From securitization moves to positive outcomes: The case of the spring 2010 Mekong crisis

Introduction

Securitization theory has been considered one of the most promising conceptual developments in the field of post-Cold War security studies. According to its ‘creators’, the so-called Copenhagen School, any public issue can be located on a spectrum ranging from non-politicized, through politicized, to securitized. For the Copenhagen School, an issue that is non-politicized is one with which the state does not deal, and one that is not a matter of public debate and decision, whereas a politicized issue is part of public policy and requires government decision and resource allocation. A securitized issue, finally, is ‘presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 23–24). The focus of the theory has been on securitized issues, with securitization defined as a process in which ‘an actor declares [through speech acts] a particular issue … to be an “existential threat” to a particular referent object’ (McDonald, 2008a: 69). Equally important, however, at least for the present article, is the concept of politicization, which, for the Copenhagen School, implies ‘mak[ing] an issue appear open, a matter of choice, something that is decided upon’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 29). In terms of their relation to each other, securitization therefore constitutes the ‘intensification of politicization’ in such a way that a securitized issue is regarded as being ‘so important that it should not be exposed to the normal haggling of politics’ (p. 29).

Although securitization has been the focus of the theory, in the larger debates about the value of security the Copenhagen School has taken the position that security is a negative concept and thus also regards securitization as something that should be avoided. Precisely, the Copenhagen School has posited that ‘security should be seen as a negative, as a failure to deal with issues of normal politics’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 29). Other scholars have supported the Copenhagen School stance. Williams (2003: 523), for example, has argued that security should always ‘be invoked with great care and, in general, minimized rather than expanded’. Likewise, Emmers (2010: 142) has emphasized the dangers of securitization in that it could ‘be abused to legitimize and empower the role of military or special security forces in civilian activities’, especially in non-democratic settings.

Consequently, the Copenhagen School has voiced a preference for desecuritization, which has most clearly been defined by Williams (2003: 523) as ‘moving issues off the security agenda and back into the realm of … political discourse and “normal” political dispute and accommodation’. More precisely, Wæver (1995: 57) has stated that desecuritization is ‘more effective than securitizing problems’. Buzan et al. (1998: 29) have seconded that desecuritization is the ‘optimal long-range option’, for it moves issues out of the ‘threat–defense sequence’. In this sense, it also becomes clear that the Copenhagen School has favored politicization over securitization, or ‘normal’ over ‘extraordinary’ politics.

Meanwhile, the Copenhagen School has also been criticized for its rationale. While Aradau, for example, has opined that securitization produces categories of ‘us’ versus ‘them’, she has likewise held that, ‘as its mirror image, desecuritization suffers from the same contradictions that plague the concept of securitization’ (Aradau, 2004: 389). Taking a different view, Floyd (2007: 342–343) has contended that there might be something such as ‘positive securitization’, which deals with a security problem ‘faster, better and more efficiently’ than politicization in terms of process, and benefits the many, rather than the few, in terms of outcome, whereas there might also be something such as ‘negative desecuritization’ if an issue completely disappears from public policy. In a similar vein, albeit against a different background, Roe (2012: 250) has argued that the ‘lack of openness and deliberation’ in processes of securitization has been ‘overexaggerated’, and that the ‘mode of extraordinary politics’ may also ‘serve to reveal more non-divisive referents and cooperative practices’.

As a result, the debates about the positive/negative value of securitization, in terms of both process and outcome, are still in full swing. This article acknowledges the original Copenhagen School position that securitization is to be avoided because it creates ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’, and that politics is to be favored over security. At the same time, the article amends the Copenhagen School rationale by focusing on the underexplored concept of securitization failure and its outcomes. More precisely, the article argues that securitization moves that fail to succeed (i.e. that end in securitization failure) can, at least in the environmental sector of security, trigger positive outcomes if the issue becomes (re)politicized rather than depoliticized. This is because securitization moves can be helpful in terms of gaining an audience’s attention regarding an issue in the first place. Subsequently, the argument continues, different audience strategies determine whether the securitization moves are turned into securitization failure as (re)politicization or securitization failure as depoliticization. The article introduces different behavioral strategies that audiences can employ to reject securitization moves: the passive recipient strategy, the blocking strategy, and the active reshaping strategy. Only the latter indicates that an audience not interested in letting the securitization moves succeed simultaneously seeks to have the issue in question be, or remain, a part of the political agenda. The remainder of this article will first elaborate in depth on the theoretical arguments and innovations to which I have just alluded. Subsequently, the article will turn to a test case, the spring 2010 Mekong crisis, in order to corroborate the theoretical arguments empirically.

