This study explores how disasters are framed and politicised in the media to provide a systematic assessment of discursive dynamics and external political contexts of natural hazards. Utilising an actor-focused approach, it contributes with knowledge on how politicisation of disaster discourses unfolds. Two similar natural hazard events, the United Kingdom floods of 2005 and 2015, are investigated by means of a content analysis and a political claims analysis. The study finds that a tension between the national government and its contestants following the 2015 floods led to a framing contest which was heavily affected by the external political context at the time. The opposition and journalists constructed a narrative of government failure, not least by intertwining the event with the politically tense situation in the United Kingdom to further populist claims about government spending and EU policies. In 2005, the lack of a comparable external context and polarisation between actors in the media prevented a politicisation of the floods in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. These results illustrate the importance of broader political contexts, even those essentially unrelated to the natural hazard, for the politicisation of a disaster.
Environmental calamities and disasters are increasingly found to affect political stability and conflicts. Despite a plethora of research across a range of disciplines, however, explanations remain elusive. The theoretical shortcomings of prior research coalesce into an overarching problem concerning how to conceptualize disasters as influencing conflicts through the disruptions they impose on identities. I argue that how identities intermingle with the disaster-conflict nexus can be further advanced by drawing on ontological security studies (OSS). By investigating the disastrous flood in the Kashmir valley in 2014, and its role in the brewing unrest that climaxed in 2016 amid separatist conflict, I argue that disasters influence conflicts through processes of securitizing and desecuritizing an ontologically secure Self. That is to say, that the search for stable and coherent identities following disasters can mitigate and reinforce conflicts. Nested within this argument are three core contributions. First, I address the multifaceted dynamics by which the Self and identities are unsettled and challenged, or affirmed and reified amid disasters and conflict, to show how we can read disasters as disruptive amid already ongoing crises. Second, I theorize how the search for stable and ontologically secure identities can engender securitization and desecuritization of subjectivity at the same time, exacerbating and mitigating different dynamics in a conflict. Third, in doing so, the dissertation suggests that future research on disasters, and environmental challenges more broadly, should be less concerned with a binary understanding of their impact on conflicts and more concerned about their multidimensional relations.
While traditional and non-traditional issues of security are at the very top of the policy agenda, security studies has been subject to much criticism. These concerns have often been framed in terms of challenges to the field’s relevance. This paper seeks to further the debate on relevance in security studies. Specifically, the paper examines the field in three major dimensions of relevance: responsiveness, diversity, and intellectual pluralism. Unlike previous disciplinary investigations, which have solely focused on United States (US) security studies, this paper examines trends pertaining to relevance in security studies in the USA as well as in Europe. The paper finds some evidence of responsiveness, a slight trend toward a more equitable share of female authors, and conflicting evidence when it comes to intellectual pluralism. The paper suggests that the field appears more as a ‘broad church’ than ‘irrelevant cult’ when its output in the USA, as well as in Europe, is taken into account.
This article contributes to an understanding of the backlash against liberalism by reconstructing the emergence and development of an increasingly influential strand of Anglo-American thought that challenges liberalism, known as postliberalism. The central diagnostic claim of postliberalism is that the two dominant forms of post-WW2 liberalism, market liberalism and social liberalism, instead of being somehow opposed, have coalesced around an all-encompassing sociopolitical project that above all else seeks to maximize individual autonomy. As a result, postliberals hold, the liberal order has become increasingly unable to cultivate the communal resources on which human sociability depends and erodes the values liberalism purportedly defends. The article argues that a central, albeit not necessarily insurmountable, challenge for postliberalism lies in moving from a critique of liberalism to proposed remedies for its perceived deficiencies, without slipping into a political project with clear illiberal rather than merely non-liberal implications.
Concerns raised over the impact of changing demographics, domestic polarization, and the return of near-peer competition on US military manpower challenges are overstated. Drawing on open-source materials and interviews, this article discusses factors often neglected in conversations on this topic and provides leadership and policymakers with a scholarly overview of an important yet understudied issue facing the US armed forces.
