Is securitization theory racist? Civilizationism,methodological whiteness,and antiblack thought in the Copenhagen School

Abstract

This article provides the first excavation of the foundational role of racist thought in securitization theory. We demonstrate that Copenhagen School securitization theory is structured not only by Eurocentrism but also by civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack racism. Classic securitization theory advances a conceptualization of ‘normal politics’ as reasoned, civilized dialogue, and securitization as a potential regression into a racially coded uncivilized ‘state of nature’. It justifies this through a civilizationist history of the world that privileges Europe as the apex of civilized ‘desecuritization’, sanitizing its violent (settler-) colonial projects and the racial violence of normal liberal politics. It then constructs a methodologically and normatively white framework that uses speech act theory to locate ‘progress’ towards normal politics and desecuritization in Europe, making becoming like Europe a moral imperative. Using ostensibly neutral terms, securitization theory prioritizes order over justice, positioning the securitization theorist as the defender of (white) ‘civilized politics’ against (racialized) ‘primal anarchy’. Antiblackness is a crucial building-block in this conceptual edifice: securitization theory finds ‘primal anarchy’ especially in ‘Africa’, casting it as an irrationally oversecuritized foil to ‘civilized politics’. We conclude by discussing whether the theory, or even just the concept of securitization, can be recuperated from these racist foundations.

Keywords

Antiblackness critical security studies postcolonial theory race and racism securitization

Introduction

Securitization theory has unquestionably made a significant impact. Its founding texts are among the most widely cited international relations scholarship (see Buzan and Wæver, 2003; Buzan et al., 1998; Wæver, 1995; Wæver et al., 1993), spawning active research programs and new ‘generations’ of securitization theory. The concept of securitization has travelled to disciplines beyond international relations, and even entered public discourse. What is so appealing about this theory? Perhaps the most tempting aspect of securitization theory is its methodological rigor. It provides a clear set of steps and standards for identifying how referent objects (e.g. migration, health, cyberspace) become security problems and deciding whether they should indeed be ‘securitized’. This readymade methodology can be applied to all sorts of empirical areas. However, students and scholars of security ought to resist this temptation of a readymade approach and inquire more deeply into securitization theory’s core theoretical assumptions and methodology.

This article argues that racist thought is fundamental and integral to classic securitization theory’s conceptual and methodological project. While other scholarship has worked either to incorporate analysis of race into securitization theory (Amin-Khan, 2012; Ibrahim, 2005; Mofette and Vadasaria, 2016) or to overcome securitization theory’s Eurocentrism (Bilgin, 2010, 2011; Wilkinson, 2007), this article offers something different. It is the first to excavate the foundations of securitization theory in racist thought. We demonstrate that classic securitization theory is fundamentally and inextricably structured not only by Eurocentrism but also by civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack racism.

What does it mean to excavate the racist foundations of a theory? That we use the ‘r-word’ and white supremacy as categories of analysis is sure to raise eyebrows. Even sympathetic readers might wonder if the problem we identify is more appropriately characterized as Eurocentrism. Critique of the Eurocentric character of much Western scholarship and cultural production has made significant inroads across academic disciplines, including international relations (Hobson, 2012; Sabaratnam, 2013). Our analysis is inspired by this research and extends some of its insights. Yet there is more to be said. Black studies and decolonial scholarship demonstrate that much orthodox and critical Western social and political thought is predicated upon epistemological and ontological premises that are not simply Eurocentric but racist, specifically white supremacist. In international relations, recent debates have addressed the question of whether postcolonial international relations should proceed solely through an analytic of Eurocentrism or whether we need to more specifically address racism and white supremacism (Gruffydd Jones, 2016; Hozić, 2016; Rutazibwa, 2016; Sajed, 2016). Sajed (2016: 168) suggests that the term ‘Eurocentric’ potentially neutralizes the foundational and continuing racism of the discipline. Rutazibwa (2016: 192) asks, ‘what existing power structure does this reluctance [to name racism] serve?’

Echoing these concerns, we ask: What is at stake in the reluctance to name racism in analyses of international security? Racism is a fundamental system of power that has profoundly shaped the world for the past several hundred years. Moreover, as is now well established, international relations emerged to provide intellectual support for the imperial and (settler-)colonial ambitions of Western states (Agathangelou and Ling, 2004a; Krishna, 2001; Vitalis, 2000, 2015). Drawing on black studies, indigenous studies, and decolonial scholarship, we illustrate the racist modes of thought that underpin classic securitization theory by deploying three concepts beyond Eurocentrism: civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack racism.

The argument presented here is not a personal indictment of any particular author. Contrary to commonsense notions that reduce racism to interpersonal prejudices of openly bigoted individuals, racism and white supremacy are systems of power (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Epistemic racism is intrinsic to Western knowledge structures, and not merely a failure of individual scholarship (Bhambra, 2013; Grosfoguel, 2003). Just as the ongoing racialized distribution of life chances across liberal societies is not simply the effect of intentionally racist individuals, racialized knowledge production is not simply the result of bad or flawed individual theorists. Colonial and racist assumptions about racial and civilizational difference animate the core political categories and theoretical frameworks of Western social and political thought. As we demonstrate, this is also true of classic securitization theory.

We begin by acknowledging that discussions of racism or colonialism are not entirely absent in classic securitization theory. Security: A New Framework for Analysis briefly discusses the racial politics of US domestic societal security (Buzan et al., 1998: 130). In one of securitization theory’s original formulations, Wæver discusses neo-Nazi attacks on asylum-seekers and racist justifications for the securitization of migration (Wæver, 1995; 70; see also Buzan et al., 1998; 42, 44–45). Colonialism is sometimes referenced (see Buzan et al., 1998: 61, 63, 98, 129; Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 14–18, 221), and white supremacism is mentioned as a potential ‘macrosecuritization’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2009: 263). Our argument is not that race is absent in securitization theory, but that racist political thought is integral to it, even when classic securitization theory texts discuss race or colonialism.