Securitization moves that fail and their outcomes

The Copenhagen School has argued that threat declarations come in the form of ‘speech acts’ (Wæver, 1995: 55). At the same time, security speech acts are not regarded as being synonymous with instances of actual – that is, successful – securitization. Rather, the Copenhagen School has incorporated the differentiation between full ‘securitization’ and a ‘securitization move’ preceding successful securitization (Buzan et al., 1998: 25). Commonly, securitization theorists have laid their focus on analyzing cases of actual securitization, where an issue perceived as a threat actually succeeded in becoming a matter of security. However, this does not always happen. Rather, attempts to securitize an issue may remain unsuccessful (p. 25) – that is, securitization moves may fail. However, how exactly these securitization failures occur, what their consequences are, and how to distinguish these failures from related concepts have remained undertheorized aspects of securitization theory.

Wæver (2000: 252–253) has maintained that securitization moves can fail because (1) the securitizing actor does not follow the ‘grammar of security’; (2) the securitizing actor is not in a position of authority; or (3) the ‘conditions historically associated with a threat’ are absent. Another option, however, is conspicuously missing from this list, and this is probably because the Copenhagen School has been somewhat ambiguous about whether securitization is a ‘self-referential’ practice (Buzan et al., 1998: 24) or ‘intersubjective’ (p. 31). The problem, as Balzacq (2005) has correctly found, is that securitization cannot be both self-referential and intersubjective at the same time. For those following the latter variant – the group to which this author belongs – speech acts are perlocutionary (i.e. they involve doing something by saying something) and not illocutionary (i.e. doing something in saying something) (see Austin, 1962). The perlocutionary speech act is one that ‘gets someone else to do something’ (Floyd, 2010: 52). Accordingly, speech acts require someone to receive them and to decide on how to handle them – that is, whether to accept or reject them, with the latter resulting in securitization failure. This role is played by what the Copenhagen School has termed the ‘audience’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 25). Although the audience constitutes another underdeveloped concept of securitization theory (see the next section), the Copenhagen School has actually acknowledged that non-acceptance of securitization moves on the part of the audience entails securitization failure (p. 25).

Aside from these rather preliminary deliberations on securitization failure on the part of the Copenhagen School, it has primarily been Salter (2008, 2011) who has elaborated on this aspect of securitization theory more extensively and more categorically. In particular, Salter shows that through carving out different stages of the securitization process, different securitization failures become possible – and thus, this author would add, different outcomes as well.

At this point, however, it is worthwhile first to refer to what has been written about the outcomes of the related concept of desecuritization. Importantly, as Salter (2011: 116) has correctly stated, ‘failed securitizing moves are not desecuritizing moves, which entails [sic] a reversal of a previous successful securitization’. In accordance with the aforementioned Copenhagen School securitization spectrum, Floyd (2007) has shown that desecuritization can lead to either the politicization or the depoliticization of an issue. That is to say, for her, following desecuritization, the issue in question either re-emerges on the ‘political agenda’ or disappears from it altogether. In a similar vein, Hansen (2012: 539–545) has identified four different modes of desecuritization, among them ‘rearticulation’ and ‘silencing’. While rearticulation, according to Hansen, is defined as when an issue is moved from being securitized to being politicized owing to a resolution of the threats and dangers underpinning the original securitization, silencing means that desecuritization takes the form of a depoliticization.

With regard to securitization failure, nothing stands in the way of suggesting that the same logic is generally possible. On the one hand, securitization moves that fail may, as a consequence, lead to the issue in question totally losing momentum and therefore dropping out of the political sphere altogether (‘securitization failure as depoliticization’). On the other hand, it is likewise conceivable that failed securitization moves find themselves on the escalation stage of politicization, as they cannot make it to full securitization but nonetheless remain part of public policy and are debated and decided upon in a rather open and non-exclusive way (‘securitization failure as politicization’).

That said, which outcome is to be seen as positive and which negative? For Floyd (2007), it has been clear that, at least in the environmental sector, depoliticization represents the negative outcome, whereas politicization constitutes the positive outcome. This makes sense because, in the environmental sector, it is apparent that political concern and public debate are often more conducive to a problem being resolved than if it were to become depoliticized and thus sink into oblivion. It might be objected that, in the environmental sector, technical solutions are sometimes preferable and that politicization could burden or delay these solutions. However, it can likewise be assumed that the implementation of technical solutions usually requires previous political decisionmaking in the first place. No decisionmaking owing to a lack of political interest means no solution either. As this article is also set in the context of the environmental sector, it follows Floyd’s general logic and similarly argues that securitization failure as politicization is to be seen as the more positive outcome. In other security sectors, this may or may not be the case, principally depending on whether political concern and public debate can help mitigate a problem (as might be the case if a group of socio-economically underprivileged people intended to securitize social welfare cuts) and do not imply giving a specific issue an inappropriate stage for discussion (as might be the case if a group of neo-Nazis sought to securitize immigration).

