Governing ‘ungoverned’ space: humanitarianism, citizenship, and the civilian sphere in the territorialising practices of the US national security complex

ABSTRACT

The ‘war on terror’ has seen an increased overlap between military and humanitarian practices in US national security strategy. Guided by imaginative geographies of ‘ungoverned’ or ‘under-governed’ space, aid distribution and humanitarian assistance efforts are frequently coupled with stability efforts and counterinsurgency operations. This overlap has been buttressed by a growing collaboration between the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development – often termed the ‘3Ds’of defense, development and diplomacy – bringing a greater influence of the civilian sphere on US national security strategy. In this paper, I explore the influence of the civilian sphere on these military-humanitarian practices. Through an analysis of publications and policy documents from across the US national security complex, I argue that the civilian sphere is central to US efforts to territorialize ostensibly insecure, ‘ungoverned’ space so as to extend US global geopolitical influence and the US-led global neoliberal market. This involves both a more substantial role for civilian organisations in security efforts, adding legitimacy and civilian expertise to territorialising military-humanitarian practices, and a growing focus on the harnessing of the civilian sphere of targeted populations on-the-ground through a greater emphasis on citizenship, and its related ideas of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, in security policy. Not only does this focus on citizenship couch US intervention in a moral discourse, it also indicates how ‘ungoverned’ space is to be rendered ‘governed’ through the encouragement of a technology of citizenship and a subjectivity conducive to the expansion of the neoliberal market.

KEYWORDS:

• Humanitarianism
• militarism
• territory
• civilian
• citizenship
• governmentality

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Emily Gilbert for her comments and guidance on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, 2015, and the Conference of Irish Geographers, 2015.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The US military is organised through six geographic combatant commands that span the globe, with each command designated a region in which it has responsibility for US military operations. The commands include Northern Command, Southern Command, Africa Command, Pacific Command, Central Command, and European Command.

2. The Institute for the Military Support to Governance is still in the early stages of development, and there is little in the way of official doctrine and policy or relevant scholarship available at this moment. The available sources, however, indicate that doctrine is in development at the time of writing.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.