Subalternization of the global south: Critique of mainstream ‘Western’ security discourses

(In)visibility of global south societies in classical security discourse

A central plank in the conceptualization, articulation and reproduction of the notion of security is power as evident in the Cold War binary which revolved around the ideological, political, cultural and economic contestation between the United States and Soviet Union (Campbell, 1990). Some global south states of Africa, Asia, Latin America, Caribbean and Pacific were drawn into the fray by virtue of their strategic, economic and geo-political value to either side conflict considered not part of this dichotomy but their relevance to either side (Nandy, 1982). In the post–Cold War era, security was also framed as an expression of cultural stratification between the good ‘west’ and the bad ‘rest’ engaged in a ‘clash of civilizations’ (Huntington, 1993), and the United States saw itself as the modern-day chief missionary to propagate Western and capitalist values either through direct coercion or indirect hegemony. Beneath the veneer of the culture and civilization are the defence and legitimization of capitalist hegemony and their attempt to reshape and control the global society through trans-border expansion and concentration of capital in a global economic elite (Robinson, 2004). Some political conflicts including civil wars and coups during the Cold War took place in global southern states, and many were linked to reaction and counter-reaction to transnational capital and the role of local states in facilitating capitalist interests through the use of state coercion and repression. These conflicts had deep transformational scars on these societies and some were driven even deeper into the vortex of underdevelopment and subaltern status in the global order.

When Francis Fukuyama (1992) made the rather naïve declaration about the ‘end of history’, he further magnified Huntington’s vision of a stratified world with US imperialism enjoying a God-given supreme status and the triumph of global capitalism as the ultimate synthesis in the Hegelian thesis–antithesis war. On the contrary, at the end of the Cold War, Western democracy and capitalism went through even more challenges with the onset of economic crisis, people protests, terrorism, cyber-wars, intra-state wars, transnational crime, ethnic conflict and increasing poverty and marginalization. These ‘new wars’, as Kaldor (2012) called them, came to represent the unsettled global security climate in the post–Cold War era. Fukuyama’s ‘history’ failed to take into consideration the inequality and exploitation created by capitalist development in many peripheral states as well as the potential of the free market system to implode through its own internal logic as we saw during the 2008 financial crisis in the United States and the wave of global people’s resistance against capitalist hegemony in the last two decades (Harvey, 2010).

Within the rubric of mainstream security assumptions was a tendency to either conceptualize global politics and conflict only in terms of competing dominant powers as in the Cold War without consideration of the significance of global south states or when global south states featured they were seen only as the evil other. For instance, an influential approach favoured by the uncompromising right-wing position was realism which focused on self-serving inter-state competition for power using military aggression, which found justification during the bipolar ideological contestation of the Cold War (Snyder, 2004). The realism is based on the Hobbesian assumption that states are in a state of war; conflict is a manifestation of human primordial tendency to inflict harm on each other. Far from reflecting history, this argument fails to recognize the fact that in many developing global south societies, the conditions for instability had been created by colonialism through arbitrary demarcation of borders, introduction of cheap foreign labour, unequal capitalist development, siphoning of profit, appropriation of land and creation of a docile and subservient elite (Mountjoy, 1971). The role of transnational capital and appropriation of local resources, exploitation of cheap labour, ethnic tension, corruption and rising inequality further exacerbated instability in the postcolonial era. These are not natural tendencies but human-created social calamities driven by transnational interests in alliance with established local elite interests.

The neo-realist theory moved away from the overtly simplistic realist position and argued that the behaviour of states is often based on regulation of self-interest through international structures and norms (Lamy, 2008). This strand of thought, together with neoliberalism, was central to the neo-conservative hawkish foreign policy stance of the United States. While the idea of global regulation works for smaller and weaker states which are often subject to international sanctions, it does not work for big powers such as the United States whose unrivalled military and economic power enables it to engage in military operations in Latin America, Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere with unrestrained aggression and unchecked impunity. The United States acts as a global policeman and imposes its definition of human rights, democracy and development on weaker states.