However, a fuller explanation is necessary. Even though the crossing of thresholds on the securitization spectrum may generally be hard to pin down exactly (see e.g. McDonald, 2008b), Salter (2011: 120) has argued that ‘every securitization requires a prior politicization’. If this is correct, it means that securitization moves that fail to succeed, and therefore leave an issue in the domain of politics, never actually see this issue change its escalation stage (‘securitization failure as repoliticization’). If this is the case, then, what is the added value of the securitization moves in such a scenario in the first place? Two points can be made here. First, politicization of an issue does not tell us what exact status this particular issue enjoys vis-à-vis other issues in the overall political debate or which parts of a ruling elite are actually involved. Securitization moves that fail can help an issue formerly at the periphery of political debate gain center stage during the time of the moves, as they increase the attention towards the issue in question. Second, if an issue involves more than one country but has not previously become politicized in all of them, securitization moves in one of the countries in which the issue has already become a matter of politics may help the issue gain attention in those countries that have not yet elevated the issue to the political realm. In other words, in cases where at least two levels of players are involved – as is often the case in the environmental security sector – failed securitization moves can facilitate the push of an issue across a national border to make a national issue an international one and thus open up previously non-existent channels of dialogue.

As a result, securitization failure as (re)politicization does provide some value added. While the original purpose in cases of successful securitization – that is, to legitimate and garner support for taking action outside the normal bounds of the political procedure in order to neutralize the existential threat (Buzan et al., 1998: 22) – is not fulfilled, the rejected securitization moves nevertheless help raise awareness of the issue in question. After failure, (re)politicization, figuratively speaking, provides new fertile ground to start or deepen debates, reach new agreements, and take decisions that can lead to more cooperation in an effort eventually to further the resolution of the given issue. In this sense, securitization failure as (re)politicization represents a positive outcome in the environmental sector of security.

The role of the audience in determining the outcomes of securitization failure

It has been stated earlier that security speech acts are treated as perlocutionary in this article, thus requiring an audience to receive them and, more crucially, to also determine their acceptance (leading to successful securitization) or rejection (implying securitization failure). Others, however, have regarded security speech acts as illocutionary (see above) and have therefore questioned the need for an audience in securitization theory (see e.g. Floyd, 2010). A vivid illustration of an insignificant audience role might be found in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was carried out despite large demonstrations against it – that is, without the acceptance of the (popular) audience. While Floyd may have a point – namely, that the political elite frequently do what they like regardless of audience input – it seems a different matter in instances where the securitizer is not the state but represented by non-state actors. Non-state actors must be considered far less likely to successfully securitize an issue without the consent of governments, which are usually the ones to exercise the emergency actions then required. Therefore, the role of the audience cannot easily be dismissed across the board.

Generally speaking, however, as with securitization failure, the Copenhagen School has not been very detailed on the specifics of the concept of the audience. Particularly, the question of how to identify the relevant audience at all has lacked clarity. Among the first to think about the audience in more conceptual ways was Balzacq (2005, 2011). For him, the audience is whoever has a direct causal relationship with the issue and the ability to enable the securitizing actor to take measures to cope with the threat (Balzacq, 2011: 9). Moreover, Balzacq (2005: 185) has also argued that ‘actors seek to convince as broad an audience as possible’. This has opened the door for thinking about multiple audiences. The most valuable attempt in this context comes from Salter (2008), whose understanding of the different audiences possibly involved in receiving securitization moves is the most nuanced. Drawing on dramaturgical analysis, Salter differentiates between four different audiences. These are the popular, the (political) elite, the technocratic, and the scientific audiences. Every securitization move can address several, but does not have to address all of these audiences, and can be successful with some yet fail with others (Salter, 2008: 322).

That said, when securitization failure is generally possible as depoliticization and (re)politicization and when audiences are key to securitization failure in the first place, it stands to reason that audiences also make for the respective outcome of securitization failure. Balzacq’s and Salter’s advancements of the concept of audience, although also valuable for the empirical case presented in this article, do not, however, explore the questions of audience behavior beyond the point of a very straightforward acceptance-versus-rejection dichotomy. In contrast, this article argues that audiences can, in fact, employ behaviorally different rejection strategies, which also lead to different outcomes on the securitization spectrum.

The first outcome, depoliticization, can be reached through two distinct rejection strategies: one option might be termed the passive recipient strategy. Confronted with securitizing moves, this strategy is simply to ignore them until they abate and eventually stop. But how to make sure that ignoring securitization moves is not tantamount to silent consent and thus acceptance of the moves? Here, it is helpful to refer to the argument made that perlocutionary speech acts not only require an actor and an audience, but also require two events. Jackson (2006), for example, has posited that rhetoric is not sufficient to securitize an issue. Rather, securitization is better described as the ‘process whereby an issue is understood as urgent, is placed onto the political agenda … and subsequent action is taken’ (Jackson, 2006: 315, emphasis in original). Similarly, Roe (2008: 632) has stated that ‘speaking security is not the same as doing security’. As for indicators of whether action was actually taken, Caballero-Anthony and Emmers (2006: 7) have mentioned aspects such as resource allocation trends, legislation, and institutionalization. Following this rationale, it should be possible to determine whether ignoring securitization moves is tantamount to accepting or rejecting them. The second option entailing depoliticization can be referred to as the blocking strategy. With this second strategy, in contrast to the first one the audience does make a reply, but also makes it very clear that it does not consider the issue a security matter and, additionally, does not see the need to discuss the issue any further. Sooner or later, this takes the wind out of the actor’s sails and the securitization attempts peter out.

