Security Dialogue recent issues

Guest Editors' Introduction

Abrahamsen, R., Hubert, D., Williams, M. C. — 2009-09-30

Gangs, Urban Violence, and Security Interventions in Central America

Jutersonke, O., Muggah, R., Rodgers, D. — 2009-09-30

Urban violence is a major preoccupation of policymakers, planners and development practitioners in cities around the world. Public authorities routinely seek to contain such violence through repression, as well as through its exportation to and containment at the periphery of metropolitan centres. Yet, urban violence is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon and not amenable to reified diagnosis and coercive intervention. Muscular state-led responses tend to overlook and conceal the underlying factors shaping the emergence of urban violence, as well as the motivations and means of so-called violence entrepreneurs. This is very obviously the case of urban gangs in Central America, which are regularly labelled a ‘new urban insurgency’ threatening the integrity of governments and public order. This article considers both the shape and character of Central American gang violence and attempts to reduce it, highlighting the complex relationship between these two phenomena. We advance a threefold approach to measuring the effectiveness of interventions, focusing in turn on discursive, practical and outcome-based criteria. In this way, the article demonstrates how, contrary to their reported success in diminishing gang violence, repressive first-generation approaches have tended instead to radicalize gangs, potentially pushing them towards more organized forms of criminality. Moreover, although credited with some modest successes, more preventive second-generation interventions seem to have yielded more rhetorical advances than meaningful reductions in gang violence.

Network-Centric Violence, Critical Infrastructure and the Urbanization of Security

Coward, M. — 2009-09-30

This article addresses the question of whether contemporary global urbanization is characterized by a distinctive relationship between the city and warfare. In particular, it examines the specific way in which two particular forms of warfare — so-called Al-Qaeda terrorism and US tactics in Iraq — target urban infrastructure. I argue that infrastructure is targeted because it is a constitutive feature of contemporary urban life. Metropolitan life is marked by its constitutive relation to urban infrastructure. The article thus suggests that this targeting of infrastructure provides a lens through which to investigate some of the central questions posed by the contemporary urbanization of security.

Informal Cairo: Between Islamist Insurgency and the Neglectful State?

Dorman, W.J. — 2009-09-30

From the late 1980s, Islamist militants established a ‘state within the state’ in the Egyptian capital Cairo, situated in ‘informal’ neighbourhoods developed without official authorization, planning or public services. After government security forces in late 1992 crushed these efforts in the neighbourhood of Munira Gharbiyya, informal Cairo became pathologized in public discourse as ashwa’iyyat (‘random’ or ‘haphazard’ areas), a zone of socio-spatial disorder threatening Egypt as a whole and demanding state intervention. However, this securitizing move did not lead to heavy-handed intervention against informal Cairo more generally. Following the suppression of the militants, the Mubarak government instead returned to long-term patterns of indifference and neglect that had allowed informal neighbourhoods to flourish since the 1960s. In part, the absence of intervention can be explained in terms of resource constraints and risk avoidance. More profoundly, however, it reflects numerous linkages between informal urbanization and the Egyptian state. The ashwa’iyyat are, to a significant degree, both a consequence of an authoritarian political order and embedded in the informal control stratagems used by Egyptian governments to bolster their rule. Informal Cairo should thus not be understood as a disorderly zone of subaltern dissidence. Rather, the Egyptian state is best seen as facing its own oblique reflection.

Managing Urban Security: City Walls and Urban Metis

Shapiro, M. J. — 2009-09-30

This article locates the contemporary security climate of the city of Los Angeles within a historical trajectory of modes of securitization. While some of the analysis treats the material and technological aspects of cities in general, and Los Angeles in particular, much of my emphasis, articulated in readings of both literary and film versions of police procedurals, is on discursive barriers. Ultimately, I suggest that, materially and discursively, urban America features class and ethnic fault lines that serve as the primary bases of security management.

