Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:31:06.198Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitisation through ritualised incantation of ambiguous phrases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2014

IDO OREN  and
TY SOLOMON
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We seek to reinvigorate and clarify the Copenhagen School's insight that ‘security’ is not ‘a sign that refers to something more real; the utterance [‘security’] itself is the act’. We conceptualise the utterances of securitising actors as consisting not in arguments so much as in repetitive spouting of ambiguous phrases (WMD, rogue states, ethnic cleansing). We further propose that audience acceptance consists not in persuasion so much as in joining the securitising actors in a ritualised chanting of the securitising phrase. Rather than being performed to, the audience participates in the performance in the manner in which a crowd at a rock concert sings along with the artists. We illustrate our argument with a discussion of how the ritualised chanting of the phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ during the run-up to the Iraq War ultimately produced the grave Iraqi threat that it purportedly described.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 313 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Austin, John L., How To Do Things With Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955, eds Urmson, J. O. and Sbisà, Marina (2nd edn, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis in original; Wæver, Ole, ‘Securitisation and Desecuritisation’, in Lipschutz, Ronnie (ed.), On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 55Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

2 Stritzel, Holger, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitization: Copenhagen and Beyond’, European Journal of International Relations, 13:3 (2007), p. 359CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid.; McDonald, Matt, ‘Securitization and the Construction of Security’, European Journal of International Relations, 14:4 (2008), pp. 563–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buzan, Barry, Wæver, Ole, and de Wilde, Jaap, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998)Google Scholar.

4 Buzan et al., ‘Security’, p. 26 (‘securitization’ as an illocutionary act); pp. 5, 26, 30, 37 (‘process’). As Stritzel put it, ‘Wæver and Buzan continuously fluctuate between the terms process and speech act/utterance as if both were synonymous’ – see Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitization’, p. 364, emphasis in original.

5 Buzan et al., Ibid., p. 25 (‘argument’); p. 204 (‘then’); pp. 27, 37 (‘significant audience’); pp. 25, 27, 31, 34, 41 (‘accept’); p. 41 (‘convinced’). In the words of McDonald, Buzan et al. ‘began to place increased emphasis on the role of constituencies or audiences in ‘backing up’ speech acts. . . . Here, speech acts were defined as ‘securitizing moves’ that became securitizations through audience consent’ – see ‘Securitization and the Construction of Security’, p. 566.

6 Austin, How To Do Things With Words, p. 99, emphasis in original; p. 109, emphasis in original; p. 101, emphasis added.

7 As Stritzel pointed out, Wæver continued to champion theorising securitisation as a linguistic ‘event’ – see Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitization’, p. 360.

8 Watson, Scott D., ‘“Framing”' the Copenhagen School: Integrating the Literature on Threat Construction’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 40:2 (2012), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Bigo, Didier, ‘Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease’, Alternatives, 27:1 (2002), p. 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Balzacq, Thierry, ‘The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience, and Context’, European Journal of International Relations, 11:2 (2005), pp. 176, 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitization’, p. 373.

12 McDonald, ‘Securitization and the Construction of Security’, pp. 568, 570.

13 Watson, ‘Framing’, pp. 1, 13.

14 Williams, Michael C., ‘Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics’, International Studies Quarterly, 47:4 (2003), p. 524CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphases in original. See also McDonald, ‘Securitization and the Construction of Security’, p. 569, and Watson, ibid., p. 19.

15 Hansen, Lene, ‘Theorizing the Image for Security Studies: Visual Securitisation and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis’, European Journal of International Relations, 17:1 (2011), p. 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 McDonald, ‘Securitisation and the Construction of Security’, p. 564; Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitisation’, pp. 373, 376, emphases in original.

17 McDonald, Ibid., p. 570; Wæver, ‘Securitisation and Desecuritisation’, p. 55, emphasis in original.

18 Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitisation’, p. 376.

19 Buzan et al., ‘Security’, p. 41, emphasis added.

20 Ibid.; Buzan, Barry and Hansen, Lene, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar (‘convinced’); Balzacq, ‘Three Faces of Securitisation’, pp. 172, 184 (‘persuaded’).

