Subjects of Security

Domestic Effects of Foreign Policy in the War on Terror

R. Cameron

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349445653, 9781137274359
• eBook ISBN: 9781137274366
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

This book argues that the war on terror is a paradigmatic foreign policy that has had profound effects on domestic social order. Cameron develops an original framework which inverts the traditional analysis of foreign policy in order to interpret its impact upon subject formation through everyday practises of security and social regulation.

Part I

Theorising Foreign Policy as Social Control

1

Sovereignty and the Modern Subject: Theory as Practice

Subjects of Security is concerned with developing an understanding of the ways in which a state’s foreign policy affects, and in particular contributes to the organisation of, its own domestic sphere. This proposition may seem at first entirely self-contradictory. After all, as those schooled in the dominant traditions of international relations (IR) would know, foreign policy, seemingly by definition, has an exclusive concern with the foreign, the international; that which is ‘outside’ the state. This chapter will challenge these perceived contradictions by posing the question, ‘Why do people think that foreign policy does not affect domestic order?’ In doing so, this chapter will highlight the fact that the processes which demarcate foreign and domestic policies exist and thrive within the foundations and practices of traditional IR theory. By demonstrating that the separation of domestic and international realms is an ongoing process of partitioning, this chapter will render suspect the proposition put forward by orthodox discourses of modern sovereignty that the domestic and international remain logically and naturally separate. Consequently, this chapter will demonstrate that the seemingly clear-cut divisions between the domestic and international realms bewilder attempts to grasp the complex practices of modern sovereignty.

This chapter will highlight these contradictions through a critical engagement with mainstream accounts of the formation of modern state sovereignty and the emergence of domestic and international spheres. It will do so by engaging two critical processes: a genealogical investigation of sovereignty, and an investigation of the discursive practices that consolidate historical practices of sovereignty. An understanding of the operation of sovereignty here is vital. After all, it is the contemporary practice of sovereignty that continues to generate the inside/outside view of IR in which foreign policy is seen as exclusively externally focused, having no bearing on domestic order. The genealogical accounts of sovereignty will highlight that accounts of IR rely on sovereignty as a fixed ontological premise, when instead it should be regarded as being historically determined and contingent. By drawing attention to the role that this interpretation of sovereignty plays in establishing the international and domestic spheres, this chapter will highlight the need to question the accepted dynamics of IR, in particular that of foreign policy being a tool to mediate the domestic and the foreign.

The account of sovereignty presented here is not meant to be an account of the actual nature of sovereignty. Rather, this chapter can be seen as an account of how the concept is used in understanding and interpreting politics. For as Jens Bartelson (1995, p. 47) argues, ‘the concept of sovereignty is so firmly linked with the epistemic and ontological foundations of political enquiry, that it can hardly be touched without simultaneously evoking questions about these foundations’. Before further exploring the nature of this claim, it is important to evoke a sense of how this book will approach the questions of knowledge and discourse that Bartelson refers to. This is an important question with regard to the aims of this book, for when knowledge and discourse are seen in this way and modern sovereignty is re-examined in this light, many of the recurring tendencies within international politics can be attributed to these practices. These tendencies include the simplification and instilling of a superficial order onto ambiguity, so that black and white dichotomies and binary discourses are created where otherwise there might be a variety of shades of grey. A contemporary incidence of this can be seen in the politics of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ in pursuit of the objectives of the War on Terror, a practice that relies on simplified and starkly oppositional notions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ that overwhelm the complexities of sovereignty’s operation. It is such questions about the foundations of otherwise familiar practices that I wish to explore here in the analysis of sovereignty, to establish an understanding of the logics that are at play when discussing international politics.

International Relations, Global Politics and Discourse

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now only matter as metal, no longer as coins.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1976 [1873], p. 47)

The study of IR is understood to be a discipline that is concerned with politics that are predominantly external to the domain of the sovereign state.¹ Despite these seemingly clear parameters, conceptual and cartographical difficulties abound when the entire globe has been claimed, mapped and placed under the sovereign rule of one state or another. If the globe is divided spatially, how are ‘relations’ between these entities to be understood? If it is spatial, exactly what space do these relations take place in? Where is ‘the international’? Where is the supposed anarchy actually located? These are the first questions that we must ask if we are to begin to map IR. However, if the study of IR is limited to simply diplomatic relations and conflicts between states (the traditional concerns of high-powered politics), then this is a narrowly defined scope of IR. It is not one that is likely to provide a comprehensive account of global interactions. At the point where it attempts to give an account of global politics, the field of study moves beyond what can be accurately described as ‘international relations’.

