Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security: Bringing together the Copenhagen and the Welsh Schools of security studies

Review of International Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 327-350

  Floyd, Rita ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34250029379     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S026021050700753X     Document Type: Review

References (111)

1. The name Copenhagen School was coined by a fierce critic of the School, Bill McSweeney, in his 1996 article 'Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School', Review of International Studies, 22:1 (1996), pp. 81-94.
2. The first usage of the term Welsh School is not so well documented, however, there is reason to believe that it was first, used in the literature by Steve Smith in The Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies: Conceptualising Security in the last Twenty Years', in Stuart Croft and Terry Teriff (eds.), Critical Reflections on Security and Change (London: Frank Cass), p. 89.
3. COPRI was closed on 1 January 2003, when the newly elected right-wing Government merged COPRI with other Danish research institutes into the Danish Center for International Studies and Human Rights.
4. This being said, sectors are actually used in this article. However, since they do not constitute a theory hut rather an analytical ordering tool there is no need to further explain them here. For an explanation see, for example: Barry Buzan, People. States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).
5. The concept of speech-acts was originally formulated by John L. Austin in his How to do Things with Words? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), who identified the existence of what he called performative speech-acts, whereby by saying something, something is being done. Like naming a ship, betting, and so on.
6. Ole Wæver, Aberystwyth. Paris, Copenhagen New Schools in Security Theory and the Origins between Core and Periphery (unpublished manuscript, 2004), p. 9.
7. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 6.
8. See also Ole Wæver, 'Security, the Speech Act: Analysing the Politics of a Word' (unpublished manuscript, 1998);
9. and Ole Wæver, 'Securitization and Desecuritization', in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
10. Wæver, 'Securitization and Desecuritization', p. 24.
11. Ibid., p. 29.
12. Ibid., p. 29.
13. Ole Wæver, The EU as a Security Actor: Reflections from a Pessimistic Constnictivist on Post-Sovereign Security Orders', in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams (eds.), International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 253.
14. Raymond Geuss, Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 1-2.
15. Ibid., p. 14.
16. Robert W. Cox, 'Social Forces, States and World Orders', Millennium, 10:2 (1981), p. 128.
17. Ibid., p. 128.
18. Jürgen Habermas, The entwinement of myth and enlightenment', New Garman Critique, 26 (1982), p. 18.
19. For a good overview, see Thomas Diez and Jill Steans, 'Habermas and IR', Review of International Studies, 31:1 (2005), pp. 127-40.
20. Ken Booth, 'Security and Emancipation', Review of International Studies, 17 (1991), pp. 314-15.
21. Richard Wyn Jones, 'Message in a Bottle'? Theory and Praxis in Critical Security Studies', Contemporary Security Policy, 16:3 (1995), pp. 310 (emphasis added).
22. Booth, 'Security and Emancipation', p. 319.
23. Ken Booth, 'Security in Anarchy; Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice', International Affairs, 67:3 (1991), pp. 539.
24. Booth, 'Security and Emancipation', p. 319 (emphasis added).
25. Ken Booth, 'Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist', in Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams (eds.), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Case (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 92.
26. Ken Booth, Critical Security Studies and the Study of World Politics (London: Lynrie Rienrier, 2005), p. 23.
27. Walter B. Gallie (1950), cited in Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear, p. 7.
28. Ken Booth, 'Critical Explorations', in Ken Booth (ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics (London: Lynno Rienner, 2005), pp. 1-18;
29. Ole Wævor, 'Security: A Conceptual History for International Relations', unpublished manuscript, 2002;
30. Ole Wasver, 'Peace and Security: Two Concepts and their Relationship', in Stefano Guzzini and Dietrich Jung, Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 51-65;
31. Emma Rothschild, 'What is Security?', in Dcedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1.24:3 (1995), pp. 53-9.
32. Michael Banks, 'The Inter-Paradigm Debate', in M. Light and A. J. R. Groom (eds.), International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory (London: Pinter, 1985), pp. 7-26;
33. Michael Banks, The Evolution of International Relations Theory', in Michael Banks (ed.), Conflict in World Society: A New Perspective on International Relations (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1984), pp. 1-21.
34. The so-called first debate in IR was that of idealism versus realism in the 1940s, and the so-called second debate was that of bchaviouralism versus traditionalism in the 1950s-1960s.
35. Ole Wæsever, 'Figures of International Thought: Introducing Persons instead of Paradigms', in Ole Waver and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 1ff.
36. David Campbell, Writing Security, 2nd edn. (Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press, 1998 [1992]), p.viii.
37. Richard K. Ashley, The Poverty of Neorealism', International Organization, 38:2 (1984), pp. 225-86;
38. Rob B. J. Walker, The Prince and the Pauper: Tradition, Modernity and Practice in the Theory of International Relations', in James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 25-48;
39. James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro, International/ Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, NC: Lexington Books, 1989).
