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Abstract
Following the plane crashes into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, Ulrich Beck claimed that the West would need to pursue ‘border-transcending new beginnings’ towards a more cosmopolitan world. Rather than any radical transformation along cosmopolitan lines, however, this paper maps a process of incremental reform and policy bricolage, where the post-cold war politics of intervention, and the securitisation of development, have been extended to encompass international terrorism in three overlapping phases. Although these overlapping phases – intervention, prevention and extension – are reflexive moments, they constitute a strengthening of the prevailing rationalities and technologies of risk rather than a radical rupture.
Notes
1. Beck, “The Terrorist Threat,” 48.
2. Cronin, “Behind the Curve,” 38; and Duffield, “Liberal Interventionism.”
3. Hameiri, “State Transformation”; Mythen and Walklate, “Terrorism, Risk and International Security”; Ericson and Doyle, “Catastrophe Risk”; Petersen, “Risk Analysis”; Clapton, “Risk in International Relations”; Heng and McDonagh, “After the ‘War on Terror’”; and De Goede, “Beyond Risk.”
4. Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, 101; and Beck, “The Reinvention of Politics,” 5–8.
5. Griner, “Living in a World Risk Society,” 149.
6. Beck, World Risk Society, 131 (emphasis in the original).
7. A variety of related terms, such as ‘risk’, ‘threat’, ‘hazard’ and ‘uncertainty’, is used by those authors employing a Risk Society approach, although their precise conceptual distinction is not always absolutely clear. Defining his own usage of the term, Ulrich Beck states that risk is ‘a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself’’. Beck, Risk Society, 21 (emphasis in the original). The precise meaning attributed to risk here, along with its distinction from the related concepts of hazard and insecurity, is quickly lost, however, when, on the same page, Beck also notes that the ‘risks and hazards of today thus differ in an essential way from the superficially similar ones in the Middle Ages through the global nature of their threat’. Beck, Risk Society, 21 (emphasis added). This conflation of terms is also repeated by those IR scholars adopting Beck’s ideas. Christopher Coker, for example, refers to both ‘de-bounded’ ‘threats’ and ‘unbounded’ ‘risks’ within adjoining paragraphs with reference to apparently the same phenomena. Coker, War, 74. For Mark Pythian this ‘linguistic uncertainty’ occurs in part because, when ‘writing about “risk” Beck is often actually describing what might be better termed “uncertainty”’. Pythian, “Policing Uncertainty,” 192. Nevertheless, in her review of this literature Karen Lund Petersen suggests that ‘a distinction between threat and risk is the baseline for understanding this approach, threats being quantifiable, specific and about intention and means-end rationality, while risk is about the unforeseen and not related to a specific incident’. Petersen, “Risk Analysis,” 703.
8. Beck, World at Risk, 66 (emphasis in the original).
9. Werner, quoted in Aradau and Van Munster, “Governing Terrorism through Risk,” 95. Scholars adopting a governmentality approach also attempt to distinguish between threat and risk. For Aradau et al., ‘whereas the concept of threat brings us in to the domain of the production, management and destruction of dangers, the concept of risk mobilizes and focuses on different practices that arise from the construction, interpretation and management of contingency’. Aradau et al., “Security,” 148. However, they too proceed to blur any absolute distinction, noting that ‘there are also important continuities’ in that threat management ‘is also about the management of a contingent future’ (p. 148, note 1).
10. Rasmussen, “‘It sounds like a Riddle’.”
11. Dean, “Risk, Calculable and Incalculable,” 151.
12. Aradau and Van Munster, “Governing Terrorism through Risk,” 97.
13. Beck, “The Terrorist Threat,” 47–48.
14. Mazarr, “The Rise and Fall”; and Coker, War, 134.
15. Aradau, and Van Munster, “Taming the Future,” 29, 39, 49; Coker, “Globalisation and Insecurity,” 73–74; Rasmussen, “‘It sounds like a Riddle’,” 388; Mythen and Walklate, “Terrorism, Risk and International Security,” 221; Ericson, “The State of Preemption,” 57; and Amoore and de Goede, Risk, “Preemption and Exception”, 99.
