bially Mattern shows that a causal understanding of identity would disconnect it from the material world and establish identity and (material) power as competing explanations (Bially Mattern 2000: 302). Instead, she argues that identity implies representational force (a specific language game) in order to trap a would-be dissident within the community (Bially Mattern 2000: 305). Then, non-compliance with the established identity would be a risky and dangerous endeavor. Within a security community power politics are not absent but exercised through threats of identity erasure (Bially Mattern 2000: 306; 2001). 3 The question I m addressing in this paper the re-constitution of NATO follows the pathway of Bially Mattern s argument and the work of others, especially Williams, 2 e.g. NATO as a community of democracies, value community 3 Further, theoretically innovative work on NATO includes Franke (objective hermeneutics), Fierke (language games), Neumann/Williams (self/other), Villumsen (Bourdieu and practices), Behnke (security discourse), Klein (representations). 5

6 Neumman, Jackson and Klein. With a quite similar intention, Neumann and Williams have showed how identity constructions of the transatlantic alliance are constitutively linked to representations of Russia (Neumann/Williams 2000). [add more] Analyzing the power of language, representations and discourses poses a quite large research filed concerning the Atlantic alliance. Andreas Behnke argues that NATO survived the end of the Cold War because of its strong interconnection with the representation of the the West (Behnke 2007). Adressing NATO s expansion, he shows how the alliance exercised power and violence over the candidate states by framing itself as the superior master of the process and setting up the applicants as dupes. While Behnke relies on Carl Schmitt s concept of a Grossraum and the distinction of enemy/friend as the source of the political, Neumann has articulated convincingly his doubts whether a territorial thinker such as Schmitt is helpful to understand recent trends of NATO s transformation in an increasingly globalizing world (Neumann 2008: 263). [add Fierke, Villumsen, Klein, Jackson] This short overview concerning post-paradigmatic research on NATO nicely shows that the field of transatlantic studies is very rich. The power of language, its performative quality functions as a key conceptual reference point in order to understand the Atlantic alliance and its politics. In the next chapter, I will discuss securitization theory as one strand of this linguistic turn. Securitization theory shares the post-paradigmatic tone with the work done by the authors mentioned so far. Its strong emphasis on the performative quality of language makes securitization theory an ideal candidate for understanding NATO s re-constitution. One could presume that institutional changes are triggered by processes of securitization/desecuritization, by changing patterns of security associated with the transatlantic alliance. Securitization Theory and the Atlantic Alliance Securitization theory has mainly addressed European and transatlantic security issues by analyzing the the EC and EU (Wæver 1998). Wæver argues that the Western European non-war community was achieved through a process of de-securitization as a progressive marginalization of mutual security concerns in favour of other issues (Wæver 1998: 69), e.g. economic integration. However, security dynamics are not absent within a non-war community but less important and mostly non-military. The fear of fragmentation (Wæver 1998: 89) and 6

7 disintegration has replaced traditional power politics within Europe and triggered a common European security identity after From this perspective, NATO partly poses a non-war community where relations between the member states are largely pacified but relations between the alliance and other actors are more ambivalent, even martial. The insecure situation after the Second World War and the perception of a growing Soviet threat was a main source of the foundation of a Western military alliance in order to provide mutual security. The cooperation within NATO produced a phase of security between the West and the East, interrupted by incidents of insecurity (e.g. Korea war, Suez crisis, the invasion of the Soviet army in Afghanistan). Simultaneously, it induced a process of desecuritization between the member states as well as occasionally towards the Soviet Union during détente. However, security dynamics never were completely absent, even not between the NATO members. When the Turkish-Greece struggles over Cyprus escalated in 1974, the U.S. congress imposed an embargo on a NATO member, i.e. Turkey. 4 Since the 1990s, especially since 9/11, there has been a parallel process of securitization, mostly expressed by and through NATO s out-of-area debate and the engagement of the alliance in combating terror. The military engagement of the alliance in the Balkan, especially the Kosovo air campaign in 1999, and the ongoing war in Afghanistan pose the most obvious examples of this trend. These patterns of securitization and de-securitization are accompanied by sectorial transformations. While military security has been the key task of NATO during the cold war, the alliance has tremendously enlarged its security concept, including the protection of human rights, cyberspace and energy infrastructure. This short description of NATO s development in the last 60 years leads to the question how Securitization theory may be an excellent candidate to understand the re-constitution of the alliance. In the next section, I will discuss three modes of addressing security issues securitization, de-securitization and silencing, their ordering effects as well as the sectoral approach to security, advocated by Buzan, de Wilde and Wæver. A Brief Introduction to Securitization Theory Processes: Securitization, De-securitization and Silencing 4 President Johnson already warned Turkey not to invade Greece in 1964 and suggested that this would provoke an Article 5 mission in defence of Greece (Kaplan 2004: 71). 7