This chapter analyses if the EU is developing a defence union, and what that would imply for the EU. In order to analyse the development of EU defence policy since 2016, this chapter first discusses what measures would need to be in place in order for the EU to have a defence union, given previous literature on defence union. Then it analyses the development from 2016 to 2022. The conclusion is that the EU so far has not developed a defence union, even though the traits of union in EU security and defence policy have increased. In particular, three aspects found are of importance. The first is the European Defence Fund, the second the common capability development, that in combination with islands of specialization increase future possibilities of specialization and burden sharing; and the third some of the PESCO-projects which indicate defence of the member states within their own territory.
Departing from Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022, this article analyses the OSCE-based security order that prevailed since the Cold War and that later was formalised in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The first conclusion is that the OSCE-based European security order was successively weakened, and at the longest can be said to have functioned until 2014. The second conclusion is that this security order will not reappear even if the OSCE survives the consequences of the war. The article then analyses the partially parallel development of the EU as a security actor in Europe, and the potential of the EU to become a node in a new European security order. The third and fourth conclusions are that the EU has the potential of being a node in a new European security order, but that it will also need to become a node in a larger global order.
Genetic technologies are revolutionizing human health. In parallel, geopolitical instability has prompted renewed discussions on the risks of DNA technology being weaponized in international conflict. With today’s changing security environment, we argue that risk assessments must be broadened from genetically targeted weapons to a series of new domains.
This article seeks to theorize the transformation of the armed forces in Northern Europe by examining its drivers during previous NATO enlargements in the region. The exploration includes the German reunification in 1990, the Polish entry in 1999, and the joining of the three Baltic States, i.e., Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, in 2004. Based on these experiences, the article identifies some theoretical considerations for transformation in conjunction with the current accession process of Finland and Sweden. Based on a realist logic, we conclude that the ongoing transformation should be underpinned by a new operational design, hence considering the need for flexibility and for managing potential new expeditionary shocks. To this end, we argue that the focus must initially be internally within the Alliance, i.e., to proceed with novel operational planning for northern Europe before turning the attention to the transformation of the armed forces of the new members.
Scholars of Strategic Studies have seldom problematized the concept of military strategy beyond identifying the three elements constituting the phenomenon, that is ends, means and ways. Moreover, we see a need for contextualizing the presumably universal conceptualization of military strategy. This article contributes to previous research by operationalize each of the three elements one-step further, thereby introducing an analytical framework for systematic comparisons of states’ different priorities regarding military strategy. Additionally, in order to explain these different priorities, the proposed analytical framework introduces tools related to both relative power and position in the international system, and to regional systems and unit-level characteristics. The usefulness of the analytical framework is illustrated by a summary of some of our findings from a research project on comparative strategy including more than 30 states.
The limits of unity: Consensus or confrontation in shaping Swedish defence policy
How encompassing is the consensus among the political parties represented in the Swedish parliament when it comes to the military threat from Russia, the relations with NATO and the design of the Swedish Armed Forces? This article aims at answering this question by exploring the Swedish defence policy from the Russian war against Georgia in 2008 to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Our results indicate that the consensus among the parties increases with the escalation of the tensions in the international relations. Hence, we disagree with some results of previous research on Swedish security politics. We conclude that the tipping point regarding the Swedish application for NATO-membership was the existential dimension of the current Russian aggression. When the internal efforts to defend Sweden against a potential Russian attack was perceived not being enough, applying for membership was considered a necessity, not an option, among a majority of the parties.
This book analyses how and to what extent ex-communist states have adjusted their defence strategies since joining the EU and NATO, and how differences and similarities between their strategies can be explained.
