A Phronetic Ethics of Securitization

Abstract

Introduction

Securitization—or the representation of a particular issue as an existential threat to national security—can be a powerful means to mobilize support for and legitimate certain policies. Securitization theorists hold that “national security” is a social and political construct, rather than a rational response to an external world rife with self-evident dangers. Political actors use discourse to identify existential threats and seek legitimation from an audience for the exceptional measures necessary to handle them. An appeal to “national security” denotes urgency and necessity, and successfully securitizing can make a swift and powerful response to an issue appear logical and natural. Speaking and practicing security, then, has the potential to reorganize social reality by mobilizing resources and legitimating the actions required to address existential threats, however these may be defined. The task for scholars, then, is not to try to observe what threats are out there in the world, but to look at discourse and identify what issues are framed as so threatening that they might require the breaking of normal political rules.

Since its inception, securitization theory has had a normative edge. The original securitization scholars of the Copenhagen School write that:

One of the purposes of [securitization theory] should be that it becomes possible to evaluate whether one finds it good or bad to securitize a certain issue. One rarely manages to counter a securitizing attempt by saying as an analyst “You are not really threatened, you only think so.” But it is possible to ask with some force whether it is a good idea to make this issue a security issue—to transfer it to the agenda of panic politics—or whether it is better handled within normal politics. (Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde 1998, 34)

More recently, Eric Van Ryhtoven has argued that scholars ought to urge caution and restraint on the part of securitizing actors due to the possibility of “perverse, unintended consequences” in securitization. Andrew Szarejko argues that securitization theory ought to be used as a “chastening tool” that can “bring a critical lens to bear” on any and all processes of (de)securitization (Van Rythoven 2020; Szarejko 2022, 794). Most ambitiously, Rita Floyd has developed a “just securitization theory” based on just war theory, which takes the form of universal moral criteria that are intended to be used to evaluate the morality of any and all instances of securitization (Floyd 2019).

Van Rythoven and Szarejko are skeptical about the prospects of developing universal theories of the morality of securitization of the kind that Floyd develops—of “imposing moral certitude where there often is none” (Van Rythoven 2020, 488; Szarejko 2022, 793). However, while they are right to be skeptical about universalism, it would be a mistake to eschew ethical theorizing altogether. Scholars—especially critically inclined scholars—are better suited to deploy the conceptual tools of securitization theory to contest securitizing moves if their critiques are placed on well-defined theoretical ground (cf. Browning and McDonald 2013). Thus, rather than abandoning general ethical theorizing on securitization, what is needed is an ethics that is adapted to the particularities of securitization and that does not rely on excessively universal moral criteria.

In this paper, taking Aristotle’s notion of phronesis (commonly translated as “prudence” or “practical wisdom”) and Hans Morgenthau’s formulation of prudence as points of departure,¹ I lay out such an ethics, which takes the form of an ethical practice or mode of reasoning rather than a set of universal rules to follow. When securitizing actors demonstrate a lack of phronesis—which takes the form of hubris or incompetence—they are more likely to generate “perverse, unintended consequences” and fail to securitize ethically, even if their actions meet the criteria of “just securitization theory.” In simple terms, for ethical securitization to be possible, political actors must reason and deliberate well, learn from both theoretical knowledge and experience, demonstrate competence, and ask themselves some tough, reflexive questions, which securitization scholars can help provoke.

This paper intersects with and contributes to three related literatures. As a work of critical security studies, it contributes to the long-running conversation on the normative dimension of securitization theory by developing an explicit ethical framework intended to help orient thinking on the moral issues surrounding securitization and to aid the task of criticism that has long been a part of securitization scholars’ agenda. Similarly, it contributes to the recent reinterpretations of classical realism by taking up its advocacy for “a common, critical, reflective, and responsible rhetoric for framing debates over interests and strategy” and applying classical realist principles to securitization theory (Tjalve and Williams 2015, 49). Finally, as a work of international ethics, it further develops what might be termed the growing “phronetic turn” by applying the notion of phronesis to and demonstrating its utility in the case of securitization. In all, I aim to demonstrate the importance of thinking through securitization as an important part of power politics that must be guided by a suitably power-political ethics. Indeed, while Floyd’s dominant approach tries to analogize securitization to war, this is unnecessary. When one understands politics as Morgenthau and many other realists do—as a contest over values and for influence over communities without violence—it becomes clear that securitization is only distinct from other aspects of political life in its radicality and that just war theory alone cannot serve as the basis for an ethics of securitization (Morgenthau 1978, 9; Goddard and Nexon 2016, 5).

This paper will proceed as follows: First, I situate my argument within the ongoing normative debate about securitization and provide a critique of existing “just securitization theory.” Importantly, however, I do not disregard the importance of just securitization theory entirely. Instead, in the remainder of the paper, I articulate how central aspects of just war/just securitization thinking—namely, just cause and proportionality—provide orienting questions for a phronetic approach and, crucially, how they can serve as rhetorical devices for scholars aiming to push back against securitizing moves. Finally, I conclude by elaborating on the implications of the theory detailed here for future research and political practice by securitization scholars.

Just War and Just Securitization

Scholars have written extensively about the normativity of securitization. Many—including the Copenhagen School itself—assume that securitization is inherently problematic and assert an inherent preference for desecuritization, or the removal of issues from the security agenda. These scholars warn of the loss of democratic oversight on securitized issues, the institutionalization of radical, exclusionary politics, and the use of fear of existential threats to legitimate the state’s rule (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998, 29; Huysmans 1998; Aradau 2004). Some critics argue that securitization will simply be ineffective for dealing with global issues that require long-term cooperation, like climate change or disease (Deudney 1990; Peterson 2002). Conversely, others argue for a more nuanced approach, asserting that we ought to evaluate the morality of (de)securitization processes on a case-by-case basis. For these scholars, because of its potent ability to mobilize action, securitization represents a potential means to pursue morally desirable “positive” conceptions of security and to garner support for important political projects like fighting climate change or the alleviation of global poverty (Floyd 2007; Roe 2008, 2012; Bell 2018).