This position was directly at odds with liberalism which argued for potential for collective peaceful engagement between states (Copeland, 1996). The UN is often seen as the epitome of collective action, but even this has its limitations given the veto power of the five permanent members of the security council and the often unilateral decisions of the big powers. Nevertheless, the voices of the countries in the global south are quite significant in the general assembly because of their numbers which translate into individual votes.

A major departure from these three discourses was constructivism which examined inter-state dynamics in relation to how they were shaped by persuasive ideas, collective values, culture and social identities (Barnett, 2008). Central to this is the role of discursive power which draws from Foucault’s notion of power as well as Gramsci’s idea of hegemony. The global south states as active agents engage with big powers in a complex, cultural and geopolitical way by leveraging their positions within the global structure. This can be sometimes empowering for them.

While based on different and even opposing assumptions, there were common threads among these approaches. Security was defined largely in narrow Eurocentric terms. There was a basic assumption that global geopolitics was largely the preserve of the big powers because of their “advanced” political systems, dominant military capacity and ability to intervene and transform global politics. It was also assumed that geopolitics could only be fully understood in terms of interstate conflict. This was contrary to the proliferation of internal conflicts in many global south states. It seems that the global south states were insignificant entities in the big ‘white’ power posturing. While the world was seen as an even playing field where geopolitical players had the same right and capacity, the historical reality was vastly different. The globalization of capitalism and Western ethos has created a global stratification of power emanating from colonialism, exploitation and subjugation.

Wallerstein’s framing of global relations in terms of an exploitative ‘world system’ provided a more historically contextualized exposition of power differentials shaped by unequal colonial and neo-colonial relations (Chirot and Hall, 1982). Others like Cox (1981) elaborated on using a neo-Gramscian approach on hegemony, the focus being on the use of complex means of manifest and latent influences, provided the platform for domination and exploitation of weaker countries. The rise of feminism has also reshaped the theoretical contours with more focus on the role of gender in politics, militarism and ideological contestation (Grant and Newland, 1991). These theories were not necessarily discipline-specific but were shared by critical social scientists arguing from the standpoint of exploitation, domination and contention.

The socioeconomic and political transformations and conflict in some global south countries in the post–Cold War era led some to provide explanations as to the causes of wars and instability. Among the most influential security theories of the post–Cold War period was the greed and grievance approach popularized by Oxford economists Collier and Hoeffler (2004). Based on a particular interpretation of selected African experiences, such as the Sierra Leone diamond wars from 1991 to 2002, Collier and Hoeffler (2004) argued that civil wars were caused by greed over resources such as diamonds. The two exponents of this approach even used it as the basis for the World Bank’s policy framework for development and conflict. This was a significant foray by mainstream economists into the realm of conflict and security studies, and some economists even in the Pacific used it as the basis for understanding resource-based conflict and security situations (Allen, 2007).

The approach came under intense criticism because of its tendency to use single factors like greed to oversimplify complex postcolonial, political and socioeconomic situations which spawned conflict (Keen, 2000). The use of quantitative econometrics by the exponents of the greed and grievance thesis took away the significance of colonial history and people and in fact reignited the stereotypes of postcolonial people as having the primordial tendency to be greedy and fight over resources, an argument which found resonance in the biological determinist theory advocated by some European psychologists (Thayer, 2004). Many of these conflicts were directly linked to US and European corporate interests using local elites and groups as comprador agents.

Another discourse which made similar assumptions was the rational choice theory which economists have used to explain conflict over resources and power as individuals and groups attempted to maximize their gains at the minimal cost through rationalization (Amadae, 2003). In reducing individuals into micro-economic units with primordial selfish urges, the theory undermined human subjectivity and the complex dynamics of colonial and postcolonial history which helped shape conditions for conflict in postcolonial societies.