8 In the last fifteen years, securitization theory has triggered a tremendous body of research literature addressing the empirical, conceptual and normative implications of understanding security as a speech act. Whether one addresses the war on terror (Stritzel), migration (Huysmans), gender, violence and self/other relations (Hansen), the power position of NATO and its changing identity (Villumsen, Bially Mattern, Neumann/Williams) or conceptual (Taureck) and normative issues (Aradau) the Copenhagen School has immensely influenced IR, at least in Europe. Although some scholars aim to take securitization theory beyond the word (for images, see Williams, Hansen; for practices, see Villumsen, Büger), I will focus more narrowly on the conceptual and normative discussion of securitization and de-securitization. I will also introduce a third concept silencing as a specific form of the impossibility to address security in a specific institutional context, leading to a downgrading of existing institutions and a transfer of security issues from one institution to another. Securitization 5 When the linguistic turn (Rorty 1969) had finally arrived at IR s disciplinary edge attention turned on processes of signification and the constitution of meaning by language in use (for an introduction in the field of IR see Fierke 2003, 2002). Especially the concept of security has aroused special attention (Baldwin 1997; Wolfers 1952; Walt 1990; Krause/Williams 1996; Kolodziej 1992; Lipschutz 1995). The conceptual work of the Copenhagen School departed from the rather narrow focus of a wide -vs.- narrow definition of security by advocating an explicitly constructivist/linguistic perspective. 6 In this view security is neither an objective fact (like rationalist approaches assume) nor just a subjective perception (like soft-constructivism and cognitive approaches suggest). Instead, they claim that security rests on an intersubjective understanding (Buzan/Wæver/de Wilde 1998: 29-31). Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde argue that security is essentially a speech act 7 a performative act with a specific grammar (Buzan/Wæver/de Wilde 1998: 23-26; Wæver 1995: 55). As a performative act, security is a self- 5 This chapter on securitization is copied from Securitizing the West The Transformation of Western Order, coauthored by Benjamin Herborth and Gunther Hellmann and me. This paper outlines a research project funded by the Cluster of Excellence The Formation of Normative Orders at the Goethe-University Frankfurt a.m./germany. A version of this paper is available at 6 Wæver himself has emphasized that the Copenhagen School provides a conceptual apparatus rather than a "theory" (Wæver 2003: 21). For critical appreciations of the securitization approach see McSweeny 1996, 1998, 1999 (for a reply see Buzan/Wæver 1997), Williams 1998, 2003; Huysmans 1998a, b; Balzaque 2005; Hansen 2000, 2005; Behnke 2000; Eriksson 1999; CASE Buzan et al. refer to Austin s and Searle s speech act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969). Opposing a representational understanding of language, language is understood as a relational, differential and rule based system where meaning (the signified) is constituted by the specific use of signifiers. 8

9 referential practice with a specific rhetorical structure: Security is about the survival of a threatened referent object articulated by a securitizing actor. Because the survival of the referent object is considered a just cause securitization justifies the use of extraordinary measures, including the use of force, to protect it. To be successful, this move of securitization has to be accepted as legitimate and appropriate by an audience. As an ordering mechanism, securitization entails far reaching political and ethical consequences because [s]ecurity is the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics (Buzan/Wæver/de Wilde 1998: 23). While politicization presents an issue as a matter of choice, ie. normal politics, securitization frames an issue as urgent and existential calling for extraordinary measures which reduce the possibility of choice to an either-or level, ie. whether we act or not. Especially Wæver has stressed the anti-democratic implications of securitization (Wæver 2003: 12; Buzan/Wæver/de Wilde 1998) because it represents a failure of handling challenges politically, ie. within the normal procedure of (democratic and deliberate) politics. De-securitization The concept of de-securitization has gained increasing academic attention in recent years. Being advocated as the normatively preferable mode of handling security issues by Ole Wæver, the meaning of the concept remains rather diffuse. What is de-securitization, what are the performative effects of de-securitization? And, how does it relate to securitization? In his 1995 article entitled Securitization and Desecurtization, Wæver describes desecuritization as an effort to keep issues off the security agenda, or even to de-securitize issues that have become securitized (Wæver 1995: 58). De-securitization is mostly implicit in his discussion on securitization and introduced as an empirical phenomenon one can observe. Hence, Wæver describes détente as negotiated de-securitization (Wæver 1995: 60) limiting the use of security speech acts. The radical changes of 1989/1990 in the Soviet Union were made possible via a sudden de-securitization through a speech act failure (Wæver 1995: 60). The collapse of the USSR was mainly caused by a loss in legitimacy within the elites and a decreasing acceptance of common patterns of securitization. So far, Wæver leaves us with a first impression that de-securitization refers to an attempt to keep issues off the security agenda, or if issues have been already securitized as an endeavor to limit and dismiss security speech acts. Thereby, de-securitization is associated with processes of institutionalization and legitimation changing taken for granted security practices and patterns. 9