Between 1999 and 2013, four phases of enlargement took place when the European Union (EU) and NATO allowed 11 new former communist states to enter both organisations. These states share some common attributes and experiences related to strategic culture and common experiences during the Cold War era that can potentially explain similarities in behaviour and preferences among them. However, the strategic adjustments among these states are far from uniform. In an effort to explain these differences, the book introduces three intervening variables: (1) differences in relative power and position in the international system, (2) national geographical characteristics; and (3) historical experiences related to formative periods of state-building processes as well as wars and armed conflicts. Empirically, the book strives to present and analyse the defence strategies of each of the new allies by conducting a structured focused comparison of official strategic documents from the twenty-first century for each of the 11 cases. Theoretically and methodologically, it introduces an analytical framework enabling us to explain both similarities and differences in the formulation of the strategies of the 11 states, and to shed light on their external and internal efforts to promote their strategic interest by operationalising the dependent variable - defence strategy. The analytical framework combines elements of structural realism with classical realism, and constructivist research on unit-level characteristics related to relative power and perceptions of strategic exposure.
This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, European Union policy, NATO and International Relations in general.
This article explores the defense transformation processes during the two initial decades of the twenty-first century among the 11 former communist states that currently are members of both the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The article introduces an analytical framework for systematic comparisons of states’ priorities regarding military strategy. Moreover, the article evaluates the influence of two intervening variables: (i) differences in relative power between middle powers and small states and (ii) differences in geographical exposure. Our findings suggest that differences related to these intervening variables correlate with differences in prioritized strategic ends, means, and ways.
This article attempts to explain why governments are surprised when extreme weather, pandemics and migration crisis hit their own country despite their good knowledge of these global threats. With the help of the contingency concept, the article explores the reasons behind these surprises by introducing a new category of threats that complements the ones in the existing literature on surprise. It adds the concept of ‘known—corporally unknown’ threats to the list of known-unknowns, unknown-unknowns as a way to emphasize the difference between abstract knowledge of ‘facts and figures’ (of e.g., global warming) and the acquiring of knowledge through personal, bodily experience (tangere) (of flooding and draughts). The article demonstrates how Swedish decision-makers—despite their good scientific knowledge and warning signals from abroad—were surprised by the migration crisis of 2015 and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 because they had not been in direct touch with massive flows of refugees or pandemics of that scale before. The article ends by discussing new ways of acquiring knowledge about global threats for a deeper, corporally anchored, preparedness for the surprises and contingencies to come.
The war in Ukraine unleashed in early 2022 may temporarily obscure the long-term trend that the United States is shrinking its military footprint in and around Europe, as the defence posture of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Central Europe suddenly was bolstered by tens ofthousands of additional US troops. For as long as the war drags on, certainly, these reinforcements will stay in place. But if, and when, the war ends or shifts to attrition warfare stretching out for years, aswas the case after the 2014 annexation of the Crimea, one can easily envisage changes in how European governments manage security and defence issues among themselves and in relation to their North American counterparts. While the debate on transatlantic security so far has played out in two distinct modes, either focusing on the economic side of burdensharing or projecting a vision of European strategic autonomy, there is a need for a more sober understanding of the future division of labour, one that would be grounded in the right blend of economics and deterrence. The main suggestion of this article is that stakeholders on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean ‘split the difference’ and strike a new grand bargain on the basis of their respective strengths. Once key issues of financial equity and militarydeterrence have been adequately addressed, European governments will still have their work cut out forthemselves. They must elaborate solutions to specific challenges at the sub-strategic theatre level and atthe same time navigate the complexities of optimizing defence reforms, aligning regional force designs and rendering foreign policy compatible with the strategic priorities of the European Union (EU) and Europe at large.