IR, therefore, is better understood as a broad discourse on global politics, rather than a portrayal of the distinct reality of relations between nation states.² At least, that is how it will be treated in this book, given that the traditional approach is not the most encompassing description of the range of concerns that the discipline engages with. Such accounts of international politics that are firmly rooted to the dichotomies of international and domestic elevate the study of this discourse such that it is seen as scientifically validated and sure. These accounts of IR suggest meaningful interactions between kindred nation states and in this sense it at least privileges the status of states in global politics if it doesn’t actually actively exclude various non-state actors. By treating IR as a field of discourse instead of a discrete reality, I am allowing these implicitly dispersed ‘facts’ of IR to be contested as well as allowing the overall coherence of its narrow reading of Western intellectual and historical experience – writ large across the globe, most noticeably in cartographic script – to be re-examined. Thus for one to write within the discipline of IR, having noted its discursive nature, does not require an acceptance that this appellation is unproblematic, or an acceptance of it at all.

Indeed many of the key assumptions of IR in this chapter will be highlighted as being part of a dominant discourse rather than ‘reality’. This book recognises that the theorisation of politics is hard to distinguish from how it ‘is’ in any kind of reality. Indeed, political institutions and events can often be seen as acting according to, or on the basis of, knowledge that has sought to theorise similar institutions or events. In this way, many theories can be self-actualising, giving rise to the reality that they seek to describe. Many tenets of the pragmatic ‘realist’ school of thought, rather than being responses to reality, can be seen in this way to be as utopian and idealistic as those of the counter-posing ‘naïve liberal’ position. Viewed this way, liberalism and realism can be seen to constitute what can be broadly described as the traditional or foundational positions in IR.

Approaching foundational positions from the perspective of discourse highlights the fact that knowledge is constantly being produced and reproduced; it is never fixed and secure, nor can it claim to be born from an ahistorical truth. If this sounds as though I am deconstructing a exaggerated ‘straw man’ argument, then some perspective on the powerful intellectual position of these ideas should be briefly overviewed. Take sovereignty and foreign policy – two of the main concerns of this chapter – for example, which are traditionally understood respectively as the exclusive right of authority and as a series of prescriptions for how a country will deal with others outside its borders. These meanings are generally clear-cut and well-established. Examining both the process of construction and the discursive representation of knowledge of traditional accounts of IR will not destabilise meaning irreparably, but it does allow for some variation in the way that it may be thought about.

The notion of discourse will be used here to refer to what can and cannot legitimately be said in a particular context. Its usage is more complex than just referring to language, and this can be seen in the definition offered by Jacob Torfing (1999, p. 300):

[d]iscourse is the relational totality of signifying sequences that together constitute a more or less coherent framework for what can be said and done. The notion of discourse cuts across the distinction between thought and reality, and includes both semantic and pragmatic aspects. It does not merely designate a linguistic region within the social, but is rather co-extensive with the social.

While this definition contains the major elements of what discourse means in the sense in which it will be used here, it clearly needs some elaboration and is perhaps understood best in relation to further definitions. What this definition of Torfing’s suggests is that discourse provides a coherent and meaningful context into which statements and actions can be understood and seen as connected with what is real. This process of social contextualisation, however, is not objective, nor apolitical. According to William Connolly (1993, p. 2), discourse can be seen as a mechanism that prescribes, legitimises and empowers a particular understanding of the world over others. Consequently, the nature of discourse is not as simple as a mere definition.

Discourse is something more complex than just forms of communication. According to Ernesto Laclau (1980, p. 89), discourse includes not just speech and writing but any institutional process ‘in and through which social production of meaning takes place’. Discourse, in manifesting knowledge, inscribes the bodies and the actions of individuals who act within its field with certain routines and practices that become meaningful, often designating a place within an overall hierarchy. So while discourse directly manifests in speech and writing, it is more complex than this. Indeed, discourse is potentially of boundless complexity when understood as being located within individuals’ bodies and social practices. The manifestation of discursive practices within such contexts may be evident even within the smallest minutiae. So while this may be the case, the philosophical task is not to reify the complexity of discourse, but to explore it. Perhaps then, with a broader, more social understanding of discourse in mind, Jim George (1994, pp. 29–30) suggests that it can be seen as ‘a broader matrix of social practices that gives meaning to the way people understand themselves and their behaviour. [It] generates the categories of meaning by which reality can be understood and explained’. Further, ‘discourse makes “real” that which it prescribes as meaningful’ (ibid.).

Discourse is thus complex and multi-faceted. Vivienne Jabri (1996, p. 94) suggests that the study of discourse reveals the way in which individuals employ ‘interpretative schemes and shared worlds of meaning in the reproduction of discursive structures of signification and legitimation’. Discourse produces a context in which meaning can be interpreted and in this sense it is more than just processes of speech and writing, for it manifests in the bodies and actions of individuals, actively constructing politics. Bradley Klein (1987, p. 4) captures this, suggesting that

to be engaged in discourse is to be engaged in the making and remaking of meaningful conditions of existence. A discourse, then, is not a way of learning ‘about’ something out there in the ‘real world’; it is rather, a way of producing something as real, as identifiable, classifiable, knowable, and therefore, meaningful. Discourse create[s] the conditions of knowing.