The article proceeds in four sections. The first section reviews the securitization theory framework and notable criticisms of it. The second focuses on the conceptual apparatus of securitization theory, showing how its conceptualization of ‘politics’ and ‘security’ is founded in civilizationist thought. The third section focuses on securitization theory’s methodology, highlighting its methodological whiteness. The fourth section illustrates how antiblackness is a crucial building-block in securitization theory’s conceptual division between security and politics. Securitization theory finds ‘primal anarchy’ especially in ‘Africa’, which it casts as irrationally oversecuritized, making it a foil to ‘civilized politics’.

Throughout, we focus on classic articulations of securitization theory associated with the Copenhagen School. Classic securitization theory is very much an ongoing intellectual project that continues to be assertively defended by its founders (Buzan and Wæver, 1997; Wæver, 2011, 2015), and its basic precepts are in need of questioning in new ways. However, we are not unaware of divergences in ‘second-generation’ and other iterations of securitization theory. We therefore conclude with some thoughts about whether other versions of securitization theory emulate or dispense with the racism of classic securitization theory, and a discussion of whether the theory, or even just the word ‘securitization’, can be salvaged.

Securitization theory and its critics

Securitization theory was forged in the post–Cold War period as a compromise between traditional (neo)realist military security analysis and Aberystwyth School scholarship that advocated widening the definition of security. Securitization theory aims to recuperate realism’s definition of security: survival in the face of an existential threat (Buzan et al., 1998: 1), while agreeing with the Aberystwyth School that security analysis should not focus solely on military state security.

Drawing on J. L. Austin’s speech act theory, securitization theory proposes a social constructivist methodology. Securitization is defined as occurring not only when ‘security’ is uttered but during any invocation of existential threat to a referent object (including, but not only, states). The securitizing actor must have some authority, but their audience must also accept, through consent or coercion (Buzan et al., 1998: 25), their claim. Securitization theory thus views securitizations as illocutionary and intersubjective.

Securitization theory centrally distinguishes between politics and security, or politicization and securitization. Through securitization, an issue is intersubjectively deemed an existential threat. This justifies breaking ‘normal’ political rules (Buzan et al., 1998: 5), a potentially dangerous slip from the norm to the exception. Wæver further draws attention to the (presumptively desirable) possibility of desecuritization: de-escalation back to ‘normal politics’ (Wæver, 1995; see also Aradau, 2004). This is securitization theory’s great strength: it provides a methodology for questioning how security threats are constructed, and how this might be reversed.

Several decades after its formulation, securitization theory has many variants (see Balzacq, 2011). These are too numerous to do justice to here. Instead, we focus on four key critiques of classic securitization theory and demonstrate that they sometimes replicate, and at other times do not sufficiently challenge, the racist political thought fundamental to securitization theory’s concepts and methodology.

First, feminist scholars of securitization theory have questioned whether the theory can account for gender relations (Hansen, 2000; Heck and Schlag, 2013; Hoogensen and Rottem, 2004; H. Hudson, 2005; N. F. Hudson, 2009; Kearns, 2017). Much of this research is inspired by Hansen’s (2000) widely cited article that argues that classic securitization theory’s limitations regarding gender are methodological: speech act theory cannot account for the gendered power dynamics that underpin situations when speech is not possible. Hansen illustrates these methodological shortcomings through the fable of the Little Mermaid, wittily locating the analysis in Copenhagen, then abruptly travels to Pakistan and Bosnia for empirical evidence. There, Hansen (2000: 299) finds ‘honour killings’ and ‘raped Muslim women’ who are deemed to be silent. This Orientalist imaginary constructs a racial opposition: white Western women, who have achieved legitimacy as vocal political actors, versus ‘silent’ subaltern women (Abu-Lughod, 2002; on securitization theory, see Bertrand, 2018). This elides gendered insecurity in places like Denmark, where ‘gender equality’ is often figured in white supremacist discourses as a mark of civilization threatened, for instance, by Muslimified (Richter-Montpetit, 2014: 45) immigrants. So, in core feminist securitization theory texts, we find that Eurocentric and racist thought is reaffirmed rather than challenged.

Second, securitization theory’s Eurocentrism has been challenged by scholarship that asks whether applying securitization theory to the non-West upends or modifies the theory (Bilgin, 2010, 2011; Wilkinson, 2007), a question echoed by some of securitization theory’s original proponents (see Greenwood and Wæver, 2013). However, securitization theory has never ignored the ‘non-West’. As we will show, it draws heavily on racist accounts of spaces outside Europe that reify a stark division between ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ without examining colonial relationalities. Critics of securitization theory’s Eurocentrism assert that we cannot assume a (functioning, democratic) European state in non-West spaces, but ignore the (settler-)colonial underpinnings of the state system and border cartographies. Seeing the issue solely as the analytical exclusion of the ‘non-West’, they decry ‘Eurocentrism’ while retaining racist political thought. We adopt a more robust analysis (see Sabaratnam, 2013) that views Eurocentrism as involving the ideas that: (1) ‘Europe’ or ‘the West’ is ontologically distinctive; (2) European development was endogenous; and (3) European cultural and political achievements were subsequently diffused across the world. Additionally, we deploy concepts beyond Eurocentrism (civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack racism) to grapple with the role of racist political thought in securitization theory.

Third, an emerging body of scholarship has moved significantly beyond a thin interpretation of Eurocentrism to inquire into how securitization theory can better account for colonialism (Bertrand, 2018) and racism (Amin-Khan, 2012; Ibrahim, 2005; Mofette and Vadasaria, 2016). This work has highlighted how ‘securitizations’ are animated by racialized threat imaginaries (Ibrahim, 2005; Mofette and Vadasaria, 2016). At times, work in this field acknowledges that securitization theory relies on a norm/exception binary that risks minimizing the racial violence of normal (liberal) politics. However, the retention of securitization theory’s methodology means the focus remains on speech acts. This risks limiting our understanding of racism and colonialism to a matter merely of (racist) language. For example, in examining migration, the literature on race and securitization focuses primarily on politicians or other authoritative speakers framing migrants as security threats. What then tends to fall out of view is how the control of the movement of racialized people has been and continues to be constitutive of the ‘normal’ liberal order (Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2018). Even when a historical approach is taken, the focus is on historical instances of speech acts or the ‘securitization’ of migration, instead of, for example, the impacts of colonial drawing of borders or ongoing settler-colonial occupation. Merely ‘adding’ race to securitization theory is insufficient to account for the raciality and coloniality of global politics. By instead excavating the fundamental racism of securitization theory’s concepts and methods, and its reliance on an eclectic canon of racist political thought, we can more fully explore the operations of racialization in security theory and practice.

