How does war become a legitimate undertaking? Re-engaging the post-structuralist foundation of securitization theory

Introduction

Securitization theory (ST) has proven extremely productive, inspiring hundreds of scholarly works (Pram Gad and Lund Petersen, 2011). According to Buzan et al. (1998: 21) ‘the invocation of security has been the key to legitimizing the use of force, but more generally it has opened the way for the state to mobilize, or to take special powers, to handle existential threats’. While this introduction to the framework intuitively looks promising for someone seeking to understand how violence and war is legitimized, Copenhagen School ST is inadequate to catch the process that goes on when war becomes acceptable. ¹ The making of an acceptable war is a much broader, dynamic social process and has much wider societal ramifications than Copenhagen School ST allows us to investigate. The aim of this article is to re-engage the post-structuralist themes in the work of Ole Wæver to create a framework that is suitable for studying how war becomes a legitimate undertaking and to what social effect.

The post-structuralist approach advanced in this article suggests that the social process that enables the legitimate undertaking of violent practices spring from an accumulation of statements that construct a sharp boundary between the Other as an existential threat and the threatened Self (for key post-structuralist works on Self/Other see Campbell, 1992; Connolly, 1991; Doty, 1996; Hansen, 2006; Neumann, 1996; Walker, 1990). In a post-structuralist reading, securitization is not one utterance by one actor, but is produced over time through multiple texts that represent something as an existential threat. It is a result of an intersubjective struggle through texts emanating from ‘securitizing actors’ and ‘audience’ over what level of difference and danger to attach to something and manifests itself in material emergency practices. This is a very different process from the actor-centric process suggested by Buzan et al. (1998) which indicates a clear sequence, starting with a ‘securitizing actor’ that securitizes towards a ‘significant audience’ via a speech act in the Austinian (1962) ‘once said, then done’ (illocutionary) way and ending with the explicit endorsement of emergency measures. When security is accentuated as part of a constant and continuing social (re)-construction of reality, as post-structuralist discourse theory encourages us to do (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), securitization is conceived of as a gradual, intersubjective process, not as an instant, individual and intentional event.

This article contributes to the efforts by the ‘second generation securitization theory post-Copenhagen School’ to specify and developed the theory into more distinct and coherent variants of securitization and to make it applicable to understand a wider range of cases and situations (Balzacq, 2005, 2011; Croft, 2012; Donnelly, 2013; Floyd, 2010; Hagmann, 2015; McDonald, 2008; Salter, 2008; Stritzel, 2007, 2014; Taureck, 2006; Vuori, 2008). But it also differs from the core contributions to this second-generation literature. On the one hand, Stritzel (2007, 2014) and Balzacq (2005, 2011) respectively bracket what they call potential ‘internalist’ or ‘philosophical’ variants associated with post-structuralist traditions and champion an ‘externalist’ and ‘sociological’ version of ST. On the other hand, Croft’s (2012) and Hagmann’s (2015) works dovetail theoretically with the post-structuralist reading of ST which is presented here in that they emphasize the productivity of discourse and the identity dynamics implicit in securitizations, but they also depart from this contribution in important ways. ² Because they want to understand foreign policy production in general and how securitization effects everyday life, both Hagmann (2015: 17–18) and Croft (2012) are uncomfortable with post-structuralism’s focus on radical binary oppositions when theorizing the production of identity and, consequently, ST’s focus on posing threats as ‘existential’. But for the purposes of understanding how war becomes acceptable, the focus on radical otherness and existential threat is crucial. The launching of violent measures on a scale such as war against an object, a territory or a social group hinges critically on representations of radical otherness. Similarly, while Hagmann (2015: 18) draws on ST despite the strong emphasis on the way in which naming threats as existential gives way to extraordinary – that is, norm-breaking – powers, this framework draws on it because of this emphasis on extraordinary force. War and violence is necessarily dramatically norm-breaking, particularly when it is levelled by the state against its own citizens, as in the case presented in this article. How such extraordinary force is enabled in a discourse of extreme difference and danger is the key to understanding how war becomes acceptable.

The article begins by outlining how post-structuralist ideas on policy production can be used to re-phrase securitization as a co-constitutive process of legitimation, and argues in favour of substituting Austinian speech act (1962) with a post-structuralist understanding of discourse to foreground intersubjectivity. Picking up on and specifying this broader outline, the article then moves on to show what post-structuralist insight does to ST, with an eye to addressing the question of how war becomes a legitimate undertaking. I expound key concepts and relations in securitization, namely representations of existential threat to a referent object; emergency measures; and audience acceptance (Buzan et al., 1998: 26), offering post-structuralist re-interpretations of these concepts. This will imply zooming in on signifying practices, the changing identity constructions implicit in these practices, and their logical and legitimate expression in material emergency practices, but also broadening the focus of study to how referent object identity and actor-hood are (re-)produced through securitization, and how the putative ‘audience’ contributes to this process. Where possible, the writings of Wæver, Buzan and de Wilde are revisited to find support for these re-interpretations. ³ By way of a conclusion I draw out some general points on securitization and war.