10 In the introduction of the 1998 book on security, the authors underline the normative implications of de-securitization: Security should not be thought of too easily as always a good thing. It is better, as Wæver argues, to aim for de-securitization: the shifting of issues out of the emergency mode and into the normal bargaining process of the political sphere (Buzan, de Wilde, Wæver 1998: 4). This statement describes de-securitization as a normative valuable act presupposing that issues have already been (successfully) securitized. De-securitization aims to dissolve the state of emergency associated with securitization in order to return to a more open mode of problem solving. Buzan, de Wilde and Wæver explicate their understanding of politics as public and deliberative opposed to a Schmittean legacy of friend/enemy as the foundation of politics (e.g. Herborth, Huysmans, xx). They argue that securitization (and de-securitization) is a choice one makes, not a necessity. The book goes on to present a variety of empirical examples of desecuritization, e.g. changing relations between the USA and the USSR, changing relations between South Africa and its neighbors after the end of apartheid. Close to Wæver s understanding, Michael Williams emphasizes that de-securitization is a moving of issues off the security agenda and back into the realm of public political discourse and normal political dispute and accommodation (Williams 2003: 523). Rather a process than a move, successful de-securitization can be judged by public contestation. The outcome of desecuritization is asecurity, i.e. a pattern where problems are handled within the normal, slow and democratic decision making process without using the language of security (threat, exception, extraordinary measures). However, like Wæver and his colleagues, Williams remains rather unspecific how de-securitization elapses, whether it is performed as a speech act at all. Recent academic debates on securitization theory have focused more explicitly on the concept of de-securitization. Claudia Aradau argues that a specification of what de-securitization means has to be political rather than analytical (Aradau 2004). Aradau criticizes that Securitization Theory lacks a clear understanding of politics and politicization (Aradau 2004: 389). Choosing between securitization and de-securitization is a choice about the politics we want (Aradau 2004: 390), either a Schmittian politics of exception, enemy and decisionism or deliberate and democratic politics. The formulation of securitization as a move towards a state of exception is measured against the background of the normalcy of democratic procedures as Aradau explicates (Aradau 2004: 392). While democratic institutions are slowing down the decision making process enabling contestation and participation securitization moves attempt to fasten a decision. Thereby, 10

11 democratic control exercised by publics or courts is suspended. Elaborated from this perspective, de-securitization becomes a political choice to restore democracy in order to return to normal deliberative politics. Aradau continues to show how the concept of emancipation, mostly advocated by Critical Security Studies (Welsh School), and de-securitization share the goal of establishing alternatives to predominant, state-centered constructions of security (Aradau 2004: 397). Although Critical Security Studies has aimed to speak for the poor and tortured, it mostly relied on counter-securitization rather than de-securitization (Aradau 2004: 399). The side effect of securing one group has been the insecurity of other others. Therefore, unmaking security, i.e. de-securitization, requires a process of re-thinking the relation between subjects of security, and of imagining localized, less exclusionary and violent forms of interaction (Aradau 2004: 400). By linking emancipation to democratic politics, Aradau moves on to reformulate desecuritization as the possibility of contestation and the openness of the locus of power, the need to democratize institutional loci, and to activate a different logic based on universal address and recognition (Aradau 2004: 401). In practical terms, this means to dis-identify dangerous others and reframe them as part of a universal principle, e.g. migrants are not migrants but workers with equal rights. 8 Araudau s answer to the question what politics do we want is the liberal-constitutional claim of equal rights for all citizens (Aradau 2004: 404). Those who are not part of this political community have to be addressed or even included by challenging the authoritative practices of the state (Aradau 2004: 405). Aradau concludes, that [i]f securitization orders social relations according to the logic of political realism and institutionalizes an exceptionalism of speed, extraordinary measures and friend/enemy, de-securitization is a normative project which reclaims a notion of democratic politics where the struggle for emancipation is possible (Aradau 2004: 406). Aradau s endeavor to re-think de-securitization as a normative project linked to emancipation is quite impressive. However, there is no contradiction to use her argumentation as an analytical guideline as well. If de-securitization aims at reclaiming democratic politics, we can observe political moves of slowing down decision making processes, of political contestation and of disidentifying the other (and the self). As Rita Taureck has clarified, securitization and desecuritization are political choices political actors make which analysts seek to uncover (Taureck 2006: 58). 8 Aradau primarily refers to the philosophical work of Étienne Balibar and Jacques Rancière. 11

