Securitisation in the Non-West

Simon Mabon, Saloni Kapur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429852282
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The concept of securitisation has gained increasing prominence in the past decade. Initially developed in Copenhagen, the term has been used to describe the broadening of the security agenda and the framing of particular issues as existential threats across the world. In spite of this prominence, very little work has been undertaken that questions the extent to which the concept can be applied beyond the Western world. This volume engages with these questions, providing a theoretical overview of issues with using the concept beyond the West, along with empirical papers looking at its use in a number of different contexts.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

‘It’s not a Muslim ban!’ Indirect speech acts and the securitisation of Islam in the United States post-9/11

Clara Eroukhmanoff

ABSTRACT
According to the Copenhagen School, a political issue is prioritised, or ‘securitised’, when an audience accepts a speech act with a particular security grammar pointing to the dangerous nature of the threat and calling for extraordinary security measures. This article probes the opposite: what if not saying ‘security’ and instead saying ‘friend’ also contributes to the securitisation? I explore this logic with the ways in which Islam has been securitised in the United States from the Bush administration to the beginning of the Trump administration and offer an analysis of what this article calls the ‘indirect securitisation of Islam.’ Drawing on the philosophy of language of John Searle, an indirect securitisation is one that is successful through indirect securitising speech acts, that is, utterances that comprise two illocutions, one direct and one indirect, with the latter being the ‘real’ request of the utterance. Using covert forms of speech such as indirect speech acts enables elite speakers to ‘deny plausibility’ and claim they are not securitising (or ‘the least racist person’ as Trump claims), thereby ‘saving face.’ Indirect securitising speech acts are therefore an important strategic tool in elite actors’ securitising playbook. The article seeks to make sense of a climate of American politics that seem ungoverned by conventional rules of speech by offering a timely study of how political leaders can ‘have their cake and eat it too’ in matters of national security.

Introduction

Securitisation theory draws attention to the selective use of language by politicians in the construction of security issues in the ‘West’ (Mabon and Kapur, this issue). According to Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde (1998), the authors of securitisation theory, securitisation is a ‘speech act’: by invoking a security grammar, a state representative attempts to convince an audience and claim ‘a special right to use whatever means are necessary to block it’ (Wæver 1995, 55). This article probes the reverse: what if, by claiming that the issue is not security and by mobilising a language highlighting the peaceful nature of an issue instead, ‘a state-representative moves a particular development into a specific area, and thereby claims a special right to use whatever means are necessary to block it’? Drawing on John Searle’s (1975) indirect speech act theory, I argue that indirect speech acts can reveal a different type of securitisation, called ‘indirect securitisation.’ Direct securitisations are identified by an overt security grammar that labels an issue a threat, magnifies its dangerous nature, signals a point of no return and offers a possible way out, thereby lifting this issue ‘above politics’ (Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde 1998, 32–3). By contrast, indirect securitisations are characterised by a covert security grammar where securitising actors avoid labelling the issue a threat, for fear of saying something gauche and be subsequently chastised. This article demonstrates that when it comes to securitising Islam, a religion perceived as non-Western, in a ‘Western democracy’ like the United States, elite speakers tend to use indirect speech to ‘save face’ since securitising religious minorities directly would be tantamount to a form of hate speech. Thus, I investigate the securitisation of Islam as a study in a Western context but of an issue that has been constructed as non-Western, or antithetical to the ‘Western way of life.’ Further, the indirect speech act approach may open a new line of inquiry into securitisations in the non-Western world insofar as covert securitisations are about the ability to mislead and to mask, rather than the capacity to speak per se.