I use the Russian securitization of Chechnya as a terrorist threat from 1999 onward to illustrate how a post-structuralist framework can be applied to understand a case of acceptable war. The Second Chechen War (1999–2001), which was accompanied by emergency measures as far-reaching and brutal as those employed during the First Chechen War (1994–1996), found resounding endorsement in all strata of Russian society. It was made acceptable to Russian leaders and their publics through a one-sided and frightening discourse which represented ‘Chechnya’ as an existential threat to an innocent and victimized ‘Russia’. This discourse emanated from official Russian texts, but also from journalistic, expert, political elite as well as historical texts via intersubjective processes where both ‘securitizing actor’ and ‘audience’ participated. In the course of this collective ‘securitizing attempt’, not only were extreme emergency measures against Chechnya and Chechens enabled and legitimized, but the boundaries of Russian identity (the referent object) were also redrawn and Prime Minister/President Vladimir Putin became empowered as an actor.

Securitization as a discursive co-constitutive process of legitimation

The core insight of Copenhagen School ST is that issues can become ‘securitized’ when ‘securitizing actors’, by means of rhetorical strategies, elevate them to the status of an existential threat to a referent object and when a significant audience accepts this representation of the issue (Buzan, 1997: 5–28). This process generates endorsement for emergency measures beyond rules that would otherwise bind (Wæver, 1995a).

The general thrust of the argument underlying this description of the securitization process is in many respects in line with post-structuralist ideas of how policies are co-constituted by identities and rely on accounts that make sense of them and legitimize them as they are launched (Campbell, 1992; Hansen, 2006). The post-structuralist stance is that policies are not a given response to an external reality to which the state (or other social actors) relates objectively, but are co-constituted by ideas or identities. References to identities are necessary to represent and legitimize policies, but at the same time these identities are constituted and reproduced through the formulation of policies. This is why the term ‘co-constituted’ is used.

When the production of politics is understood in this way the task for the analyst is to ‘embrace a logic of interpretation that acknowledges the improbability of cataloguing, calculating and specifying “real causes” and concerns itself with considering the manifest political consequences of adopting one mode of representation over another’ (Campbell, 1992: 4). Studying politics then involves studying how some representations of reality become dominant discourses, and how problems, subjects and objects are constituted in these discourses that simultaneously indicate relevant policies to pursue. The claim is not that such dominant representations cause certain policies or actions, but that they both open up and constrain the range of policies and actions that seem possible and legitimate to undertake (Hansen, 2006).

This link between identity and policies can be conceptualized more explicitly as one of legitimation. Jackson (2006: 16) sees legitimation as:

the process of drawing and (re)establishing boundaries, ruling some courses of action acceptable and others unacceptable. Out of the general morass of public political debate, legitimation contingently stabilizes the boundaries of acceptable action, making it possible for certain policies to be enacted.

‘The process of drawing and (re)establishing boundaries’ is here taken to be the continuous references to Self and Other that policy formulation implies and which, in turn, legitimates policy implementation.

Based on this understanding of how policies are produced and legitimized, a post-structuralist approach would imply treating securitization as a process through which a representation of something as an existential threat becomes dominant at the expense of other representations and uncovering, in the course of research, the changing boundary between this identity and that given to the ‘referent object’. These changing representations would not determine emergency action, but would condition the range of emergency measures political actors could undertake legitimately. In turn, the undertaking of such emergency measures against the something that is said to be threatening and in defence of the referent object would confirm and reinforce the new identity boundaries that were drawn up and legitimize the undertaking of emergency measures. From a post-structuralist perspective the process of securitization is a fundamentally co-constitutive process and one that implies legitimizing concrete material security practices (see below). This reading suggests that securitization cannot be treated as a sequential, linear process from securitizing actor through audience acceptance and to emergency measures. Rather, it is a much more dynamic development; securitizing actors, referent object, threat objects as well as exceptional measures are co-constituted within the securitizing process. ⁴ Moreover, alternative articulations of the Self/Other boundary which attach a lower level of threat to the Other can emerge and render emergency measures illegitimate. This would be a process of de-securitization.

A first step towards such a re-interpretation would be to substitute Austinian speech act with post-structuralist discourse as the core concept in the theory.

