Racism and responsibility – The critical limits of deepfake methodology in security studies: A reply to Howell and Richter-Montpetit

Guilt by association

If H&RM deem various classical authors (Arendt, Schmitt, Hobbes, Durkheim, Foucault) racist, then securitization theory, and by implication the present authors, are also racist for citing them. This destructive tactic is the main basis for their charge against us of civilizationism (H&RM, 2020: 7–11 [5–9]). By this standard, it would be hard to find anyone in international relations who did not qualify as racist. Aside from the considerable room for contesting whether some of these authors (e.g. Arendt) qualify as racist, there is the question of whether tinges of racism, or even wholesale embracing of it, should disqualify a thinker’s work in toto. H&RM’s mode of presenting these accusations implies that everybody should ignore in their entirety the works of key thinkers, both Western and non-Western, up to 1945, who lived in times when racism was a widely accepted norm in most societies and who did not go out of their way to contest that norm. This requirement would eliminate most of the intellectual legacy of the humanities and social sciences. Do we as a discipline become better at analysing politics by leaving out references to Hobbes, because if we cite him our writings become racist? ‘Don’t engage with the tradition. Start anew every time.’ This is the unarticulated argument in H&RM’s article. A presentist and anti-intellectual future looms large. If you who are reading this have ever cited anybody who might have been inspired by someone who can be seen as racist, be prepared for your turn in the dock.

H&RM mobilize Foucauldian security studies as a source of authority against us, but their own previous round of racism-busting was targeted at Foucauldian security studies (Howell and Richter-Montpetit, 2019). Now the scene gets not only absurd but authoritarian. You become a racist if you use any source that H&RM deem to be racist. They themselves draw on something they deemed racist in previous work. Since they are not self-labelling as racists, this places interpretative power with the accuser.

H&RM write 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’ (H&RM, 2020: 4 [2]). Then, H&RM should explore the entanglement of international relations in this system and its implications. Instead of analysing securitization theory in relation to such a systemic understanding, H&RM imitate a close reading of securitization theory, pretending to make their points from our texts, while de facto reaching their conclusions from anywhere but our texts themselves.

Errors in citation and attribution

H&RM base a considerable part of their argumentation on illegitimate quotations. These citations appear at crucial places in the article, where H&RM have presented an interpretation for which they lack backing in our published texts. One long quote on the Hobbesian state (H&RM, 2020: 8 [6]) is from the final chapter of the Framework book (Buzan et al., 1998). They deploy it to back up their claim that securitization theory is based on racist ‘state of nature’ thinking through an affinity to Hobbes, and to saddle us with a historicist vision of desecuritization linked to Western/European ‘progress’. Later, H&RM (2020: 12–13 [10–11]) quote several more lines from the same page. Yet the passage sits where we, as a self-critical exercise about the limitations of our own approach, contrast securitization theory to critical security studies, on the one hand, and traditional security studies, on the other. This argument we presented not as part of the construction of our own theory. On the contrary, it was clearly a hypothetical critique of it, part of an alternative position that would challenge ours. To cite it as our position is methodologically unacceptable – and potentially misleading to readers who don’t check the book.

H&RM back their Hobbes/‘state of nature’/racism charge with another long quote. They initially (on pp. 5–6 of the online version; see corrigendum) ³ cite Wæver (2011: 121), but Wæver (2011) has no p. 121. They must mean p. 121 in Wæver (2015), which they reference to the correct Wæver text (at H&RM, 2020: 12 [10] they present a full 118 words quotation). But the cited text is by Marina Sbisà and placed as an epigraph above Wæver’s article. H&RM draw far-reaching implications from a page-long interpretation of specific wordings in this passage, elaborating on, for example, an alleged racial imaginary mobilized (although implicitly) in this quote – without attributing it to its true author. To cite this only as ‘Wæver, 2015: 121’ implies that the text is Wæver’s: a clear violation of standard codes of scholarly conduct. ⁴

H&RM misattribute positions to securitization theory to produce additional guilt by association. For instance, they say we cite ‘frequently and favorably . . . Huntington’s racist . . . “clash of civilizations” thesis’ (H&RM, 2020: 7 [5]). In most of the cited instances, we reference Huntington as cases of securitization – that is, we analyse empirically how various security discourses articulate threats and referent objects. H&RM fail to distinguish between citations of practices analysed empirically and citations of academic work drawn upon. That we study a securitization performed by Huntington does not signify our agreement with his thesis – on the contrary, we critically analyse its political performance of securitization (and at length contrasted our approach to Huntington’s thesis in Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 41).