40. Hugh Gustersori, 'Missing the End of the Cold War in International Security', in Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall (eds.), Cultures of Insecurity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 323.
41. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 80.
42. This follows Keith Krause's and Michael Williams' small 'c' distinction in Critical Security Studies (1997), whore critical security studios refers to all those approaches critical of the mainstream. This includes Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, postmodernists, post-structuralists, some versions of feminism, constructivism and the Copenhagen School.
43. Ole Wæver, Aberystwyth, Paris, Copenhagen New Schools in Security Theory and the Origins between Core and Periphery (unpublished manuscript, 2004), p. 13.
44. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner, 1998), p. 35.
45. Ibid., p. 35.
46. Ole Wæver, 'Socuritisation: Taking Stock of a Research Programme in Security Studies' (unpublished manuscript, 2003), p. 23, emphasis added.
47. Jef Huysmans, 'Migrants as a Security Problem: Dangers of "Securitizing" Societal Issues', in R. Miles and D. Thraenhart (eds.), Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion (London: Pinter, 1995), p. 69.
48. Jef Huysmans, 'Language and the Mobilization of Security Expectations: The Normative Dilemma of Speaking and Writing Security' (unpublished manuscript, 1999), p. 26.
49. Ibid., p. 8.
50. Ibid., p. 18. And, in recognition of this fact, see also Ole Wæver, 'Securitizing Sectors? Reply to Eriksson', Cooperation and Conflict, 34:3 (1999), pp. 338.
51. Claudia Aradau, 'Security and the Democratic Scene: Desecuritization and Emancipation' (unpublished manuscript, 2004).
52. Ole Wæver (2005), The EU as a Security Actor', p. 252.
53. I have written about this in more detail, in Rita Taureck, ' Securitisation Theory and Securitisation Studies', Journal of International Relations and Development, 9:1 (2006).
54. Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework, p. 23.
55. The term consequeritialism was coined by Elisabeth Anscombe in her 1958 essay 'Modern Moral Philosophy', Philosophy, 33:124 (1958). Anscombe's essay is a strong critique of (at the time modern) English moral philosophy, which she identified as collectively subscribing to the consequentialist principle whereby the moral lightness of an action is dependent on its consequences. Anscombe was strongly opposed to this principle, for she read consequentialism to mean that, 'a man does well [...] if he acts for the best in the particular circumstances according to his judgment of the total consequences of this particular action'. (Ibid., p. 9, emphasis added.) For Anscombe this subjective judgment of consequences is opposed to the Hebrew-Christian ethic where 'there are certain things forbidden whatever consequences threaten, such as choosing to kill the innocent for any purpose, however good.' (Ibid., p. 10 emphasis in the original.) For this and other reasons, for Anscombe thus what is morally right (wrong) cannot possibly be determined by an act's consequences, and she herself worked in the tradition of so-called virtue theory whereby moral rightness is not sought in consequences of actions, but rather 'in describing types of character which we might admire'. Greg Pence, 'Virtue Theory', in Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005 [1991.]), p. 249.
56. For a critique of consequentialism along Anscombe's lines see also Thomas Nagel 'War and Massacre', in Samuel Scheffer (ed.), Consequentialism. audits Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988[1979]), p. 51-73.
57. It should further be noticed that Anscombe as the originator of the term consequentialism differentiates between consequentialism and utilitarianism, For her this difference lies in the consequentialist's 'denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned', whereas, for example, the hedonistic utilitarianism of Jererny Bentham and John Stuart Mill concerned itself with the intended consequences of the maximisation of happiness only, and would thus never have contemplated the calculation of murder. Be that, as it may, today utilitarianism is widely regarded as a form of consequentialism and Bernard Williams, for example, argues that 'any kind of utilitarianism is by definition consequential'. See, 'A critique of utilitarianism', in J. J. C. Smart, and Bernard Williams (eds.), Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 79.
58. Today consequentialism takes many forms - including the many variants of utilitarianism - all of these agreeing on the basic principle that the moral tightness of an action is to be judged by its consequences. It is precisely this principle to which deontologists (besides the virtue ethics of scholars such as Ariscombe, consequentialism's main contestants) object. Thus deontologists reject the consequentialist view whereby the right is defined as that which maximises the good. In its place they propose a theory 'that either does not specify the good independently from the right, or does riot interpret the right as maximising the good.' John Rawls A Theory of Justice (London: Harvard University Press, 1971) p. 30.
59. Or, as Charles Fried puts it 'for the deontologists, [...] the right is prior to the good.' Fried cited in Nancy Davies, 'Contemporary deontology', in Peter Singer (ed.) A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005[1991]), p. 206.