12 Jef Huysmans discusses these normative implications of studying security and addresses the relation between the researcher and the object of research. He argues that security studies tend to re-iterate and reinforce securitization because they presuppose the interpreter to use a security lens for reading political and social situations (Huysmans 2006: 126). This reflexivity-problem leads Huysmans to re-locate the question of migration (i.e. as a securitized issue, GS) to a context of ethico-political judgment in which one does not seek to found the political on the basis of existential insecurity (Huysmans 2006: 127). Huysmans shares the normative, ethical goal with Aradau but focuses more on the question of how analysts can produce security knowledge without the negative consequences of exceptionalism. Then, one should not study historical processes of de-securitization but engage with the politics of the production of security knowledge (Huysmans 2006: 127; italics in the original). Huysmans continues to situate securitization within Schmitt s understanding of the political based on the distinction between friend/enemy. Political acts differ from other decisions because they are based on the recognition of an enemy. According to the superiority of the political, plurality of opinion can be limited to defend the community against the enemy. Paradoxically, an enemy has the capacity to unite a functionally differentiated society. Huysmans shows two different meanings of de-securitization. On the one hand, de-securitization shifts a securitized issue from one sector (the political based on the distinction between friend/enemy) to another functional sector, e.g. addressing migration as an issue of labor market performance (Huysmans 2006: 129). On the other hand, de-securitization can aim at dissolving relations of enmity as the foundation of political community (Huysmans 2006: 130). Then, de-securitization describes a political strategy to challenge the Schmittian foundation of a political community without simply removing issues from the security agenda. The discussion of de-securitization leaves us with three possible interpretations: primarily, desecuritization is considered as an act/attempt of moving issues off the security agenda in order to handle them otherwise or normally understood as politically (Williams, Aradau, Huysmans). Then, unmaking security presupposing already securitized issues and a state of exception. Desecuritization understood as a failure of securitization is a rather marginalized understanding in the recent debate. A breakdown of a securitization move would primarily depend on the refusal of the audience to accept it as a justified and legitimate act. Then, the decision making process and the struggle for public support would be the focus point to trace negative acts of desecuritization as a form of dismissal. Addressing the political realism of securitization, Huysmans (and Aradau) addresses a third interpretation of de-securitization as the reformulation of the founding 12

13 sources of a community. Then, a community is not based on friend/enemy distinctions but rather on practices of dis-identifying the self/other which may lead to a more inclusive, deliberate order. I will use de-securitization as a twofold concept addressing a sector specific and a constitutional logic: On the one hand, de-securitization can mean to move an issue off the security agenda in order to handle it otherwise, either in economic, social, or cultural terms. 9 On the other hand, desecuritization may use the grammar of inclusion, deliberation and recognition in order to dissolve the foundation of a community based on friend/enemy distinctions. This process would trigger tremendous institutional changes replacing practices of exclusion and exception by inclusionary, deliberative rules and reframing the threatening other and self as subjects with shared values and interests 10. In the next chapter, I will refer to silencing as one form of securitization failure, i.e. the impossibility to address an issue in either security or political terms. From my perspective, the failure of a securitization move cannot be fully addressed as an attempt of de-securitization because the later one presupposes a securitized issue. Silencing The issue of silencing has been mainly addressed by Lene Hansen (2000). While the Copenhagen School delivers a constructivist understanding of security, it fails to acknowledge the importance of voice and body for speaking security successfully and thereby disregards the silent subject. Hansen argues that [s]ecurity as silence occurs when insecurity cannot be voiced, when raising something as a security problem is impossible or might even aggregate the threat being faced (Hansen 2000: 287). Acts of silencing are mostly apparent if one studies gender related violence where security is subsumed to the gendered identity of the individual subject. However, acts of silencing are not limited to gender and body. The reasons for the inability to address a threat may be personally or institutionally. During the Cold War, the Atlantic Alliance was unable to name human rights abuses and civil war as threat to the West because doing so would have aggregated a much bigger danger, namely the USSR. Only the Helsinki process broke this silence and initiated a limited negotiation and I will argue later de-securitization of human and social rights beyond the grammar of security. 9 It s important to mention that this sectoral logic is not identical with the sectoral approach to security. 10 However, this brings us back to the underlying topic of Aradau s contribution, the tension between universalism and particularism. I will not address this problem any further here because the aim of the paper is to clarify the concept of de-securitization for analytical purposes. 13