To demonstrate this argument, the article first provides an analysis of speeches made by three presidents of the United States while in office in relation to Islam and Muslim communities. The analysis indicates that in these speeches, a direct security grammar with respect to Islam was not mobilised. George W. Bush and Barack Obama make sure that Islam is not associated with ‘security,’ or ‘threat,’ and instead frame Islam as a peaceful religion that is hijacked by an extremist fringe of extremists. Even newly elected Donald J. Trump (2016b), who during his campaign talked about a ‘complete shutdown’ of Muslims entering the United States, once in power, reassured the public that his executive order was ‘not a Muslim ban’ (2017c). The second section unpacks Searle’s indirect speech act theory and lays the theoretical groundwork necessary for conceptualising the securitisation of Islam as an indirect securitisation. The implications of indirectness are explored in the third section, where securitising indirectly is considered a strategy deployed by elite speakers to thwart accusations of wrongdoings (such as racism). This is made possible because indirect speech allows securitising actors to deny plausibility by claiming that they never meant to securitise. Being able to save face is important for elite speakers for a failed securitising move can affect their political clout and in turn they can lose authority and legitimacy as security speakers. When President Trump has not respected the rules of covert speech and ventured outside of his speechwriter’s text, for instance when he branded African nations and developing countries ‘shitholes’, these incidents have backfired and have invited responses that either ridiculed him or created diplomatic tensions (e.g. with South Africa) (CNN 2018). As Shogan (2006, 10) notes, one way to achieve credibility and maintain authority is to use rhetoric, which includes covert strategies such as indirect speech acts.

The concept of indirect securitisation provides an innovative twist to securitisation theory and is fundamental to how minority groups become securitised by elite speakers with the executive power to move issues ‘beyond politics,’ an issue that is relevant beyond the Western world. Indeed, when a securitisation constitutes a form of hate speech, such as saying that Muslims are a threat to the United States who need to be monitored, securitising actors securitise indirectly for fear of being accused of racism or discriminating against a minority group. This article speaks to philosophies of everyday language, in particular to covert forms of hate speech and racism, and offers a timely analysis of the indirect securitisation of Islam in the United States. Indirect securitisations illuminate the ways in which various American administrations, Democrat and Republican, can claim the war on terrorism is ‘not a religious war’ while at the same time target the Muslim population domestically and internationally. While covert language is not yet central to the philosophy of language (Saul 2017), how established speakers manipulate, lie and mislead their audiences is vital in the world and has become an increasingly pertinent area in International Relations since the rise of Trump and right-wing populism. Indirect securitisations can shed light on the nexus between the securitisation of minority groups and racism, notably how ‘security’ is intertwined with racist constructions, and how these practices reinvent themselves in the twenty-first century in the face of actors who claim they are the ‘least racist person’ (Trump 09/12/2015; Trump 15/09/2016; Trump 16/02/2017).

Framing Islam as a peaceful religion

On 17 September 2001, six days after the September 11 attacks, Bush travelled to the Islamic Centre in Washington DC to speak to American Muslim communities and reassured them that the United States was not at war with Islam. He declared that ‘[t]he face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.’ Equally, on 20 September 2001 Bush asserted that the terrorists ‘pervert the peaceful teachings of Islam’ (Bush 17/09/2001, emphasis added). Offering an olive branch to the Muslim world, Barack Obama (04/06/2009) announced in Cairo that ‘America and Islam are not exclusive,’ instead, ‘they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.’ More recently, newly elected President Trump (2017c), from the Oval Office, claimed that the ‘extreme vetting’ executive order passed during his first hundred days in office is ‘not a Muslim ban.’ Yet, Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, Obama’s extensive drone programme and Trump’s several attempts to ban individuals coming to the United States from a list of predominantly Muslim countries created by Trump’s administrative team,¹ suggest that in the context of the war on terrorism Islam has been ‘securitised,’ meaning that security measures, exceptional and mundane, target the Muslim population.

This article is particularly concerned with elite speakers (such as the president of the United States) who have the executive power to trigger extraordinary measures like the PATRIOT ACT, the surveillance of ‘Muslim neighbourhoods’ and the assassination of American citizens by drones in territories with which the United States is not at war. To a certain extent, this article reinstates the elitist and exceptional understanding of securitising moves, which has been compared to the conceptualisation of politics by the German jurist Carl Schmitt ([1922] 2005), and rightly contested by a wide array of scholars, from the Paris School of Securitisation (Bigo and Tsoukala 2008; CASE Collective 2006; Diez 2007) to scholars working on the governmentality of security, technologies of risk and the securitisation of catastrophic events and trauma.² They argue that while the Copenhagen School has opened space for thinking of security beyond Cold War balance of power, the School has also closed it by merely exploring exceptional discourses of powerful actors, at the expense of everyday security practices and the ‘little security nothings’ (Huysmans 2011). Some have thus called to go beyond the ‘spectacle of security’ and instead investigate everyday experiences of (in)security (Lundborg and Vaughan-Williams 2011, 369).