Discourse, not Austinian speech act: According to Copenhagen School ST, threats and security are determined through the speech act. Understood as a speech act, ‘security’ means that the very identification, the articulation of words that describe something as a security threat, is an act (Wæver, 1995b: 55). The weight given to words in this explication seems to match post-structuralists’ foregrounding of language, but it is still not useful to theorize securitization as a speech act. ⁵ It is an impossible attempt at reconciling relationalism with actor-centric understandings of social change. The initial focus on actors implicit in Copenhagen School ST is amplified with the adoption of speech act in the Austinian ‘once said, then done’ way. Not only is the securitizing actor projected as the driving force in the process, but also his words are accorded status as final and decisive. Thus, the audience is certainly not significant and the intersubjective process is lost (for a similar critique see Balzacq, 2005: 182–183; Stritzel, 2014: 20–24; Taureck, 2006: 52–61). By adhering firmly to relationalism and placing agency not in an actor, but in the discursive practices that comprise a securitization, a post-structuralist approach offers a less contradictory theoretical framework and one that gives priority to intersubjectivity. ⁶

Discourses are seen as structures of signification which construct social realities. The understanding of significative construction which informs most post-structuralist work is taken from the structuralist linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (1974). He held that language is not determined by the reality to which it refers – it should be understood as a system of signs, with the meaning of each sign determined by its relation to other signs. A sign is thus part of a structure together with other signs that it differs from, and it gains its specific value precisely from being different from other signs. The assumption, prevalent in most post-structuralist international relations (IR) work, that discourses are structured largely in terms of binary oppositions draws on the work of Jacques Derrida. According to Derrida (1981), language is a system of differential signs and meaning is established not by the essence of a thing itself but through a series of juxtapositions, where one element is valued over its opposite. Binary oppositions are not neutral, they establish a relation of power such that one element in the binary is privileged.

Discourses are seen as made in a process of social practical interaction and are always textually interconnected; as such, they are a set of collectively articulated codes and are intersubjectively embedded at the outset. Moreover, they are continuously conditioned by intersubjectivity – because, despite being highly structured, they are seen not as stable grids, but as open-ended, changeable and historically contingent (Milliken, 1999: 230). This aspect of discourse implies that there is a play of practice, or struggles over which discourses should prevail. Some fixations of meaning become so conventionalized that we think of them as natural. Other fixations are always possible, but may become temporarily excluded by these hegemonic discourses (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). ⁷

The first argument for replacing Austinian ‘speech act’ with post-structuralist ‘discourse’ is, therefore, that it enables us to move from a self-contained and definite core concept in the theory to an inherently intersubjective and process-oriented concept. ⁸ But also, if we consider what a securitization would look like in the empirical world, a more reasonable understanding would be that a ‘securitizing attempt’ consists of a series of utterances. Nothing can be constituted as an existential threat on a political arena through a ‘speech act’ in the ‘once said, then done’ sense. As Butler (1993) points out, the power of speech acts (not to be confused with Austinian illocutionary speech acts) lie in their iterability; that is, they can be cited, recited and changed through such citation. It is only through iterability that utterances have transformative potential. ⁹ This makes it more appropriate to explicate ‘securitizing moves’ as the onset or strengthening of a discourse that constructs something as an existential threat. Finally, as regards the application of securitization to understand how war becomes acceptable, a discursive approach simply seems to have greater explicatory clout. The Second Chechen War and the acceptance of this violent undertaking in the wider Russian public cannot be thought of as a single authoritative act: it is better grasped as an evolving intersubjective process. The purpose of an enquiry informed by post-structuralist ST is to study how this intersubjective process of securitization unfolds.

Representations of existential threat

Although Copenhagen School ST can be read as putting the ‘securitizing actors’ first, Buzan et al. (1998: 32) actually state that ‘one cannot make the actors of securitization the fixed point of analysis – the practice of securitization is the centre of analysis.’ This practice is the signifying practice of giving something the identity of an existential threat to a referent object. If we start the enquiry of the Russian securitization of Chechnya by tracing representations instead of ‘actors’, we discover that statements representing Chechnya as an existential terrorist threat first appeared in the Russian media and in texts by the Ministry for Internal Affairs and the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) (Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti). ¹⁰ Only later did such representations make it into top-level official texts and multiply into a clear and one-sided official narrative of Chechnya as an existential threat to Russia, necessitating war. ¹¹ Thus, ‘securitizing moves’ can emerge from multiple sources and are intersubjective endeavours.