Fourth, Foucauldian security studies has offered convincing criticism of securitization theory’s reliance on a norm/exception distinction derived from the German philosopher – and ‘Crown Jurist of the Third Reich’ (Frye, 1966: 818) – Carl Schmitt (Huysmans, 2008; Neal, 2006, 2009). For securitization theory, ‘normal politics’ is the norm and security/securitizations are the exception. Securitization theory thus rests on a conceptual separation of ‘security and the process of securitization from that which is merely political’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 5). Foucauldian security studies scholars criticize this formulation for eliding the everyday bureaucratic construction of security (Bigo, 2002; McDonald, 2008), limiting securitization to a singular threat-defense logic (Neal, 2009), and only considering forms of politics found in the nation-state, despite claiming to challenge state-centrism (Huysmans, 2006; Neal, 2006).

In the next section, we build on these critiques but open a new line of inquiry, arguing that securitization theory’s norm/exception distinction harnesses a racist, specifically civilizationist, political imaginary, in which normal politics is the achievement of civilization and ‘securitization’ threatens a potential backslide into barbarous ‘primal anarchy’. As a result, securitization theory’s binary of normal politics versus exceptional security obscures the racial violence of ‘normal’ liberal politics.

Civilizationism in securitization theory’s conceptual apparatus

In this section, we describe how civilizationist thought underpins securitization theory’s concepts of politics and security. Civilizationism is a term used to describe racist (theoretical) perspectives that contain three assumptions: (1) Civilizations can, and ought to, advance, and some (Western) civilizations are more ‘advanced’; (2) civilizational progress is not only technological and material, but political and moral; and (3) the ‘underdevelopment’ of certain civilizations represents a problem for, or threat to, developed ones. Drawing on a broad canon of civilizationist political philosophy, canonical securitization theory texts develop a narrative of world-historical progress in which civilizational advancement beyond the violence of ‘primal anarchy’ involves curtailing securitization through the instantiation of civilized ‘normal politics’.

Classic securitization theory frequently and favorably cites Samuel Huntington’s racist (Said, 2001) ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis (Buzan et al., 1998: 36, 53, 112, 125) and Robert Kaplan (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 221, 252; Buzan et al., 1998: 47, 54, 69–70, 112, 127), infamous for his theory of ‘the coming anarchy’, his warnings of the danger of ‘tribalism’, his neo-Malthusian arguments about ‘overpopulation’ in the global South (Kaplan, 1994, 2000), and his defense of ‘tempered imperialism’ (Kaplan, 2014). Social theorists such as Durkheim, who built his theory of society on racist anthropological distinctions between civilized men and savages (Elias and Feagin, 2016), also feature (Wæver, 1995: 67).

Perhaps more fundamentally, securitization theory draws on social contract thinkers such as Hobbes (see Buzan et al., 1998: 69, 209; Wæver, 1995: 54) for their ‘state of nature’ concept (Sbisà in Wæver, 2015: 121). Mills (1997) has convincingly argued that racism is integral, not incidental, to social contract theory,¹ which typically casts the social contract as an achievement of Western civilization and locates the contrasting ‘state of nature’ in African ‘tribes’ or indigenous ‘savages’ (Mills, 1997: 13). Securitization theory extends social contract theory to cast ‘normal politics’ (and the curbing of securitization) as an achievement of civilization. ‘Primal anarchy’ and the ‘state of nature’ act as the foils to this ‘normal politics’ in a teleological hierarchy of civilizational advancement from securitization towards politicization (Buzan et al., 1998: 53, 69).

Following Hobbes, securitization theory locates this supposed progress in the West, particularly Europe:

It perhaps begins with the construction of the Hobbesian state in the eighteenth century. The creation of the Leviathan was aimed at opening a sphere of public economic and political life, and this could not be done without pushing the use of force back into a contained space controlled by the state. Under the Leviathan, citizens could not draw swords over economic grievances or political disagreements, which were to be handled by the rule of law and the market. The logic of existential threat and the right to use force … were reserved to the state and thus were largely desecuritized among the citizens. (Buzan et al., 1998: 209, emphasis added)

The social contract, for securitization theory, is an (18th-century, white, European, liberal) feat of desecuritization, both within nation-states and among them (Buzan et al., 1998: 51).² Securitization theory, then, does not merely replicate social contract theory and civilizationist thought: it develops it. By introducing a constructivist methodology, securitization theory places politicization (the instantiation of ‘normal politics’ or social contracts) and minimizing securitization as integral to civilizational progress.

Admittedly, securitization theory is an eclectic theory. In addition to thinkers easily identified as civilizationist, it also draws on apparently more critical theorists, notably Arendt. Responding to Foucauldian critiques that describe securitization theory’s conceptualization of security as the exception to politics as Schmittian, Wæver (2011: 470) argues that these critics have misunderstood: ‘it is wrong to claim … that securitization theory involves a “Schmittian” concept of politics – the theory has a Schmittian concept of security and an Arendtian concept of politics’, further clarifying that:

The concept of security is Schmittian, because it defines security in terms of exception, emergency, and a decision (although not by a singular will, but among people in a political situation). This does not in itself make securitization theory’s concept of politics Schmittian, because the place of security in the theory is as an anti-politics or the politically constituted limit to politics. This general politics is inspired by Hannah Arendt. (Wæver, 2011: 478)

Elsewhere, Wæver (2015: 122) summarizes Arendt’s concept of politics: ‘politics takes place among people, in-between us, because power only emerges when people act together, it basically consists of action directed to and dependent on the reaction of others, not doing things directly’. Here, he adverts to Arendt’s distinction between power (Macht) and violence (Gewalt), which securitization theory mirrors by dividing politicization from securitization.

