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eastchance.com essay feature
Author: Giorgi Mekerishvili
Macro-securitization, Sovereignty and Hegemony
Is there anything better than the feeling of being secure?
There are three categories of people and each of them has its own understanding of security and threat:
1.A noble knight from the Dark Ages, Nitsche from 19th Century and some venturer from our days would say that permanence of threat is one of the goodness of our lives and without it our existence becomes senseless. People with this kind of thinking are very rare.
2.There are more who consider utilities of threat in more pragmatic ways and believe that threat is one of the best means for mobilizing and consolidating peoples' masses and states. This kind of vision is prevalent among academicians and high rank politicians.
3.And, of course, there is a majority against threat.
When talking about importance of threat for the first two categories, it does not automatically imply that threat becomes an end in itself. No, of course not at all. Ideal security is an end for everyone. It is a condition where the values gained are not threatened by anything that would damage or devastate them. The starting point of difference in understanding of concepts of security and threat is difference in values. For instance, a knight needs physical threat, not because it is his moral end, but because it is a mean for achieving his moral ends and creating secure environment for his values- bravery, courageness, nobility - that justify his status. On state level, politician needs outside threat, because he knows that perception of common threat creates good ground for consolidating and unifying various political, religious, ethnic and other interest groups (in general the entire nation). On international level hegemon or regional leader needs threat (macro-threat), which is a good tool for maintaining and securing hegemony or regional leadership. In all cases existence of threat is essential for raising quality of security, which is created for protecting or acquiring more important values. And, of course again - the majority (world society, we - the people, humanity) for which threat is an absolute misfortune. This is because creating secure environment for their values does not require existence of any kind of threat and this could be explained by the down-on-earth type of their values that stand very far from supernatural and universal (unlike those of noble knights and high rank politicians). Accordingly, "narrow values" require less sacrifice.
Preceding essay aims at analyzing concepts of threat and security in connection with state sovereignty and hegemonity from the point of Hegemon and regional leader states that external threat is a perfect tool for creating a secure environment for their hegemonic and leadership positions.
Barry Buzan defines concept of macro-securitization in the following way: "By 'macro-securitisation' I mean a securitisation aimed at, and up to a point succeeding, in framing security issues, agendas and relationships on a system-wide basis. Macro-securitisations are based on universalist constructions of threats and/or referent objects. ...A macro-securitisation can be about a shared fate, where the referent object is staged in universalist terms (e.g. the planetary environment, human civilization), or about a widespread sharing of the same threat even though the specific referent objects are mainly at state and societal level (e.g. terrorism, disease)," (Buzan, 2006). I think, Buzan's definition gives a very clear idea of the concept. So, let me ask main questions on which I will have an attempt to give answers: Is a game between the two subjects of our analysis (macro-securitization and sovereignty) zero-sum? Can we justify the postulate - growing macro-securitization means falling sovereignty? How does giving various issues macro-securitization status (WOT, HR, NP, war on drug-trafficking, controlling migration processes, fighting with poverty and inequality) influence sovereignty of states? And where is the place for hegemon in this game?
Everything is like a big fairytale... Once there were two super-states. Both desired to be a world hegemon. More then forty years they adversed each-other: pursued ideological propaganda, arms race; fought for might and for maintaining balance of power through manipulating local conflicts and revolutions; raised financing for secret services day by day and spied on each-other; taxed their own population and developed military industry. There were even several crisises that put it one step away from transforming soft bipolarism into universal nuclear war, but then came the time and one of the candidates for hegemony completely failed. This happened so unexpected (seemingly) that the winner, swept away with sudden happiness and zeal, promised light future to humanity, which he conditionally called "New World Order". But the tale does not end here... At first there seemed to be enough universal problems (poverty, inequality, violation of human rights and other) and fighting with those problems was a justification for new hegemon's new status - proof that hegemon's existence was inevitable, essential and beneficial. But, like it happens in most of the big stories, new problems for hegemon emerged: there was a sacred "black gold" that was a source of mostly important values, without it was no power or authority. Our hegemon was short of "black gold". There were bad states that possessed it in enormous quantities but did not use for good ends. There occurred second problem after a while: hegemon began lacking threat. Although, by then he had not spent (neutralized) old threats, but he discovered that old threats were not enough for assembling states around him more closely and strengthening his status. Hegemon deepened in thinking... and suddenly there was a light before him...
Following 9/11 War on Terrorism takes leading place in international relations. New era begins: International Community against terrorism. This easy formula contains a bunch of dimensions, incorporates many issues, and has its own positive and negative aspects. Analysis of the formula can be done on different levels, based on various ideas, concepts and viewpoints. Also its influence could be observed on many processes (international or state-level), interconnected with the plenty of happenings etc. In our case we are interested in the moment where WOT, concept of macro-securitization and sovereignty meet each other.