Discourse in this sense is implicated in the creation of the conditions of objects of knowledge and in what manner these are to be understood and valued.

Through its role in determining what has meaning and what is ‘real’, discourse intertwines itself with the notions of epistemology and ontology. Epistemology and ontology can be very briefly defined as, respectively, ‘how we claim to know’ and ‘what we claim to be real’. While this may sound trite, epistemology and ontology are fundamentally about investigating claims to knowledge and reality. Epistemology relates to how knowledge comes to have authority and meaning, and which kinds of knowledge and logic are seen as valid. Perhaps over-simplifying slightly, it is the attempt to create an ‘overall correspondence or correlation between… words to things, or knowledge and reality’ (MacDonnell, 1986, pp. 64–65). Epistemology is what causes science, for example, to be deemed a more credible form of knowledge than fairy tales and myths. Ontology focuses on the foundational objects that are seen as the basis of the reality within that sphere of knowledge. Ontology designates the prime units of concern; in other words, the basic currency of knowledge. Epistemology and ontology are interrelated through discourse; the epistemological nature will play some part in determining the nature of the units of analysis that are privileged insofar as it is likely to provide the supporting logic that makes the focus of knowledge seem to be common sense. A secure ontological foundation is similarly required in order to base epistemological claims, since without a logical corresponding ‘reality’ the knowledge claim will seem baseless (Smith, 1996). The relationship between discourse, epistemology and ontology will be more clearly demonstrated in the context of IR through a thorough analysis of the modern discourse of sovereignty.

IR has largely been dominated by a positivist approach to knowledge that has favoured states as the primary actors. The positivist approach to knowledge, a positivist epistemology, attempts to replicate scientific surety within social and inter-state relations through an adherence to some combination of rationalism and empiricism. This, in turn, seeks to ground knowledge claims via reference to conceptually theorised or impartially observed trends within historical fact (George, 1988). Viewed according to this positivist logic, the prime ontological unit (that is, the main actor in IR) is seen to be the state, whose utility and pre-eminence can be observed as far back as the Peloponnesian War, but also throughout the Enlightenment and, more recently, global modernity. The interdependence of ontology and epistemology within the discourse of IR will be more thoroughly demonstrated in the context of foreign policy in Chapter 3. The discussion in the next section will demonstrate how sovereignty has come to be taken for granted, particularly within IR theories of the state. It will do so by questioning the ontological grounds upon which these claims are based and the epistemological logic through which this assumption is generally taken to be ‘common sense’. For now, it is sufficient to say that there is a complex and interwoven relationship between these terms, one in which a discourse will necessarily have an implicit and corresponding epistemological logic, grounded in certain ontological claims as to what constitutes the central subject.

These understandings of discourse as they relate to IR and social theory more generally draw from the thinking of Michel Foucault. This influence is particularly evident in the way that it is seen to function in a manner replete with social and political power. Discourse, according to Foucault, is ‘a form of power that circulates in the social field and can attach to strategies of domination as well as those of resistance’ (Diamond & Quinby, 1988, p. 185). Discourses in this sense are much more than

ways of constituting knowledge, together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere in such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the ‘nature’ of the body, unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life of the subjects they seek to govern. Weedon (1987, p. 108)

For Foucault, discourse or discursive fields are an intense site where conflicts over power and knowledge take place. The drive for an ascendant discourse, which he describes as the ‘will to truth’, ‘tends to exert a sort of pressure and something like a power of constraint’ in an attempt to utter a well-ordered and ‘true’ discourse (Young, 1981, p. 55). The discursive field, in this sense, can seen to be a warlike state where the victor emerges possessing legitimate knowledge or a claim to truth.

Consequently, power and knowledge are connected inextricably and is accordingly often written as power/knowledge. For Foucault (1975, p. 27), this is the case because ‘power and knowledge directly imply one another… there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge which does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’. In addition to the symbiotic relationship between power/knowledge, Foucault eschews any objective or material conception of power. Power, for Foucault, is not something that can be possessed: rather, it is a relationship that is enacted in discourse and social interaction. Discourse can thus also be understood in terms of its relation to power. Power in this context is ‘a dynamic of control and lack of control between discourses and the subjects, constituted by discourses, who are their agents. Power is exercised within discourses in the ways in which they constitute and govern individual subjects’ (Weedon, 1987, p. 113). Power, understood as a knowledge practice or claim to legitimate knowledge, can be exercised through discourse in order to shape and control individuals. The subject in this sense is created through the process of discourse. It is crucial, in grasping the nature of this relationship, to appreciate that this dynamic is not a form of sovereign violence or overt coercion but rather a highly modern practice, a subtle process of social normalisation.

A number of different ways of understanding such modern techniques of social control, including those articulated by Foucault, will be discussed further in Chapter 2. For now, however, it is enough to say that in an attempt to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Theorising Foreign Policy as Social Control
• Part II Case Studies of Foreign Policy Regulation
• Conclusion
• References
• Index