Another possible outcome of securitization failure is (re)politicization. This happens when the audience rejects the securitization moves by means of an active reshaping strategy. On the one hand, the audience pursuing this strategy still does not consider the issue a matter to be securitized and also communicates this attitude clearly in a first step, thereby establishing a securitization failure. On the other, however, and crucially, the audience subsequently seeks to ease (some of) the actor’s concerns and/or brings in its own ideas on how to deal with, or even solve, a given issue. The result is that during and after the reshaping, the issue in question loses its ‘security connotation’ and (again) becomes a matter of politics to be discussed in a rather open and non-exclusive manner.

Testing the theoretical arguments: The spring 2010 Mekong crisis

The Mekong is among the longest rivers in the world as it flows first through China and then continues into Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea. The Mekong is also the lifeline for some 65 million basin inhabitants making their living directly off the river (Babel and Wahid, 2009: 11). At the same time, the river is facing a new era of large-scale hydropower development. China, the most upstream riparian country, has a series of dams already in operation (Biba, 2012; see also Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The Mekong, its riparian countries, and the mainstream dams.

From January to April 2010, water levels in the lower Mekong had shrunk dramatically. According to the Mekong River Commission (MRC) – the (then) prime governance body of the Mekong established in 1995 and consisting of representatives from the four countries of Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam (hereafter: the Mekong downstream riparian countries, MDRCs), while also having China as a dialogue partner – water levels in the Mekong had widely sunk to a record low (MRC, 2010a). Broadly speaking, the impacts included fewer fish catches, less water for the irrigation of agriculture, for livestock and for drinking, and suspended river transportation affecting trade and tourism (Middleton, 2011: 17). The duration and severity of the situation turned the low water levels into a regional crisis during which many started to blame the Chinese dams on the upper reaches of the Mekong mainstream for storing water and thus causing, or at least contributing to, these lowest-ever water levels in the lower basin. From late February to early April, an outcry could be heard in the MDRCs as many saw their livelihoods endangered. Local communities directly affected by the low water levels, regional and international activist and NGO groups committed to sustainable development, and the media inside the region launched a week-long series of articles that were harshly critical of China’s dam-building – even though its precise role in the crisis has remained somewhat inconclusive to this day.

In the following, the article will first present the critique of the Chinese dams as attempts by the non-state actors mentioned to securitize Chinese dam-building, as this activity was seen as a direct threat to people’s livelihoods and thus to their food security and economic base. Subsequently, the article will demonstrate that the relevant audiences rejected these securitization moves. Finally, the article will show that the resulting securitization failure ended in a (re)politicization of the issue and thus produced several positive outcomes.

Before doing so, however, a few words on methods, particularly with regard to data collection and data analysis, are expedient. The empirical case study makes use of a wide set of primary sources in accordance with the actors and audiences involved. Most significant are English news articles from regional outlets. This use of English sources might be seen as controversial. However, it makes sense because the securitizing actors and audiences came from different countries. Through coverage of the crisis in English, some of the most widely circulated regional news outlets (such as the Bangkok Post and the Nation in Thailand, the Thanh Nien News in Vietnam, the Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia, the Vientiane Times in Laos, and the China Daily in China) ensured that everybody involved would understand each other. This not only applied for news articles, but also for other primary sources issued in English by NGOs or the MRC, for example. As the overall amount of both securitization moves during the spring 2010 Mekong crisis and the responses from the relevant audiences was quite impressive, this article can only focus on some of the most relevant speech acts and responses. In addition, some 30 interviews conducted with local activists and NGO employees, journalists, university professors, experts from think-tanks, as well as MRC and government officials in China and the MDRCs during the summer and fall of 2012, helped fill in on some ‘dark spots’ left behind where no official/public documents were available or traceable.

Securitization moves during the crisis

The Copenhagen School has stated that, generally speaking, many different actors can assume the role of the securitizer. However, its members also hold that different actors are placed in different ‘positions of power by virtue of being generally accepted voices of security’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 31). States have therefore often been considered the most critical actors of securitization, whereas for the individuals threatened it is usually deemed hard to speak security and be heard without assistance – even more so in non-democratic settings like the MDRCs (with the exception of Thailand, at least in early 2010). Yet advocacy for individuals may come in the form of activist and lobbying NGOs committed to effective action on environmental issues. Likewise, media may support individuals in that they may function as a multiplier of their concerns.