Following the year 2001 President Bush, his administration, other US officials, high rank politicians, experts and competent individuals of partner states and international organizations regularly affirm (directly or indirectly and perephrising) the status of WOT as the major macro-securitization of our times, subordinate other security issues to it and create list of threats appropriate to our times, suggesting that those threats could only be overcome by unanimity, cooperation, transparency and openness. Here the messianist role of US is a fact coming out from US positions (assuming messianist role openly and conceivably) and objective reality. How stable and how durable will be the mesianistic standing and what factors play the main role in maintaining that standing and durability? To these questions there are several laconic and understandable answers and the hibrid of all of them could be stated in following way: Of course there are outside threats - regional leader states and little disobeyed states, which contradict US policies, do not or can not surrender their influence spheres and merely have "mad Caesars" on the top posts; and there is also the main type of threat which is internal and nests in the mistakes of political system, pursuing of wrong policies, unserious attitude to own values (values that have pretensions for being universal ones) that give bad example and cause doubts; protectionism and unilateral actions. The best solution to the problem of weakening hegemonic position and alienation is cooperation, consensus, respecting others' opinions, giving good example, establishing tradition of horizontal relations culture with international community, more accurate diplomacy - that mean pure leadership phenomenon and not domination.
What happens when messiah breaks into sovereign entity? Break-ins happen everywhere, always and easier then one could imagine thanks to the influences of globalization, power, economic levers and Democracy with its Liberal ideology. Giving WOT and other security issues global dimensions is a good example. "In the name of and for WOT" proceeds in following ways: accusing state X for violating international law and principles (in spite of necessity of those principles, they remain major threats to state sovereignty) members of international community are given right to punish disobedient state X and then, mostly, they somehow manage to attach accusations like financing, patronizing terrorists etc. to the other factual accusations and this way, make stronger effect on public opinion; making WOT one of the priorities for state X by using lobbing techniques; using the principle of "Sticks and Carrots" for making state X to do whatever "strong one" would prefer him to do; creating International, Regional and local anti-terrorist Organizations and agencies establishing frames for cooperation and for more transparency of information implementing various programs that increase ability of member-states for monitoring and making easier to exchange intelligence information. The initiator- state becomes deposit-destination for all the information. Thus, according to his interests and thanks to those organizations, agencies and projects initiator-state manages to somehow control other states and indirectly influence their internal affairs. We could see a side of conspiracy here: Using imperative principles of international law1 and appealing to WOT Hegemon becomes plenipotentiary to intervene in the internal affairs of any state. Today, US-troops are dislocated in 135 countries all over the world2 that makes up 70% of all the states. With direct or indirect US initiative various agreements are reached, international and regional organizations are established, conferences are held for popularizing WOT and making states to come together closer to fight other universal problems. Here we come to the ethical dilemma: Could one ethically justify the intervention of state A in another state's internal competence issues, even in case state A has sufficient resources to keep the situation "in control"? Of course, there is no objective justification - except, when "the ends justify the means". But, in our case end is very vague and the context (political) is thoroughly irrelevant to ethical issues.
There is a moment when high politics has to come to the earth, when idea needs to be interpreted to peoples' masses, when there has to be found connecting rope hanging from long-term generalized and abstractized political concepts down to everyday life. In our case, securitization propaganda is the connecting rope. Securitization propaganda is a process that is attached to securitization process and proceeds paralelly through the entire cycle of securitization process. Securitization propaganda aims at interpreting universally constructed referent-object and universal threat in such ways that ordinary people could understand them; and popularizing and justifying macro-policy choice. The tools for pursuing securitization propaganda are: media, movies, music, arts and literature. The major tool remains media. Let me paraphrase ideas of Yves Lacoste: contemporary societies are fed with images that shape political, ideological and geopolitical views of those societies. Mass-media plays the main part in creating those images. For instance: reporting news from some "hot region" has to represent general picture of the region for ordinary people who know nothing or very little about the region; journalist also has to focus on the issue that coincides with ones political goals. So, mass-media is a great factor in shaping today’s societies' history and influencing human destiny (Lacoste). Contemporary arts has also its role in securitization propaganda that express images of perceived enemies and threats and feeds us with stereotyped versions of terrorists, narco-barons, despots, tormentors and others. Sometimes grotesque images of some enemy contain aspects that create fully depraved, dangerously tempter stereotypes. For example, images of terrorists always emphasize on the Arabic aspect of terrorist and, as it is an easy truth that terrorist is not necessarily Arab, those kinds of images breed prejudice and Arabophobia. One could set some restrictions on spreading and publishing those kind of "wrong" images but unfortunately that would be violation of liberal rights. Movies also have their share in pursuing securitization propaganda (Homeland Security, Flight 93, 300 Spartan, Jarhead etc.) and so does music (Alan Jackson).
If we summarize all that was said so far we could draw a general picture: On the first stage global leader creates universal compulsory rules; on the second stage he starts securitizing issues that fully comply with those rules; On the third stage he strengthens his leadership positions, increases levels of influence and control using those rules and securitized threats.