Arendt drew on racist German anthropology that distinguished between (uncivilized) ‘nature people’ (Naturvölker) and (civilized) ‘cultured people’ (Kulturvölker) (Klausen, 2010; Owens, 2017) to divide the world into communities with history, language, and political institutions, and those without (Klausen, 2010: 396). She cast the former as (morally and politically) superior and warned that the latter’s ‘primitivism’ posed a threat to political freedom and democracy. When securitization theory adopts Arendt’s concept of politics, it does not dispense with her civilizationism but replicates and develops it, conceptualizing ‘normal politics’ as the achievement of civilized people capable of resisting violence (securitization) through reasoned dialogue (politicization).

Securitization theory also replicates Arendt’s evacuation of violence from politics. Arendt built her idea of power (Macht) on an idealized vision of the Athenian polis, ignoring the ‘raw materials’ of ancient Athenian democracy – slave labor and women’s unpaid reproductive labor (James, 2003: 249f). She similarly idealized the American republic (Gines, 2014; James, 2003; Johnson, 2009; Owens, 2017). Although in her famous ‘boomerang thesis’ Arendt (1979) located the origins of Nazism in European racism and colonialism, she asserted that the USA had never been guilty of imperialism or indigenous genocide (see James, 2003; Johnson, 2009). Though she spoke out against Nazi white supremacy in Europe, she insisted US racism was merely a social phenomenon, not a political structure (James, 2003: 253; Johnson, 2009), even though Nazi policies were explicitly inspired by US settler-colonial genocide, the reservation system, and Jim Crow segregation (Cesaire, 1950; Fanon, 1967; James, 2003; Whitman, 2017). In praising ancient Athens and contemporary America, Arendt actively minimized the imperial, racialized, and gendered violence structuring these ‘civilized’ democracies (Allen, 2001; Gines, 2009, 2014; James, 2003; Johnson, 2009; Norton, 1995).

Securitization theory similarly occludes the racial violence of normal (liberal) politics. This is not just a conceptual problem: it results in major empirical oversights. For example, though it contains the word ‘security’, securitization theory places social security outside of its frame of analysis, as part of ‘normal politics’: ‘Although it shares some qualities with “social security,” or security as applied to various civilian guard or police functions, international security has its own distinctive, more extreme meaning. Unlike social security, which has strong links to matters of entitlement and social justice, international security is more firmly rooted in the traditions of power politics’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 21). Securitization theory overlooks the power politics of social security and cannot see how Western welfare state social security systems support white (settler) heteropatriarchal forms of life, such as the nuclear family (Arvin et al., 2013; Cohen, 1997; Duggan, 2003; Kandaswamy, 2008), and disproportionately target racialized, indigenous, and poor communities for direct and violent interventions such as the removal of children from families through enslavement, the residential schools that formed part of the genocide of indigenous people, child welfare systems, migrant detention and removal, and so on. Closer to Copenhagen: Denmark now uses socialized daycare as a means for removing and assimilating Muslim children (Salem, 2018). Social and national security are imbricated. For example, current Islamophobic counter-terrorism programs often use social and health services to identify suspected ‘terrorists’ (Kundnani, 2014; Qurashi, 2018; Qureshi, 2015). Social security only entails ‘entitlement and social justice’ for those privileged by whiteness, heterosexuality, citizenship, and/or class status. Securitization theory’s civilizationist idealization of ‘normal politics’ occludes these dynamics.

More strikingly still, Copenhagen School theorists view policing as a positive force: ‘In the West, the police are normally an institutionalized part of society that ensures continuous functioning’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 54). They praise the pacification role of the modern state (Greenwood and Wæver, 2013: 489) and ignore the longstanding use of police in defending class and racial inequality and (hetero)sexual mores (Amar, 2013; Browne, 2015; Davis, 2003; James, 2000; Kelley, 2000; Sexton, 2007; Singh, 2016), and violently occupying indigenous land (Bell and Schreiner, 2018; Byrd, 2011; Dhillon, 2015; Fanon, 1963; Nettelbeck and Smandych, 2010; Razack 2015). Securitization theory also repeatedly refers to the US War on Drugs as a ‘niche securitization’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 327–331, 2009: 265). This minimizes the transnational history of antiblack violence perpetrated by the US state leading into the mass incarceration of black and Latinx people (Davis, 2003; James, 2000; Rodriguez, 2006) and ignores American covert and counterinsurgency action globally, especially in Latin America. Policing ensures ‘good’ order for those privileged by whiteness, property ownership, gender norms, and/or settler status. The constitutive role of policing and law in the racial, (settler-)colonial, sexual, and class violence of ‘normal politics’ is occluded as a direct result of securitization theory’s reliance on civilizationist oppositions between politics versus security and politicization versus securitization.

Classic securitization theory is civilizationist in that it believes that there are more or less politically and morally developed civilizations. It identifies ‘normal politics’ with (European) civilization and ‘securitization’ with a return to (racialized) primal anarchy. As a result, it depicts ‘underdeveloped’ civilizations as threats to supposedly more advanced ones. This becomes especially clear when examining securitization theory’s ideas about ‘state failure’. Securitization theory claims that in ‘developed’ states (Buzan et al., 1998: 28) a civilized political sphere generally fends off securitization, except when ‘securitization is unavoidable, as when states are faced with an implacable or barbarian aggressor’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 29). By contrast, in ‘failed’ or ‘weak’ states securitization runs amok:

‘In well-developed states, armed forces and intelligence services are carefully separated from normal political life, and their use is subject to elaborate procedures of authorization. Where such separation is not in place, as in many weak states … much of normal politics is pushed into the security realm’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 28).

This excessive securitization, in turn, leads to primal (or ‘Hobbesian’ or ‘Kaplanesque’) anarchy, wherein the state

‘fails to take root or spirals into disintegration. This situation can lead to prolonged periods of primal anarchy, as is currently the case in Afghanistan and various parts of Africa, in which the state is only a shadow and reality is one of rival warlords and gangs’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 50, emphasis added; for analysis of the colonial preoccupation with Afghan ‘tribes’, see Manchanda, 2018).