Studying such signifying practices in a structured way when working with a given empirical case entails constructing an analytical template outlining the sequence of elements that make up the security argument. Such a template, which I refer to as the securitizing narrative denotes the signifying aspect of discourse. As noted, discourse is a supra-concept which includes both signifying practices (securitizing narrative) and material practices (emergency measures). The securitizing narrative enables us to map out the pattern of argument actually deployed in a given securitization and formalizes how the security argument produces boundaries (between the threat and the threatened) for acceptable action. It captures the distance that is created between Self and Other in representations and concomitant policy suggestions. Echoing Croft’s (2012: 15, emphasis added) claim that ‘securitization is about shaping relations between identities in particular, and confrontational ways’, this explication emphasises that a securitizing ‘move’ or ‘attempt’ in the terminology of Copenhagen School ST carries in it a narrative where Self and Other are represented as radically opposite – so radically opposite that the Other emerges as an existential threat to the Self.

In their discussion of the first facilitating condition under which the speech act aimed at securitization works (‘the demand internal to the speech act of following the grammar of security’) Buzan et al. (1998: 33) only hint at how such an analytical template could look. They say that the securitizing discourse is more likely to be authoritative and convincing if it takes the form of a securitizing plot that includes: (1) existential threat; (2) point of no return; and (3) a possible way out.

The first element in the securitizing narrative (1) concerns the description of the nature of the threat and the referent object. In Copenhagen School ST the notion that the threat is represented as ‘existential’ is absolutely fundamental, but no tools are offered to establish when a threat representation has reached the level of ‘existential’. This maps on to criticism raised by Stritzel (2014: 35) on ‘the lack of clear criteria for assessing when we have reached beyond the threshold of normality.’ Post-structuralist ideas on how identities are constituted suggest the possibility of scaling representations of threat, to which I will turn first. They also alert us to the effects that securitization may have for the constitution of the political communities that are said to be threatened, to which I return to below.

Scaling threat: The post-structuralist claim that the structure of language is never totally fixed, and that meaning is constructed through the juxtaposition of signs, have implications for the conceptualization of identity. Identities, whether personal or collective, are not given, but are constituted in relation to difference. Difference is not given either, but is constituted in relation to identity (Connolly, 1991). Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe, Hansen suggests that ‘meaning and identity are constructed through a series of signs that are linked to each other to constitute relations of sameness as well as through differentiation to another series of juxtaposed signs’ (Hansen, 2006: 42). ¹² Identities can, therefore, be said to be highly structured. But again, they are also seen as flexible and changeable entities that can never be completely fixed, because the signs in these chains of sameness and difference may be changed and substituted.

Identities are not necessarily drawn up in relation to radical and threatening Otherness. ¹³ Still, given ST’s emphasis on existential threat, a post-structuralist ST developed to understand how war becomes acceptable has to focus on radical Otherness (Campbell, 1992; Connolly, 1991). Threat constructions can be placed on a scale with differing degrees of difference and danger attached to them. While some link the issue to descriptors that do not indicate danger or difference in negative terms, other constructions are so radical on these two accounts that the issue emerges as an existential threat. In between these two poles there are threat constructions that indicate varying degrees of danger to and difference from the referent object. Reasoning along the same lines, the ‘point of no return’ (2) within the securitizing narrative can be conceptualized as a scale of alternative futures for the referent object. A future where the referent object cannot exist can then be placed at the top end of this scale, below there would be possibilities for peaceful co-existence. The third element in the securitizing narrative, ‘a possible way out’ (3) identifies the policy suggestion, given the gravity of the threat. In this third element of the narrative we find a description of how to deal with the threat in order to achieve a future of survival. ¹⁴

The securitizing narrative is internally consistent. The level of threat implied in the representations (1) delineates a boundary between the threat and the threatened, but also a boundary for acceptable action (3). A threat representation that can be placed at the top of the scale in terms of danger logically fits together with policy proposals that are equally radical or violent. Salter’s (2002) argument is instructive. He claims that the classification of ‘barbarian’ is not only dependent on counter-concepts (savage, civilized), but also has effects. The kind of security policy deemed available and legitimate regarding ‘barbarians’ is other than what is thought of as available and legitimate in other relationships. As suggested above, the link between identity construction and policy suggestion is such that a policy will appear legitimate if it is consistent with the identity construction on which it draws. This means that going up the scale of threat representation will make possible tougher or more violent policies. Put simply, representations of existential threat (i.e. ones that can be placed at the top end of the scale in terms of difference and danger) make practices of brute violence and war seem logical, legitimate and, ultimately, necessary. While Croft (2012: 89–90) might be right that securitizations hinge on both constructions of the Radical Other and the Orientalized Other (implying representations of the Other as mystical, attractive and exotic), this second type of Other will be downgraded in securitizations for war, where representations of existential threat legitimate extreme violence.