14 I m aware that this re-framing of silencing sets the concept apart from its critical intention and relocates it as a normatively neutral process we can observe. The impossibility to address security within a specific context could trigger a downgrading of an existing institution, e.g. silencing European security within the OSCE after 1990, and a transfer of an an issue to another institution, e.g. addressing European security within NATO and the EU. Security Sectors The ordering effects of speaking security also resonate within the sectoral approach of the Copenhagen School. Security sectors are types of interaction (Buzan/Wæver/de Wilde 1998: 27) which differ according to their (dominant) referent objects of security. While the military and political sector traditionally refer to the securitization of the state and its sovereignty, societal security refers to threats in identity terms. The referent objects in the economic and ecological sector remain rather unspecified. Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde emphasize that sectors have no ontological status but are analytical devices (Buzan/Waever/de Wilde 1998:168). Although they stress that the boundaries and referent objects of the sectors are contingent the survival of the state and its sovereignty has traditionally been at the core of securitization. The concept of security sectors has been commonly applied to the study of European migration, the question of societal security and identity politics (Wæver et al. 1993). While most research has focused on political, military or societal security the issue of economic security remains rather underspecified. On the one hand Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde have argued that securitization in the economic sector is least successful regarding the competitive nature of market relations where it is difficult to separate attempts to securitize economic issues from the more general political disputes (Buzan, Wæver, de Wilde 1998: 99, 165). On the other hand they stress the security implications of economic security in other sectors triggering intersectoral dynamics of securitization and de-securitization. However, recent bailout plans in the USA pose a clear attempt of securitizing the national economy (and companies) where the state is re-instituted as the ruling authority. The sectoral approach refocuses our perspective to the contingency of referent objects. Desecuritization and securitization are relative and sector specific processes constituting different subjects and objects. Although security as a speech act has always the same (rhetorical) form, its content might be quite diverse. 14

15 Outcomes: Security, Insecurity and A-Security Securitization, de-securitization and silencing are productive of different orders, i.e. a state of security, a-security or insecurity. While security as a state of exception seems to be the easiest case to observe, a-security could be the outcome of de-securitizing and silencing as well. However, failed securitization whether dependent on de-securitizing moves or (non-) acts of silencing may primarily be constitutive for an insecure order as a system where actors are unable to articulate defence measures. Security refers to an order where moves of securitization have successfully addressed a threat and extraordinary measures were implemented in order to protect an endangered referent object. This order legitimizes a state of emergency, delimiting plurality and deliberative rule. The institutional consequences of security can be ground-breaking, e.g. the exposure of international law in Guantanamo Bay. A securitization move without calling for or implementing measures of defense can be called insecurity. Either the move has failed in the first place (i.e. it was not accepted by the audience) or it never caused any serious consequences of protecting the threatened referent object. 11 This order produces a significant state of insecurity, the perception of a threat without a response. Such a situation will most likely be very instable, tending towards a new attempt of securitization or initiating a process of de-securitization and/or silencing. A-security poses an order where threats have mainly disappeared and normal decision making procedures are followed. Constitutional, political and practical barriers for securitization are high, democratic institutions are strong enough to resists moves of securitization. However, such an order is not immune against re-securitization in the face of a new threat. European integration has triggered such an order based on a-security in Europe. The unfolding of the ordering effects of security associated with NATO could be described in this way: When NATO members recognized that the USSR had deployed new SS20 missiles they were left in a situation of perceived insecurity. German chancellor Helmut Schmidt was one of the key securitizing actors who forced a collective decision of the alliance in order to deter this threat (Haftendorn 1986). Therefore, NATO s double track decision reestablished the security of the alliance members, especially Germany. Under the new leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev negotiations of force reduction and disarmament initiated a phase of de-securitization leading to a partly order of a-security between Russia and NATO in the early 1990s. The basis for détente 11 For a long time, the human rights violations in Dafur have been an example of such an order of insecurity. 15