This article examines Sweden’s successful 2016 bid to serve at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and shows that the subsequent 2017–18 tenure relied on a formula with three key elements. One was to mobilize the competitive advantages of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), and a second to systematically highlight Africa-related priorities. A third element was to boost the standing of the E10 category of members in day-to-day diplomatic practice. After securing a plurality of votes in the General Assembly, Swedish diplomats went to work with a unique constellation of concurrently serving likeminded countries, generally receptive to Stockholm’s priorities. The formula appears to have contributed to a solid performance in 2017–2018. That said, the UNSC is not conducive to individual E10 members having a lasting impact on its institutional memory.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is primarily an existential threat to the Ukrainian society and its institutions, and furthermore an enormous challenge for neighboring countries, the EU and NATO. Yet beyond the European continent, one can also discern the contours of an alternative world order, in that today’s rule-based system anchored in international legal principles of national sovereignty, formal equality and territorial integrity are less respected. The article examines how the international community, and especially the most resourceful actors, have responded to the war in Ukraine as an indication of levels of support for a rules-based world order with or without “liberal characteristics”, or for a system where regional great powers wield greater impact in their immediate neighborhood. To arrive at a nuanced analysis, a range of concepts and methods from the study of international relations and foreign policy decision-making are employed.
Research problems are crucial in the sense that they provide new research with purpose and justification. So why, despite the abundance of guidance available from an extensive methods literature, do graduate students often struggle to develop compelling research problems? This article argues that the process of developing research problems epitomises the insecurity of doing research. We focus in particular on the anxiety that graduate students often seek to avoid or alleviate through a range of counterproductive coping strategies. The existing literature on research problems focuses predominantly on the technical aspects of doing research while neglecting how anxiety might affect the research process. This article seeks to rectify this shortcoming by providing advice on how graduate students can face such anxiety, and how professors can assist them in this endeavour. Drawing on theories about identity and anxiety, the article explains the allure of coping strategies such as gap-filling, while arguing that anxiety is not necessarily a negative emotion to be avoided at all costs, but integral to learning and creativity. It concludes by suggesting that compelling research problems can be constructed through the formulation of narratives that try to embrace anxiety, instead of seeking premature resolutions.
International relations research acknowledges that states can have different security policies but neglects the fact that ‘models’ may exist in the security policy realm. This article suggests that it is useful to think about models, which it argues can become examples for emulation or be undermined through narrative power. It illustrates the argument by analysing Japan’s pacifism—an alternative approach to security policy which failed to become an internationally popular model and, despite serving the country well for many years, has even lost its appeal in Japan. Conventional explanations suggest that Japan’s pacifist policies were ‘abnormal’, and that the Japanese eventually realized this. By contrast, this article argues that narratives undermined Japan’s pacifism by mobilizing deep-seated beliefs about what is realistic and unrealistic in international politics, and launches a counter-narrative that could help make pacifism a more credible model in world politics.
What explains Japan’s security policy change in recent decades? Heeding the ‘emotional turn’ in International Relations, this article applies a resentment-based framework, which defines resentment as a long-lasting form of anger and the product of status dissatisfaction. Leveraging interviews with 18 conservative Japanese lawmakers and senior officials, the article discusses the role, function, and prevalence of resentment in the remaking of Japan’s security policy, premised on constitutional revision. The analysis reveals that conservative elites are acutely status-conscious; and that those who blame a perceived inferior status on Japan’s alleged pacifism are more likely to see revision of Article 9 as an end in itself. For a subset of conservatives, however, the goal is rather to stretch the Constitution to enhance Japan’s means of deterrence vis-à-vis objects of fear or in solidarity with allies. Overall, the article demonstrates that resentment provides a fruitful lens for analyzing status dissatisfaction in international politics.
This essay takes literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe’s Nobel lecture from 1994, Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself, as a point of departure for thinking about Japan, the ambiguous and how the already fragile and complex narrator that is I has evolved ambiguously over time in relation to a similarly ambiguous and changing imagination of Japan. Based on aikido practice—the narrator’s gateway to Japan—the essay ends up proposing a different understanding of and approach to ambiguity to Oe’s.