The securitizing narrative implicit in Russian official statements during the launching of the Second Chechen War in 1999 described ‘Russia’ as facing an existential threat from one internal enemy – ‘terrorism’ – which encompassed all factions of the Chechen separatist movement, albeit some involuntarily, and working in alliance with a distant enemy, ‘international terrorism’. Moreover, the inhuman nature of this enemy which was described in official representations called for immediate action against Chechnya in order to secure the very survival of Russia. The possible ‘way out’ indicated in the narrative not only scrapped practices such as negotiations and economic relief as means of dealing with Chechnya, but urged the destruction of this threat by any means. Thus, in this narrative there was a logical fit between the level of threat implied in the representations of Chechnya and the emergency measures suggested to deal with this tiny Russian republic. ¹⁵

Referent object identity: Another important insight that has been neglected in Copenhagen School ST, and that springs from a post-structuralist conceptualization of identity, is that the securitization of an issue – identifying something as an existential threat to a referent object – has effects in terms of maintaining and changing the identity of the referent object. ¹⁶ This is particularly relevant when talking about securitization for war. The identity of the referent object will necessarily have to be (re-)defined in relation to the representation of something as an existential threat. If the threat is described, those who are said to be threatened will necessarily have to be described as well. Building on Derrida (1981), the relation constructed in securitizing attempts through a series of juxtapositions between threat and threatened is not neutral in terms of power, as one element (the referent object) will be valued over its opposite (threat). Thus, the re-defining of identity in the face of existential threat can have substantial effects in terms of cohesion, power and stability within the referent object. With this move ST can be used to say something more about ‘how political communities themselves are constituted’, as called for by McDonald (2008: 565; see also critique by Hagmann, 2015: 27). In particular, it can shed light on how securitization for war becomes the key engine in the production of national identity.

In Russia, the projection of ‘Chechnya’ as an existential terrorist threat from 1999 onward generated a re-articulation of Russian identity – breaking with the more modest version predominant during the interwar period, and now projecting ‘Russia’ as innocent, strong and capable of establishing order. Adjustments made in representations of the Russian Self during the initial securitization of the Chechen threat in autumn 1999 marked the beginning of a radical re-articulation of Russian identity in official language – not necessarily in comparison to historical representations, but in comparison to dominant representations in official language since 1991, and particularly within the interwar discourse on Chechnya. This process continued throughout Putin’s subsequent presidential terms (2000–2008), becoming even more explicit in his new term as president from 2012 (Wilhelmsen, 2014: chapter 5).

Emergency measures: Copenhagen School ST merely states that acceptance of the securitizing argument by the audience leads to endorsement of emergency measures ‘beyond rules that otherwise have to be obeyed’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 25). This reads like a positivist set-up of variables that produce an outcome, but gives no clue about what kinds of emergency measures are actually enabled in a process of securitization. Because Copenhagen School neglects post-structuralist insights, it accepts a divide between signifying and material practices and misses the opportunity of theorizing the link between these two in a process of securitization. In the post-structuralist perspective, meaning and materiality go hand in hand. Building on Foucault, Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 108) understand the entire social field as constituted by discursive logic. Discourses encompass the social field. Hence, they do more than include systems of signs; they are also material.

The securitizing narrative presented above captures the signifying articulations that contribute to bring something into being as an existential threat, but a full post-structuralist approach to securitization should include the study of how these signifying practices find an expression in material practices (emergency measures) and how these, in turn, serve to constitute and confirm the identity constructions in the securitizing narrative. The radical differentiation between Self and Other in a process of securitization will not only be established in a securitizing narrative. Any group or object that is represented as an existential threat will also be materially constituted as such in a physical space and in the ways it is treated.

As noted earlier the changing of representations to foster a relation of radical opposition between Self and an existentially threatening Other would not determine emergency action, but would condition the range of emergency measures political actors could undertake legitimately. Signifying practices condition emergency measures in the sense that they both open up and constrain the range of feasible material practices and actions. ¹⁷ Given the internal congruence between identity construction and policy proposal in the securitizing narrative, this explication assumes that certain representations of the Other (such as ‘terrorist’ or ‘infidel’) will be followed by policy proposals that permit certain actions (such as killing or torture) while prohibiting others (such as negotiation). To be clear, the assumption is only that the representation (‘terrorist’, ‘infidel’) enables the legitimate undertaking of a certain type of action (such as killing or torture): this action might still have been undertaken without such a radical representation, but would not have made much sense.