H&RM generally use quotations radically out of context. They never study what is done in the texts they are ‘reading’. They say nothing about their own methodology or data selection and give no principles for interpretation. They do not define racism (see response by Lene Hansen [2020]), and they don’t discuss at all what it means to read a theory and judge whether it is racist. Given that this is the theme of the article, it is disturbing that Security Dialogue has published it. Despite H&RM’s repeated assertions about something being ‘foundational’ to securitization theory, they do not follow any standards for how to find what is ‘foundational’ for, or ‘structures’, a theory. If there is a methodology at play, it is deepfake in the sense that if you break a corpus of text down into small fragments, you can reassemble it to say anything you want. Deepfake as analogy does not imply any claim about intentional falsehood. The analogy is to the technique: making somebody ‘speak’ by using splinters from them reassembled to produce meaning disconnected from the original texts.

H&RM present no theoretical framework. We can’t backtrack their theoretical position from scattered citations. Impressive forerunners do exactly what they don’t: Stoler (1995) and Mills (1997) trace meticulously how their analysed theorists struggle to do specific things, and then what role race plays in enabling this. H&RM, in contrast, ignore what securitization theory attempts and how it works.

Not using the relevant sources on securitization theory

This is a tale of two books. First, if one is interested in the place of racism in relation to the formation of securitization theory, the obvious source to examine carefully would be Wæver et al. (1993). H&RM note it as a key text of securitization theory, but then ignore it completely. This book is all about the risks involved in European security turning towards security policies on behalf of ‘identities’ and against supranational integration, other national and ethnic identities, and migrants. The explicit formulation of securitization theory grew out of its largely implicit role in this book, which deals with racism in several chapters. In the first lines, it sets out the project in relation to, inter alia, ‘the releasing and/or revival of nationalism and xenophobia’ (Wæver et al., 1993: 1). The book places the birth of securitization theory squarely in the context of an explosion of new forms of securitization in Europe, contra the baseless image created by H&RM that, for securitization theory, Europe is the continent of civilized desecuritization threatened by securitization from a dangerous Africa. Our key argument – widely cited – is that the disastrous violence of Europe’s history is mobilized in a securitization of ‘Europeanness’ as dangerous, thus justifying European integration (an argument anchored in the first collective Copenhagen School book: Buzan et al., 1990). H&RM’s misleading representation of this case leaves out its distinguishing feature – securitizing one’s own past – and instead makes it look as though desecuritization is Europe’s natural state of being. This is not a minor omission. It takes systematic reorganization to get this history out upside-down. Europe figures prominently as the locus of multiplying novel securitizations also in Buzan and Wæver (2003), which makes it hard to see how any reader of these texts can get the impression that we equate Europe with desecuritization.

Second, H&RM make much use of the Africa chapter in Buzan and Wæver (2003). They fail to note that Regions and Powers is not primarily about securitization theory and, as fully explained in the book, only draws selectively on it. Regions and Powers aims at setting out regional security complex theory, another Copenhagen School theory, unmentioned by H&RM. Without explaining why, they ignore all the other cases in Regions and Powers of securitizations across the world. It is more than passingly curious that H&RM focus on this one chapter to make their case that securitization theory is racist and that the content of this chapter can be used to capture what is ‘foundational’ of the theory, structures it and is ‘baked into’ its conceptual apparatus. Regions and Powers was not part of constructing securitization theory but appeared nearly ten years after Wæver’s (1995) crystalizing text (where all examples of ‘dangerous securitizations’ were in the global ‘North’). The key concepts of securitization theory were first presented in Wæver (1995) and Buzan et al. (1998), and their roots can be traced through Buzan et al. (1990) and Wæver et al. (1993). How can a text ten years later reveal something ‘foundational’ about a theory launched without reliance on the elements of regional security complex theory from the later book? Either you look at a theory step by step as it takes shape in texts and ascertain what is ‘foundational’ by the architecture of the construct, or you openly claim that it is Buzan and Wæver who are personally racists, and then you must include our other writings unrelated to securitization theory that have engaged with postcolonial and race-related concerns in ways that would trouble this interpretation (e.g. Acharya and Buzan, 2019; Buzan, 2014; Buzan and Lawson, 2015; Tickner and Wæver, 2009; Wæver, 2017).

H&RM’s dependence on Regions and Powers poses other problems for their argument. Contra their charge (at H&RM, 2020: 6–7 [4–5]), that book addresses the historical impact of colonization/decolonization in a big way. If Regions and Powers is as important to securitization theory as H&RM presume, how then can they accuse securitization theory of neglecting the impact of colonialism on the present world? A major part of H&RM’s use of quotations to prove the racism in securitization theory takes the form of demonstrating that particular passages do not mention settler colonialism, slavery or racism – which H&RM deem as to ‘occlude’ and whitewash those practices, whether or not they were particularly relevant for the argument made or were mentioned elsewhere in the same book. For example, they say we ‘ignore American covert and counterinsurgency action globally’ (H&RM, 2020: 9 [7]), but we actually write about it in the Latin America chapter they ignore. That we have entirely framed the whole book Regions and Powers by colonial/post-colonial history counts for nothing if H&RM can isolate a sentence that does not mention racism and settler colonialism. If you fail to display constant symbolic loyalty to a particular form of anti-racist scholarship, your work is racist.