In light of this debate, Rita Floyd (2019) has drawn on just war theory to develop a “just securitization theory” that can be used to evaluate the morality of any and all processes of securitization and desecuritization. She develops a list of criteria that provides coverage of many of the moral issues involved in the initiation, conduct, and termination of securitization, and this list is intended to be universal across all cases of securitization. Among these criteria are an “objective existential threat,” “a just referent object,” a “right intention” on the part of securitizing actors, “targeted security measures,” and appropriate timing for desecuritization. For Floyd, when a given instance of securitization meets all of the criteria of just securitization theory, securitization is morally justified; conversely, if securitization falls short on any one of the criteria, it is unjustified.

Floyd’s just securitization theory is remarkably thorough, comprehensive, and compelling. However, there are, I posit, three interlocking issues that undermine the utility of her theory for analyzing and morally evaluating actual instances of securitization. One need not accept all of my criticisms of Floyd to buy into a phronetic ethics of securitization. Accepting at least one of the three claims below—that securitization is best understood as a process, that determining the objectivity of existential threats is difficult or impossible, or that universal moral criteria are of limited utility—clears the way for a phronetic reconstruction of the ethics of securitization, which focuses on reasoning rather than rules and on means rather than ends.

Intersubjective Process, Not Singular Event

The first issue concerns Floyd’s theory of how securitization can be studied as an empirical phenomenon. She is only concerned with instances of securitization that manifest as “the exception,” or a concrete policy change in response to speech from securitizing actors (2019, 59–60). She only counts “those actors who utter a speech act and either act on it, or are powerful enough to instruct others to act on it” as securitizing actors (53). She argues further that audience acceptance is not a particularly important criterion for determining the success of securitization, because securitizing speech acts are not directed toward a legitimating audience, but instead toward either those at the source of the threat as “a warning” or those being threatened as “a promise for protection” (54). Together, these claims depict securitization as a singular action that takes place at a particular point in time by a particular, politically powerful actor. For Floyd, this narrow definition of securitization is essential for developing just securitization theory. “In order to say when something is right (morally justifiable),” she writes, “we need to know what that something is, and for that it has to be more concrete than simply what actors make of it” (59).

However, many scholars disagree that securitization can be reduced to a singular policy change emanating from a singular, powerful actor. Securitization should be conceived not as a singular speech act but as a process that is composed of many iterated utterances and/or material practices that reinforce each other and make an exceptional, potentially violent mode of response more logical and legitimate (Balzacq 2005; Stritzel 2007; Léonard and Kaunert 2022; Hayes 2015, 16–7). From this point of view, securitization’s mobilizing power lies not in its singularity as an authoritative statement of impending security action, but in a repeatability that naturalizes the apparent threatingness of a particular issue (Wilhelmsen 2017, 171). This conceptualization comports better with reality; for example, it was only after many invocations of the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and multiple UN inspections that skepticism and opposition to war were drowned out in a hawkish chorus of calls for US invasion (Oren and Solomon 2015).

Additionally, minimizing the role of the audience in securitization causes one to miss the source of securitization’s potentially dramatic mobilizing power and its distinct ethical issues. As Van Ryhtoven (2020) explicates, securitization does not merely represent a performative speech act that promises or provokes action. When securitization is successful, it constitutes a broader shift in social relations; “what is uniquely “radical” about [securitization]. . . is that its transformative potential resides not just at the level of policy, but at the level of the polity” (485). This radicality is the source of what Van Rythoven calls “the securitization dilemma.” Securitization, as an intersubjective process, relies on interpretation. “Security” and “existential threat” are subject to multiple and varied interpretations, and thus do not necessarily offer audiences the same picture of social reality as securitizing actors might initially assume.

Therefore, securitizing discourse may entail different radical social transformations than intended, leading to “perverse, unintended consequences.”

For example, some supporters of the PATRIOT Act were surprised by just how widespread the surveillance it authorized was as an example of the dramatic social consequences that securitizing discourse may have, but Van Rythoven points out that such consequences are an inherent risk in the use of the language of national security (485; 488). Similarly, some argue that the hypervigilance of the Red Scare in the United States later made détente with the Soviet Union politically untenable with a fervidly anti-Communist audience (Williams 1985; Brands 2014, 51; cf. Morgenthau 1952, 236 for a similar criticism).The securitization dilemma, then, comes from the choice one must make: either to forgo one of the most powerful means of political mobilization or to utilize it and assume all the risks that it entails. This understanding of securitization—as an intersubjective process the effects of which are not entirely in the control of particular political actors—–implies that ethical securitization requires continuous attention to security discourse and to how exactly security claims are articulated, and to continuous contestation when discourse goes awry.

Objective Existential Threats?

Moving to the second issue, Floyd stipulates that only “objective existential threats” can justify securitization. This is to be determined by a calculation of the potential aggressors’ malign intentions and their capacity to actually follow through and cause real harm to the proposed referent object (2019, 77–82). Few would deny that it is possible to identify such objective existential threats—those that will definitely harm or kill people regardless of their sociopolitical context and framing. However, all security issues must be represented discursively, and are therefore constituted by inherently political and contestable claims; as Bigo argues, “the wording is never innocent” (2002, 71).