In this picture, sovereignty of states' fade away as the role of macro-securitization grows. The game becomes zero-sum. There are states that surrender part of their sovereignty to various macro-securitizations and this happens because of fear, pressure or/and material profit expectations. There is also another category of states that place sovereignty on the top of value hierarchy. Those states manage (or try to manage) to resist fears, pressures and temptation of material profit expectation3 and consequently become labeled as disobeyed states - part of universal threats. Disobeyed states have claim on regional leadership position or just, swim against the tide of time (Zeitgeist): North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. There is another type of disobeyed states that in spite of their "disobedience" are not publicly exposed as parts of universal threats. They are relatively powerful ones and often strive for leadership positions (Russia, China). Those that have claim on regional leadership positions participate in macro-securitization processes as much as they manage to use macro-securitizations, led by West, for realizing their own goals, justifying imperialistic policy and maintaining spheres of influence4. But often they tend to constructing particularistic threats - regional ones on the contrary to universal ones. Iran is a perfect sample of disobeyed state. Shiite Republic rejects universally constructed threats, ignores Western values, violates own citizens' rights, finances terrorist and military groupings, does not recognize Israel's statehood, continually violates non-proliferation principle and strives for Regional Leadership position. Iran tries to construct particularistic threats based on concept of Western Imperialism - focusing on USA and Israel. He possesses perfect armament of arguments for constructing those threats successfully: deeply rooted anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in Middle East and other parts of Islamic World, Israel-Palestine dispute in which Palestinian brothers are oppressed, fate of Afghanistan and Iraq that could have an effect of spill-over.
Small states have two alternatives: stick to stronger ones or fully stay on their own. I think, its better for me to focus on first alternative, since drawing exact line between those two alternatives in practice, is very difficult (may be impossible). A' prior, in theory, drawing that line would be very easy but empiric analysis would give us different results. So, in my opinion, theoretical line between those two alternatives would not be very useful. In practice they (sticking to stronger ones and staying on their own) even coincide with each-other. With this I want to say that second alternative is utopian. In theory, there could be a small state fully on its own (fully sovereign) but in practice there is no such small state today. For instance, Cuba is inclined to be fully on its own but it has elements of sticking to China too. So, there is no pure second alternative. For example, when my country tried (Georgia under the president Zviad Gamsakhurdia at the beginning of 1990s') to prove that second alternative could be fully realized in practice it catastrophically failed: small country5 - with no social capital, no experienced political elite, no developed economy, no culture of liberal-democracy and experience of being free buried in oblivion - becomes independent state. Nation starts building new state but nation does not need anyone’s assistance nor needs it knowledge from experienced or economic assistance from riches. Why? Because nation does not want to pay for anything. By then, Georgia did not want to go on any compromise with West or even with Russia and was not going to follow anyone’s directives. For small state sticking to stronger one is due paid for wellbeing, peace and security. Georgia wanted everything for "free" - ultra-national, isolationist government chose alternative of being fully on its own and in the end the results revealed mistakes. That was the real world for my country and the same is for each and every small state. At last, all of them encounter the point where sticking to stronger state becomes needed. Ways and forms are different for all of them, but various degree of "sticking" is inevitable for each of them and relatively lower degree of "sticking" depends upon relative higher power of small state - its political, social, cultural and economic resources.
We could draw an interesting parallel between ideas of Jose Ortega y Gasset and theory of macro-securitization. Gasset sees three stages in formation of European nation-state: On first stage geographically and linguistically close ethnic groups are being united; on second stage newly established state is being consolidated. It goes through the phase of repining expressed through the perception of "others" as strangers, adversaries, potential enemies; on the third stage state becomes developed and more powerful. The new goal is being set - to unite with the people who were perceived as "others" (during the second stage). The belief, that "others" interests and moral coincide with his own interests and moral, is becoming stronger. Through this process (this process is nation. Nation is dynamics - movement towards future) the main thing that unites the whole nation is joint action plan for future: national interests, goals and threats. Gasset was saying in 1930s that implementation of that 3-stage scheme from national to regional level in Europe was inevitability that was to deliver Europe from dying. Only common European nationalism, European integration, was the only solution that would restore regeneration ability of European civilization. In Ortega's opinion, European states had to draw out and follow joint action plan for future and assume new historic responsibility (Gasset - "Revolt of the Masses"). Today, the same can be diagnosed on the global level. Of course this diagnosis is not new, it is just an interpretation of International Law, proclamations of navigators of global civilization, Western values and macro-securitization. WWII made necessity to follow that diagnosis obvious: the need for Global joint action plan for future based on universal goals, interests and threats -need for Global nationalism (cosmopolitanism).
Everything discussed above is underlined with the red line of hegemony issue. Merely, hegemony issue will always play its role in analysis where focus is made on categories and theories like sovereignty, macro-securitization, universal security, policy of disobedience, policy of "sticking", regional leadership e.g. This essay pictured Hegemon as a super state that constructs universal threats and then uses that as means for maintaining and strengthening hegemonic positions6. On the other hand, there is a contradicting tendency of particularistic securitization pursued by regional leaders. "Hegemon+macro-securitization VS Regional Leader+particularist securitization" is a formula that could be interpreted in another way- "Hegemon+Mundialism VS Regional Leader+Regionalizm"7. This formula encompasses everything (and of course much more) that was discussed in this essay.
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