The securitization debate

The post–Cold War period saw attempts to redefine the new security climate based on subjectivity and speech act. Part of this new movement was the birth of the securitization discourse, popularized by Wæver (1995) and elaborated further by Buzan et al. (1998) of the Copenhagen School. The notion of securitization provided an alternative post-constructivist approach to the age old debate as to whether a threat can be understood as an objective reality or a reflection of subjective perception through the idea of threats as social constructions centred on speech acts. In philosophy and sociological theory, speech acts refer to the notion that through verbalization, something is done. For instance, just as naming a person brings a person into existence, uttering the word ‘security’ can be seen as an act which ensures that military, political, economic and environmental issues become real threats. Verbalization and action are symbiotically linked in what Austin (1962) referred to as a ‘performative utterance’ or ‘perlocutionary act’.

Not all speech acts can be related to securitization. Securitizing utterances have to be part of a rhetorical structure and process related to war and associated aspects such as survival, urgency, threat and defence. This, according to the Copenhagen School, makes securitization a discursive process with three rhetorical aspects: (a) the claim that the object in question is existentially threatened, (b) the right to take extra-ordinary measures to counter the threat and (c) convincing an audience that extra-legal behaviour to counter the threat is justified.

Simply framing something as ‘security’ heightens its importance and urgency, and because of this, it can be used to circumvent or even subvert democratic processes and debates.

There are a number of criticisms of the securitization school. First, it assumes that speech act is individualized and thus reduces security into an individualized European phenomenon and does not consider the broader cultural and historical specificity of societies such as the collectivity of speech acts as in many indigenous communities. Furthermore, the focus on the affirmation of the semantics of security (as opposed to desecurity) thinking probably does more harm than good, especially to postcolonial societies who are often victims of big power security intents. Thus, there is a need for conceptual shift away from securitization towards desecuritization at the level of polity rather than policy (Tjalve, 2011). Politics itself is embedded in security discourse and is manifested in terms of three major discursive trends: politics, action and intentionality; modern organization of politics, spheres and sectors; politics, ethics and science (Gad and Petersen, 2011). While the securitization theory was an attempt to open possibilities beyond military affairs (Wæver, 2010), it tends to be too narrow and lacks universal contextual relevance. The criticisms range from constructivists who find it necessary to have the theory reconfigured and fine-tuned to correspond to changing circumstances and critical postcolonial thinkers who declare it moribund.

Another criticism is that morality is not an important issue at all in securitization. Floyd (2011) who used the just war theory argues that moral righteousness of securitization is fundamental to its own legitimacy (p. 428). Without moral consideration, securitization could be a Trojan horse for all types of strategic, ideological, political, or economic forms of subjugation and exploitation as we have seen in the hegemonic US foreign policies over the years.

While there is broad acceptance of the securitization theory among some European theorists, there are serious questions about its applicability and relevance to non-Western societies (Bilgin, 2011; Sheikh, 2005; Vuori, 2008). Those who argue from the standpoint of critical security studies perceive desecuritization as a conservative process which reproduces the existing liberal order (Aradau, 2004). At the same time, those using the peace studies lenses make the point that securitization makes no morally defensible position on such issues as minorities and aids (Elbe, 2006; Roe, 2004). The theory’s Eurocentric and statist nature tends to be too analytically restrictive to be of much use in illuminating the complex security situation in postcolonial societies whose historical and cultural evolution has been shaped by complex colonial and postcolonial forces.

One of the most ardent critics of the Copenhagen School and mainstream security studies generally was the Aberystwyth School which attempted to frame security within the critical theoretical framework. Influenced by neo-Marxian dialectics, neo-Gramscian notion of hegemony and the Frankfurt School, it argued that security could only be meaningfully understood in the context of social transformation and human emancipation. Two leading figures of this school, Ken Booth (1991) and Richard Jones (2001), asserted that security was not contested and subjectively defined as the Copenhagen School contended but was related to real social conditions and human needs.

