Securitization, Technology and the Transformation of Warfare

Objectives

To map state of the art research on the changing relationship between new security challenges and the way new technologies transform the practice of war in the context of the evolving European security identity, as a basis for articulating the European self-understanding towards the rest of the world. Ole Waever

To develop an up-to-date history of the main discourses on ‘risks’ and ‘security threats’, thereby sharpening the theoretical concepts underlying the future formulation of European security and foreign policy.

To explore the history and emerging relationship between practices of security and the principles of the democratic public sphere.

To analyse the means and methods of threat assessment and the vulnerability of critical infrastructures, most notably the specific cases of telecommunication networks, water systems, nuclear plants, cyberspace and knowledge-based experts networks, the commercial privatisation of technologies of surveillance and control.

To explore the security policies and warfare strategies that result from a globalised security environment which reinforce the development of the West as ‘risk societies’.

The data collected and analysis carried out within the framework of this workpackage will be used also to inform the observatory.

Description of work

Work package 3 will explore the relationship between evolving security challenges, the nature of war and new technologies by focusing on four research areas.

1. New Technologies, New Wars and a New World Order

The ways of warfare are changing and the nature of international relations change in parallel. Information and communication technologies are enabling especially the United States to fight a new kind of war. This capability underscores the dominating nature of American power after the end of the Cold War. While this so-called revolution in military affairs is reshaping the global power of the leading state in the international system, the new technologies enable also new agents to enter the military stage. As Al-Qaida illustrated so dramatically on 11 September 2001, non-state actors are now able to fight in ways where existing agents can find themselves at war (and some state representatives even perceive themselves permanently at war). The United States declared war on Al-Qaida as it declared war on Japan following Pearl Harbour. As expressed most clearly by Raymond Aron, but widely assumed, the international system is defined in terms of agents capable of waging war on one another, and this suggests that the ability of non-state actors to wage war will have profound effects on the make-up of the international system. These effects will rival the effects of American military power.The transformation of warfare as a practice, the agents involved in it and its effect on international order manifest itself on three levels. At one level, information and communication technologies offer the United States capabilities and modes of fighting demonstrated in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. This raises, among other things, important questions about the relationship between military and civilian dynamics in society, because the dramatic changes are largely technology driven and simultaneously, the onus of technology development has shifted from the military to the civilian sector. At a second level, other actors facing these new overwhelming powers are developing asymmetric technologies of war, including terrorism and possibly new forms of joint ventures between state and non-state actors. Finally, at a third level, the nature of military conflicts that do not involve the leading powers are in many cases slipping out of classical Clausewitzian categories for other reasons than the above: the parties are often very un-state-like, and warfare blends into general violence and disintegration especially in many third world cases. To understand the complex transformation shaped by both changing warfare itself and broader changes in the social, economic, religious and political causes of conflict is crucial for any attempts to assist with conflict resolution, mediation, reconciliation or other techniques for de-escalation and desecuritization. Since, European actors - including the EU - expect to play a leading role in the future in such efforts, an increasing understanding of these dynamics is mandatory. Much research has been done, but too little of this research has asked how the new practices of warfare change the concepts by which conflict and conflict resolution is understood. For that reason much of the debate on ‘new wars’ do not adequately take into account what is new and what the consequences for policy will be. To spell out new vocabularies of policy is especially important in a European setting where a number of different actors with different national discourses are to shape security policies together.

2. Security and the Public Sphere

The domain of security policy is largely dominated by the presumption that it suspends ordinary norms. Yet, the image currently presented by the mass media and the public sphere underplays this aspect of security practices. The project will further develop and deploy the concept of «securitization», conceived by Waever and colleagues, in order to analyse and understand the complex and fragile relation between security and democracy. The potential of the theory in this direction is striking, but it has never systematically been unfolded, although part of the team working under the direction of COP has started on this task. While the traditional state is principally based upon open debate in a public sphere whose security interests are represented by institutions, the new «security state» is characterized by channels of power and information which bypass the public sphere and its institutions of knowledge. Security in the era of European construction is in some respects more open to debate and political choice as security issues are often further from issues of national survival and more about hypothetical risks or distant interventions. Simultaneously, security is often shifted into new informal routines, networks and bureaucracies that remove it from the public view. Thirdly, the trade-offs and dilemmas (notably in relation to liberty) involved when democracies enter ‘high security’ engagements, is far less openly addressed than, for example, when the US entered the Cold War. The concept of security has become more comprehensive, and with diffuse threats like terrorism symbolically defining the agenda, there is a risk of un-specified hyper-securitization - as arguably seen in the US post-911 - which allows for civil rights violations without precise links to specific and specified threats. However, because the debate on risk is basically a debate on scenarios of threat that societies face, there is also a risk that policy-makers choose to believe that ‘everything will be alright’, and avoid making hard and politically difficult choices. It is therefore important for a functioning democracy to cultivate a more precise understanding and focused public debate on the specific threats and the ensuing democratic costs of meeting them at maximum effort. Much of the debate on the security/liberty tension is too polemical and/or on a very weak theoretical basis. By framing this issue conceptually and historically, the workpackage becomes able to explore the current situation with much greater precision. Through securitisation analysis, the study will map how the concept and agenda of security has expanded and investigate how this expansion and transformation influences the role of securitization in the public sphere at both the national and the European level.