During the spring 2010 Mekong crisis, it was primarily the Save the Mekong Coalition (SMC) that provided advocacy for the individuals affected. The SMC itself is a network of NGOs, community groups, academics, journalists, artists, fishers, farmers, and ordinary people both from within the Mekong countries and internationally. It can be seen as the Mekong activists’ ‘umbrella mechanism’. While the views of many activists were repeatedly cited in a large number of news articles during the crisis, the SMC also issued its own statements, the first of which came out on 14 March. The piece began by stating that

the loss of fisheries, crops, livestock and drinking water has struck the livelihoods, food security and economies of some of the region’s poorest communities…. [T]hese communities have few alternative means to see them through this disaster. (SMC, 2010a: 1)

Subsequently, the connection to the Chinese dams on the upper Mekong mainstream was made:

[the] dams in China have been built without consultation, apology, disclosure of data, compensation or restitution, all of which are now long overdue…. The role that these dams played in earlier droughts has never been clarified or communicated; instead the facts have often been muddied. (SMC, 2010a: 2)

Following this statement, on 3 April a public protest in front of the Chinese embassy in Bangkok was organized under the SMC umbrella, and a letter of complaint for the attention of the Chinese premier and government, open and available online, was handed over. The letter put the blame directly on the Chinese dams, stating that they had ‘caused the water level to rise and fall rapidly and abnormally both during the flood and dry seasons’, thereby precipitating ‘huge impacts on ecosystems, natural resources, food security, cultures, social well-being, local economies, trade and tourism in the lower Mekong countries’ (SMC, 2010b: 1). Moreover, the letter extended the threat perspective beyond the 2010 events and also speculated on possible future catastrophes. In detail, this paragraph on future calamities read:

Finally, we raise our concern over a potentially devastating consequence of building dams on the upper Mekong River in China, which may cause the end of Mekong civilization itself. The large amount of water stored in the reservoirs … is located on a powerful fault-line…. If there is an earthquake … it could also destroy one of these dams. Our fear here is that the massive amount of water unleashed from one dam will flow rapidly downstream breaking the dams downstream in a domino effect. Wouldn’t you agree that the Mekong river communities are gravely at risk from this threat? (SMC, 2010b: 2)

Significantly, the individuals and the SMC were supported by the regional media, particularly in Thailand and Vietnam. The media, while on the one hand being audiences to the speech acts of involved individuals and the SMC, also picked up on the crisis and turned into a pivotal actor, multiplying the views that they had received. In this context, the Thai media played an outstanding role. As Thailand was the only country among the MDRCs whose political system still had some fairly democratic characteristics at the time, the media there were relatively free. Consequently, the two most widely circulated English newspapers in the country, the Bangkok Post and the Nation, covered the crisis extensively – that is, they launched an entire series of articles over several weeks and (mostly) sided against the Chinese dams. Among the highlights were two editorials published by the Bangkok Post. The first, which already appeared on 25 February, ran the headline ‘China’s Dams Killing Mekong’ and, among other things, referred to ‘the adverse impact caused by the [Chinese] dams to the ecological system of the river basin and to the millions of people living downstream’ (Bangkok Post, 2010a). The second editorial was released on 10 March and stated:

For close to a decade, there has been widespread criticism of China’s actions along the Mekong. The current emergency, with millions of lives affected, simply adds urgency to the problem. (Bangkok Post, 2010b)

An illustrative example of the coverage in the Nation could be read on 2 April and was headlined ‘The Mekong: A Matter of Life and Death’. The article particularly accentuated the possible impacts on people’s livelihoods as it stated:

Unless something substantial and tangible is done as soon as possible, the current drought affecting the Mekong River will become a new regional crisis that will affect some 60 million people who depend directly on this majestic river. (Nation, 2010a)

The Vietnamese press was also quite active in supporting the securitization moves. In particular, the Thanh Nien News, one of the most widely circulated newspapers in Vietnam, also released in English, covered the crisis as extensively as its Thai counterparts and voiced equally sharp criticism. One rather expressive example is an article published on 15 March that declared that ‘the biggest threat to the stretch of water [i.e. the Mekong] that supplies life and sustenance to millions was the collection of upstream hydropower dams slowly sucking it dry’. Moreover, the same article quoted an expert who stated that ‘the sheer scale of China’s engineering to harness the power of the Mekong and change its natural flow was setting off alarm bells’ (Thanh Nien News, 2010a).

In Cambodia and Laos, however, the behavior of the media was notably different from that of their counterparts in Thailand and Vietnam. The Phnom Penh Post released a few pieces on the crisis, but instead told the story of how the situation was perceived in Thailand (see e.g. Phnom Penh Post, 2010a,b). In one article, however, the executive director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia stated that ‘the development of dams … suggested that the series along the Mekong would severely affect the livelihoods of people living in communities along the river’ (Phnom Penh Post, 2010b). The Vientiane Times (2010a,b), in contrast, conspicuously avoided speculating on the reasons for the low Mekong water levels at the time. We will return to this later.