16. Ewald “The Return of the Crafty Genius,” 64.
17. O’Malley, “Uncertain Governance,” 186.
18. Ibid., 187–189; and Rasmussen, The Risk Society at War, 101.
19. Cooper, “Pre-empting Emergence,” 120.
20. Freedman, “Prevention Not Preemption,” 106.
21. Beck, “The Terrorist Threat,” 39. It should be noted at the outset that Beck accords risk an ontological status, whereas the Foucauldian approach treats risk as a way of ordering reality; risk is viewed as a construction, a ‘way in which we govern and are governed’. Amoore, and de Goede, Risk, “Preemption and Exception”, 9.9
22. Hameiri, “State Transformation,” 382.
23. Beck, World at Risk, 52.
24. Ibid., 53.
25. Beck, “The Terrorist Threat,” 42, 46, 48.
26. Beck, World Risk Society, 81.
27. Ibid., 131 (emphasis in the original); and Beck, “The Reinvention of Politics,” 6.
28. Griner, “Living in a World Risk Society,” 149.
29. Beck, World at Risk, 66 (emphasis in the original).
30. Beck and Levy, “Cosmopolitanized Nations,” 21, 25.
31. Beck and Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe, 254.
32. Ibid., 21.
33. Beck, “The Cosmopolitan State,” 3 (other emphases in the original).
34. Beck, and Levy, “Cosmopolitanized Nations,” 6.
35. Beck, World Risk Society, 80. As Shahar Hameiri has pointed out, although Beck initially emphasised risks arising from our scientific–technical knowledge and practices, since 9/11 he has included terrorism in his category of unbounded risks. Hameiri, “State Transformation.”
36. Beck, World at Risk, 66; and Beck and Levy, “Cosmopolitanized Nations,” 9.
37. Crouch, the Strange Non-death.
38. Dean, “Risk, Calculable and Incalculable,” 151.
39. DFID et al., Building Stability, 8.
40. Jacoby, Current and Projected National Security Threats, 12.
41. White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 1.
42. Piazza, “Incubators of Terror”; and Howard, “Failed States.”
43. Mair, “A New Approach,” 52.
44. Plummer, “Failed States,” 416; and Patrick, “Weak States and Global Threats,” 32.
45. Patrick, “‘Failed States’,” 644; Patrick, “Weak States and Global Threats,” 28; and Newman, “Weak States,” 465.
46. Patrick, “‘Failed States’,” 644.
47. Bøås and Jennings, “‘Failed States’ and ‘State Failure’,” 477.
48. White House, National Security Strategy, 3, 8.
49. White House, National Strategy for Counter Terrorism, 9.
50. HM Government, A Strong Britain, 28.
51. European Union, Report on the Implementation, 1; and Council of the European Union, Draft Internal Security Strategy, 17.
52. Krueger and Malečková, “Education, Poverty and Terrorism”; and Enders and Sandler, The Political Economy of Terrorism.
53. Piazza, “Rooted in Poverty?,” 170.
54. Krueger and Malečková, “Education, Poverty and Terrorism,” 40–41; and Blomberg et al., “Economic Conditions and Terrorism.”
55. Krueger and Malečková, “Education, Poverty and Terrorism,” 33; and Piazza, “Rooted in Poverty?”, 159.
56. Brown, Kennedy Memorial Lecture.
57. Beck, “The Terrorist Threat,” 50.
58. Ghani and Lockhart, Fixing Failed States, 166.
59. Duffield, Global Governance, 121.
60. Duffield, “The Liberal Way of Development,” 63.
61. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, 67.
62. Duffield, Global Governance, 121.
63. Bretherton, “Security after the Cold War,” 137.
64. Ibid., 138.
65. United Nations, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.
66. United Nations, Report of the Panel; and United Nations, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, 17–18.
67. Bretherton, “Security after the Cold War,” 141–142.
68. Duffield, “The Liberal Way of Development,” 58.
69. United Nations, Prevention of Armed Conflict, 2.
70. United Nations, Security Council Resolution 1645, 2.
71. Ibid., 5.
72. World Bank, United Nations Development Group, 1.
73. World Bank and UNDP, State Building, 4.
74. Acharya, “State Sovereignty after 9/11”; and Wheeler, Saving Strangers.
75. Duffield, Global Governance, 45.
76. McArthur, “Global Governance,” 54.
77. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa; and Harrison, Neoliberal Africa.