3. The Evolving European Security Identity

In the Maastricht Treaty, the notion of European Security Identity is present both in the general linkage between «common foreign and security policy» and identity (introduction) and the explicit «security and defence identity» mentioned in relation to the Western European Union. Thus it is mostly but ambiguously inscribed in the third pillar. The development of a European Security and Defence Identity has become the most recent brick in the construction of a European identity - a surprising turn of events given how ‘European identity’ as for long tied to the spheres of culture/history, citizenship and social entitlements. ‘Security identity’ in turn represents an unheard of constellation of cultural heritage, power, juridical competence and bureaucracy that remains to be adequately theorized. Through gradual crystallization of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), coupled with an irregular, but continuous, process of political, economic and cultural integration, the EU aspires to develop a consolidated security identity. While the European Security Identity (ESI)-a term that became official in documents of the Western European Union in 1992-is formed through the tension between external and internal aspects, the political challenge for EU is to put this identity to the service of European geo-political, economic and cultural interests. Theoretically, the very term ‘security identity’ is a dual challenge because it on the one hand fits a vibrant theoretical interest in the relationship between security and identity, on the other hand the term is un-common in actual policy discourse in all non-EU contexts and there is a wide-spread understanding by policy makers that this particular phrasing in the EU context is pure coincidence and not as path-breaking as theorists tend to assume. A key element of European identity might be emerging through a collective Freudian slip. The framework for the study is threefold: To understand the effects of introducing a novel concept of ‘European security identity’, one needs to understand three things: ‘security’, ‘identity’ and the combination of the two. For all three elements, a diachronic, genealogical background should be combined with a synchronic understanding of current discursive constellations. The most intensive empirical work will be concentrated on current shifts in conceptual constellations: Security: The genealogy of the concept of security, long neglected, begins to be explored by historical work related to theories of international relations. The development of the notion of «securitization» introduced by the Copenhagen school has opened for a reconsideration of the conceptual foundations of the study and practice of security. Identity: Understanding will be developed against the backdrop of a growing theoretical body on the formation and meaning of collective identity. Both sociological literature on the dynamics of nationalism and collective self-understanding and philosophical literature on the nature and function of identity and difference in the conceptual organization of politics provide powerful tools for rethinking the relation between political self and geo-political other. European security identity is a concept of relatively recent date, arising, as it did out of the process of European construction surrounding the Maastricht negotiations, and in the need to give a substantial meaning to the European common foreign and security policy. Much ambivalence surrounds the question whether the concept belongs purely in the context of foreign affairs, or it is a basic challenge to the pillar structure as such, and/or it has a potentially central place in the overarching discussion on ‘European identity’.

4 Risk, Vulnerability and Infrastructure

Increasing attention is given to the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, most notably the specific cases of telecommunication networks, electricity grits, water supply systems, nuclear facilities and the internet. These issues emerge at the interface of two traditionally distinct types of knowledge: expertise on infrastructural systems and security studies. Much of this has traditionally been discussed in terms of ‘risk’ in (mostly technical, probability measuring) literature on safety and risk assessment and more recently in more abstract meta-reflections under the label ‘risk society’ (Beck, Luhmann). Yet, in recent years the field of ‘security’ traditionally associated with foreign affairs and military matters has widened its attention to include so-called new security threats, including the vulnerability of modern society and terrorism Thus ‘security studies’ has moved into the area of critical infrastructure. Forging a coherent strategy for coping with interrelated societal risks and vulnerabilities demands a clarification of the often confusing and contradictory relationship between knowledge cumulated by different fields and actors often unaware of each other - financial risk assessment, insurance companies, safety research, research within the life sciences, the study of concepts of risk by anthropologists and sociologists, the study of societal fear by psychology and social-psychology, and the study of security by strategic studies and international relations. These fields only very recently started to talk to each other and much work needs to be done in order to establish comprehensive platforms for academic and societal reflections on these new challenges. In order to further this exchange the development of a coherent theoretical understanding that places different perspectives on different levels of analysis within a common framework is needed. Horizontal and vertical interlinkages as well as relative impact of various risks and as well be explored and mapped through a number of empirical case studies and risk scenarios.

The team working under the direction of Copenhagen University will be working closely together with researchers at the Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS) and the Royal Danish Defence College. The researchers in Copenhagen. Research will be carried out also in collaboration with experts from Oslo have a well consolidated record of cooperation, and the Work Package will draw on relevant expertise in other parts of the partnership, notably Peter Lock/EART Germany and Loader, Dillon and others at Keele and Kings.