Discourses of state failure are ‘irredeemably rooted in an imperial and racialized imagination’ (Gruffydd Jones, 2015: 65; see also Grovogui, 2001; Shilliam, 2013; Wai, 2012a, 2012b). While they may avoid overt reference to race, they operate within a lineage of racial discourse that emerged to justify colonialism and continuing trusteeship. This racial hierarchy is fully represented in securitization theory’s list of weak and failing states: Nigeria under Abacha, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Liberia, and ‘various parts of Africa’, the USSR under Stalin, Bosnia, Colombia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and so on (see Buzan et al., 1998: 28, 50, 69, 146). This is a racial discourse: ‘primal anarchy’ is primarily located in ‘brown’ (‘Afghanistan’) and ‘black’ (‘parts of Africa’) regions.

Copenhagen School theorists sometimes seem to be aware of how this division falls. This does not lead them to question it. On the contrary, they warn against Western-centrism, but only in order to emphasize that it is in the West that ‘normal’ civilized politics exists: ‘if domestic and international were fixed, there would be a risk of generating a cozy Western view of politics: Domestic politics is normal and without security, whereas the extreme is relegated to the international space. In other parts of the world, domestic is not cozy’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 47n7). For securitization theory, primal anarchy exists, not only in the international realm, but also in non-Western ‘other parts of the world’, where a failure of normal politics leads to ‘“tribalist” forms of association’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 69).

Securitization theory refuses to seriously consider the role of modern colonialism and ongoing imperial warfare in ‘failed states’. Such consideration might reveal the significance of Western colonial divide-and-rule policies, extraction of resources and labor, imposition of state borders, and military and covert intervention. Instead, securitization theory frames ‘failed states’ as evidence of a primal state of nature.

Civilizationism is not just a collateral, detachable, part of securitization theory’s imaginary, or a sadly unattended-to implication of its Kaplanesque view of anarchy or its Arendtian model of politics. The idea that there has been (white) civilizational progress away from (racialized) primal anarchy is omnipresent in securitization theory because it is fundamental to securitization theory’s opposition between politicization and securitization. Ungrounded in the racist and civilizationist narrative that ‘normal politics’ emerged from ‘primal anarchy’, this opposition would look as arbitrary as it in fact is.

Methodological and normative whiteness in securitization theory

We have established that securitization theory is founded in a civilizationist conceptualization of politics and security that occludes racial and colonial violence. We now demonstrate that, on the basis of these assumptions, securitization theory develops a methodologically and normatively white theory.

As postcolonial, critical race, and feminist scholarship argues, methodology involves making choices about whose perspectives or histories we (de)value. Bhambra (2017) defines methodological whiteness as

a way of reflecting on the world that fails to acknowledge the role played by race in the very structuring of that world, and of the ways in which knowledge is constructed and legitimated within it. It fails to recognize the dominance of ‘Whiteness’ as anything other than the standard state of affairs and treats a limited perspective – that deriving from White experience – as a universal perspective.

Operating in supposedly neutral and universal terms, methodological whiteness naturalizes the racial status quo, eliding the crucial role of racism in political systems or intellectual traditions. Bertrand (2018) has critiqued securitization theory’s methodology for setting up a colonial relation wherein subalterns cannot speak and securitization theorists speak for them. Our critique is somewhat different: we argue that since securitization theory aspires to describe not just ‘what is’ but ‘what should be’, its methodological whiteness also becomes normative whiteness. To illustrate this argument, we evaluate securitization theory’s incorporation of speech act theory and ask how it interfaces with its civilizationist conceptualizations of politics and security.

Securitization theory bases its methodology in J. L. Austin’s notion of illocutionary speech acts: forms of speech having some element of force, such as making a promise or giving a warning. Combining this with an Arendtian concept of politics seems intuitive: Arendt defined politics as action through communication, and Austin provides a method for analyzing communication as action. Notably, this methodology enacts a normative stance, being designed to ‘protect’ Arendtian normal politics:

Securitization theory was built from the start on speech act theory, because it is an operational method that can be designed to protect politics in Arendt’s sense. Put in short form, the political conception of securitization theory is inspired by Arendt, implemented through speech act theory. (Wæver, 2015: 122, emphasis in original)

As we have seen, by defining violence as outside politics, Arendt failed to acknowledge that, by virtue of gender and racialization, some people are produced as the ‘raw materials’ of others’ political freedom. When securitization theory claims that the purpose of its method is to protect Arendtian ‘normal politics’, it implicitly undertakes to defend the status quo of a violent international racial order.

To begin, we can observe that securitization theory does not challenge the ways in which structures of speech acts (like law, civil hierarchy, or international treaties) are and have been central to enforcing a colonial system of global inequality. On the contrary, securitization theory is structured, through its apparent neutrality, to supplement and reinforce those structures:

Our relative objectivism on social relations has the drawback of contributing to the reproduction of things as they are, of contributing to the taking for granted that [critical security studies] wants to upset. The advantage is – totally in line with classical security studies – to help in managing relations among units. (Buzan et al., 1998: 206)

While acknowledging this methodological and normative investment in maintaining the status quo as a ‘drawback’, the authors claim it is worth the price. ‘Managing relations among units’ – maintaining order – is a higher priority than justice.

And how is order to be maintained? By preventing civilized ‘normal politics’ from ‘regressing’ into a ‘state of nature’:

Austin gives us insights into the capacity of mankind [sic] for creating shared environments through language…. Herein lies the power of human civilization, as opposed to the ‘state of nature’; the power which alone makes it possible, on occasion, for someone weak and without weapons to be listened to and even obeyed, the power which makes it possible to conceive and pursue things such as social equality or solidarity and equal opportunities for genders, all of which would not be conceivable in a ‘state of nature’ ethology. To acknowledge in theory and investigate such power is at the same time to foster and defend it against the regression into forms of social life based on brute force and coercion. (Wæver, 2015: 121, emphasis added)

Although this passage avoids overt mention of race, it mobilizes a racial imaginary. Its argument is that through the use of language to form social contracts, civilized people lift themselves above the savage ‘state of nature’ and create a public political sphere. This superiority is evidenced by the capacity for (Western, liberal) discourses like ‘equal opportunities for genders’ (here, securitization theory echoes imperial feminism’s racist claim that gender equality is most advanced in the West and should be exported, especially to ‘Muslim’ societies).