16 was already laid out in the Harmel report in 1967 and the SALT negotiations in the 1970s but only fully developed after the leadership had changed in the Soviet Union. Formal relations between the former enemies were continuously institutionalized in the context of NATO downgrading the CSCE/OSCE. The NATO-Russia Council provided an institutionalized basis for further negotiations on a new European security architecture. Beside an intensified cooperation with Russia, some NATO members also pushed for a stronger, more visible role of the EU and tried to transfer security issues to this institutional context. However, the complex and partly unsettled relation between the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and NATO has not triggered a reliable institutional arrangement yet. The so called Berlin-Plus agreements and the recent return of France into the military structure of the alliance seem to be the beginning of a more lasting interconnection of both organizations. Nevertheless, the OSCE, once the core institution for negotiating European security, has been continuously downgraded by NATO (and to a lesser extent by the EU). The following chapter will link the conceptual framework of securitization theory closer to the question of NATO s reconstitution. By re-constitution I understand those practices which enable to speak of the alliance as a collective and capable actor authorized to act for someone, even a larger entity such as the West. Re-Constituting NATO In this paper, NATO has appeared as something out-there scholars, politicians and opponents have to deal with. But the key question is how we are able of speaking of NATO in the first place. What analytically understood is the transatlantic alliance? From the perspective of securitization theory, NATO can play very different roles: as a securitizing actor, the North Atlantic Council framed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as an existential threat directed against all its members and invoked Article 5 for the first time in the history of the alliance. As a referent object of securitization, the political and military structures of NATO were perceived as an important transatlantic asset which should survive the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in the 1990s, as well as the unilateral action of Britain and France during the Suez crisis in the 1960s. As a perceived threat, the military capabilities and the growing political ambition of the alliance were part of the problem concerning NATO s Eastern enlargement from the perspective of Russia or NATO s double track decision as argued by European peace movements. Last but not least, the transatlantic alliance itself represented an institutionalized 16

17 extraordinary measure after the Second World War in order to provide European security, i.e. to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. Defending the West : Practices of Securitization, De-Securitization and Silencing At first sight, the question how NATO relates to de-securitization may be contra-intuitive. Many scholars would suspect that NATO as a security alliance is hardly engaged in moving issues off the security agenda because security and defence is its constitutive language game. 12 The sectoral approach of the Copenhagen School political, military, economic, environmental and societal security helps to understand the excessive and widening nature of security. If security is not exclusive linked to military threats, then nearly everything can become an issue of security. That s the reason why security speech acts may not vanish completely but just travel to another sector. Hence, military relations between NATO member states have been mostly de-securitized while economic tensions between EU-Europe and the USA (e.g. struggles over protectionism and tariffs) or Western states and Russia (e.g. disputes over energy) are still present or actually increasing. The success of institutions, such as the EU, OSCE and the Partnership for Peace, bind potential rivals and constrain moves of securitization but they do not eliminate their possibility (Buzan, de Wilde, Wæver 1998: 65). However, the hard-won desecuritization achievements of liberalism (Buzan, de Wilde, Wæver 1998: 210) and I would say not only liberalism but institutionalization have their costs 13. The de-securitization of economic relations between North America and Western Europe during the Cold War facilitated the U.S.-American hegemony and penetrated the economic and security interests of states in the periphery. Thereby, [l]iberal states were able to delegitimize the non-military security claims of other actors, in the process subordinating them to the normal politics of the market economy and pluralistic politics (Buzan, de Wilde, Wæver 1998: 210). Consequently, the success of the liberal project gave rise to the demand of a wider security agenda. In order to illustrate how securitization theory provides us with a conceptual repertoire to understand the re-constitution of NATO, I have selected three cases 14. First, arms control negotiations between the USA and the USSR in the 1970s nicely show how de-securitization developed as a process beside the transatlantic alliance and triggered the foundation of a new 12 On YouTube, NATO describes its job as crisis management and peacekeeping. See 13 The author s refer to the success of the nation state to civilize relations of the people and the de-securitization of economics towards the ideology of capitalism. 14 not George/Bennett 17