“Objectivity,” then, is only possible regarding the most unambiguous and uninteresting cases of securitization. This is because it is often via securitization that the essential nature of a referent object is defined. The process of intersubjectively identifying and agreeing on what crises are so grave for a polity that they constitute existential threats is how some threats become real. As Williams writes, “a successful securitization... involves precisely the capacity to decide on the limits of a given identity, to oppose it to what it is not, to cast this relationship of threat or even enmity, and to have this decision and declaration accepted by a relevant group” (2003, 519).²

For example, the question of whether or not migration poses an existential threat to the European Union is in part determined via securitization, a process in which the essential character of the EU, its future, and those who are and are not “foreign” to the EU are in part determined (cf. Huysmans 2000). Even the issue of climate change, which to many appears unambiguously and objectively existentially threatening, faces contestation, as some claim that proposed responses to climate change threaten a particular consumption-focused “way of life” (McLaren and Corry 2023). Therefore, it seems that the ontological status of many threats can only be determined intersubjectively by the actors and audience themselves, and can seldom be known a priori except, again, in all but the most banal cases.³

Universal Moral Criteria?

The final issue stems from the other two and concerns Floyd’s development of just securitization theory as a set of universal moral principles that function as criteria to be checked off. Given that securitization is an intersubjective process, the consequences of which are not totally in control of actors, and given that the notion of an “objective” existential threat is not particularly useful for understanding how societies and security issues co-constitute each other, how can one theorize the ethics of securitization at all? What is the point?

Rather than universal moral theorizing, what is needed is a mode of ethical reasoning that can help agents navigate scenarios that are long on moral dilemmas and short on moral clarity (cf. Amoureux 2016, 1–6). Aristotle provides such a mode of reasoning. For Aristotle, “the good” that humans ought to aim for is not something consistent and universal across time and space, and therefore making rules or laws that aim at it without fault is not possible; the actions that one ought to take to achieve a good life are not consistent across every case (Aristotle 2019, I.6.1097a). Therefore, ethical agents must exercise good judgment throughout the course of their life if they are to flourish (I.10.1100b). For Aristotle, this sort of judgment takes the form of phronesis. Phronesis concerns deliberation about possible human actions. A person who exercises it reasons well about the actions they ought to take to achieve a good life (VI.5.1140b).

Phronesis is distinct from scientific knowledge and wisdom, which entail knowledge about the aspects of human life that are the same across every case (VI.7.1141a–1141b). Importantly, therefore, phronesis is a continuous process of careful deliberation about what the best course of action is. It is more about means than ends (although ends are not unimportant, as the next section details; I.6.1097a; V.11.1138a; VI.7.1141a). Phronesis does not take the form of strict adherence to a rule or to a particular conception of the good. One does not “set it and forget it.” Rather, in light of one’s experiences, one continuously updates their ideas of what they ought to do and how to do so.

At this point, one may object that relying on Aristotle rather than just war theory for an ethics of securitization simply swaps one form of universalism for another. After all, does a reliance on a delimited set of virtues—and especially on the singular virtue of phronesis—to flourish not seem like a general, universal prescription? The fact that phronesis does entail knowledge of universal principles, since these can help guide action, may only add confusion on this issue (Aristotle 2019, VI.7.1141a).

While it is true that Aristotle offers the virtues as general prescriptions to live “the good life,” he is clear that “the good is not something common corresponding to a single idea” (2019, I.6.1097a). As Sylvia Berryman summarizes, Aristotelian ethical agents “do not rely on rules to balance out the competing claims of justice and courage, for example, and determine which claims are paramount in a given situation. It would be practically impossible to offer a formula for finding the correct decision merely by summing up the values of all the relevant considerations” (2019, 124).⁴ What prescriptions that Aristotle offers, then, are so thin and context-dependent that they are not universal in any meaningful sense. Thus, one who exercises phronesis “must also acquire knowledge of particulars, since it is concerned with action, and action is about particulars.” That is, knowledge of universal principles without the ability to interpret and apply them is futile. Phronesis requires concrete, practical knowledge, extensive experience, and thorough empirical assessment of the particular situation one is faced with and the extent to which universal knowledge might (or might not) be of use in navigating it (VI.7.1141b).

These points can be clarified by recent Aristotelian engagements with just war theory. Chris Brown advocates for “just war thinking” rather than “just war theory,” a view which I follow here. He argues that just war principles cannot be used formulaically by plugging in the facts of any given case to determine whether a war is just or not. Every instance of warmaking varies too much and contains too many variables for this to be possible. The ethics of war, then, is not the subject of technical knowledge, of boxes to be ticked off, but instead the domain of “concrete, practical, context-dependent knowledge” (Brown 2013, 161). Similarly, Amoureux and Steele draw on Arendt and Aristotle to argue that war is an activity in which some agents’ ends always connect to other agents’ means, and that even those who act within the rules of just war theory find themselves subject to the “blowback” of unintended consequences. Thus, for them, the notion of competence, as the ability to consider all the possible outcomes of even rule-governed action and to revise one’s actions in light of these considerations, is an essential additive to the just war tradition (Amoureux and Steele 2014).

While taking much inspiration from Aristotle’s description of phronesis, the account of the ethics of securitization developed in the remainder of this paper is not strictly Aristotelian. I also draw on the classical realism of Morgenthau, who famously wrote that “there can be no political morality without prudence; that is, without consideration of the political consequences of seemingly moral action” (Morgenthau 1978, 10).⁵ Prudence, for Morgenthau, was the only means to act ethically in a complex international political space in which to act was necessarily to do some evil (Morgenthau 1945). While obviously Morgenthau never wrote about securitization, I believe his reflections on the nature of power politics and ethics are useful for thinking about securitization as a practice of power politics and as presenting a distinct ethical dilemma. This phronetic approach, I argue, is better suited to dealing with the complex and contingent nature of the intersubjective process that is securitization. The remainder of this paper develops this approach by putting Aristotle and Morgenthau in conversation with extant just securitization theory.