What kind of methodology is it that makes zero use of arguably the most relevant foundational text from securitization theory about racism, and major, but extremely selective, use of a much later text that is on the margins of securitization theory? Surely, we wrote sentences 15 or 30 years ago that we would today phrase differently owing to sensitivities or knowledge acquired. H&RM’s claim is much bigger: that securitization theory is irreparably infused in its key concepts by racism. This would demand an altogether different methodology.

False arguments

One assertion is central to H&RM’s article, dominating the abstract: that the concepts of securitization and desecuritization are distributed in time and space so that securitization is a threatening re-regression lurking in a backward black Africa, while desecuritization is a reasoned, liberal, civilized dialogue characteristic of Europe (and our prescribed future). We already debunked their attempt to pose Europe as the poster child for desecuritization. H&RM depict Africa as the essence of securitization, but offer no reason why Africa should be seen as constitutive for the theory. The foundational misunderstanding in H&RM’s article on which their whole argument hangs is an alleged ‘conceptualization of “normal politics” as reasoned, civilized dialogue’ (H&RM, 2020: 3 [1]). In Buzan et al. (1998), we write:

Of course, places do exist where secrecy or violation of rights is the rule and where security arguments are not needed to legitimize such acts. The earlier illustrations were for a liberal-democratic society; in other societies there will also be ‘rules,’ as there are in any society, and when a securitizing actor uses a rhetoric of existential threat and thereby takes an issue out of what under those conditions is ‘normal politics,’ we have a case of securitization. (Buzan et al., 1998: 24–25, emphasis added)

Thus, quite explicitly, ‘normal politics’ is not a politics with some specific attributes (‘liberal’, ‘civilized’, ‘reasoned’); it is whatever passed as normal until an exception was installed through securitization. H&RM do not consult the existing secondary literature on this, but instead repeatedly restate their own (false) definition that ‘normal politics’ means reasoned, liberal, civilized dialogue. From there, they associate freely into this being ‘a teleological hierarchy of civilizational advancement from securitization towards politicization’ (H&RM, 2020: 8 [6]). This characterization they support with a reference to pp. 53 and 69 in the Framework book. It looks damning when H&RM write thus and back it with a reference; but, if you read those pages, there is absolutely no hint of securitization-to-politicization being cast in evolutionary or civilizational terms. Their article contains dozens of similar instances, where they make a reference to our texts but what you find there is not what they claim.

Significantly, their definition of ‘normal politics’ could not work for securitization theory, because, as argued very strongly by Wæver (2011, 2015), the theory needs a clean concept of securitization as a distinct operation that is contrasted simply to the non-securitized (called ‘normal politics’), not a substantial concept of ‘normal politics’ as holding particular teleological (e.g. liberal democratic) qualities. Securitization is an ‘operation’ that is available for deployment and contestation in all societies at all times. The unprofessional citation practices of H&RM are the smaller problem; the big one is that they don’t read. They inject elements into the theory that both aren’t there and couldn’t be there. Methodology matters.

H&RM avoid understanding the theory they are attacking. On the second page of their article, they state that securitization theory has been attractive because ‘it provides a clear set of steps and standards for . . . deciding whether [the referent objects] should indeed be “securitized”’ (H&RM, 2020: 4 [2]). No. The theory does not aim to guide when something ‘should be securitized’. It is a framework for analysing what happens when something is securitized and the politics of struggles over this act. It is argued systematically in all the major works (and has been a common target of criticism) that securitization theory cannot and will not prescribe when something ‘should be securitized’. H&RM make no attempt to present the securitization theory project, its animating agenda, and the political or academic setting into which the texts intervened. If they had explained what the theory and the key texts were designed to achieve, they simply could not argue as they do.

Twisting of concepts to generate racism

H&RM refer to the concept of ‘primal anarchy’ 19 times, characterizing it as ‘racial discourse’ (H&RM, 2020: 10 [8]), twisting its meaning away from an empirical differentiation of type, towards an emotive, normative classification of race hierarchy. The distinction between anarchy at the level of individuals (Hobbesian, primary) and at the level of political collectivities (international) is a central point of theorization in international relations and the basis for its inside/outside problematique. H&RM characterize this differentiation as ‘racist discourse’ on the grounds that most of the contemporary examples of primal/Hobbesian anarchy given (including our altogether three usages of the term ‘primal’) are from non-white countries. It would certainly be possible to give ‘white’ examples of this, from post-Cold War Bosnia through to the more chaotic aspects of the Thirty Years War. More importantly: H&RM’s sweeping allegation brings into question any form of classification that happens to correlate with race – for example, climate vulnerability. The unrestrained use of this charge threatens the entire methodology of classificatory differentiation in the social sciences.