60. J. J. C. Smart (1973), 'An outline of a system of utilitarian ethics', in Smart and Williams (eds.), Utilitarianism: For and Against, p. 13.
61. Philip Pettit (2005 [1991]), 'Consequentialism', in Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics, p. 235.
62. Ibid., p. 237.
63. It should be noted hero that is possible to identify a third broad school concerned with the relations between the environment and security. In this approach, 'environmental security' moves away from both state-centric and human-centric interpretations of environmental security, in that it is argued that what is to be secured is the environment per se. Anthropocentric interpretations of security are to be replaced by eco-centric interpretations of security, as both humans and the state are seen as a threat to the health and stability of the natural environment. This conceptusilisation of environmental security is commonly referred to as 'ecological security', and therefore - despite the close relation - falls outside the environmental security sector.
64. Terry Tariff, Stuart Croft, Lucy James and Patrick M. Morgan, Security Studies Today (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 118:
65. and Richard A. Matthew, 'Introduction: Mapping Contested Grounds', in Daniel Deudney and Richard A. Matthew (eds.), Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999), p. 14.
66. For advocates of the various strands within the state centric environmental security discourse, see Jessica Tuchman Matthews, 'Redefining Security', Foreign Affairs, 68:2 (1.989), pp. 1.62-77;
67. Richard Ullman, 'Redefining Security', International Security, 8 (1983), pp. 133ff;
68. Norman Myers, Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Stability (New York: Norton, 1993);
69. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon and Val Percival, 'The Case of South Africa', in Paul F. Diehl and Nils P. Gleditsch (eds.), Environmental Conflict (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001), pp. 13 35;
70. Thomas F. Homer Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999);
71. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, 'Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases', International Security, 19:1 (1994), 5 40;
72. Thomas F. Homer Dixon, 'Global Environmental Change and International Security', in D. Dewitt; D. Haglund and J. Kirton (eds.), Building a New Global Order: Emerging Trends in International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 185 228;
73. Thomas F. Homer Dixon, 'On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict', International Security, 16:4 (1991), pp. 76-116;
74. Robert Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy.', in G. O. Tuathail; Simon Dalby and P. Routledge (eds.), The Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge, 1998 [1994]), pp. 188-96;
75. Ken H. Butts, 'Why is the Military Good for the Environment?', in Jyrki Käkönen (ed.), Green Security or Militarized Environment. (Brookfield: Dartmouth Publishing, 1994).
76. For advocates of the human security approach to environmental security, see Simon Dalby, Environmental Security (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002);
77. Edward A. Page and Michael Redclift (eds.), Human Security and the Environment (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002);
78. Jon Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security (London: Zed Books, 2001);
79. Jon Barnett, 'Destabilizing the Environment-Conflict Thesis', Review of International Studies, 26 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 271-88;
80. Jack A. Goldstone, 'Demography, Environment and Security', in Paul F. Diehl and Nils P. Gleditsch (eds.), Environmental Conflict (Oxford: Westview Press, 2001), pp. 84-108).
81. Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security, p. 129.
82. Deudney and Matthews, Contested Grounds, p. 14;
83. Terry Terriff, 'Environmental Degradation and Security', in Richard H. Shultz, Roy Godson and George H. Quester (eds.), Security Studies for the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1997), pp. 253-87 at 254;
84. Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security, p. 122.
85. The qualification 'in the environmental sector of security' here is of vital importance. Thus it is reasonable to suggest that whilst 'desecuritisation as politicisation' is positive in the environmental sector of security, the same may be negative in other sectors of security. In more detail, whilst an environmentally-conscious individual will always favour a politicisation of environmental issues over their disappearance from political and public concern after a desecuritisation, the same cannot be said for all issues that were once high on an actor's security agenda. Indeed, it could be argued that it is a laudable sign of progress when some issues (such a xenophobia for example) have vanished from an actor's political agenda following desecuritisation, as by becoming non-issues they cannot quietly stir in the background, potentially leading to renewed conflict. In other words, the evaluative categories of positive and negative desecuritisation (staying on/off the political agenda following desecuritisation) are not absolute: they are issue-dependent and will have to be reviewed for each and every issue.
86. Richard Wyn Jones, Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), p. 109.
87. Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework for Analysis, p. 29.
88. Ole Wæver, The EU as a Security Actor', p. 251.
89. For a good overview of the different approaches to environmental security, see Richard A. Matthew, 'Introduction: Mapping Contested Grounds', in Deudney and Matthew (eds.), Contested Grounds, p. 1-22.
90. Matt McDonald, 'Power and Identity: The Environment and the Construction of Security', Ph.D thesis (unpublished manuscript, 2003), p. 199 (emphasis added). It is important to notice here that Matt McDonald's understanding of the term positive, differs from mine. By positive McDonald merely means to say, that the development from a mainstream conception of environmental security to that of an international society one was positive; whereas I would argue that the overall outcome of the later securitisation was positive, understood as defined in this article.