78. Williams and Young, “Governance,” 87.
79. Ghani and Lockhart, Fixing Failed States, 166.
80. Ibid.
81. Aalberts and Werner, “Mobilising Uncertainty,” 2197.
82. Ibid., 2220.
83. Duffield, “Liberal Interventionism and the Fragile State,” 119.
84. Duffield, “The Liberal Way of Development,” 60.
85. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, 128.
86. Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War, 1.
87. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, 2.
88. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, 13.
89. World Bank, World Development Report.
90. Ibid., 149.
91. Ibid., 157.
92. Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State,” 113–116.
93. Williams, “Development, Intervention, and International Order,” 1216.
94. Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero, “Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century,” 280.
95. Dillon and Reid, “Global Liberal Governance,” 49.
96. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, 67.
97. Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War, 170.
98. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars, 121.
99. Fine, “Neither the Washington nor the Post-Washington Consensus,” 14–15; and Standing, “Brave New Worlds?”
100. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, 18 (emphasis in the original).
101. Ibid., 4, 18.
102. Ibid., 87.
103. Ibid., 89.
104. Clapham, “The Challenge to the State,” 789.
105. Williams, “Development, Intervention, and International Order,” 1214.
106. Duffield, “The Liberal Way of Development,” 61.
107. Blair, “At our Best when at our Boldest.”
108. Mead, Power, Terror, Peace, and War, 165–166.
109. Mazarr, “The Rise and Fall,” 114.
110. OECD-DAC, A Development Co-operation Lens, 15.
111. Cragin and Chalk, Terrorism and Development, 2–3.
112. OECD-DAC, A Development Co-operation Lens, 15.
113. Cragin and Chalk, Terrorism and Development, xiv.
114. OECD-DAC, A Development Co-operation Lens, 10.
115. Ibid., 11.
116. Aalberts and Werner, “Mobilising Uncertainty,” 2184.
117. Williams, “(In)Security Studies,” 76.
118. Cheru, “The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative,” 73.
119. Blair, “Prime Minister Blair’s Statement on the G8 Gleneagles Summit.”
120. Blair, “Chair’s Summary.”
121. Blair, “British Prime Minister Tony Blair Reflects.”
122. As Oxfam reported recently, ‘in spite of the bold promises made in 2005, because of the failure of some countries to meet their commitments, as the 2010 deadline passed for the G8 to increase aid by US$50 billion, only US$30 billion had been delivered in total. While the increase of US$11 billion in aid to Africa, was still way under half of the $25 billion increase promised.’ Oxfam, “Make Poverty History.”
123. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa; and Harrison, Neoliberal Africa.
124. Pender, “From ‘Structural Adjustment’.”
125. Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War, 168.
126. Beck, “Risk Society’s ‘Cosmopolitan Moment’,” 4.
127. Ibid., 7.
128. Frequent references are made to Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘unknown unknowns’ in order to convey this condition of uncertainty. See, for example, Rasmussen, “It Sounds like a Riddle,” 67; and Daase and Kessler, “Knowns and Unknowns,” 412.
129. Radaelli, “The Public Policy of the European Union”; and Aalberts and Werner, “Mobilising Uncertainty.”
130. Blair, “Blair’s Terror Speech in Full.”
131. Williams, “(In)Security Studies,” 63.
132. Aradau and Van Munster, “Taming the Future,” 29. However, it should be pointed out that these writers tend to differ from Beck in that they view the representation of risks as constituting a way of governing, a way of seeing the world, with certain consequences, without asserting that this is how the world really is.
133. Beck, World Risk Society, 6.
134. Ibid., 7.
135. Griner, “Living in a World Risk Society,” 156.
136. Cameron, “PM speech at the UN General Assembly.”
137. Kuperman, “Obama’s Libya Debacle,” 66–67.
138. Ibid., 77.