I focus on presidents not because statesmen are the only actors shaping our understanding of what constitutes a societal and security issue. This would assume a top-down and overtly discursive understanding of how knowledge and meaning are generated. I focus on elite speakers for an important reason, namely, that these speakers contribute to the pervasiveness of covert forms of racism and hate speech, which remain unabated and unpunished because these actors can claim they never meant to securitise or that what they said is ‘not racism.’ This practice has become ubiquitous since the election of Trump, who has activated the securitisation of Islam in the United States, but has couched it under Executive Orders and the language of national security (Hassan 2017, 187–8). I do not suggest that actors other than the presidents of the United States have not securitised Islam or that practices other than speech do not contribute to seeing Muslims as threats. Securitisation is always manifold and includes a multitude of direct and indirect, discursive and non-discursive, exceptional and everyday acts performed by a variety of what the Copenhagen School calls functional actors, ‘actors who affect the dynamics of a sector’ and ‘who significantly influence decisions in the field of security’ (Buzan, Wæver, and De Wilde 1998, 36).

Functional actors like Fox News assert quite explicitly that the United States should be worried about the role of Islam in American society, but others such as the police have relied on more imagined and less explicitly means of communication, for instance explaining the radicalisation of Muslim individuals with metaphors of growing bad seeds and incubators (Eroukhmanoff 2015). These securitising moves constitute the background knowledge necessary for the indirect securitisation to be successful, as we will see later in this article. They are instrumental in the growing Islamophobic attitudes in the West, founded on the perception that Islam is a threat to the Western liberal-secular order and a threat to security (Mavelli 2013, 160–1). The election of Trump (2016b) has crystalised anti-Muslim prejudices by being overtly critical of Muslims during the 2016 election campaign, even calling for a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.’ Trump’s Islamophobia is, as Hassan (2017, 188) notes, well documented. Still, prejudices about Islam and the role of Muslims in the War on Terror also stem from less overt iterations than Trump’s ‘Muslim shutdown’ comment. Indirect speech acts are part of this covert construction and as such should be examined on their own merit, especially in the context of a Trump presidency which has been successful in maintaining Islam is at the centre stage of politics while simultaneously preserving the Bush and Obama administrations’ official rhetoric that the war on terrorism is ‘not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations’ (Trump 21/05/2017). Indirect securitisations can unravel the contradictory and unpredictable messages sent from a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – The Copenhagen School goes global: securitisation in the Non-West
• 1. ‘It’s not a Muslim ban!’ Indirect speech acts and the securitisation of Islam in the United States post–9/11
• 2. Recursion or rejection? Securitization theory faces Islamist violence and foreign religions
• 3. Review of ‘Recursion or rejection? Securitization theory faces Islamist violence and foreign religions’, by Mona Kanwal Sheikh
• 4. Existential threats and regulating life: securitization in the contemporary Middle East
• 5. Review of ‘Existential threats and regulating life: securitization in the contemporary Middle East’, by Simon Mabon
• 6. From Copenhagen to Uri and across the Line of Control: India’s ‘surgical strikes’ as a case of securitisation in two acts
• 7. Securitization analysis beyond its power-critique
• 8. Securitization outside of the West: conceptualizing the securitization–neo-patrimonialism nexus in Africa
• 9. Securitization and the global politics of cybersecurity
• 10. The politics of securitized technology
• 11. Let’s just say we’d like to avoid any great power entanglements: desecuritization in post-Mao Chinese foreign policy towards major powers
• 12. China and discourses of desecuritization: a reply to Vuori
• 13. Securitization, mafias and violence in Brazil and Mexico
• 14. Sovereign implications of securitization work
• Index