91. Ole Wæver, 'Security the Speech Act' (unpublished manuscript, 1989), p. 4.
92. This was not always the case, Wæver, in 'Peace and Security: Two Concepts and their Relationship', in Stefano Guzzini and Dietrich Jung (eds.), Analysis and Copenhagen Peace Research (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 51-65, and in Security: A Conceptual History for International Relations (unpublished manuscript) shows that throughout history security has had both positive and negative meanings. McSweeney in Security, Identity and Interests makes the same point. To add to the confusion, however, McSweeney shows how security moved from a positive to a negative meaning over time; whereas Wæver argues that security moved from a formerly negative meaning to a positive meaning in our own time. 'Security has not always been a clearly positive term. Especially to Christians, it was highly ambiguous - only God knows with certainty about your salvation, and for you humans to be 'secure1 is presumptuous. [. . .] This potentially negative meaning was present throughout medieval theological discourse, only to break into the open with Luther and Calvin. [. . .] The concept of certitudo in particular became a vehicle for gradually developing a modern, unashamedly positive attitude to security.' (Wæver, pp. 54-5) And, McSweeney argues: 'Etymologically, the noun "security" has evolved from a positive, comforting term to a negative one. From being a psychological condition of the care-free into which we are easily lulled [. . .]', to a technology of the state, whereby threat and defense are routinely evoked to secure the states boundaries and separate the inside from the outside.' (McSweeney, p. 16).
93. Austin, How to Do Things with Words?, p. 15.
94. Ibid., p. 40.
95. Arthur H. Westing (ed.), Herbicides in War: The Long-term Ecological and Human Consequences (London: Taylor & Francis, 1984);
96. Anne H. Ehrlich and John W. Birks, Hidden Dangers: Environmental Consequences of Preparing for War (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Book Club, 1990);
97. Susan D. Lanier-Graham, The Ecology of War (New York: Walker and Company, 1993).
98. George H. Quester, 'Non-Traditional Uses of Military Force', in Shultz, Godson and Quester (eds.), Security Studies for the 21st Century, pp. 131-70;
99. and Kent H. Butts, 'Why is the Military Good for the Environment?', in Jyrki Käkörien (ed.), Green Security or Militarized Environment (Brookfield: Dartmouth Publishing, 1994).
100. Gerald B. Thomas, 'US Environmental Security Policy: Broad Concern or Narrow Interests', Journal of Environment and Development, 6:4 (1997), pp. 397-425.
101. Jon Barnett, for example, argues that the US environmental security strategy, particularly the focus on the military was used to 'preserve legitimacy, avoid radical reform, and distract attention from the contradictions of the modern world for which the United States is inextricably responsible'. 'Environmental Security and US Foreign Policy: A Critical Examination', in Paul Harris (ed.), The Environment, International Relations, and US Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001), p. 80.
102. And, 'that the US military has thus far employed the concept of environmental security in such a way as to maintain its privileged position as the guardian of national security demonstrates the recurrent and fundamental danger of the concept'. (Barnett, The Meaning of Environmental Security, p. 107.) Furthermore, Barnett, in analysing the DOD's environmental security strategy, argues 'what is being secured in this interpretation of environmental security is the military readiness of the armed forces rather than the state. The threat here is the possibility that environmental degradation might undermine the effectiveness of the US military by limiting access to training areas or by detracting from the health and welfare of military personnel.' (p. 79.) Barnett concludes, that 'it would seem that the DOD is using environmental security (a term which ideally suits its needs) to promote its (questionable) green credentials and to marginalise the efficacy of scholars and social movements critical of the Pentagon's environmental record', (p. 80).
103. Department of Defense Directive Number 4715.1E 19. March 2005 p. 2, section 4.5. See also
104. 〈http://www.peer.org/watcli/federal_info.php?row_id =3〉.
105. Ole Wæver, 'Security, Insecurity and Asecurity in the West-European Non-War Community', in Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.), Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1.998), pp. 69-118, at 69.
106. For an extended argument of the incompatibility of the environment with security, see Daniel Deudney, 'Environmental Security: A Critique', in Deudney and Matthew (eds.), Contested Grounds;
107. Daniel Deudney, 'Environment and Security: Muddled Thinking', The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 47:3, pp. 23-8;
108. Daniel Deudney, The case against linking environmental degradation and national security', Millennium, 19:3 (1990), pp. 461-76: Wæver, 'Securitization and Desecuritization'.
109. Wæver, 'Securitization and Desecuritization', p. 65.
110. Marc A. Levy, 'Is the Environment a National Security Issue?', International Security, 20:2 (1995), p. 62.
111. Wæver, 'The EU as a security actor', p. 254.