In the final analysis, is the security dilemma inescapable? Or can the protagonists in world politics learn to live with never-ending insecurities and the risk of attack without producing precisely the outcomes that they wish to avoid? This article explores this fundamental problem for International Relations theory by performing a thought experiment, in which it applies lessons from aikido to world politics. A form of Japanese budo, or martial art, aikido provides practitioners with a method for harbouring insecurities, and for dealing with attacks that may or may not occur, by empathically caring for actual and potential attackers. The article builds on practice theory in assuming that any social order is constructed and internalised through practices, but also capable of change through the introduction and dissemination of new practices. Although an unlikely scenario, aikido practice could serve as such a method of fundamental transformation if widely applied in world politics. Empirical examples ranging from international apologies and security cooperation to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations are discussed, suggesting that contemporary world politics is at times already performed in accordance with aikido principles, albeit only imperfectly and partially.
‘Othering’ – the view or treatment of another person or group as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself – is a central concept in the International Relations literature on identity construction. It is often portrayed as a fairly singular and predominantly negative form of self/Other differentiation. During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden at first glance emerged as exactly such a negative Other. This article problematises such a view of Othering. Departing from a narrative analysis of news reporting on Sweden’s management of COVID-19 in the United States, Germany and the Nordic states, the article proposes an ideal type model with four forms of Othering – emotional, strategic, analytic and nuanced – not recognised in previous research. These types differ in their treatment of the Other as more or less significant and in involving a more or less self-reflexive construction of the self. Although narratives in all these settings drew on previously established narratives on Sweden, they followed different logics. This has implications for our understanding of Sweden as an Other in the time of COVID-19, as well as of self/Other relations in International Relations more broadly.
The study of intelligence oversight captures the inherently political nature of secret intelligence. However, many studies of intelligence oversight adopt rather instrumentalist views that omit important political aspects of the policy process. Typically, these studies focus on obstacles to effective oversight. This article discusses how the effectiveness of oversight can be assessed by applying broad evaluative categories that contain programmatic, process-related, political, and durability dimensions. Empirically, the study probes the case of Sweden as an illustration. Swedish oversight arrangements have on balance been successful in some dimensions, particularly the programmatic dimension, which arguably also contributed to its relative longevity
This paper presents a Kelsenian perspective on international pluralism showing that international pluralism is not necessarilythe logical consequence of sovereignty but bestowed upon states by international law through the principle of equality. Thepaper argues that this leads to an improved concept of international pluralism as more than a by-product of sovereignty logic.Flowing from Kelsenian legal logic, international pluralism and legal cosmopolitanism share the same origin in theGrundnorm.Hence, this perspective on international relations appeases the perceived conflict between international pluralism andcosmopolitanism. Moreover, the paper suggests that the approach provides a different framework for analyzing internationalnorms and practices, their normative relationship and evolution
Dramatic alterations to the natural environment due to human activity have produced a permanent rupture in the Earth system; the relative stable epoch of the Holocene has given way to a volatile Anthropocene. Acceptance of these claims means that we now live in this altered physical reality, inviting us to rethink how we conceptualise disasters. Yet, disaster scholars have been hesitant to apply the Anthropocene label and to acknowledge the profound changes that it can bring to the study of disasters. This paper queries whether this label is a necessary adage or unnecessary baggage for disaster studies by examining the possibilities and the challenges associated with engaging with the Anthropocene. An analysis of the concepts, causes, and consequences of disasters reveals how the Anthropocene provides, as the very least, a theoretical heuristic for challenging linear temporal assumptions, the epistemological status of uncertainty, and the location of agency in disaster studies.
This article contributes to the literature theorizing military social order, embodiment, and resistance in IR. The military institution is known to resist change, and much research have been devoted to challenges to the gendered order of the military. One area that has received little attention, however, is the reluctance of many militaries in the West to facilitate veganism during service in spite of the increasing demand for vegan food options, diversity, and sustainability. Drawing on research on the military social order and gender theory, I conduct an unpacking of conflicting elements and representations of military and vegan bodies, and theorize this reluctance as institutional resistance. Typically, the military does not offer motivations for its stance – which makes it difficult to detect and counter. As a consequence, vegans are silenced and excluded, not facilitated to enter the military. This is a challenge to increasing attempts at governing sustainability and diversity in the military.