Just Cause

Because phronesis requires attention to universals and particulars, I develop a phronetic ethics of securitization by relying on two “universal” categories of just securitization thinking—just cause and proportionality—as useful guides for thinking about the moral issues raised by securitization, but as no more than that (cf. Brown 2013, 168). Just cause is almost certainly the most important just securitization (and just war) criterion. Without a just cause, even a case that satisfies all the other just war/just securitization criteria is unjustified; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for ethical warmaking.

As mentioned, Floyd’s version of just cause requires that securitization must be in response to an “objective existential threat.” This, she argues, is the only justifiable form of security that can be provided. Above, I argued that such objectivity is difficult or impossible to achieve in all but the most banal cases. Rather than suggesting the impossibility of moral theorizing regarding securitization, though, this aporia suggests the locus of theorizing should be the means of securitization, rather than the ends. If one takes seriously the idea that security issues are socially constructed, assessing the ends of securitization against some universal moral standard is likely to generate parochial conclusions.⁶ When well-formulated, the ends of ethical securitization may vary widely over space and time. While it is difficult to come to any conclusions about what constitutes “just” or “unjust” securitization, judgments regarding the way in which agents go about securitization are more possible, concrete, and, I argue, a more effective means to contest securitizing moves. Although absolute answers are not possible (this is an intrinsic part of Aristotle’s definition of ethics; 2019, I.2.1095a; VI.7.1141a), we can speak more concretely about whether securitizing actors deliberated well and practiced prudence throughout the securitization process, regardless of whether or not its results match the criteria of any just securitization theory. By focusing on how an issue was securitized, rather than focusing on more abstract and moralistic arguments as to why, I argue that one can make more definitive and effective criticisms.

Here, it is instructive to engage with Morgenthau’s conception of the national interest. While securitization and the construction of national interests are not synonymous, there are resonances between the concepts that make sustained engagement with Morgenthau and those he has inspired fruitful. One might think of securitization as a particular form of the “articulation” of a national interest that Jutta Weldes (1999) defines. However, it is important to note that what I argue here is not limited only to states and statespeople. One of securitization theory’s most important normative contributions is its insistence that even if states and national security may often dominate discussion, anybody can, in theory, speak security and thus bring about new political and social configurations, even from the margins and on a wide variety of issues outside of “traditional” national security issues (Williams 2015, 116).⁷

As most students of international relations know, the concept of “interest defined as power” is at the core of Morgenthau’s theory of international politics. It is (or ought to be) the driving force of all of a state’s foreign policy decisions. However, as is also well known, Morgenthau is quite clear that interest has no fixed meaning across space and time. It “depends upon the political and cultural context within which foreign policy is formulated. The goals that might be pursued by nations in their foreign policy can run the whole gamut of objectives any nation has ever pursued or might possibly pursue” (Morgenthau 1978, 8–9).

Further, the national interest is not antithetical to ethical conduct in foreign policy, but is actually the condition of possibility for such conduct. As Morgenthau writes, “the choice is not between moral principles and the national interest, but between one set of moral principles divorced from political reality, and another set...derived from political reality” (1952, 33). Only by situating moral principles in the particular features of a given political context can a state successfully navigate international life and avoid the consequences of overly moralistic and utopian action on the one hand and those of nihilistic and amoral action on the other. In fact, only by properly understanding the national interest and understanding all states as “political entities pursuing their respective interests” is one “able to do justice to all of them” (1978, 11). This other-regarding foreign policy is important both morally and instrumentally, as it sets a precedent for future interaction among international agents that can prevent one’s own state from becoming the subject of immoral treatment in the future (Morgenthau 1978, 11; Lang 2010, 37).

Importantly, this definition of the national interest does not stand apart from the subject it purports to describe as just an empirical claim. It is also a “rhetorical device that seeks to use the political power of this concept to encourage critical reflection and dialogue about interests and their relation to identity” (Williams 2005, 181). To raise the question of what the national interest is to ask what the nation is. This is inherently a political question, as for Morgenthau, politics is the domain of social life in which the definition of “the good” that persons and nations ought to strive for is contested and determined (Williams 2005, 187). “The national interest” does not refer to a pregiven political entity with a particular conception of “the good” and a strategy for how to achieve this good, but is rather partially to how this entity is constructed. Thus, a call to consider the national interest is a call to look inward and reflexively assess what exactly the “nation” in “national interest” is. Given that the national interest must always be derived from a fluid political reality, the national interest is the subject of phronetic reasoning as Aristotle understood it: a continuous process of deliberation about what actions a person (or, in this case, a state) ought to take to flourish in life.

Understood in this way, the indeterminacy of the national interest is neither inherently a good nor a bad thing, morally speaking. Its status gives politics “its distinctiveness as a realm of freedom, creativity, and change” that makes morally desirable change possible by allowing what is good for the nation to be subject to constant evaluation (Williams 2005, 18–9). Indeed, while “national interest” is usually read as “self-interest,” there is nothing inevitable about this interpretation. Morgenthau goes so far as to write that “to defend its own rights, to vindicate its own honor, there are occasions when a nation ought to hazard even its existence” (1952, 17).

Steele argues similarly in his article on “reflexive realism” that a state’s idea of its national interest may be able to be reconfigured to include genuinely humanitarian projects (Steele 2007, 290).⁸ In short, invoking the national interest—as both a political and an ethical imperative—is a means by which actors actually carve out space for their political and ethical action in world politics. While the concept is open to almost endless interpretation, when guided by prudence and a respect for the interests of other states, it can be harnessed and corralled into conduct that is at once self-serving and ethically oriented.