21 Edelman, Murray, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

22 Buzan et al., ‘Security’, pp. 34, 26.

23 Esther Schrader, ‘Lawmakers Grill Wolfowitz on Iraq’, Los Angeles Times (30 July 2003).

24 Barber, Benjamin, Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), p. 29Google Scholar.

25 Snyder, Jack and Ballentine, Karen, ‘Nationalism and the Marketplace of Ideas’, International Security, 21:2 (1996), pp. 5–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Kaufmann, Chaim, ‘Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War’, International Security, 29:1 (2004), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Johnson, Catherine, Branding Television (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 3Google Scholar.

28 Cook, Guy, The Discourse of Advertising (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 227Google Scholar.

29 Luntz, Frank, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear (New York: Hyperion, 2007), p. 12Google Scholar.

30 Bigo, ‘Security and Immigration’, p. 65.

31 Ibid.

32 Huysmans, Jef, ‘What's in an Act? On Security Speech Acts and Little Security Nothings’, Security Dialogue, 42:4–5 (2011), p. 372CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Ibid.

34 Austin, How To Do Things With Words, pp. 18–19; emphases in original.

35 Austin later qualified this generalisation somewhat, concluding that ‘Illocutionary acts are [always] conventional acts, perlocutionary acts are not conventional’ – How To Do Things With Words, p. 121, emphasis in original.

36 Ibid., p. 16.

37 Derrida, Jacques, ‘Signature Event Context’, in Graff, Gerald (ed.), Limited Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), p. 15Google Scholar, emphasis original. We found Culler, Jonathan, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 110–34Google Scholar, very helpful in clarifying Derrida's critique of Austin.

38 Derrida, ‘Signature Event Context’, p. 15, emphasis in original.

39 Ibid., p. 17.

40 Ibid., p. 18.

41 Ibid., p. 20.

42 Culler, On Deconstruction, p. 126

43 Derrida, ‘Signature Event Context’, p. 18.

44 Butler, Judith, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 3Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

45 Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitisation’.

46 Butler, Excitable Speech, p. 36.

47 Buzan et. al., ‘Security’, p. 25, emphasis in original.

48 Ibid. The Oxford Dictionary is available at: {http://oxforddictionaries.com/} accessed 15 September 2012, emphases added.

49 Buzan et. al., ‘Security’, pp. 26, 41, emphasis added. See also Buzan and Hansen, Evolution of International Security Studies, p. 34.

50 Oxford Dictionary Online.

51 Oxford Dictionary Online, emphases added.

52 Neumann, Iver B., ‘Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 31:3 (2002), pp. 627–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Pouliot, Vincent, International Security in Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Neumann, ‘Returning Practice’, p. 629.

55 Adler, Emanuel and Pouliot, Vincent, ‘International practices: introduction and framework’, in Adler, and Pouliot, (eds), International Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Adler, Emanuel, ‘The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO's Post-Cold War Transformation’, European Journal of International Relations, 14:2 (2008), pp. 195–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pouliot, Vincent, ‘The Materials of Practice: Nuclear Warheads, Rhetorical Commonplaces, and Committee Meetings in Russian-Atlantic Relations’, Cooperation and Conflict, 45:3 (2010), pp. 294–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Adler and Pouliot, ‘International Practices’, p. 8.

57 Althusser, Louis, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Brewster, Ben (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), p. 168Google Scholar, first emphasis added, other emphases in original.

58 Butler, Excitable Speech, p. 25.

59 Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, p. 168.

60 Batnitzky, Leora, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 1Google Scholar.

61 Fishbane, Michael A., Judaism: Revelation and Tradition (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), pp. 83–4Google Scholar.

62 Bamford, Julia, You Can Say That Again: Repetition in Discourse (Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice Bologna, 2000), p. 78Google Scholar.

63 Sylvan, Robin, Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimension of Popular Music (New York: New York University Press, 2002), p. 6Google Scholar.

64 Ibid., pp. 19–20.

65 Jones, Richard R., ‘Chants’, Encyclopedia of Anthropology (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), p. 478Google Scholar.