However, while traditional Hobbesian social contract theory views the social contract in quasi-legal terms as happening once for all in the past, securitization theory redefines it as continuously intersubjectively produced through speech acts, and therefore constantly in need of reproduction. For securitization theory, white Western superiority is therefore precarious: it must be protected from (excessive) securitization that risks a ‘regression’ to a lower level of civilization or a fully uncivilized ‘state of nature’.

This passage does not merely retell a classic civilizationist narrative in newer philosophical language. It operationalizes this narrative, making its assumptions into a method. If the ability to do things with words and not force distinguishes civilized man, it argues, then to analyze ‘how to do things with words’ via Austin’s method must be in itself to step to the defense of civilized normal politics. Securitization theory offers a methodological procedure by which the scholar can observe that a speech act meets the criteria for ‘securitization’ and make normative statements about whether it should be heeded. For securitization theory, when we deploy this methodology, we inherently proceed in a civilized manner and so contribute to and protect illocutionary, Arendtian politics.

The normative goal of securitization theory is to protect ‘normal politics’ though civilized illocutionary action in favor of desecuritization, where desecuritization is constantly understood as synonymous with ‘progress attached to the development of Western international society’:

Progress as desecuritization [has been] inherent in the liberals’ project since the nineteenth century…. This project has been taken the furthest in the ‘zone of peace’ that now characterizes Western international society…. With the demise of the Communist counterproject and the closed states and societies associated with it, the prospect exists for a more widespread dissolving of borders, desecuritizing most kinds of political, social, and economic interaction. This development is the most advanced within the EU, but it is also inherent in the shift from modern to postmodern states and from more closed to more open political constructions that is going on in many parts of the world. (Buzan et al., 1998: 209, emphasis added)

To describe the 19th-century, golden age of European imperialism as a period of Western liberal progress is to dramatically misapprehend the historical record (see Barkawi and Laffey, 1999; Grovogui, 2001; Krishna, 2001). To equate the growth of Western imperialist hegemony with ‘desecuritization’ is even worse. It is not only to retroactively sanitize white supremacist imperialist history, but also to further insist that it ought to continue. In this sort of normative claim, securitization theory’s racism becomes operative, moving from a white methodology that describes the world from ‘a limited perspective – that deriving from White experience’ (Bhambra, 2017), to a normatively white prescription for how the world ought to be.

To illustrate the empirical consequences of this methodological and normative whiteness, consider how securitization theory refuses to distinguish between white nationalist and racial justice movements:

The radical white categorizations often line up with the attempts of the avowed progressives of the movements of minorities, multiculturalism, and political correctness to produce a general U.S. trend toward a redefinition of cultural and societal categories in terms of distinct racial and gender groups. The one side wants these groups recognized to ensure affirmative action in favor of the disfavored; the other side wants to use these categories to picture minorities as the threat to them and thereby to the whole. (Buzan et al., 1998: 130)

The above passage is not a mistake. Similar lines of thought are articulated elsewhere, for instance in relation to the threat of ‘radical feminism’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 54). Securitization theory frames racial justice and white nationalist movements as equivalent: both potentially securitize cultural and racial categories. This framing is a result of securitization theory’s methodological whiteness, its inability to ask questions about racialized, gendered, and (settler-)colonial orders, and its general preference for order over justice. It is also a normative stance. Securitization theory aims to use speech act theory to defend normal politics from (excessive) securitization, including by racial justice movements. Racial justice, by extension, becomes a danger, threatening regression into a (racially coded) lower level of civilization or, worse, primal anarchy.

To summarize: classic securitization theory is fundamentally and avowedly conservative, seeking to excuse and reinforce a white liberal status quo. Securitization theory begins with a theory of ‘normal politics’ as reasoned, civilized dialogue and securitization as a potential regression into an uncivilized ‘state of nature’. It justifies this through a civilizationist history of the world that privileges Europe as the apex of civilization and ‘desecuritization’, ignoring Europe’s violent colonial projects. It then constructs a methodologically white theory that mostly avoids mentioning race even as it locates ‘progress’ towards normal politics and the limitation of securitization in Europe. This methodological whiteness produces normative whiteness: the theory does not merely describe desecuritization as European progress, it normatively asserts that becoming or remaining like Europe is a moral imperative. Through an analysis of classic securitization theory’s representations of Africa, the following section shows how these intellectual commitments issue in clear antiblack racism.

Antiblack racism in securitization theory writings on Africa

‘Antiblackness’ is a term used to describe the specificity of racism against people of African descent in the post-Columbus world. Chattel slavery turned people from the African continent into commodities to be traded and accumulated, and thereby placed them as ‘the bottom marker’ of ‘a projected universally human scale of being’ (Wynter, 2003: 308; see also Fanon, 1967; Hartman, 1997; Spillers, 1987). In this imaginary, blackness and black people figured as enslaveable things: the foil against which notions of what it means to be human (and thus a political subject) were invented. Antiblack racism is also complexly entangled with Western gender and sexual formations (Fanon, 1967; Hartman, 1997; Spillers, 1987): black women’s bodies and their alleged sexual difference were cast as proof of African primitivism.³

Significant here are questions of temporality. For Victorians, Africa was ‘a fetish-land, inhabited by cannibals, dervishes and witch doctors, abandoned in prehistory’ (McClintock, 1995: 41). Tropes of ‘the Dark Continent’ as ‘inhabiting not simply a different geographical space but a different temporal zone’ (McClintock, 1995: 40) stubbornly persist, including in much international relations theory, which casts Africa ‘as a metaphor for a number of evils: failed states, AIDS, poverty, corruption’ (Grovogui, 2001: 426). Such representations of Africa are not incidental in traditional international relations theory. They are intrinsic to it. This is because ‘Africa’ serves as a foil (Mills, 1997: 13) to ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’, the ultimate counterpart to not just Western but human development (Mudimbe, 1988; Wai, 2012a). In much international relations scholarship, blackness continues to signify ultimate (moral, sexual, and political) primitivism, an inherent propensity to (sexual and political) violence, and sexual excess and danger.