Similarly, securitization’s openness is also not inherently morally problematic. When seen as an intersubjective process, securitization can be understood as a contest over what “constitutes an existential threat to a shared value” (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998, 31). The fact that almost anything can, in theory, be framed as an “existential threat” is actually what gives securitization its radical potential. This claim that something raises the very question of what values are shared and whether they are so important as to require potentially extraordinary action. Perhaps surprisingly, attempting to limit securitization against only “objective” existential threats as Floyd defines them actually limits the possibilities for morally desirable transformation. For example, the extent to which global poverty constitutes an “objective existential threat” to the world’s wealthiest nations is unclear. While one could point to the possibility that those fleeing global poverty (and especially the effects of climate change) will eventually need to move to wealthier countries en masse and that this could cause problems regarding state capacity, it is not difficult to imagine that the wealthiest states may simply respond by slamming their borders shut permanently.

However, if the case that the existence of global poverty itself—as something morally abhorrent—represents an existential threat to what a powerful nation is and ought to be, this could provide the impetus to begin to address the issue (Bell 2018). As a threat to a commonly shared value, though, it does not seem that the threat of global poverty framed in this way could be deemed “objective” by any analyst. It can only be determined via the process of securitization itself, and this makes the process a potential vessel for ethical political projects. This possibility is conceptually foreclosed when one attempts to delimit the range of justified securitization only to those that refer to “objective” existential threats, a category that seems only to cover those threats that entail certain and immediate death to persons or a polity.

For both the national interest and securitization, though, such positive political transformation is possible insofar as those who articulate national interests/existential threats engage a public. This engagement is also a precondition for exercising phronesis. Here, it is crucial to note that I am not advocating for a form of Habermasian discourse ethics. Ideal speech conditions without account for rank or background to generate sound conclusions are not part of my argument. Quite the contrary, in fact. Rather, as part of an ethics of political prudence, I depend on those who hold power to clearly articulate their views so that contestation may happen.

For Aristotle, an essential aspect of phronesis is the ability to offer guidance to a polity; speakers offer up their ideas to a public audience, who in part determine how well that person engages in phronetic reasoning, among other virtues. “It is necessary, therefore, for a person who seems to have [practical wisdom, virtue, and goodwill] to be convincing to his listeners” (Aristotle 2018, II.1.1378b).⁹ Because those who engage in phronesis call upon others to aid deliberation when necessary, prudent political leaders sometimes call upon public audiences to gauge their ideas about certain actions and hold them accountable (Aristotle 2019, 1112b10).¹⁰ Such public deliberation is not the ethical decision-generating process per se (nor is it guaranteed to generate correct results), but merely one aspect of proper reasoning.

Similar dynamics are present in the political thought of Morgenthau. As Vibeke Schou Tjalve argues, in classical realist thought, “the formulation of clear political interests” is “instrumental for empowering the public and restraining government. Only when a political system defines clear political viewpoints may counter-views be provoked” (2011, 446). These moments of contestation generate opportunities for would-be securitizers to engage with the potential social consequences of their actions and, if necessary, change course.¹¹ For example, Lene Hansen calls attention to the ways in which the absence of gender identity as a sufficiently salient threatened identity—because it is so often subsumed under other categories like national or religious identity—can inhibit the ability to perceive women qua women as existentially threatened, as during wartime sexual violence, which may often be framed as threatening to the nation (2000, 297–9). If threatened women were given more of a platform to speak security (or if more attention were paid to their physically embodied securitizing moves), their existentially threatened status would become more visible, and thus something might be done about it. In more masculine halls of power, public Congressional opposition prevented Nixon and Kissinger from successfully painting India as an existential threat, even as the pair did so vigorously in private (Hayes 2012, 81–2). Both of these examples highlight the ways in which silence can be “a powerful political strategy that internalises and individualises threats thereby making resistance and political mobilisation difficult” (Hansen 2000, 306). According to Aristotelian and classical realist thought, then, silent, secret securitization is definitely imprudent and unlikely to be successful.

To be clear, I do not argue that this process guarantees that securitization is ethical or that injecting public deliberation into the securitization process automatically makes it ethical. It scarcely needs to be said that mass publics are more than capable of making rash decisions or demonizing their enemies. My argument is that a degree of publicity—developing and engaging “a political culture of the national interest” (Morgenthau, quoted in Tjalve 2011, 450)—is a necessary but insufficient aspect of ethical securitization. Pragmatically, it is part of the deliberative process, as political actors hear arguments and counter-arguments as to why something does or does not pose an existential threat and what the best way to address it is. To eschew this part of decision-making is to claim, implicitly or explicitly, that one deliberates so well that no help is necessary. While this may be true sometimes, and while secrecy may sometimes be needed, such claims run the risk of being hubristic. Further, and more abstractly, engaging a public is the only way to pull in what Williams (citing French Revolutionary figure Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès) refers to as the “constituent power” of a polity, or its potential to engage and absorb securitizing arguments for negative or positive political change (Williams 2015, 115).

Culpable Aggression?

Of course, such public engagement must be undertaken responsibly. Indeed, that securitization will definitely lead to positive change is patently overoptimistic. Securitization has often manifested as an enmitous and even violent mode of representation. Scholars have spilled much ink, highlighting the ways in which migrants, minorities, drug users, and a host of other dangers and deviants have been characterized as existential threats. At its worst, securitization takes the form of casting potential threats as intrinsically evil others that must be opposed at all costs (Williams 2003; Croft 2012, 86–7; Wilhelmsen 2017, 172; cf. Connolly 1991). This represents precisely the opposite of the sort of foreign policy Morgenthau prescribes. As he urges, a proper conception of the national interest also recognizes that every other state also has and acts upon a national interest and conception of its own good life. Failure to recognize this fact—that states “meet under an empty sky from which the gods have departed”—resulted in the worst excesses and atrocities of the twentieth century, as completing “claim[s] to universality” of moral righteousness turned wars into crusades (Morgenthau 1978, 99).