The Dialectic of 'Junctions' and 'Bases': Youth, 'Securo-Commerce' and the Crises of Order in Downtown Lagos

Ismail, O. — 2009-09-30

This article examines the involvement of youth — constructed as ‘area boys’ and ‘area girls’ — in crises of order in downtown Lagos. It explores the emergence of ‘bases’ and ‘junctions’ as modes of organization and differentiation between and among youth in urban Lagos. A ‘base’ is a neighbourhood meeting place where youths gather to relax, recreate, and discuss sports and politics. A ‘junction’ is where social miscreants, street marauders and touts congregate to exploit money-making opportunities. It is my argument that bases and junctions embody distinct, yet connected, forms of subcultures that are simultaneously imbibed and projected by members. Moreover, they constitute emergent forms of territoriality constructed around spaces of leisure, residence and commerce, manifested in extrastate regimes of (dis)order in downtown Lagos. The article unpacks the involvement of members of junctions and bases in the provision of (dis)order as ‘securo-commerce’ — payment of different kinds of fees and levies to purchase security or forestall insecurity in downtown Lagos.

The Visibility of (In)security: The Aesthetics of Planning Urban Defences Against Terrorism

Coaffee, J., O'Hare, P., Hawkesworth, M. — 2009-09-30

Urban defences against terrorism have traditionally been based on territorial interventions that sought to seal off and surveil certain public and private spaces considered targets. Lately, though, a much wider range of crowded and public spaces have been viewed as potential targets and thus have been identified as requiring additional security. This has immense implications for the experience of the ‘everyday’ urban landscape. Drawing on contemporary notions that incorporate the study of aesthetics and emotions within critical security and terrorism studies, this article discusses the visual impact of counter-terrorism security measures. It analyses the ‘transmission’ of symbolic messages, as well as the variety of ways in which security might be ‘received’ by various stakeholders. The analysis takes place against the backdrop of concern that obtrusive security measures have the capacity to radically alter public experiences of space and in some cases lead to (intended and unintended) exclusionary practices or a range of negative emotional responses. The article concludes by outlining a ‘spectrum of visible security’ ranging between traditional obtrusive fortified approaches and approaches that embed security features seamlessly or even ‘invisibly’ into the urban fabric.

Operation Princess in Rio de Janeiro: Policing 'Sex Trafficking', Strengthening Worker Citizenship, and the Urban Geopolitics of Security in Brazil

Amar, P. — 2009-09-30

This article develops new insights into the gendered insecurities of the neoliberal state in Latin America by exploring the militarization of public security in Rio de Janeiro during 2003—08 around campaigns to stop the ‘trafficking’ of sex workers. Findings illuminate the intersection of three neoliberal governance logics: (1) a moralistic humanitarian-rescue agenda promoted by evangelical populists and police groups; (2) a juridical ‘law and rights’ logic promoted by justice-sector actors and human-rights NGOs; (3) a worker-empowerment logic articulated by the governing Workers’ Party (PT) in alliance with social-justice movements, police reformers, and prostitutes’ rights groups. Gender and race analyses map the antagonisms between these three logics of neoliberal governance, and how their incommensurabilities generate crisis in the arena of security policy. By exploring Brazil’s fraught efforts to attain the status of ‘human security superpower’ through these interventions, the article challenges the view that the reordering of security politics in the global south is inevitably linked to desecularization, disempowerment, and militarization.

War Without End(s): Grounding the Discourse of `Global War'

Chandler, D. — 2009-06-09

This article seeks to explain the limits of critical discourses of `global war' and biopolitical framings of `global conflict' that have arisen in response to the globalization of security discourses in the post-Cold War era. The central theoretical insight offered is that `global war' should not be understood in the framework of contested struggles to reproduce and extend the power of regulatory control. `Global war' appears `unlimited' and unconstrained precisely because it lacks the instrumental, strategic framework of `war' understood as a political-military technique. For this reason, critical analytical framings of global conflict, which tend to rely on the `scaling up' of Michel Foucault's critique of biopolitics and upon Carl Schmitt's critique of universal claims to protect the `human', elide the specificity of the international today. Today's `wars of choice', fought under the banner of the `values' of humanitarian intervention or the `global war on terror', are distinguished precisely by the fact that they cannot be grasped as strategically framed political conflicts.