European security studies generally, including the Copenhagen School, since World War II, has been seen as self-serving and has developed a ‘Eurocentric character’ (Barkawi and Laffey, 2006: 329). This was because of how they deliberately misrepresented societies, cultures and security relations of the global south. One of the consequences of this was the caricaturization of the world in the form of self-constructed Western cultural supremacy and ignorance of historical security relations through acknowledgement of joint contribution of European and non-European cultures in making history.

Blurring the lines further: The human security dilemma

The desire to move away from the statist framing of security as was dominant in the Cold War period to a more inclusive approach incorporating broader, cultural, ideological, social and economic issues prompted the formulation of the human security discourse in the 1990s, initially by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The traditional notion of state-based ‘hard’ security, often framed around the ideas of political security, national security and state security, was extended to include a multiplicity of factors – political, social, cultural, economic, spiritual and psychological – which shape people’s sense of insecurity, fear, instability and anxiety. These arrays of disparate variables were collectively encased in the broad term human security. Increasing sense of insecurity and loss of faith in the state as a guardian of security contributed to the shift in this direction (Durodie, 2010). People were put at the centre of analysis instead of the institution of the state (Hampson and Penny, 2008).

The human security discourse was a response to the proliferation of new forms of security threats which could not be adequately captured by the confines of the traditional, state-centric national security paradigm. While it can be conceptualized as a part of the broader security discourse, its trans-disciplinary coverage spans across a diverse range of academic and policy areas such as international relations, development studies, gender studies, environmental studies, public health, economics, human rights, public policy, foreign policy and conflict/peace studies. The changing global events and conditions continually shaped and reshaped our perceptions of security, especially the specific focus of what may be considered significant in a particular context. For instance, the threats of terrorism, the impacts of globalization and mass migration have raised serious questions about identities, politics and worldviews and how these can be understood critically by framing human security through legal, international relations and human rights lenses. This is especially so when dealing with refugees, migrants and displaced and stateless persons and whether, conceptually and practically, human security can sufficiently illuminate the myriad of challenges they face (Edwards and Ferstman, 2010).

The failure of the US-led coalition in achieving its political and strategic objectives in the post-9/11 era was a clear manifestation of the inadequacy of the hard security paradigm and the need to broaden the analysis using the human security framework. While using the human security framework in this context poses considerable challenges given its ‘conceptually fuzzy’ nature, for some, it still provides a more theoretically encompassing tool to examine the multiple dimensions and dynamics of the ‘War on Terror’ (Shani et al., 2007). The War on Terror was based largely on the deployment of force, consolidation of a new global imperialist agenda through the ‘coalition of the willing’, deployment of psychological warfare and arbitrary framing of the world in terms of the ideological binary ‘the West’ versus the ‘the rest’ (Scruton, 2002). The ideological fuel which percolated and justified the wave of anti-Islamic sentiments ranged from crude propaganda through Fox News and other mainstream media to more sophisticated academic treatise such as Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis. These blurred the lines between empirical reality and myths and spawned irrational hysteria, religious intolerance and racial stereotyping. The complex interplay between socioeconomic factors, religion, political ideology, culture and militarism was beyond the realm of hard security.

While a globalized human security paradigm provides a shift in emphasis from the confinements of national security thinking, defining threat across multi-sovereign situations in the context of multiple issues becomes a challenge given the way threats and risks are defined locally and manifest themselves differently in different circumstances. This requires not only a new theoretical shift to capture the continuously changing security climate but also, in more practical terms, a change in the policy direction, capacity and roles of international organizations and civil society organizations in relation to human rights and the development of an effective intervention capacity to protect individuals from state action as well as other security threats arising from conflict, poverty, disease and environmental degradation (Battersby and Siracusa, 2009). As we shall see below, a number of criticisms have been raised about the implications of the human security approach on global south societies which have questioned its appropriateness and reliability.