66 Sylvan, Traces of the Spirit, p. 33.

67 Sacks, Oliver, ‘The Power of Music’, Brain, 129:10 (2006), p. 2528CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, including the Nietzsche quotation.

68 Storr, Anthony, Music and the Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), p. 21Google Scholar.

69 Sacks, ‘Power of Music’, p. 2530.

70 Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, p. 168.

71 Sacks, ‘Power of Music’, p. 2530.

72 Sylvan, Robin, Trance Formation: The Spiritual and Religious Dimensions of Global Rave Culture (New York: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar; Jones, ‘Chants’, p. 478.

73 Jones, ‘Chants’, p. 478.

74 Kertzer, David I., Ritual, Politics and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 62Google Scholar, including the Durkheim quotation.

75 Ibid., p. 63.

76 Ibid., p. 69. In this vein, Wedeen, Lisa, in her Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and performance in Yemen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 87–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, found that ‘Images of national unity do not do away with the divisions that generate lively worlds of debate in Yemen. Both the elections and the [North-South] unity celebrations provided discursive contexts within which alternative forms of group identification and politics could take place.’

77 Kertzer, Ritual, pp. 64–5.

78 Ibid., p. 70.

79 Although space constraints prohibit a detailed discussion, these interweaving roles of belief and materiality raise the issue of affect in securitisation. One route worth exploring here would be how affects play a role in audience acceptance of securitisation discourses. Such work could follow recent research demonstrating the role of emotions in rebuilding communities after crises. See Hutchison, Emma and Bleiker, Roland, ‘Emotional Reconciliation: Reconstituting Identity and Community after Trauma’, European Journal of Social Theory, 11:3 (2008), pp. 385–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On emotions and beliefs, see Jonathan, Mercer, ‘Emotional Beliefs’, International Organization, 64:1 (2000), pp. 1–31Google Scholar.

80 Oren, Ido and Solomon, Ty, ‘WMD: The Career of a Concept’, New Political Science, 35:1 (2013), pp. 109–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Howarth, David and Stavrakakis, Yannis, ‘Introducing Discourse Theory’, in Howarth, , Aletta Norval, , and Stavrakakis, (eds), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 8Google Scholar.

82 Kertzer, Ritual, p. 11.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid., p. 76.

85 Buzan et al., ‘Security’, p. 27.

86 Gershkoff, Amy and Kushner, Shana, ‘Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration's Rhetoric’, Perspectives on Politics, 3:3 (2005), p. 531CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Richard Cheney, ‘The Vice President Appears on Late Edition’, CNN, available at: {http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20020324-2.html} accessed 31 July 2012.

88 Woodward, Bob, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 163–6Google Scholar.

89 Rich, Frank, The Greatest Story Ever Told: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina (New York: Penguin, 2006), pp. 189, 57Google Scholar.

90 Quoted in Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus, ‘Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence’, Washington Post (10 August 2003).

91 Ron Suskind, ‘Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush’, New York Times (17 October 2004). Suskind actually attributed this remark to an unnamed senior official who was ‘widely known’ to have been Rove – see Danner, Mark, Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War (New York: Nation Books, 2009), p. 555Google Scholar.

92 Isikoff, Michael and Corn, David, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006), p. 29Google Scholar. See also Rampton, Sheldon and Stauber, John, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's war on Iraq (London: Robinson Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

93 CNN, ‘Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer: Interview with Condoleezza Rice’ (8 September 2002), available at: {http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/08/le.00.html} accessed 31 July 2012.

94 Woodward, Plan of Attack, pp. 201–2.

95 ‘President Rallies Troops at Fort Hood’ (3 January 2003), available at: {http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030103.html} accessed 31 July 2012.