The Unlikely Securitizer: Humanitarian Organizations and the Securitization of Indistinctiveness

Vaughn, J. — 2009-06-09

The securitization framework has greatly improved empirical analysis of security threats. Yet, it could benefit from heightened analysis of two often neglected aspects. First, this article argues that securitizers may invoke multiple referent objects to strengthen their argument that the referent object possesses the `right to survive'. Second, by drawing attention to the presentation of securitizing moves, as well as their content, it highlights how securitizers attempt to persuade multiple audiences that their securitizing moves should be accepted and countermeasures enacted. These claims are illustrated through the analysis of an atypical case of securitization performed by an unlikely set of securitizers, humanitarian aid organizations, as they argue that indistinctiveness poses an existential threat both to their material security and to their identity.

The Responsibility To Protect and the Conflict in Darfur: The Big Let-Down

Badescu, C. G., Bergholm, L. — 2009-06-09

This article discusses the international response to the conflict in Darfur from 2003 onwards in order to explore some of the key challenges related to implementing the responsibility to protect (R2P). First, we show that the debates on R2P in connection to Darfur translated into little more substantive action than the pragmatic decision to deploy peace operations with mandates that included civilian protection, as suggested by the African Union (AU) Mission in Sudan (AMIS), and later by the hybrid UN—AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). Second, we argue that the international response to Darfur illustrates three major challenges to R2P implementation. These are: political limitations inherent in the R2P framework; moral dilemmas emerging from military action; and tactical challenges, as exemplified by the struggles faced by the AU and the UN in Darfur. We conclude that the international failure to offer meaningful protection in Darfur highlights the need for continued caution and critical analysis of the ways in which R2P is conceptualized and implemented.

The EU's Emergent Security-First Agenda: Securing Albania and Montenegro

Ryan, B. J. — 2009-06-09

This article forms a critique of security sector reforms implemented in Albania and Montenegro between 2000 and 2007 by and on behalf of the European Union. It argues that within these reforms it is possible to discern a tension between a more holistic development approach and a security-based approach that is top-down and largely founded on the self-referential security concerns of the European Union. Drawing on research conducted by the author in Albania and Montenegro, the article utilizes public surveys to point out the distance between internal security reforms funded by the EU and the everyday security concerns of residents living in ineffectively policed states. The article concludes that a security-first agenda has slipped into the EU's aim to create an area of `freedom, security and justice'. Thus, while the rims of the Western Balkans are being secured, lack of reform in the interior hampers the socio-economic development and democratization of states engaged in the EU enlargement process.

When Security Speech Acts Misfire: Russia and the Elektron Incident

Atland, K., Ven Bruusgaard, K. — 2009-06-09

In October 2005, the Russian trawler Elektron refused to be subjected to arrest when caught by the Norwegian coast guard fishing illegally in the Fisheries Protection Zone off the Svalbard archipelago. With two Norwegian coast guard inspectors still on board, the trawler took off from its pursuers, heading for Russian territorial waters. Observers in Russia were outraged by the attempted arrest and called for Russia's Northern Fleet to flex its muscles as the hot pursuit in the Barents Sea unfolded. The purpose of this article is to explore underlying factors that may explain Russia's non-escalatory behavior during the incident and why the issue was not `securitized' by Russia's political establishment. The article is to be read as a case study exploring the phenomenon of `failed securitization'. On a more policy-oriented level, it also aims to shed light on Russian policies and perceptions with regard to the role, relevance, and usefulness of military power in the European Arctic, as well as the interplay between intra- and interstate security dynamics.

Call for abstracts: The Global Governance of Security and Finance: Conflicting, Complementary and/or Contagious Logics

2009-06-09

Postmodern Intelligence: Strategic Warning in an Age of Reflexive Intelligence

Dunn Cavelty, M., Mauer, V. — 2009-03-17

Providing strategic warning to policymakers is a key function of governmental intelligence organizations. Today, globally networked challenges increasingly overshadow their historical state-centric counterparts so that warning has become considerably more difficult. It is recognized in parts of the intelligence community that many of the current problems for warning arise from continued reliance on analytic tools, methodologies and processes that were appropriate to the static and hierarchical nature of the threat during the Cold War. However, even though alternative analysis techniques have begun to be applied, this article argues that the intelligence community could benefit from the understanding that more than just the ontology of threats has changed, that in fact it is in the epistemological area that the most meaningful changes have taken place: Society has seen the replacement of the previous means—end rationality by a reflexive rationality. The notion of reflexive security can provide a valuable conceptual framework for understanding the current changes, and it could be instrumental in adapting intelligence sources and methods to a new era. In particular, an awareness of both complexity sciences and postmodernism might increase understanding of the limitations of knowledge and lead to the establishment of a political discourse of uncertainty.