Purpose – Previous studies show that the implementation of gender equality encounters resistance in military organizations, but it is often invisible or seen as confined to anonymous structures or troubled individuals. This paper aims to show how the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) use organizational principles to resist implementing gender equality measures.
Design/methodology/approach – The study is a qualitative analysis of discursive strategies in the SAF’s 2013–2018 annual reports to government.
Findings – The organizing principles of instrumentality and distance, while existing in parallel with gender equality efforts, actually pursue logics that prevents the SAF from implementing gender equality. The principle of instrumentality in this context means that gender equality in the SAF is of secondary interest to organizational members. The principle of distancing from the problem includes strategies that alienate female from male officers.
Originality/value – The contribution of this paper is the finding that the use of organizing principles represents conscious organizational resistance to go gender equality efforts. This kind of use needs to be revealed and criticized to change military organizations.
Kriget i Ukraina har redan fått många återverkningar, även i samhällen som inte direkt skakas av de fruktansvärda krigshandlingarna. I traditionella och sociala medier funderar människor kring vad som skulle hända om det blev krig i Sverige och hur detta skulle påverka vår vardag och våra relationer. En ofta förbisedd fråga i detta sammanhang är relationen mellan människor och djur. I denna artikel diskuteras hur totalförsvaret som samhällsorganisation och verksamhet kan utmanas av 2020-talets normer om förhållandet mellan människor och djur och djurs status som säkerhetssubjekt. Mot bakgrund av den traditionella totalförsvarstanken presenterar vi ett antal områden där djurens relationer med människor kan tänkas väcka frågor och komma i konflikt med delar av totalförsvaret: synen på säkerhet, juridiken i kris och krig samt utvecklingen av den sociala relationen mellan människor och djur. Artikeln avslutas med tankar kring hur ett totalförsvar som inkluderar djur skulle kunna se ut samt kring hur dagens totalförsvar i så fall skulle behöva förändras.
Although concern about the effects of international audiences consuming Russian state-sponsored media has been expressed, little empirical research examines this. The current study asks how audiences in Latvia respond to narratives projected by Sputnik Latvia – a Kremlin-financed news outlet. We begin a tripartite methodological approach with an analysis of the types of narratives the outlet projects. We then test how ethnic Latvian and Russian-speaking participants in Latvia respond to destruction narratives that portray Latvia as “failing,” the most prominent type in our analysis. We use two survey experiments that test an existing hypothetical mediation model predicting an array of affective and trust responses. We find evidence that exposure to destruction narratives triggered largely similar responses in both groups; however, exploratory analyses and post-survey focus groups are used to show that their motivations may be different. We conclude by discussing potential reasons for these differences, and the ramifications of these results.
Russia utilizes state-sponsored news media outlets, such as RT or Sputnik, to project antagonistic strategic narratives into targeted societies and perturb international audiences. While psychological responses to this conduct are frequently assumed, there is a lack of causal evidence demonstrating this. Using a transdisciplinary perspective, we conducted four survey experiments that tested two path models predicting possible cognitive and emotional responses to two narrative strategies that Russian state-sponsored media employ: destruction, which portrays a state as weak and chaotic, and suppression, which portrays a state as indecent and morally deviant. The experiments had between-participant designs, where participants read either an article demonstrating a strategy or a control text, and then indicated their responses to several trust and emotional variables. Participants were either Swedish or Dutch citizens, to build on previous analyses of Russian narration about Sweden and The Netherlands. Path analyses revealed significant differences between the conditions on several response variables. However, we found no evidence that these effects were mediated by generalized realistic or symbolic threat perceptions. We contribute preliminary insights into potential causal links between Russian antagonistic narrative strategies and specific psychological responses. This study, and its overarching research agenda, should have implications for practitioners seeking to counter Russian information influence.