Further engagement with just war thinking can provide an avenue to approach this problem as it manifests in securitization. Scholars of just war and the ethics of self-defense are not only concerned with what acts can be responded to with violence. They are also concerned about the moral relationship between aggressors and the acts they commit, and there is debate amongst philosophers about how strong this connection needs to be to justify the use of defensive force. Some scholars assert that even “innocent threats,” who would harm agents for reasons, they cannot control, as in Robert Nozick’s famous example of the man unwillingly thrown down at you as you stand at the bottom of a well, whom you must vaporize with your ray gun to survive (Nozick 1974, 34). Others disagree and put forth accounts with varying strictness regarding how responsible threatening agents must be for their actions before force against them is justified (see, for example, Thomson 1991 and McMahan 2005).

I posit that Kimberly Kessler Ferzan’s criterion of “culpable aggression” is instructive for the ethics of securitization. As she argues, culpable aggression is defined by the “purpose, knowledge, and recklessness” of the aggressor (2012, 684). When an aggressor acts in such a way as to harm someone intentionally, knowingly, and/or with conscious disregard and without sufficient justification, they act in such a way as to forfeit their right to be free from any proportionate harm their victim might use to stop their attack. Importantly, culpability also obtains when agents intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, and without sufficient justification act in such a way as to make someone believe they will harm them, even if they do not actually intend to do so. When you point an unloaded gun at someone’s face, she is justified in acting on the belief that you intend to shoot her. This is because self-defense is by necessity a somewhat preemptive act; “liability [to defensive harm] is a communicative act that announces an attack and requires a defense. Not only does the defender hear the same thing when the attack is actual as when it is apparent, but also the aggressor says the same thing” (692–3). Thus, for Ferzan, assessing culpability does not require knowledge of agents’ private thoughts and beliefs, and is judged by examining others’ behavior and what justifications they may or may not have for it.

Of course, in line with the rest of this paper, I do not deploy the concept of culpable aggression as a criterion in the vein of much just war theorizing. Obviously, the intentions of others are unknowable, and attempting to assess actors’ actions and see if they align with Ferzan’s definition of culpability is unlikely to be a fruitful enterprise. However, it does seem that the notion of culpable aggression, as part of a just cause for securitization, is useful for stimulating the reflexivity that a phronetic ethics of securitization demands. It is especially important to note that the preemptive nature of self-defense highlighted above cuts both ways. Not only is it the case that you cannot be certain whether a threat is apparent or actual until it is too late, but neither can the person you might be (unintentionally) threatening.

For example, Wilhelmsen argues that Norway and Russia have undergone a process of mutually escalating securitization and, because of the preemptive nature of self-defense, that this is possible even if neither state ever initially had offensive intentions. Neither state can tell if the other is actually preparing its population for war or merely securitizing for “enteric use,” and thus each must respond in kind, kicking off a negative spiral of increasingly hostile representations of the other (Wilhelmsen 2021, 4).

Because of the persistent problem of interpretation, ethical securitization requires carefully probing the specific facts of a given scenario and determining which are the most relevant for determining what to do then and there while bearing in mind that searching for certitude is misguided. It seems that the just war/just securitization category of just cause is a particularly useful device for prompting would-be securitizers to carefully consider the reasons they might frame something or someone as an existential threat. The proper task of the scholar is not to make the attempt to determine whether something “actually is” an existential threat, but instead to make would-be securitizing actors themselves ask and answer this question themselves and to inculcate a degree of reflexivity in these actors. These actors should be made to consider how securitization might be perceived by those identified as threats, how audiences may internalize this idea, and how these interpretations may constrain future interactions. When viewed this way, Floyd's notion of “objective existential threat,” even if analytically problematic, can play an important role in taking up the Copenhagen School’s call to criticize and contest securitizing narratives (Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde 1998, 34). While deploying this concept is, as I have argued, unlikely to turn up any answers as to what constitutes a “real” threat, it can provide a useful wedge into disrupting settled representations of certain issues as obviously threatening.

This moral conceptual thinking, then, cannot be disentangled from probing, in particular, empirical assessments. In any given case of potential securitization, actors need to be made to ask themselves some difficult questions. How is it that this given issue came to be seen primarily as a security threat? How will this framework change the way others think about the issue, and what consequences might this have? What assumptions have I made about my potential adversaries? To what extent are they and I in a similar, dilemmatic situation, and thus to what extent are they culpable? To what extent am I culpable in provoking aggression? How might my words and actions be interpreted and reverberate to produce insecurity or even violence? Might I be wrong?¹² Taking these questions seriously represents an essential aspect of competence in securitization, as failure to do so is more likely to lead to disastrous results. In line with Aristotelian phronesis, this questioning must extend forward in time both conceptually—via a consideration of the possible effects of securitization in the long run—and literally—as a continuous process that agents engage in even after securitization has begun.

While it has proven difficult to find an empirical example of this sort of phronetic reasoning from political actors, it is exemplified in Stefan Elbe’s scholarship on the securitization of HIV/AIDS. His 2006 article “Should HIV/AIDS Be Securitized,” demonstrates a deep concern with the limits of the universal moral concepts (especially the Copenhagen School’s inherent normative preference for desecuritization; cf. Szarejko 2023), how securitizing discourse will be interpreted and acted upon, and the long-term effects of such discourse. Regarding the first issue, Elbe points out that, while a fear of the exceptionalist politics of security is warranted–and that therefore advocating for desecuritization is often a safe strategy–the HIV/AIDS pandemic was marred by “the utter absence of adequate state involvement.” In response to this inaction, framing HIV/AIDS became a means of politicizing and democratizing the issue and pulling in national and international institutions to address it, a process which had tangible, significant benefits for afflicted people around the world (Elbe 2006, 132).