Does securitization theory overcome, replicate, or deepen antiblack thought on ‘Africa’? Certainly, securitization theory sees a tendency towards primal anarchy and the ‘state of nature’ in many non-Western parts of the world (the Balkans; Eastern Europe; Central, South, and East Asia; the Middle East; and South America), but ‘Africa’ is particularly maligned. Often, classic securitization theory treats the entire continent as a single entity, a space where normal politics is weak and oversecuritized, the state or social contract fails (or was never established), and ‘man’ reverts to (or never left) the state of nature. ‘Africa is a pessimist’s paradise, a place where the Hobbesian hypothesis that in the absence of a political Leviathan life for individuals will be nasty, brutish, and short seems to be widely manifest in everyday life’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 219).

Elsewhere, however, it adds some complexity by seeing Africa in terms of multiple temporalities, being both ‘premodern’, having elements of the ‘modern’, and threatening a ‘back to the future’ scenario. On the one hand, a book like Regions and Powers (Buzan and Wæver, 2003) offers a sweeping history of Europe over millennia (containing little mention of colonialism), but a history of Africa that covers only official decolonization and the post–Cold War era: a matter of mere decades. Completely missing is any historical account of how colonialism and enslavement shaped not only African but also European security relations (Agathangelou and Ling, 2004b; Barkawi, 2006; Barkawi and Laffey, 1999; Krishna, 2001), and the idea of Europe itself (Mudimbe, 1988; Said, 1979). Conversely, another canonical securitization theory text asserts that ‘in the contemporary international system, some prestate referent objects are still active. The remnants of tribal barbarians still exist in parts of Central Asia and Africa. Some hint of how these tribes worked as referent objects for military security can be gleaned from contemporary civil wars in Afghanistan and Somalia’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 53, emphasis added). The past-tense ‘worked’ here implies that we can learn about premodern times (in Europe) by looking at present-day Afghanistan or Somalia, whose backwards ‘tribal barbarian’ populations constitute a prestate referent. These two temporalities come together in the statement that ‘in Africa, the main societal referent objects are a mix of premodern – the extended family, village, clan, and tribe – and modern, the “state-nation”’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 126).

Securitization theory, then, sees Africa as temporally anomalous – that is, both premodern and modern – because it manifests both a postcolonial present and a potential degeneration to a precolonial/premodern past, as when Buzan and Wæver (2003: 221), drawing from other authors, including Kaplan, speculate that:

the period of colonization and decolonization might, in the long view, appear as something of an interlude, a period with its own distinctive characteristics, rather than a point of permanent transformation from premodern to modern. If back-to-the-future pessimism is right, then what we are looking at now is some phase in the terminal collapse of the Westphalian experiment in Africa.

This passage outlines a ‘back to the future’ scenario in which Africa returns to its default state of precolonial, tribal, anarchic statelessness. Here, as elsewhere, securitization theory does not entirely ignore histories of colonization: it admits that colonialism had an impact on Africa, but it understands this impact not as an extraction of resources and labor and a violent transformation of people into chattel, but as an ‘experiment’ aimed at bringing the European Westphalian state to ‘premodern’ barbarians (see Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 221; Buzan et al., 1998: 53, 126). Colonial and ongoing postcolonial and settler-colonial exploitation does not feature in this analysis, and decolonization appears not as a project of liberation but as a potential backslide into primal anarchy (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 345). For securitization theory, histories of colonialism look less like violent ongoing exploitation than a missed opportunity for Africa to become more modern, desecuritized, and European.

Why is ‘Africa’ missing this opportunity? Securitization theory’s methodological whiteness leads it to assert, without substantiation, that the cause of this backsliding must be not the ongoing extractive violence of liberal powers but the failure of African people and states to ‘desecuritize’:

Because political violence has been such an endemic feature of the African landscape, and because the crisis of the African state is so central to the pervasive insecurity on the continent, we will take the existence of systematic political violence to indicate the presence of a dominant securitization. (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 223)

This is strikingly circular reasoning, where premises and conclusions guarantee each other. Securitization theory starts, as we have seen, from the axioms that ‘normal politics’ tames violence and irrational securitizations threaten ‘normal politics’. Seeing Africa as a violent, anarchic space, lacking in ‘normal’ civilized politics, securitization theory assumes this must be because securitization has run amok. As a result, African ‘dominant securitization’ can be taken for granted, as a foil to the supposed peacefulness of Europe, and therefore as evidence that ‘normal politics’ tames violence, and so on.

Securitization theory here turns an antiblack narrative of African (a)history (Africa is primitive, violent, anachronistic) into an equally antiblack normative proposition: that Africa is culpable for failing to produce ‘normal politics’. European colonial violence is occluded or, worse, exonerated:

many African elites publicly embraced a negative view of globalization, and took the view that their weak position in the global periphery was a major explanation for their difficulties. This led to a convenient rhetoric of ‘neo-colonial’ securitization that sought, often successfully, to divert attention from the indigenous causes of Africa’s difficulties. (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 251)

This not only sanitizes the violence of colonialism and enslavement, it goes so far as to cast anti-colonial politics as the problem.⁴

With Europe exonerated, Africa is then able to appear as a threat to Europe. We have already seen that securitization theory seeks to protect Western ‘progress’ and normal politics from excessive securitization and a potential fall into primal anarchy. It is similarly concerned to defend normal politics outside the West but sees this as more hopeless: ‘In regions dominated by weak or failed states, real prospects exist that the local level will become dominant, with securitization forming microregions. To the list of microregions we should perhaps add the Hobbesian anarchies in some inner cities of megalopolises’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 70). Later, this idea is expanded:

As argued by Robert Kaplan (1994), units other than states have created new lines of division…. The booming megacities in the Third World, with their enormous slum suburbs, produce large populations that identify neither with their clans or tribes nor with states or nations…. Large groups of people who focus on immediate material survival needs become nonidentity factors and might enter the sociopolitical realm as the joker at some later point when they suddenly do acquire or generate an identity. (Buzan et al., 1998: 127)

Here, those who dwell in slums are figured as people without identities, or political subjectivities, not fully political, and perhaps not fully human. (Even cursory empirical investigation would prove this false: there are robust traditions of political activism in slums across the globe, including across the African continent.)