This chapter analyses how Nordic health authorities and prime ministers used social media during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The research questions address the extent to which they interacted with other actors on social media and what communication objectives they pursued in messages to the public. The data consists of health authorities’ Twitter communication and prime ministers’ Instagram posts. The results show that both the health authorities and prime ministers primarily interacted internally with domestic governmental and administrative actors. Still, they pursued different communication objectives. Whereas the health authorities mainly instructed the public on how to act, the prime ministers provided support and appealed for solidarity. National differences are observed. The Danish case stands out, as both the national health authority and the prime minister clearly focused on communicating support to the public.
The Anthropocene rupture refers to the beginning of our current geological epoch in which humans constitute a collective geological force that alters the trajectory of the Earth system. An increased engagement with this notion of a rupture has prompted a lively debate on the inherent anthropocentrism of International Relations (IR), and whether it is possible to transform it into something new that embraces diverse forms of existence, human as well as non-human. This article challenges that possibility. It shows how much of the current debate rests on the idea fulfilling future desirable ideals, which are pushed perpetually beyond a horizon of human thought, making them unreachable. As an alternative, the article turns to Jacques Derrida's understanding of the future to come (l'avenir), highlighting the significance of unpredictability and unexpected events. This understanding of the future shows how life within and of the international rests on encounters with the future as something radically other. On this basis, it is argued that responding to our current predicament should proceed not by seeking to fulfil future ideals but by encountering the future as incalculable and other, whose arrival represents an opportunity as much as a threat to established forms of international life.
This article develops a new approach to analysing intelligence failures. Rather than looking for their causes, intelligence failures are here analysed as part of a politics seeking to reify the value of rationality and the taming of power. To analyse this politics, the article draws on Bent Flyvbjerg’s notion of an asymmetrical relation of power/rationality, according to which power has a productive role that is inseparable from claims to rationality. The asymmetrical relation of power/rationality is used in order to challenge the instrumentalist language that pervades much of the literature on intelligence failures and what can be learned from them.
This chapter looks at how the emergence of surveillance capitalism, and specifically the change in contemporary mass surveillance and intelligence where the practice of watching and identification of suspicious behaviour is supplemented by the practice of modification and identification of profitable behaviour, is (re)constituting neoliberal, surveilled subjectivity. It argues that this gravitational shift from watching to modification makes the subject more steered than disciplined, putting its agency at even greater risk. Moreover, it ventures that more than putting the subject's agency at greater risk, this move also reconfigures the very meaning of agency in the context of surveillance and intelligence, by impelling us to understand it in temporal terms, as the capacity to move freely in time, instead of in spatial terms, as a mere extension of privacy. Advancing the analysis, the chapter explores and compares the Snowden and Cambridge Analytica cases through the memoirs of the two whistleblowers, Edward Snowden and Christopher Wylie, showing how Snowden's subject is private and disciplined, whereas Wylie's appears to be more agentic and steered.
This article contributes to our understanding of security devices by engaging with the distinctiveness of one particular and especially important device: the smartphone. Drawing from Barad’s understanding of posthumanist performativity and turning to the smartphone literature outside of security studies, it develops a conceptual account of the smartphone as a security device. The article suggests that the smartphone stands out from other comparable devices because humans have come to embody its connective features. Using the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 as an illustration, the article shows how the smartphone’s intra-action with users enable the crafting of new security practices through appropriations of embodied connectivity, especially when such appropriations are carried out on the streets. The police appropriated the smartphone to monitor social media activity and for geofencing, while the protesters appropriated it to obfuscate data and for livestreaming. By (re)locating the negotiation of competing security interests in the (extended) bodies of the protesters through the affordance of these practices, the smartphone contributed to the acceleration and intensification of a racialised spiral of surveillance and counter-surveillance.