However, Elbe argues that this observation does not suggest that securitizing the virus is definitely the right choice. Regarding interpretation and long-term consequences, he points out the dangers involved in talking about HIV/AIDS as a security issue at all, and even the dangers associated with different framings of the type of security issue that the virus is. First and foremost, any security talk around the issue of HIV/AIDS helps reproduce the idea that greater governmental control, monitoring, and regulation of potential dangers is always preferable—that “‘more security’ is always better.” It also threatens to push the issue out of “the more cosmopolitan and altruistic frameworks of health and development” and toward a more “state-centric framework” (129). Further, he argues that specific word choice is especially important. As he argues, there is a crucial difference between framing persons infected with HIV/AIDS as a security threat and framing the virus itself as a threat; the former is potentially dehumanizing and exclusionary, the latter more likely to engender policies focused on prevention and treatment (139).¹³

This sort of analysis–which pokes holes in overreliance on abstract principles (such as ‘desecuritization is always preferable’) and gives careful consideration to potential interpretations of discourse–represents a step towards phronetic securitization. Engaging in this form of (self-) criticism is, to my mind, an essential step towards realizing the reflexive and other-regarding foreign policy that Morgenthau demanded and to securitizing in a more ethical manner. While not guaranteeing morally desirable results, this can hopefully help political actors avoid the worst tendencies of securitization and do the least evil (cf. Morgenthau 1945).

Relatedly, before turning to the next section, it is important to note that while much of what I have written above focuses on becoming more aware of when one ought not to securitize, it also applies to instances in which one ought to securitize. It may be the case that, after careful consideration of universal moral theories, the particulars of their situation, and themselves, prudent agents find that securitization is the most promising avenue for action or the lesser of two evils. When this is the case—as when there is a just cause in the just war tradition—keeping one’s action within careful moral limits becomes especially important, and it is to this issue that I now turn.

Proportionality and Restraint

Indeed, in the just war tradition, the presence of a just cause alone is never sufficient to justify war. Just war theorists also demand that belligerents consider the potential consequences of their actions; this demand manifests as a proportionality criterion. Most basically, jus ad bellum proportionality requires those considering engaging in war to weigh up all the moral good that making war may bring about against all the potential evils, and only proceed if the former outweighs the latter. Floyd, in her version of just securitization theory, defines proportionality as “the expected good gained from securitization must be greater than the expected harm from securitization, where the only relevant good is the good specified in the just cause” (2019, 128). She then translates this requirement into a formula that attempts to calculate and compare the scale and magnitude of harm that might be done by securitizing. For her, securitization is only proportionate when such calculations determine that the harm done does not outweigh the good provided by securitization, and only greater security for individuals and referent objects—both intentional and incidental—counts in favor of securitization (131–5).

As may be intuitively obvious, forecasting the moral consequences of any large-scale collective action is indeed difficult. In war, the sheer number of moving parts and incomplete information—compounded by the “fog of war” and incalculable trade-offs between human life and strategic value—inhibits calculating proportionality with any accuracy. Thanks to the problem of interpretation, it seems that the criterion of proportionality as typically construed by the just war tradition may be even less clear in securitization than in warmaking. If one cannot even accurately predict how others will interpret their rhetoric and translate it into action, how is one to make any meaningful calculations about its potential moral consequences? Why think about proportionality at all?

Again, the insights of classical realism are instructive for overcoming this conceptual hurdle. As Williams (2005) argues, the notion of consequentialism in ethics can stimulate critical reflection on the ends of action; “a commitment to an ethic of consequences reflects a deeper ethic of criticism, of ‘self-clarification’, and thus of reflection upon the values adopted by an individual or a collectivity” (174–6). In conjunction with an acceptance of the fact that the world is complex and not entirely knowable and that therefore it is difficult to predict the consequences of one’s actions, consequentialist ethics council political actors to appreciate their own limits. As Seán Molloy points out, hubris represents to Morgenthau “a primary example of a political vice and moral danger against which leaders should be warned” (2009, 103).

In this light, then, proportionality is not merely a question of calculating external moral costs and benefits, but also of weighing up internal values and capabilities of recognizing, as the prudent person does, “things that are achievable in action,” rather than what abstract thought suggests is permissible (Aristotle 2019, VI.12.1143b). Indeed, the observation that it is extremely difficult to predict the consequences of securitization does not mean that all hope of ethical securitization is lost; as Amoreux points out, “to be meaningful for ethics, a reflexive agency need not tightly correspond to the intended consequences of action. We can take responsibility for agency through practice even if connecting our actions to specific effects is difficult and does not completely account for our world and our relations” (2016, 117).

Such a reflexive conceptualization of proportionality suggests—because political actors cannot possibly predict all the ways that they will be interpreted—that restraint in the use of security rhetoric is of the utmost importance. It stimulates further and deeper reflection of the critical questions articulated earlier by forcing comparison to whatever goods may be secured against the potential harms that may result from misinterpretation and unexpected consequences. It suggests that securitization should have a carefully limited scope, and not pursue some vague referent like “the American way of life,” a nebulous and unlimited concept that helped legitimate the Global War on Terror (Fierke 2015, 172).¹⁴ Even when securitization is ethically justified, proportionality suggests resisting the urge to totally demonize potential aggressors, lest they respond in kind. In short, a sense of proportionality in the ethics of securitization is also a sense of a particular tragedy: that some of the most powerful tools of political mobilization may—even when they may help realize emancipatory political projects—may be beyond the limits of responsible statecraft (Williams 2005, 192; cf. Van Rythoven 2020, 489).