Critique of the human security paradigm

Despite its appeal as an encompassing framework, the human security approach has a number of flaws. First, the term itself is too fuzzy, inconclusive and amorphous in the way it frames any potential threat and challenge in the society. While the term was initially used to escape the limitations of the hard security approach, its encompassing and holistic approach has turned out to be a liability because it ‘is so vague that it verges on meaninglessness’ (Paris, 2001: 102). Because of this, achieving consensus and legitimacy for a global human security paradigm can prove problematic because of the contending political, economic, strategic and ideological interests and positions of the major global actors.

For the big powers, the primacy of hard security is an indispensable part of their political and ideological mind frame, and commitment to human security can be questionable. For instance, the United States would see its use of deadly military technology in the form of invasions, drones, smart bombs and counter-insurgency to serve its strategic and economic interests as paramount and human security may undermine this. Because of competing strategic interests, it is not easy to agree on what human security factors should be universally adopted. The failure to arrive at a consensus on the text of the draft of the UN conference concluded on 27 July 2012 to negotiate an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a clear indication of the way in which powers such as United States and Russia, who both called for more time to negotiate, prioritize their national agenda ahead of international security interests. The UN instigated conference was an attempt to incorporate human security concerns into arms export controls, but the lack of consensus raised fundamental questions about the major countries’ commitment to the human security agenda, as well as the divergent national interests and relative power of different actors to shape global governance structures (Bromley et al., 2012). The primacy of national interests over global human security considerations by the big powers will remain a major political bottleneck in an attempt to create a global human security environment. This remains a scourge for global south countries which, through the urgings of the UN and other multilateral agencies, have put faith in the significance of human security as a panacea for their countries’ development and stability.

Second, the debates over the ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ human security frameworks have undermined emphasis on power relationships which is central to our understanding of the politics of global south societies (Chandler, 2012). This is why it is important to integrate preventive human security practices to enhance resilience and facilitate the empowerment of the vulnerable and intervention to protect victims. This becomes more imperative in a situation where hegemonic groups use their control of state institutions to project their economic and political interests at the cost of subaltern groups. For instance, using the global postcolonial discourse, D’Hauteserre (2011) in her study of colonial representation in New Caledonia demonstrated that international tourism marketing is a political statement which constructs New Caledonia as a French enclave which relegates Kanaks into a subaltern position with minimal significance. This representation reinforces the French colonial hegemony and runs counter to attempts to promote the human security of Kanaks. In other words, development projects which purport to promote human security can be a Trojan horse for more sinister political intent such as appropriation of resources, political control and cultural hegemony.

Third, the human security framework as defined and promoted by international organizations, research institutions and states tends to promote the ideological values of neoliberalism and political liberal democracy. A classic example is the widespread use of performance indexes to quantify the progress and ranking of countries as a reflection of their human security achievement. For instance, the design of the Governance Index (GI), Human Development Index (HDI), Social Protection Index (SPI) and Failed State Index (FSI), among the many, is based on the selective choice of variables which tend to promote neoliberal and Western values and achievement. The Western states are always ranked above the global south states which are always ranked towards the bottom. The underlying assumption is that to increase their human security capacity, the global south countries should emulate their developed counterparts. Potentially, this modernizationist development approach undermines the importance of basic and everyday human needs while promoting externally imposed inappropriate models of state institutions (Newman, 2011). What is required though is to redefine human security in the context of the changing demands and circumstances of development to ensure relevance to global south societies (Ştefanachi, 2011). This is especially so after the Cold War, where the impact of the normative relationship between human development and human security policies on individuals has come under greater scrutiny. This requires re-theorizing and employing alternative discourses of human security which encompasses both global transformation and local realities.

Fourth, in situations of modern conflict, the notion of human security often becomes more complex as different participants are driven by competing interests, such as corporate entities aiming to benefit financially from conflict, states who want to use conflict as a testing ground for their military power, combatants driven by claim to historical motherland or humanitarian groups intervening to stop the conflict. Even humanitarian aid is confronted with insurmountable political, legal, social and military challenges (Cahill, 2004). Creating a humanitarian space in a conflict situation becomes important to protect human dignity and human rights, especially the rights of the displaced, as well as contribute to peaceful reform and consolidation in the post-conflict transition period.