Because they exist in this state of nature (i.e. ‘focus on immediate material survival needs’), these racialized ‘jokers’ are potential threats to Europe, though in a way that is particularly tied to securitization theory’s constructivist methodology:

‘Another effect of Kaplanesque anarchy, especially the disease–crime–population–migration circles in Africa, is the unofficial erection of Atlantic and Mediterranean walls by which North Americans and Europeans define a category of Africa and Africans as the major zone of anarchy, danger, and disease to be shut off from “our world”’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 127).

This asserts that ‘Africa’ is a space of ‘Kaplanesque anarchy’ and, at the same time, warns against the securitization of ‘Africa and Africans’ in the West. What securitization theory’s analysis of Africa produces, in this formulation, is nothing other than an updated ‘white man’s burden’: it is incumbent on the civilized not to turn away from the plight of the primitive, but the civilized must also take care to avoid being corrupted by their primitive anarchy. We can see here, finally, how little separates this contemporary school of security analysis from the openly antiblack racism of its Victorian predecessors.

Conclusion

This article has illustrated that classic securitization theory is structured not only by Eurocentrism, but also by civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack racism. This is evident in its conception of politics, borrowed from Arendt, which it defines as a sphere of (white) civilized dialogue where reason triumphs over irrational securitizations. This perspective is only made possible by ignoring colonial history, ongoing (settler-)colonial relations, and the racial violence of normal liberal politics. Securitization theory’s racism is also evident in its methodology, which examines securitizing speech acts in order to defend this (European, civilized) ‘normal politics’. Under cover of ostensibly neutral terms, securitization normatively prioritizes the defense of order over justice, positioning the securitization theorist as the defender of (white) civilized politics against (racialized) ‘primal anarchy’. We have further demonstrated the role of antiblack thought in securitization theory: its racist imaginaries of Africa serve as an indispensable foil, setting up a contrast between normal politics and securitization.

One question beyond the scope of this article is whether this is similarly true of ‘second-generation’ and more empirical applications of securitization theory – or, indeed, the mere use of the word ‘securitization’. Postcolonial literature has long deliberated whether it is possible to rework theories built on racist precepts. For example, vigorous debate has surrounded whether the works of Marx (Coulthard, 2014; Rao, 2017; Robinson, 1983) or Foucault (Mbembe, 2003; Stoler, 1995; Thobani, 2007) can be adapted and made to work for anti-racist/anti-colonial purposes. Are there ‘reparative possibilities’ (Sedgwick, 1997; in relation to international relations, see Rao, 2017) for classic securitization theory? Can it excise or surmount its racist foundations? Our analysis suggests that securitization theory’s racism is not an incidental feature, nor ‘merely’ a matter of (empirical) application. Rather, it is baked into securitization theory’s conceptual apparatus and, in particular, its core concepts of politics and security. These problems cannot be remedied by applying classic securitization theory to non-Western spaces (as typically suggested by critics of its Eurocentrism), or by simply adding race or colonialism to its accounts. The retention of securitization theory’s concepts and methods leads to a primary focus on instances of overtly racist speech acts. Global racism is then treated as a matter of mere language. This elides the constitutive role of racist and colonial relations of force and expropriation in the making of the modern order, including ongoing security projects (see Howell and Richter-Montpetit, 2019).

Once classic securitization theory is stripped of its racist conceptual and methodological apparatus, including its concepts of ‘normal politics’, its conservative deployment of speech act theory, its view of excessive securitization as threatening a racially encoded lower level of civilization, its faith in the social contract, and so on, there is very little left. Perhaps what remains is simply the word ‘securitization’. But even this word is potentially problematic, because inherent in it is a temporal move from normal politics towards the (exceptional) violence of security. Authors attempting to recuperate the term ‘securitization’ must take care not to indulge in white nostalgia for a better, more innocent time: a time that does not exist for those who have been subject to colonialism or the racial contract on scales from the local to the global – that is to say, the majority of the world’s people. Such a recuperative intellectual project, if at all possible, has yet to be articulated.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the engagement of graduate students and faculty at Rutgers University – Newark and at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester, and for feedback from the peer reviewers and editors at Security Dialogue.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for the research presented in this article was provided by the Leverhulme Trust Research Grant R/150528.

ORCID iD

Melanie Richter-Montpetit

Notes

Alison Howell is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University – Newark, where she is also a member of Women’s and Gender Studies, Global Affairs, and Global Urban Studies. Her work has addressed the global politics of medicine, technoscience and warfare in order to advance feminist, critical race and critical disability perspectives in international relations. She is currently completing two co-authored books with Melanie Richter-Montpetit: Race and Security Studies (under contract with Oxford University Press) and Martial Politics: Thinking Against Militarization and Securitization on Disability, Race and War. Email: alison.howell@rutgers.edu.

Melanie Richter-Montpetit is Lecturer in International Security at the University of Sussex. Much of her work is concerned with the ongoing hold of racial-sexual and colonial formations of power on contemporary war and liberal security regimes. She is currently finishing up a book titled Beyond the Erotics of Orientalism: Feminist and Queer Investments in Liberal War. She is also currently completing two co-authored books with Alison Howell: Race and Security Studies (under contract with Oxford University Press) and Martial Politics: Thinking Against Militarization and Securitization on Disability, Race and War. Email: m.richter-montpetit@sussex.ac.uk.

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