Apart from outlining the securitization moves, it is also important to define what was actually demanded by the securitizing actors, as this both helps later to determine the extent to which securitization failed and also makes clear what a successful securitization would have looked like and entailed. The SMC letter to the Chinese government mentioned above gives some useful indication in these regards. As the letter rather straightforwardly put it, the SMC’s ‘demands’ were that the Chinese: (1) ‘stop building all dams’ on the upper Mekong mainstream; (2) release data detailing the dam operation schemes as well as past hydrological records before dam-building started; (3) ratify the UN Watercourse Convention regulating non-navigational uses of international watercourses; and (4) establish a joint committee (together with the MDRCs but also representing the affected people) whose mission it should be to manage the river in a ‘just and sustainable way’, also revising the management of the completed dams (SMC, 2010b: 2). Although the final aspect talks about a ‘joint’ committee, it becomes immediately apparent from this list of ‘demands’ that successful securitization would have pitted the SMC and its followers against the Chinese, for all the demands were in direct opposition to the hydro-political approach taken by China towards its transboundary rivers (see Biba, 2014: 25).

Meanwhile, from a theoretical point of view, it might still be argued that the demands made did not (clearly) indicate ‘actions outside the normal bounds of politics’, which securitization usually requires (see above). However, it should be kept in mind that the distinction between ‘normal politics’ and ‘emergency politics’ is a difficult one. Consequently, Abrahamsen (2005: 59) has importantly militated against a ‘sharp’ distinction and instead held that ‘rather than emergency action, most security politics is concerned with the much more mundane management of risk’. Also seeking to clarify the distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘emergency’, Jutila (2006: 172) has maintained that ‘“emergency politics” and securitizing acts might be understood as initiatives made in the name of a collective in order to save it from future disaster and extermination’. The SMC’s demands certainly sought to manage the risk of future disaster.

The responses of the audiences: Establishing securitization failure

While the previous section demonstrates that securitization moves were made during the spring 2010 Mekong crisis, the questions now are who was addressed by the moves and how those addressed responded. As a matter of fact, when the SMC protested in front of the Chinese embassy in Bangkok and handed over its letter of complaint to the Chinese (see above), it also presented a second letter, this one addressed to the Thai government and the MRC. This second letter pressed the addressees to ‘revise their stance towards the Chinese government regarding dam building on the upper Mekong River’ and to ‘cooperate with other Mekong governments to urge the Chinese government to review their operation of the upper Mekong dams’ (SMC, 2010c). As a result, and in accordance with the way in which Salter (2008) has disaggregated the audience (see above), the governments of the four MDRCs functioned as (political) elite audiences, while the MRC, as the Mekong’s prime governance body possessing the tools and resources to gain enormous technical data on the river, combined the roles of technocratic and scientific (expert) audiences.

Turning to the actual MDRC/MRC responses, which overlapped with recurring securitization moves in the time period from early February to early April 2010, none of these audiences left any doubt that they did not accept the securitization moves. As will be demonstrated shortly, none of the audiences echoed the criticism of the Chinese dams as an undoubted reason for the crisis. At the same time, however, and more noteworthy even, there were noticeable differences as to how exactly the various audiences rejected the moves. Much of these differences related to country-specific contextual factors.

Beginning with the four MDRC governments, the Lao side, as mentioned earlier, was not confronted with securitization moves coming directly from domestic or Lao-based foreign actors. This was largely because Laos is a non-democratic country with a central government that is relatively strong vis-à-vis an almost non-existent NGO sector (interview with representative from the Challenge Program on Water and Food in the Mekong [CPWF Mekong], 2012). In addition, the Lao government has itself several dam-building projects on the Mekong and its tributaries in their planning and construction stages, and the Chinese have played a role in the implementation of these plans and in other (related) infrastructure development projects (Reilly, 2012: 82–86). As a result, no official reactions could be heard. Instead, the Lao government simply ignored the securitization moves coming from other MDRCs, as it was not interested in any publicity regarding potential adverse impacts of Mekong dam-building. This reaction accordingly represented an illustrative case of what was earlier termed a passive recipient strategy seeking depoliticization.

In contrast, the Cambodian government did not remain silent. Minister of Water Resources and Meteorology Lim Kean Hor, for example, was adamant that ‘some parts of China, Thailand and Laos are currently facing drought’ and that the cause was ‘low rainfall and climate change’. As far as the Chinese dams were concerned, he stressed that the ‘current drought situation on the upper stream is not caused by the hydropower dam projects’, since ‘the dam projects have been studied and found not to cause any significant environmental impact’ (Phnom Penh Post, 2010a). In comparison with Laos, Cambodia has an active NGO sector, which had also managed to get its voice heard in the Cambodian media (see above). At the same time, there is almost no country in Southeast Asia that is more dependent on the Chinese for aid and investment than Cambodia (Reilly, 2012: 79–82). Consequently, the Cambodian government resorted to what was earlier called a blocking strategy, thereby fully refuting a possible role of the Chinese dams in the crisis and simultaneously indicating that further discussions on the matter were not welcome.

