Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory: Epilogue

Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory

Richard Wyn Jones

1999

Epilogue

In Part 1 of this book I attempted to delineate and evaluate some of the central ideas in the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, at least as they are relevant to the study of global politics and, particularly of course, security. I did this by tracing the thinking of Horkheimer, Adorno, and the second generation of critical theorists in relation to the three key themes of theory, technology, and emancipation. I used these ideas in Part 2 both to criticize the prevailing orthodoxy of traditional security studies and to lay the conceptual foundations for an alternative critical security studies: to deconstruct and to reconstruct. The following brief remarks will recapitulate and summarize the main lines of argument, focusing in turn on conceptualizations of security, strategy, and the relationship between theory and practice.

Reconceptualizing Security

It has been argued that the conceptualization of security underlying traditional security studies

Tends to reify the prevailing status quo because of its scientific–objectivist epistemology (and, indeed, is a paradigmatic example of Horkheimer’s “traditional theory”)
Is ahistorical and deeply resistant to notions of contingency and change because of its state–centric ontology
Is blind to the way in which notions of security are dependent on deeper assumptions concerning the nature of politics
Focuses exclusively on a narrowly military understanding of security
Is tied to the state in a way that privileges the state’s ethical position above all others and is also unable to capture the way that the power of security as a speech act is utilized by many other actors and other forms of political community than the state

In place of this traditional conception of security, the case has been made for an alternative, critical conception of security that is

Deeper, in that it understands that security is a derivative concept; that is, security reflects deeper assumptions about the nature of politics and the role of conflict in political life
Broader, in that it recognizes that military force is not the only potential threat to security and that other threats are equally important and equally worthy of consideration in security studies
Extended to include referent objects other than the state; individual human beings, however, are regarded as the ultimate referents
Focused, crucially, on emancipation as the prism through which both the theory and the practice of security should be viewed

Reconceptualized in this way, the concept of security can take its place at the center of a new critical security studies capable not only of mapping out the contours of the present but of plotting a course for the future.

Reconceptualizing Strategy

It has further been argued that a critical theory–influenced approach to security—critical security studies—not only encourages the development of a more analytically useful conceptualization of security but also generates a more sophisticated framework for the analysis of military force (strategy) than that utilized by traditional security studies.

The conceptualization of strategy used in traditional security studies has been characterized by

A tendency to ignore ends—and (human) consequences—and to become concerned with a calculus of means, a tendency generated by, and inherent in, a reifying traditional mode of analysis
An erroneous, undialectical, and ahistorical understanding of technology and particularly the interaction of military technology and strategic culture

In place of this traditional understanding, I have argued for a critical reconceptualization that

Utilizes modes of analysis in which normative concerns are regarded as intrinsic rather than as an optional extra
Deploys, in the case of military technology, a critical understanding of technology to denaturalize and challenge the processes from which weapons emerge

Reconceptualizing Practice

The central issue of how these reconceptualized understandings of security and strategy might aid in the transformation of the real–world practices in these areas has also been addressed. Traditional understandings of the relationship between theory and practice were criticized on the grounds that they have

Tended to regard the addressees for its theorizing as state leaders and their servants
Served to legitimate the status quo by naturalizing the practices of global (in)security and reinforcing “commonsense” assumptions about what constitutes security and who should provide it
Attempted to delegitimate and silence alternative approaches to security

An alternative conceptualization of the theory–practice nexus was developed based on a reading of the work of Antonio Gramsci, a reading reinforced by the historical experience of the 1980s peace movement. This suggested that critical security studies should

Focus on the delegitimation of the prevailing hegemonic ideas and promote realizable alternatives to it
View those within civil society who are challenging this hegemony as its addressees
Become the organic intellectuals of critical social movements when they exist, or encourage the creation of the political space necessary for their emergence if they do not

In these ways proponents of critical security studies can not only interpret the world but also play a role in changing it.

Although I do not wish to underestimate the difficulties of achieving such emancipatory change, I also believe that critical security studies is an idea whose time has come. The contemporary world order exhibits all the morbid symptoms of a period of interregnum foreseen by Gramsci “when the old is dying and the new cannot be born” (Gramsci 1971: 276; this quotation is used by Booth 1991c: 1). Aspects of the old are certainly withering: Not only has the Warsaw Pact disintegrated following the collapse of the Soviet empire, but far more fundamentally, some important voices believe that the Westphalian system itself is losing its legitimacy (see the discussions in Rosenau 1990; Linklater 1998a). The main reason for what may be termed—after Habermas (1976)—as the “legitimation crisis” is that those political structures whose primary justification rests on their ability to provide security—namely, sovereign states—are patently failing in their task. When security is considered in its widest sense, incorporating ecological concerns, economic questions, human rights—both individual and communal—as well as military issues, those proffering traditional statist solutions to contemporary problems are engaging in a Canute–like attempt to resist the irresistible rising tide of change.

Even so, the character of the new still remains to be seen. And new does not necessarily mean better. Morbid symptoms abound, and barbarism is one possibility. Barbarism will become more of a probability if those engaged in the study of security continue to think in ways that have the effect of legitimating and supporting the failing status quo. Another possibility is the development of a peaceful and rational world order, what Adorno foresaw, in a typically beguiling turn of phrase, as a “landscape of benignly interacting particularities” (cited in Jay 1984: 20). Such a development will undoubtedly be aided if those intellectuals concerned with issues of security attempt to emulate Habermas in seeking out “traces of reason that unites without effacing separation, that binds without unaming [sic] difference, that points out the common and the shared among strangers, without depriving the other of otherness” (Habermas 1994: 119–120).

Ultimately, only political practice can bring about the development of a peaceful, secure, and just world order. Critical security studies can assist those political practices that aim at expanding human security through expanding processes of emancipation, but it cannot be a substitute for them. Critical theorists cannot hope to emulate those Australian aboriginal people so memorably portrayed by Bruce Chatwin in his book The Songlines (1987), who, during their “dream–time,” sang their world into existence. Critical security studies cannot sing a more secure world into existence, but it can become an important voice informing and legitimating those political practices that might turn the dream of a “landscape of benignly interacting particularities” into a reality.