In a given empirical case ‘emergency measures’ should be studied by investigating the linking of two aspects: the signifying representations in the securitizing narrative (particularly ‘the way out’/the policy proposal given in the securitizing narrative), and the enactment of this in concrete security practices aimed at countering the threat. Then, finally, such a study should asses the way in which these physical actions contribute to confirm and constitute the identities in the securitizing narrative. The securitization of Chechnya as an existential terrorist threat in 1999 was not confined to rhetorical exercises: it materialized in the endorsement and undertaking of practices of war that had been totally unacceptable for the Russian public only half a year earlier. These practices involved the physical sealing-off of ‘Chechnya’ and ‘Chechens’ from Russia, the repeated bombing of Chechen territory from September 1999 onward and the violent practices undertaken against the population of Chechnya in connection with efforts to ‘cleanse’ this Russian republic of terrorists during the ground offensive from October 1999 onward. Such emergency measures went far beyond the rules in Russia that ‘must otherwise be obeyed’, in both legal and social terms. However, they were a logical fit with the dominant securitizing narrative which represented Chechnya as an existential terrorist threat against Russia, and they were legitimized through these representations. In turn, the material enactment of the securitizing narrative in concrete security practices served to confirm the narrative. The physical isolation of Chechens in Russian cities by their absence in hired flats, regular jobs and schools, coupled with their presence at police stations and in the ‘terrorist zone’ subjected to bombing, confirmed their identity as an existential terrorist threat (Wilhelmsen, 2014: chapter 4).

The study of practices in this framework is not directed towards their routinized and often institutionalized nature, as is the case in the approach advanced by Didier Bigo (2002) and the ‘Paris School’ (CASE Collective, 2006). This is not to suggest that ‘the creation of networks of professionals of (in) security, the systems of meaning they generate and the productive power of their practices’ should be ignored (CASE Collective, 2006: 458). Still, with ST as a point of departure, it seems most reasonable to focus on changes in or beginnings of what later become such patterned actions. With its focus on emergency action and extraordinary means, ST directs our attention more towards how practices are changed or even established, than to their routinization over time. This is particularly relevant when studying securitization for war: that passing of a threshold which implies that extreme violence is introduced. When something is (suddenly) raised to a level of existential threat, this legitimizes new types of action or – alternatively – intensifies existing security practices.

The constitution of actor-hood and audience acceptance

As to the conceptualizations of speaker and audience and the relation between them, explicated by adding the second and third facilitating conditions in Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde’s book, they can easily be read as contradicting post-structuralist tenets. ¹⁸ Turning first to the role of the speaker, Copenhagen School ST emphasizes (by adding the second facilitating condition) how the pre-existing power position of the securitizing actor is important for succeeding with securitization. Post-structuralist ideas on the productivity of discourse turns this emphasis on pre-existing power position of the actor on its head and suggest that securitization of an issue – identifying something as an existential threat to a referent object – has effects in terms of maintaining and changing not only referent object identity but also actor-hood. As Stritzel (2007: 361–362) points out, Wæver himself actually opens for such a reading, particularly in his single-authored texts, where he builds on Jacques Derrida’s claim that ‘there is nothing outside the text’ and Judith Butler’s idea that speech acts have power to constitute meaning and create new patterns of significance in social relations.

As Milliken (1999: 229, emphasis in original) points out, the productivity of discourses also imply that they ‘define subjects authorized to speak and to act … knowledgeable practices by these subjects towards the objects which the discourse defines’. Drawing on this insight, we can achieve a different conceptualization of the actor. In this reading, the authority to speak and act is constituted by the productive power of the discourse itself. It is not inherent to the position of the actor at the outset, but to the process of securitization. When a securitizing argument is launched, it draws up boundaries (by identifying something as an existential threat to a referent object) and limits the range of acceptable policies – thus also producing an actor, by demarcating a sphere in which the actor can then legitimately undertake such policies. According to Jackson (2006: 30) ‘a particular deployment always contains one or more subject-positions from which action can be taken, and it thus contributes to the production of the actor at the same time as it reveals a particular world in which that actor can subsequently act’. The recognition of existential threat implicit in a securitization creates a particular situation of urgency, and thus seems to require action by competent actors who, in turn, are empowered to act by this situation. As put by Hagmann (2015: 22) securitization provides both points of reference for agency and asks for agency at the same time.

In sum, the re-defining of identity in the face of existential threat can have substantial effects in terms of cohesion, power and stability within the social group that is recognized as referent object, and it also produces an urgent need for an ‘actor’ and bestows this actor with authority to counter the threat. In the Russian case, the choice of Putin as prime minister in August 1999 and the pulpit it provided him with is not the focus in a post-structuralist application of ST theory. Even as prime minister, Putin was not automatically endowed with authority. Quite the contrary, as Yeltsin’s man he found himself initially in a rather weak position. What is more relevant is to reflect on how the position Putin was given was empowered by the launching of a securitizing narrative that resonated well with established positions in the Russian discursive terrain as well as those voiced by the broader political elite and public. The new and dominant discourse of existential threat painted a situation that called for urgent and united action. The securitization of the Chechen threat before and during the Second Chechen War not only served as a vehicle for the return and strengthening of a core position on Russian identity, it also produced a surprising re-unification of the fragmented Russian political elite under the auspices of the incumbent regime and became a launching pad to power for Vladimir Putin. In line with the new focus on an existential terrorist threat to Russia, certain ‘actors’ were made particularly relevant, seen as authoritative for taking the lead and standing at the helm of a united Russia at war.