The fifth issue pertains to the misrepresentation of the link between human security and democracy. Proponents of human security often linked it to democratization, especially how states are seen as delivery mechanisms for social and economic rights through the broad inclusion of citizens in decision making and poverty reduction in the form of promotion of democratic practices, separation of powers, freedom of the press and guarantees of human rights (Large and Austin, 2006). However, while the opening up of a more participatory and enlightened political space can be conducive to enhancement of human security, there are other significant factors such as institutionalized inequality, vested economic and political interests and the hegemonic role of the dominant classes and institutions, which may undermine the democratization of citizen participation. Simply focusing on the formal and mechanical aspects of democracy such as elections, separation of powers, freedom of the press and guarantees of human rights has the potential effect of overshadowing the deeper structural causes of inequality and disempowerment within many postcolonial states. These cannot be addressed merely through formal institutional democratization. Formal democracy does not necessarily equate to progressive development; in fact, the opposite may also be true as evidenced by the high level of development of some authoritarian states such as Singapore and the high level of acute inequality and poverty in democratic states such as India.

The sixth point relates to the danger that human security can also be used as justification by hegemonic powers to intervene in postcolonial states in order that they fulfil the requirements of good governance, security, democracy and free trade. The invasion of Iraq, for instance, was justified on the basis that the country posed a threat to the region and to the world, militarily through its non-existent weapons of mass destruction and ideologically through its dictatorial tendencies. The elimination of ‘rogue states’ such as Libya and the attempted overthrow of the Syrian regime are often justified in human security terms such as ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, two rhetorical notions that some have superficially associated with human security. Thus, human security can be readily deployed as an ideological construct to camouflage the deeper strategic and economic agenda of powerful states.

The seventh criticism is that human security has been used as an ideological tool for global consensus through manipulation as propagandistic euphemism by states and various international organization groups to project a good image of self-serving and unpopular ideas and policies. Like populist but fuzzy terms like ‘development’, ‘good governance’, ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘humanity’ which invoke positive images, the term human security has been used by scholars, policy-makers, states and civil society organizations almost as a universal panacea for all social ills. Because international aid agencies such as World Bank, Asian Development Bank and UNDP use these terms as a policy tool to frame aid, recipient states will need to show commitment to human security values, including democracy and good governance as preconditions for aid disbursement. Thus, aid could be used as a tool for promoting ideological consensus rather than a way of addressing poverty.

The last point is that in more recent times a criticism of the human security agenda is that it could inadvertently undermine the international human rights regime. This is because threat to human rights which is driven by specific conditions is subsumed and lost under the broad rubric of human security (Howard-Hassmann, 2012). While human security has been associated with human rights principles, it also has the potential to undermine the primacy of civil and political rights as a strategic tool for citizens to fight for their rights against their own states. The use of the term umbrella human security concept has created confusion between previously distinct policy streams of human rights and human development (Martin and Owen, 2010). The term human rights itself has been relegated to a subservient position within the broader human security discourse thus enhancing the ambiguity more.

The intellectual and political appeal of human security seems to be waning. For instance, the UN and Canada, two original adherents of the human security discourse and policies, appear to be losing enthusiasm with the concept because of lack of clarity. Other organizations and states are following this trend as criticisms of the human security approach mount. Nevertheless, perhaps the most critical discussions on global security came from the postcolonial school which provides a much more historically and sociologically empathetic discussion of the global south societies.