Power and Examination: A Critique of Citizenship Tests

Lowenheim, O., Gazit, O. — 2009-03-17

Terror threats and fear of ethnic and religious outbursts, combined with the aspirations of governments to better integrate immigrants into society, have led a growing number of Western states to adopt the practice of citizenship tests as a prerequisite for full citizenship. These tests require the immigrant, usually of non-Western origin, to demonstrate advanced language skills as well as comprehensive civic and cultural knowledge of the host society. While existing literature focuses either on internal inconsistencies within civic integration policies or on the models of citizenship reflected in the exams, the present article offers a critical and power-centered approach to the subject. Using a Foucauldian perspective, we analyze the tests as a sign of authority, a technology of naturalizing authority, and a disciplinary tool. This study joins a growing body of literature on the concept of governmentality, putting the spotlight on the `microphysics of power', specifically at borders and liminal points where the state's presence is prominent.

Private Security Companies and the Laws of War

De Nevers, R. — 2009-03-17

The use of contractors employed by private security companies (PSCs) has exploded in recent years, outpacing efforts to assess the consequences of increased reliance on PSCs for international humanitarian law (IHL). This matters both for the states that hire these companies and for the employees of PSCs on or near battlefields. This article examines the legal status of PSCs under the existing IHL framework, focusing on activities where PSC employees carry weapons and how the presence of PSCs in asymmetric conflicts increases the challenge of determining what actions are appropriate within the laws of war. In most cases, PSC employees cannot be accorded combatant status under IHL. However, the actions of private contractors may put their protection as civilians under IHL at risk, and this is particularly true in asymmetric conflicts. I argue that changing the status of PSCs on the battlefield under IHL to take into account the tasks they are performing is not the answer. Rather, bearing IHL in mind, states need to rethink the tasks that PSCs conduct on their behalf, even if this means reducing reliance on PSCs or limiting state military activities. Notably, the USA should re-evaluate its reliance on PSCs to conduct tasks in situations where PSC employees are likely to be pulled into hostilities.

Consensus and Governance in Mercosur: The Evolution of the South American Security Agenda

Oelsner, A. — 2009-03-17

This article constitutes a first exploration of the security governance of Mercosur, the common market of Latin America's Southern Cone. Drawing on securitization theory, the article argues that three major clusters of security issues have consecutively become the focus of the region's security agenda. First, prior to Mercosur's foundation and during the various processes of democratization in the region, the success of democratic transitions, the stabilization of civil—military relations and the region's insertion into the world economy were successfully securitized. At a second stage, more traditional issues associated with the use of military force gained centrality in the security agenda. Finally, and particularly since 11 September 2001, the region's security architecture was redesigned to accommodate `new' security threats. Around the consensuses on these three issue-clusters, formal and informal structures of policy coordination have emerged, constituting a limited system of governance. Yet, though regional governance is admittedly weak, this article contends that the security consensuses and the emerging institutional structures that have ensued are contributing to forging a shared normativity in the Mercosur area.

Human Security in Southeast Asia: Viable Solution or Empty Slogan?

Nishikawa, Y. — 2009-03-17

This article explores the concept of human security and its relevance to the discourse and management of security in Southeast Asia. It examines whether the human security concept is applicable in the management of internal conflicts in that region, such as the conflict currently taking place in southern Thailand. The article argues that human security will have limited applicability in dealing with internal conflicts in Southeast Asia because of the huge gaps between what governments and other groups within Southeast Asian societies regard as threats. Nevertheless, the concept contributes to our understanding of the complex root causes of violence and illustrates links between human insecurity and conflict. The article concludes that the future usefulness of human security in efforts to manage internal conflict in Southeast Asia will depend on whether the analysis of specific situations incorporates a thorough understanding of the unique relationships between government and other groups, as manifested in the `ASEAN Way', within the localities in question.

