Contesting Security: Strategies and Logics by Thierry Balzacq

Author:Thierry Balzacq [Balzacq, Thierry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Political Science, International Relations, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9780415643863
Google: 7a84LgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 15859234
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

2. Action: security language and security practice should be terminated in full and with immediate effect

If desecuritization is the unmaking of securitization and if, in turn, securitization consists of speech act plus relevant security practice (exceptional action taken by the securitizing actor or someone instructed by the same) to that threat then desecuritization must consist of both the reverse of security language and security practice. Things are, however, not quite so straight forward. In the first instance, there is, as Lene Hansen has put it no 'desecurity speech act' (2012, 6) and more often than not former security concerns vanish quietly from political agendas. Ideally therefore when something is no longer a threat this should be publicly announced in the same way (most) securitizations are announced. Some analysts (e.g. Behnke, 2006: 65) would hold against this that desecuritization is 'logically impossible [as declaring something no longer a threat] would be invoking the language and logic of security' (Hansen, 2011: 6). While this objection might be a challenge to original securitization theory which believes in the securitizing force of language, it has no bearing on my framework where this logic is explicitly rejected, and security speech by securitizing actors amounts to no more than a warning and/or a promise (Floyd, 2010: 53-54).

There is good reason to believe that a public announcement of the onset of securitization is beneficial to the cause of just desecuritization, this much can be extrapolated from the work of mainstream constructivists who have found evidence that a hypocritical - which is to say an 'intentionally deceptive moral stance' (Lynch, 2008: 170) - public commitment to certain internationally accepted standards of behaviour (norms) can be turned to a force for good in world politics, specifically, into real commitment to the cause. This may happen in the following way:

If -and only if- a public sphere exists which can make compelling demands upon states to redeem their rhetoric, normatively orientated critics can work to force great powers to live up to their strategically chosen rhetoric. Holding the powerful to their public commitments opens up possibilities for the weak to exercise power over the strong by shaming them with their own words.

(Lynch, 2008: 175; see also Schimmelfennig, 2005: 157)

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