96 ‘Full Text of Colin Powell's Speech’, The Guardian (5 February 2003). While we focus here on the immediate run-up to the Iraq war, we concur with Burgos, Russell A. (‘Origins of Regime Change: ‘Ideapolitik’ and the Long Road to Baghdad: 1993–2000’, Security Studies, 17:2 (2008), p. 221)CrossRefGoogle Scholar that the Bush administration's ‘rhetoric was firmly embedded in a pre-existing foreign policy consensus defining Saddam Hussein as the “problem” and his overthrow the “solution”’. We similarly recognise that ‘WMD’ can be seen as part of a broader ‘discourse of danger’ that produced collective understandings of ‘us’ and ‘them’ after 11 September 2001. See Campbell, David, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

97 Schrader, ‘Lawmakers Grill Wolfowitz’.

98 Quoted in Woodward, Plan of Attack, p. 170.

99 Quoted in Ibid., p. 203.

100 David W. Moore, ‘Public Taking Wait-and-See Attitude on U.N. Inspections’, Gallup News Service (12 December 2002), available at: {http://www.gallup.com/poll/7408/public-taking-waitandsee-attitude-un-inspections.aspx} accessed 31 July 2012.

101 Solomon, Ty, ‘Social Logics and Normalization in the War on Terror’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 38:2 (2009), pp. 269–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 The data presented in Figures 1–3 were generated by using the Factiva.com search engine, operated by the Dow Jones Corporation. Factiva.com's category of ‘major U.S. news and business publications’ (Figures 2 and 3) includes some forty newspapers and magazines ‘covering general news and business news that are considered key publications in their region by virtue of circulation or reputation’.

103 Barber, Fear's Empire, p. 29; American Dialect Society, ‘“Occupy” 2011 Word of the Year’, available at: {http://www.americandialect.org/occupy-is-the-2011-word-of-the-year} accessed 30 July 2012.

104 American Dialect Society, ‘Occupy’.

105 Luntz, Words that Work, p. 6.

106 Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 94Google Scholar.

107 Ibid.

108 Jonathan Alter, ‘Why This Is Not a Drill’, Newsweek (17 November 1997).

109 Michael Kinsley, ‘Low Opinion: Did Iraq Have Weapons of Mass Destruction? It Doesn't Matter’, Slate (19 June 2003), available at: {http://www.slate.com/id/2084602/} accessed 25 July 2012.

110 Oren and Solomon, ‘WMD: The Career of a Concept’. See also Bentley, Michelle, Weapons of Mass Destruction and US Foreign Policy: The Strategic Use of a Concept (London: Routledge, 2014)Google Scholar.

111 John Shiffman, ‘Unhappy over Surgery, He Now Faces Prison’, Philadelphia Inquirer (5 April 2006).

112 Kertzer, Ritual, p. 11.

113 Morrison, Philip and Tsipis, Kosta, ‘Rightful Names’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 59:3 (2003), p. 77Google Scholar.

114 John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. ‘Keeping Saddam Hussein in a Box’, New York Times (2 February 2003).

115 Holsti, Ole R., American Public Opinion on the Iraq War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), p. 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Jeffrey M. Jones, ‘Latest Update Shows No Change in Support for Invasion of Iraq’, Gallup News Service, available at: {http://www.gallup.com/poll/7942/latest-update-shows-change-support-invasion-iraq.aspx} accessed 20 June 2012.

117 Kertzer, Ritual, p. 76.

118 Kinsley, ‘Low Opinion’.

119 Huysmans, Jef, ‘Defining Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma of Writing Security’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 27: (2002), pp. 41–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

120 Ibid., p. 50.

121 Ibid., pp. 50–1.

122 Ibid., p. 59.

123 Butler, Judith, ‘Sovereign Performatives in the Contemporary Scene of the Utterance’, Critical Inquiry, 23:2 (1997), p. 351CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis original.

124 Kaufmann, ‘Threat Inflation’, p. 5.

125 Benhabib, Seyla, Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Butler, ‘Sovereign Performatives’, p. 365.

127 Butler, Excitable Speech, p. 14.

128 Butler, ‘Sovereign Performatives’, p. 375.

129 Ibid., emphases in original.

130 A recapitulation of the episode is available at: {www.avclub.com/review/the-sopranos-all-happy-families-63274} accessed 20 December 2013.

131 ‘Simpsons’ Halloween ‘“Horror” Could Hit GOP’, available at: {www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=2600380&page=1} accessed 20 December 2013.

132 Butler, ‘Sovereign Performatives’, p. 375.