Conclusion

Securitization theory has, since its inception, gained normative purchase by calling attention to the nonessential nature of national security agendas; if these agendas are the result of rhetoric and intersubjective acceptance, they can be contested and changed. However, this is not to say that morally desirable change is inevitable. As Wendt poignantly observes, social structures based on shared ideas about Self and Other are self-reinforcing and not amenable to quick and easy change (1999, 315). The task for critical security studies scholars, then, is not an easy one and involves pointing out that certain common practices of foreign policy are not the domain of certainty and rationality, but of (mis)interpretation and unreflective reflexes to the conduct of others. If policymakers and other power-holders are ever to act with the sort of caution, restraint, and phronesis that I and other scholars advocate for, this is sure to be the result of a long, arduous process.

Thus, rather than aiming for a universal solution to the distinct moral problems of securitization, my aim has been to provide conceptual tools that scholars may use to analyze and critique academic, public, and political debate about narratives of enemies and existential threats; rather than a solution, I have aimed to develop rhetorical tactics. It is unlikely that the theoretical tools here can be used definitively to say in advance whether or not securitization is unjustified or imprudent, and I concur with Chris Brown that this is a foolhardy goal for an ethical theory (2013). Rather, I argue that some of the theoretical insights here can give scholars and activists a basis on which to oppose securitizing moves that they find unjustified or imprudent, with the hope that the securitizing actors in question may themselves practice phronesis and take heed of the advice given, if it is sound. As securitizing actors ought to engage a public, this public must engage them back, and here I have tried to articulate some ground on which it may do so.

Of course, in writing a paper on securitization, ethics, and reflexivity, I would be remiss not to discuss the “normative dilemma of writing security.” As Huysmans persuasively argues, one of the implications of a constructivist approach to world politics is that those who study security do not stand outside the field of security knowledge and practice. By detailing the way in which a particular issue has been securitized, one may contribute to the further securitization of this issue, even if one intends to do the to do the opposite; as he writes, “staging alternative practices [of security politics] doe not necessarily undermine the real effects” of dominant discourses (Huysmans 2002, 51).

If Huysmans is right, then there is a chance that the suggestions I and others have made to utilize securitization theory for political purposes will backfire. In keeping with the spirit of the rest of my argument, here, I do not offer a solution to this dilemma. Instead, like the prudent practices of securitization I have attempted to articulate above, I want to offer some suggestions for how to mitigate it. Hopefully aided in part by the theory developed here, I believe that scholarly writing on securitization and other practices of political representation can best serve its critical purpose while minimizing the risk of blowback by adopting a skeptical and irreverent attitude when criticizing dominant narratives of securitization.

This task can be achieved in part by further empirical research on failed and especially disastrous attempts at securitization. Ruzicka (2019) already provides strong social–scientific and normative reasons to study failed securitization; I believe my account here provides reasons to double down on this agenda. If phronesis requires experience and the ability to consider the ways that particular ways of thinking and particular actions have succeeded and failed in the past, then excavating as many lessons as possible from examples of securitization that have produced “perverse, unintended consequences” is a key task for scholars, many of whom lack the practical experience that Aristotle argues is an important part of phronesis.¹⁵ And while it is true that these examples “do not ever provide us with a simple if-then calculus or a practical syllogism,” as part of a broader process of phronetic reasoning, they are important for developing a menu of examples to point to when those who do have experience proclaim authoritative knowledge and certitude about how to respond to certain issues (Gould 2016, 256). Such examples, when part of a public deliberative process, can help bridge the gap between abstract theoretical knowledge and real-world experience, combining them in the way that phronesis demands.

Attitudinally, I believe the insights of this ethical and empirical agenda can best be deployed by adopting a mocking, ironic attitude toward would-be securitizing actors. Oren and Solomon argue that parody is an effective means of navigating Huysmans’ normative dilemma. Attempting to combat securitization by arguing directly about the realness of a threat or the best means to respond to it may be an ineffective strategy because it reifies the issue at hand as a security issue in one way or another. Instead, drawing on Butler and Derrida, they argue critics should use humor and satire to highlight the ways in which securitization is a particular and contingent way of looking at an issue that produces a particular social effect (Oren and Solomon 2015, 335–6). Similarly, Steele observes that a debacle that featured the US Department of Homeland Security suggesting that Americans protect themselves from chemical warfare by shrink-wrapping their homes proved an effective desecuritizing move of terrorism via ridicule (Steele 2010, 206).

Indeed, if ethical securitization requires prudence and competence, then denaturalizing and deconstructing the apparent authority of those who fail to exhibit these traits via satire and humor may be an effective mode of argumentation against securitizing narratives. Just as “parodic proliferation” of supposedly natural gender identities can drain these identities of their self-evidence (Butler 1990 138), it seems that parody can aid desecuritization by helping critics deflate the authority of those who are quick to warn of a new “axis of evil” or extol the necessity of “great-power competition” when necessary. This approach cannot completely avoid being caught in the securitization dilemma; after all, one cannot be certain about how even mocking criticism will be interpreted and regurgitated. However, by combining this mode of critique with various insights from Aristotelian ethics, classical realism, and (just) securitization theory, I believe that scholars can more persuasively argue against imprudent narratives of securitization. They can do so most effectively not by attacking these narratives on the terms their proponents set, but by calling into question the extent to which these proponents are qualified to and actually do speak on behalf of the collective they purport to represent.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Andrew Proctor, Linnea Turco, Rachel Finnell, Bronson Herrera, Jack MacLennan, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback and constructive criticism. I would like to thank Anna Johns for listening to endless babbling about securitization theory and for her invaluable moral support

Footnotes

References