The postcolonial school and security

A good starting point for the postcolonial approach to security would be Edward Said’s notion of orientalism, which was a critical deconstruction of the colonial gaze which represented the colonized in a patronizingly superficial manner and framed a new paradigm for postcolonial critique. It was a critique of the way the west (which he referred to as Occidental) deployed simplistic racial stereotypes to frame colonized peoples (Said, 1978). The distorted images, articulated in novels, films and media, become the basis not only on how the colonized people were understood in the popular European imagination but also the prism through which subaltern societies were cast as threats to the European social order and culture. The same orientalist logic, as Tariq Ali (2003) argued, was used to cast Muslims and Arabs as terrorists as major sources of threat to the west, especially since 9/11.

Said was critical of Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’, based on assumptions about cultural contestations between the west and Islam. Huntington (1993) asserted that

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics and the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. (p. 22)

In his article ‘The clash of ignorance’, Said (2001) debunked Huntington’s feeble attempt to construct static cultural boundaries in a world where cultural cross-fertilization has been part of human history and where politics and ideology rather than culture have created conditions for conflict. To Said (2001), the use of dichotomous labels like the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ by Huntington tended to ‘mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality’ (p.11). Said (2001) provides an alternative framework to understand the power dynamics which shape global security:

These are tense times, but it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis. ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ thesis is a gimmick like ‘The War of the Worlds’, better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time. (p.14)

The way the west was defined by the likes of Huntington assumed moral and cultural superiority in the global hierarchy. Stuart Hall (1996) saw it as an ideological construction where ‘the west’ = developed = good = desirable, while ‘the non-west’ = under-developed = bad = undesirable (p. 186). This discursive binary of the ‘west and the rest’ framed the dominant contemporary security discourse where the west was constantly threatened by the primordially threatening non-west.

A central plank in the west–others dichotomy is the relationship between power and security. Michel Foucault (1991) saw power as beyond the realm of the state or even organized society but was a dispersed phenomenon which shaped all relationships. Foucault (1991) saw power and security inherent in the conception of surveillance, discipline, regulation, biopolitics of population, discourses of security and governmentality, and this has some relevance in the way power and security threat are dispersed in an ever globalizing world. For Foucault, discourses of security invoke power and this is important in understanding security:

Discourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it … We must make allowances for the complex and unstable process whereby a discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart. (Foucault, 1998: 100–101)

The discourse of the west in itself provides its own association with power the same way the term postcolonial may have association with the power of resistance. The relationship between discourse and power is also explored in Stuart Hall’s (1973) meaning and power, encoding and decoding where despite multiple meanings, the dominant meaning provides a hegemonic leverage for influence by dominant interests. In security terms, this means that the meaning of security and the source of insecurity and threat are often framed and reproduced by hegemonic interests as a self-serving device.

The relationship between security, power and hegemony was manifested much more markedly in the post–Cold War era where US global interest continues to dominate. Although the United States portrayed itself as a model for democracy and a global sheriff for freedom, Noam Chomsky (2006) argues that it is a ‘failed state’ operating on a ‘single standard’ based on the premise that ‘their terror against us and our clients is the ultimate evil, while our terror against them does not exist – or, if it does, is entirely appropriate’ (p. 3). The US hegemonic desire to demonize and eventually brutalize others is seen as part of destiny, a righteous cause and a natural American right as Chomsky (2006) argued:

By now, the world’s hegemonic power accords itself the right to wage war at will, under a doctrine of ‘anticipatory self-defence’ with unstated bounds. International law, treaties, and rules of world order are sternly imposed on others with much self-righteous posturing, but dismissed as irrelevant for the United States – a longstanding practice, driven to new depths by the Reagan and Bush II administrations. (p. 3)

Influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s (2012) notion of hegemony and manufacturing consent, Herman and Chomsky (1988) make the assertion that consent to the idea of US and Western moral righteousness to wage war is part of a systematic, ideological, intellectual and cultural control through education, media and other forms of public discourse. Consent is manufactured through a complex system of corporate, media and state manipulation of ideas and propaganda rather than simply voluntary and rationalized. The invasion of Iraq was a classic case of hegemonic control of mainstream media which acted as a cheerleader and consent manufacturing machine for Bush’s warmongering adventure.