Intersubjectivity and audience acceptance: Turning to the role of the audience in Copenhagen School ST, the emphasis on intersubjectivity in the establishment of an existential threat is fully in line with post-structuralist understandings. Buzan et al. even make explicit reference to Derrida when they point out that

Whether an issue is a security issue is not something individuals decide alone. Securitization is intersubjective and socially constructed: Does a referent object hold general legitimacy as something that should survive, which entails that actors can make reference to it, point to something as a threat, and thereby get others to follow or at least tolerate actions otherwise not legitimate? This quality is not held in subjective and isolated minds: it is a social quality, a part of a discursive, socially constituted, intersubjective realm. (Buzan et al., 1998: 31)

However, one could, as Buzan and colleagues sometimes seem to do, make a leap from this idea of a process of intersubjective establishment of something as an existential threat to a conception of the ‘securitizing attempt’ as a product of the individual securitizer’s words, with the ‘audience’ as a given entity with a veto role in an attempted securitization and with ‘acceptance’ as a moment of rational choice. Also possible is another reading, one which builds more on Wæver’s post-structuralist heritage and which is more helpful for understanding how war becomes acceptable in a broader public. Such a reading entails seeing the audience as a potential field into which the securitizing attempt is launched. Given the malleable yet fixed quality of discourses and the struggles between them, the discursive reception of the securitizing attempt in the ‘audience’ will be conditioned upon how well it resonates with well-established representations in the given society, but there is also room for change and appropriation of the securitizing narrative: it can be confirmed, revised – or rejected – by representations in the ‘audience’. ‘Audience’ responses to the securitizing attempt enter the discursive battle on what meaning should be attached to the object. Agreement on something as an existential threat (thereby making possible the legitimate undertaking of emergency measures) is a result of both securitizing attempts and audience responses, and takes the form of a many-layered and dominant discourse. ¹⁹

The production of the ‘consenting audience’ becomes a joint act in which both ‘securitizing actor’ and ‘audience’ participate. It should be understood as an intersubjective and negotiated process of legitimation through which sharp boundaries are established between the threat and the threatened as well as the ‘way out’, ruling ‘emergency measures’ acceptable. What Buzan et al. (1998: 27) talk about as ‘acceptance of that designation by a significant audience’ is, then, in the sense of Laclau and Mouffe, a situation when a particular securitizing discourse has become hegemonic by naturalizing this particular intervention and overpowering others in the broader public (Torfing, 1999: 103). Empirically, this is the situation when the description of the threat as ‘existential’ and of ‘the point of no return’ and the ‘way out’ given in a securitizing move (not necessarily promoted from the top of a political system) has gained enough resonance and response in the representations of the audience for emergency action to be undertaken legitimately.

The implication of this reading is that studies of securitizations should not be limited to the statements of state and political leaders, the presumably dominant voices in the construction of security. While most critiques of Copenhagen School securitization on this account have raised the normative problematique implied by the silencing of marginal voices (for an overview of critiques see McDonald, 2008: 573–575; also Hansen, 2000), the current explication critiques the insufficient attention paid to where representations of existential threat actually emerge from and how they become dominant. Security is a site of competing discourses and there are many authoritative utterances beyond those voiced from a political position (for a similar critique see Croft, 2012: 81–88; Doty, 1998: 73).

Finally, in this reading, securitization is never a stable social arrangement: securitizing claims must be reproduced continually, and no object can become so firmly established as an existential threat necessitating extra-political action that it cannot be challenged. Theoretically, the legitimacy of a policy of war can unravel via a process similar to that which made war acceptable. An intersubjective process which establishes the Other not as an existential threat but as something far less threatening to the referent object would render other policies than war more logical and acceptable. ²⁰