The Vietnamese and Thai governments took yet another approach to responding to the securitization moves. On the one hand, the Vietnamese side was rather silent. The Thanh Nien News (2010b) only reported on 29 March that Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung was ‘expected to talk to Chinese officials about the Mekong River and current problems with water resources on the sidelines of the [MRC] summit’ to be held in early April. On the other hand, however, it must be kept in mind that Vietnam, like Laos and Cambodia, is an autocratic state without freedom of the press. The mere fact that criticism of the Chinese dams, as outlined above, could be launched in the Vietnamese press in the first place was indicative of government consent. Furthermore, that official reactions did not follow up on the media views also showed that the government had no intentions of confronting China directly, but instead wanted to express its criticism in ways that were subtle enough to leave communication channels open (interview with Vietnamese scholar, 2012).

Last, but not least, Thailand’s political elite was most active among the MDRCs in responding to the securitization moves. Most prominently, on 8 March, it was reported that then Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva did

not think China had intentionally brought suffering to downstream countries. The cause of the current water shortage must be investigated first and Thai authorities will look up the agreements on international water management to see what they could do next…. It is still too early to conclude that China should be blamed for not releasing water retained upstream. (Nation, 2010b)

Statements made by other high-ranking officials seconded this view. For example, Thailand’s then Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti stated that the ‘Chinese dams were not a big contributing factor to the drought in the Mekong basin’. At the same time, however, he conceded that ‘the problem is that we don’t have sufficient information about water in Chinese dams and we also have a problem of water management’. Therefore, ‘better solutions for water management’ had to be found, ‘otherwise we will face drought in the dry season and flood in the wet season’ (Nation, 2010c).

When we compare the responses of the Lao and Cambodian governments with those of their Vietnamese and Thai counterparts, the difference becomes striking. Unlike the former, the latter seemed interested in using the opportunity presented by the crisis and the pressure from non-state actors to seek more Chinese cooperation on the matter. On the one hand, the latter’s official statements left some room for speculation as to the possible role of the Chinese dams in the crisis; on the other, all statements of the Vietnamese and Thai governments emphasized, in one way or another, that the Chinese side should be engaged with. This kind of behavior coincides with the audience strategy of reshaping securitization moves, namely, steering an issue away from confrontational security connotations while simultaneously leaving it open to further and joint discussions in the realm of politics.

Apart from making individual responses, the MDRCs also turned to the MRC. This was not just because it is one of the MRC’s prime functions to generate scientific knowledge on the river. Even more importantly perhaps, the MRC is an intergovernmental organization whose top decisionmaking body consists of ministerial- and cabinet-level representatives of its member states, the MDRCs. This meant that the dissemination of the MRC’s findings could be controlled by the MDRC governments. As one MRC employee observed, the organization was indeed pressed to deliver results quickly, turning the organization into the actual spearhead of response to the securitization moves (interview with MRC official I, 2012). In late February and early March, respectively, the MRC first issued a news release (MRC, 2010a) and then published a technical report (MRC, 2010b) focusing explicitly on the spring 2010 situation and relating it to ‘severe drought conditions’. Moreover, on 16 March, then Chief Executive Officer of the MRC Secretariat Jeremy Bird (2010) wrote an op-ed for the Bangkok Post. In condensed form, Bird’s key messages were that, first, ‘low water levels in the Mekong and its tributaries are the result of extreme natural conditions’; second, Chinese dams, once they are fully operational, ‘will lead to increased dry season flows downstream’; and third, the MRC ‘is engaging with China to better understand how dams and other human activities on the river impact on those downstream’.

Notably, Bird’s op-ed reflected – and in fact accentuated – the Vietnamese and Thai strategies of seeking not to blame but rather to engage with China. Possible explanations for this approach include: first, that the MDRCs were all eager to ‘hide behind the MRC’. In particular, this applied to the smaller MDRCs of Laos and Cambodia, which had the least interest in antagonizing China (interview with CPWF Mekong representative, 2012). Second, CEO Bird regarded it as his ‘personal mission’ to improve MRC–China relations during his tenure (interview with MRC donor representative, 2012).

Given the power asymmetries (economic and military) at work in Sino-MRDC relations, which made it difficult for the MDRCs to confront China outright, it is actually quite noteworthy that such an active yet cautious policy of engaging with China was pursued. For a reshaping of securitization moves to be successful, however, it would also have to be taken up by the Chinese side.

(Re)politicization and positive outcomes

In early 2010, however, China’s initial reaction resembled the behavior of Laos. From early February through to mid-March, the Chinese press and online media published a host of articles vividly describing the severity of a drought situation in China’s southwest, stating ever-increasing numbers of people affected and the costs inflicted (see e.g. China Daily, 2010a,b). However, the potential role of Chinese dam-building on the Mekong was no more mentioned than the criticism raised by downstream actors. The only discontinuity in this early narrative occurred when the Chinese embassy in Bangkok held a specially convened press conference on 11 March, during which it was emphasized that the Chinese dams built on the Mekong mainstream had ‘not affected river flows downstream’ and that ‘changes in the Mekong River have nothing to do with our activities’ (Bangkok Post, 2010c). This event did not find its way into the Chinese media, though.