One way in which global security is played out is in the form of invoking of religion as an ideological tool for mobilization and justification. This, Tariq Ali argues, is manifestation of the return of history in a horrific form, with religious symbols playing a part on both sides represented in a politico-religious rhetoric such as ‘Allah’s revenge’, ‘God is on Our Side’, and ‘God Bless America’. The visible violence of 9/11 was the response to the invisible violence that had been inflicted on countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine and Chechnya. Some of these have been the direct responsibility of the United States and Russia. Tariq Ali (2003) argues that many of the values proclaimed by the enlightenment retain their relevance, while portrayals of the American empire as a new emancipatory project in this era ‘clash of fundamentalism’ are misguided.

The framing of postcolonial societies as threat to the west, represented by capitalism and liberal democracy, is not merely a theoretical proposition – it is also encapsulated in policy thinking. When former British Prime Minister Tony Blair labelled Africa a ‘scar on the conscience of the world’, he was reflecting on New Labour’s policy shift from ‘development/humanitarianism’ to the ‘risk/fear/threat’ category in the broader context of the ‘War on Terror’ (Abrahamsen, 2005). While the securitization of Africa helped legitimize the ‘War on Terror’, it has effectively undermined development initiatives by framing development through the mainstream Western security lenses.

While the critical framing of global security by Said, Hall, Chomsky and Ali are able to shed light on the intricate hegemonic power relationship between Western powers and postcolonial societies, they ironically also replicate Huntington’s west versus rest dichotomy, although using different analytical approaches. Rather than looking at this relationship as a simple dichotomy, we need to recognize the diverse actors and forces at play. For instance, within postcolonial societies there are some elites who are ideologically supportive of the west, and in the west there are active modes of resistance against Western hegemony. Often elites of both Western and postcolonial states share similar interests and are sometimes connected by common economic and political agendas. For many subaltern postcolonial societies, threat to their economic survival and political empowerment can be both internal and external. Analysis of postcolonial security needs to move away from the simplistic dichotomy approach to one which is more encompassing and multi-level.

Conclusion

The need to understand the place of global south societies in the security discourse is due in part to the way mainstream security thinking has rendered invisible and undermined their value and significance in the global scheme of things. Their culture, religion and interests are seen as at odds with and often a threat to Western culture. Yet the interaction between Western and non-Western cultures over the years and the role of global south societies in promoting peace and stability are hardly acknowledged.

The historical links between the west and global south is a result of colonialism when new states were created to serve colonial interests, colonies were used as sources of raw materials and cheap labour and colonial states were created in the image of the colonizers. Resistance to colonial rule and later neo-colonial influence manifested themselves in many forms. To many global south societies, threat emanates from the hegemonic manipulations of external powers and interests, whether economic, ideological, or political.

The failure of the mainstream security approaches such as realism, neo-realism, liberalism, constructivism, securitization, greed and grievance and human security to explain and make sense of the postcolonial history and reality is a dangerous precedent. It is dangerous because it ferments prejudice and ignorance in a world where globalized engagement of ideas and cultures is critical for global peace. Instead of dismissing them as totally irrelevant to postcolonial security, it is important to subject them to critical analysis and recognize their potential contribution to the theoretical debates. Even alternative critical theories which claim to advocate for the global south need critical scrutiny. No notion of security can validly claim universal validity at all times and in all circumstances. Security changes and so do its explanatory and justificatory narratives.

Alternative narratives of security based on syncretism (accommodation of multiple positions) that take into consideration recognition of global citizenry and equal status in the global geopolitical relationships must be sought. This includes a counter-narrative that provides empathy towards other cultures and religions, and their legitimate place in the global system could be the starting point for what Gramsci refers to as counter-hegemony. This counter-hegemony should be transformational and geared towards deconstructing the dominant security paradigm and creating conditions for greater peaceful engagement. This may sound idealistic, but idealism matters in a world where discourses and narratives continue to shift and reconfigure as they redefine our place in a postmodern world.