The Spaces and Faces of Critical Terrorism Studies

Jarvis, L. — 2009-01-23

This article explores the burgeoning academic interest in establishing a critical terrorism studies research programme. It begins by reviewing the debates over definition, causation and response that still dominate mainstream discussions of terrorism. The analytical and normative limitations of these debates, it argues, open considerable space for the emergence of a critically oriented body of literature. A second section then explores two distinct efforts at overcoming these limitations: the broadening and interpretivist faces of critical terrorism studies. The broadening face refers to attempts to expand our understanding of terrorism beyond non-state violence alone, while the interpretivist face comprises critical explorations of terror in image and narrative. Although each of these approaches offers scholars a more engaged role than the problem-solving orientation of the mainstream debates, the article argues that only the interpretivist face is capable of addressing their analytical limitations. The article concludes by calling for further attention to the notion of critique within the relevant critical literature.

Femina Sacra: The `War on/of Terror', Women and the Feminine

Masters, C. — 2009-01-23

This article inquires after women with whom we have seemingly become intimately familiar in the `war on/of terror'. On one hand, it asks after women such as Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England, examining how US female soldiers have been represented in the `war on/of terror'. On the other hand, it also inquires after some women we do not know at all — women who have largely remained faceless, nameless, figural, reduced to the snapshot of the veil — the women on behalf of whom this war is claimed to be waged. In so doing, it asks the question: What do any of these women have in common? The article explores how women in the `war on/of terror' have in common their silence, erasure and radical exclusion, in varied degrees, from politics. This has been effected through particular representational politics wherein women have been written over and against one another — American women over and against Afghan and Iraqi women, Jessica Lynch over and against Lynndie England. Accordingly, we fail to make connections across difference, and never ask after that which appears at the margins of the text, at the edges of the screen, on the borders of the photograph. This article, therefore, seeks to ask after these margins, edges and borders. It seeks to ask after femina sacra.

Conceptualizing Biorisk: Dread Risk and the Threat of Bioterrorism in Europe

Kittelsen, S. — 2009-01-23

The significance of the threat of bioterrorism lies in the fear that it generates, `threat' in this context constituting not just a physical manifestation of impending danger but also a reflection of a subjective vulnerability derived from a fear of an eventuality that cannot be predicted, identified or controlled. It is a threat that plays upon our perceived biological vulnerabilities in a contemporary environment where biotechnological innovation has reconfigured European relations to biological threat and where security is increasingly informed by risk. Confronting the threat of bioterrorism in Europe, then, necessarily requires engaging with the fear associated with it. This article argues that it is by conceptualizing bioterrorism through the notion of `dread risk' that this can best be accomplished. In so doing, it elucidates the manners in which perceptions of threat interact with articulations of security to inform a cyclical threat—defence dynamic, enabling a more explicit engagement with the ways in which Europe is not only subject to biological insecurity but also a facilitator of it.

`So These Folks are Aggressive': An Orientalist Reading of `Afghan Warlords'

Stanski, K. — 2009-01-23

`Afghan warlords' are some of the most maligned actors in US debates about Afghanistan. These figures are vilified as exemplifying some of the darkest moments in Afghanistan's recent history. Yet, they are also lauded for their contributions to the future of the Afghan state or, in some cases, recast as seemingly less vicious characters, such as `local commanders' or `militia leaders'. This article situates US conceptions of `Afghan warlords' in a historical and comparative context by returning to arguably the West's most formative exposure to Afghanistan, the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838—42). A discursive analysis of primary and secondary sources from both periods reveals that longstanding Orientalist archetypes about the `Afghan people' and their violent tendencies continue to influence US thought about `Afghan warlords'. The article concludes that recent concern about `Afghan warlords' should be understood as part of the longer, and still unresolved, construction of a violent Afghan `Other' in Anglo-American political thought.

Argument and Identity Change in the Atlantic Security Community

Kitchen, V. M. — 2009-01-23

The Atlantic community shares more than just dependable expectations of peaceful change. Its members also share a reflexive political community they sense is worth preserving and a view that their security is intertwined. Existing accounts of the Atlantic security community have identified the importance of renewed emphasis on common values as a factor in preserving and expanding the security community after the Cold War. But, debates at the end of the Cold War also turned on the question of what the allies would do together and what responsibilities they had to each other and to other states. This article outlines a discursive framework and a set of rhetorical strategies used by members of the Atlantic community that explain how they worked to maintain and change their community during debates about their mandate for cooperation. This framework is then applied to the Atlantic community's debates over common action during the Yugoslav wars.