Interestingly, the Chinese side changed course in mid/late March. Apparently, the intensity of attempts to securitize China’s Mekong dam-building caught the Chinese off guard. When the criticism did not fall silent, the Chinese government needed to rectify the accusations (interview with Chinese scholar I, 2012). Consequently, the Chinese state media no longer censored the foreign blame on Chinese dam-building. Instead, articles were published in which any negative impact of the Chinese dams on the MDRCs was denied, while their positive effects were highlighted. Two examples: first, a spokesman from the foreign ministry made the comment that China took a ‘responsible attitude in water resources exploration, maintaining rational and sustainable development and utilization of water resources and fully considering the concerns of countries downriver’ (China Daily, 2010c); second, an official with the Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Company (Lancang Hydro), the state-owned developer of the Chinese Mekong dams, was quoted as saying that, in contrast to allegations, ‘some dams even helped to manage water flow by storing water in the rainy season and releasing water in the dry season’. Moreover, the official went on to add, the dams did ‘not affect the total amount of water flow in the river as most hydropower stations had no reservoirs’ (China Daily, 2010d).

The fact that the Chinese side broke its silence over the matter and turned to a rather vocal blocking of the securitization moves already represented a novelty (see also Inter Press Service, 2010a) and demonstrated that the securitization moves in the MDRCs had successfully ‘traveled’ to China, where the issue became increasingly important. As a matter of fact, the Chinese side went even further than just blocking the moves. While adamantly rejecting any negative role played by its dams, the Chinese side also began to send out signals of its own that were compatible with a strategy to reshape the securitization moves. Broadly speaking, these signals proceeded along two different time lines. On the one hand, the Chinese government engaged in one-time short-term attempts that it launched while the immediate crisis was still taking place. On the other, and more notably, China also sought to initiate, or at least accept, new forms of cooperation with downstream actors on Mekong-related issues after the crisis, as well as to intensify already existing ones.

Conclusion

While (successful) securitization has overwhelmingly been linked to negative effects, the key intention of this article has been to show that, at least in the environmental sector of security, securitization moves that fail to become instances of successful securitization may actually produce positive outcomes that help ease, and may even solve, a particular security problem. That is, while the securitization moves fail to reach the stage of successful securitization, they are helpful in raising awareness of an issue to the extent that the issue becomes reassessed in a different light. In other words, securitization moves initiate a process during which the original security connotations regarding a particular issue fade out, while the issue then (re)appears in the political discourse, thereby providing opportunities for new or intensified forms of cooperation. The behavior of the audiences of the securitization moves is crucial in this process, because audiences have to be willing to let the issue be (re)politicized. This strategy has been termed ‘active reshaping’ (in contrast to the passive recipient and blocking strategies).

The empirical test case of the spring 2010 Mekong crisis supports the theoretical arguments presented in this article. More specifically, it could be found that when confronted with securitization moves coming from various non-state actors based in the MDRCs and directed at China’s Mekong dam-building, the relevant audiences – that is, the MDRC governments, the MRC, and the Chinese government – all rejected the moves. More notably, however, the two bigger MDRCs, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as the MRC, additionally indicated to China that they would nevertheless be interested in a deepened dialogue and appreciate more cooperation with each other on Mekong-related issues. The Chinese side reciprocated this interest. The results included enhanced transparency measures, increased interactions, and the building and strengthening of interpersonal relationships between various Mekong stakeholders on the MDRC and Chinese sides. Accordingly, the results did not even come close to what the securitizing actors originally had in mind (such as a halt to all Mekong dam-building). Nevertheless, the degree of cooperation was unprecedented, especially in the light of the huge power asymmetries between the MDRCs and China. And, most critically, China was not antagonized but engaged with. Moreover, as the sequence of events reveals, the various forms of cooperation only materialized after securitization moves had raised awareness of the issue enormously and thus apparently exerted some pressure on the governments to react.

Additionally, this article makes at least two further and significant conceptual contributions, both to securitization theory more specifically and to security studies in general. First, the article adds some important nuances to the role of audiences in securitization theory. The three newly identified behavioral strategies that audiences can employ to reject securitization moves promise to enhance our understanding of securitization failures and their outcomes in general, regardless of which security sector is concerned. At the same time, while this article only focused on the process from securitization moves to positive outcomes, an important follow-up question in this context seems to be why some audiences are interested in reshaping strategies while others are not. A preliminary assessment might suggest that audiences engaged in reshaping incoming securitization moves need to see some kind of benefit in (re)politicization for themselves. Further analyses, however, have yet to corroborate this point.

The second contribution is related to bigger questions concerning the relationship between politics and security (within securitization theory). While the article has generally supported the argument ‘politics over security’, it has likewise shown that politics and security are intricately linked in that positive impetus for politics can be a consequence of a (failed) push for securitization. On the one hand, this link between politics and security is not meant to promote securitization moves in general, as the success or failure of these moves cannot be (fully) predicted. On the other hand, the findings of this article nevertheless illustrate a potential avenue for non-state actors (in the environmental sector of security and likely beyond) to exercise some pressure on the usually much more powerful state actors that they have to face in order to focus the latters’ attention on a particular issue perceived to be of grave concern.