18 institution, the CSCE. Second, the out-of-area debate in the 1990s and the self-legitimation of the alliance as a defender of human rights show how the concept of European and transatlantic security was enlarged and provided NATO with a powerful new mission downplaying alternative institutions such as the UN and the OSCE. Third, the issue of energy security illuminates how the widening of security within the alliance is going on and, thereby, dissolving former de-securitized relations between NATO members and Russia. 15 This selection of cases should provide a first empirical mapping of areas where research questions generated by securitization theory could be applied. The Harmel Report, SALT Negotiations and the Foundation of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe In 1967, the Harmel report initiated a period mutual cooperation concerning issues of military security between NATO member states and their Eastern counterparts. This document describes two main tasks of the alliance: providing military security and conducting a policy of dètente as complementary. The Strategic Arms Limitation treaty, signed by the USA and the USSR in 1971, limited the number of strategic ballistic missiles and initiated a phase of de-securitized military relations between the East and the West. By the end of the 1970s, Americans and Soviets assigned to an additional limitation of nuclear weapons. These bilateral negations were accompanied by an international conference on security and cooperation in Europe, including the USA and the USSR. The institutionalization of non-military relations within the CSCE enabled negations about social and economic issues. East-West relations were shifted to either bilateral negations (SALT) or non-military issues between Europe, the USA and the USSR (CSCE). While the SALT negotiations moved armament and nuclear planning partly off the security agenda and into an area of technical and bureaucratic control, the Helsinki process aimed at creating a new forum (or community) where the USA and the USSR could talk about social and economic issues without addressing their predominant military confrontation. The CSCE changed the constitutive basis for East-West relations by including the block powers into a new institutional arrangement as equal partners. Hence, the Helsinki Final Act expresses the commitment to promote better 15 The text-selection the following analysis is based on includes 1) the anniversary communiqués of the NAC, 2) topic relevant documents dealing with SALT, CSCE, energy security and the justification of interventions, and 3) the key strategic concepts of the alliance, including the Harmel report and the strategic concepts of 1992 and This project tries to make use of a specific reconstructive methodology, named Objektive Hermeneutik (e.g. Oevermann xx). So far, the impressionistic citation of documents does not ensure the rigorness the methodological guidelines are requiring. However, the cases only aim to show how research questions generated with the help of securitization theory are able to improve our understanding of NATO. 18

19 relations between the signature states solving the problems that separate the societies and states in the interest of mankind 16. During this period of de-securitizing East-West relations, NATO played a relatively marginal role. One could argue that the military alliance was mainly perceived as part of the problem instead of a solution and limited in its authority to negotiate arms control issues. The alliance was not a sovereign entity allowed to speak for the community and downgraded to an arrangement where the SALT-negotiations were merely commented. Hence, both issues arms limitations and East-West cooperation were regularly discussed at NATO meetings. All NAC document in the 1970s explicitly express a support for the negotiations between the USA and USSR. Especially the preparation for a conference on security and co-operation in Europe was appraised as an initiative to de-securitize East-West relations: Ministers considered that a Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe should not serve to perpetuate the post- war division of Europe but rather should contribute to reconciliation and co-operation between the participating states by initiating a process of reducing the barriers that still exist. 17 (italics added) Accordingly, the Council expressed its long-standing belief that a mutual and balanced reduction of forces in Central Europe which preserves the legitimate security interests of all concerned would maintain security and enhance stability in Europe (ebd.). They thanked the U.S. government for close alliance consultations during the SALT negotiations. However, this explicit reference also showed that NATO s endeavors to achieve sufficient defence capabilities were framed as complementary to the ongoing talks on arms reduction between the superpowers. They argued that sufficient and credible defence is a necessary corollary to realistic negotiations on security and co-operation in Europe. (ebd.). In contrast to the cited paragraph above, the NAC communiqué accuses the USSR of rearmament. They (the ministers of the NATO member states, GS) noted the growth of Soviet military efforts in recent years and the indications that the Soviet Union continues to strengthen both its strategic nuclear and conventional forces, especially naval forces. They therefore agreed on the North Atlantic Council, Final Communiqué, 9th-10th December, 1971, Brussels. The North Atlantic Council met in Ministerial Session. The Foreign and Defence Ministers were present. 19