A study on the Russian securitization of the Chechen threat, based on this understanding of audience acceptance, must focus on how different representations of Chechnya and Russia emerging from different groups – such as the political elite, experts and journalists – worked together with official representations to define what kind of security challenge Chechnya constituted in autumn 1999. It is possible to reveal how such an intersubjective process unfolded by investigating similarities, differences and changes in representations in and across the texts of these various groups over time, and then by comparing them against the official narrative. That, in turn, makes it possible to establish how far the process of producing a consenting audience evolved during autumn 1999 and how it happened. The linguistic variations, inventions and re-articulations across the texts of all these groups underscore the intersubjective nature of the process that led to broad agreement on Chechnya as constituting an existential terrorist threat, and on the necessity of a new war. The confirmation of the official narrative in most political elite, expert and journalistic representations during autumn 1999 was a re-articulation of this narrative, which both inserted and rejected certain aspects of the threat as presented in the official language. The official securitizing narrative did not serve as a blueprint that the audience either accepted or rejected. Thus, the process that brought Chechnya into being as an existential terrorist threat was not something achieved by Prime Minister Putin in isolation: it was a collective and intersubjective endeavour. ²¹

Conclusions

While ST is both lauded and criticized for its ambitions of combining theoretical perspectives and expanding the study of security to include new issues, this article has engaged post-structuralist insights to create a framework that takes ST back to the core of security studies: the study of war and how it becomes a legitimate undertaking. Re-focusing ST back to the ‘grammar of security’ via post-structuralist insights means that the centre of analysis becomes how a securitizing multi-layered discourse shapes the understanding of the objects of which it speaks, and the material practices made logical and legitimate by this understanding. Several explications of core concepts and relations in ST stand out as a result of this theoretical re-reading.

First, representations of threat can be placed on a scale with differing degrees of danger and Otherness attached to them. While some link the object to descriptors that do not indicate danger or Otherness in negative terms, other constructions are so radical on these two accounts that the object emerges as an existential threat. Moreover, the level of threat implied in the representation delineates a boundary between the threat and the threatened, but also a boundary for acceptable action. A threat representation that can be placed at the top of the scale in terms of danger logically fits together with policy proposals that are equally radical or violent. For securitization in war this suggests that the type of representation that becomes dominant during the process of securitization has effects on how the war is waged. While it is impossible to rank different wars according to the degree of ‘cruelty’ along an objective standard, some wars are clearly more violent than others in terms of how massive and indiscriminate the violence is, and how long it can be carried out and still be acceptable. Securitizing narratives in war that cast the enemy as extremely dangerous and different make massive and indiscriminate violence possible and acceptable.

Second, expounding ST through post-structuralist insights brings material practices back into the spotlight of empirical study. By engaging a post-structuralist concept of discourse, which suggests that linguistic and material practices are intertwined and co-constitutive, securitizations are not merely words. They manifest themselves quite literally in extraordinary security practices such as detention, bombing, torture and killing. Moreover, there is a recursive effect of these material practices; they confirm and constitute the identity assigned to threat and referent object in the securitizing narrative. Surely, the original authors of the theory hardly intended that securitization should be reduced to the study of rhetorical machinations. The emergency practices that are enabled by securitizing talk are a key part of the process, and studying them gives the theory both political and critical salience.

Third, re-engaging post-structuralist insights implies loosening up the fixed understanding of the ‘securitizing actor’ and the ‘referent object’. The securitizing discourse does more than form and disempower the object that is said to be threatening. It also empowers the ‘referent object’ by producing a threatened subject and positioning it ‘above’ the threatening object, as well as producing a ‘securitizing actor’ by creating such a subject position from which action can be taken. In particular, the urgent focus and discursive detailing of the threat which a securitizing attempt in war can elicit will produce a new articulation of the Self that is said to be threatened. It might be argued that this re-articulated Self in times of war is negatively constituted, that it is more through what it is not than through what it is that the Self becomes re-defined and united. Nevertheless, no social group wages an acceptable war and remains the same. There will always be some benefit in terms of social cohesion.

Finally, when the ‘audience’ is re-conceptualized in a post-structuralist fashion, ‘audience acceptance’ becomes a joint act. It should be understood as an intersubjective process of legitimation whereby boundaries are established between the threat and the threatened as well as the ‘way out’, making ‘emergency measures’ acceptable. Conversely, this also means that securitization can unravel, through a similar intersubjective and discursive process whereby a discourse that attaches a lower level of threat to the object is gradually negotiated: the issue is de-securitized, and emergency measures then become unacceptable. Even in wars that have become acceptable, discourses that negate the representation of the enemy as radically different and dangerous, and represent the victims of war as fellow human beings, can emerge to challenge the legitimacy of continued violence. A perhaps controversial claim that follows from this explication is that when war becomes acceptable it is thanks to the discursive efforts of many. Both what Buzan et al. (1998) refer to as the ‘securitizing actor’ and ‘the audience’ contribute. By emphasizing securitization as an intersubjective process of legitimation, as suggested in this article, the spotlight is broadened beyond the war-mongering leadership to shed light on how the political opposition, experts, generals, police and especially the media not only accept but contribute to the construction of the object as an existential threat and to making war a legitimate undertaking.