Defending the duty to secure: A reply to critics

Abstract

The Duty to Secure: From Just to Mandatory Securitization (2024) extends Just Securitization Theory (JST), originally developed in The Morality of Security: A Theory of Just Securitization (2019), with a theory of the moral obligation to use emergency measures to safe valuable referent objects from objective existential threats. Morally mandatory securitization includes prescriptions setting out when the duties to secure and to securitize apply, on who has such duties, and to whom. In this article, I defend the theory against five critics. All of these see value in and need for the general project of rethinking the ethics of securitization, but all disagree with some aspects. Including, the theory’s communitarian roots, the usage of revisionist just war theory to derive moral principles, and/or the attempt to refocus the responsibility to protect (RtoP) norm. I use the available space to defend my choices. I conclude by pointing out directions for future research on the ethics of securitization.

Introduction

Academic work, like most other pursuits, gains meaning and value only in exchange with other people. I would like to thank JIPT and Professor Lang for organizing this forum and thus enabling me to have this work-affirming experience. I am deeply grateful to all the contributors for taking the time to engage with my work, for their encouragement and their thoughtful criticisms.

I am going to structure my response by, first, summarizing and responding to key criticisms raised across the contributions. This largely takes the form of relaying and defending choices I made in the conception and writing of this book. I then move to the suggestions regarding ‘where to from here’ for the theory of just and mandatory securitization.

In short, here are the four central criticisms. (1) It is – argues Chris Brown – impossible to have a theory of just or mandatory securitization because reality is always messier than the neat requirements set out in the abstract and drawn from hypotheticals. (2) Floyd (2024), suggests Kamilla Stullerova should have been built in closer allegiance with the teachings of either the Copenhagen or the Welsh school, as opposed to revisionist just war theory. (3) Mandatory securitization, worries Daniel Brunstetter, could be abused by powerholders who will seize upon the concept to legitimate perpetual securitization. In that light, the argument would benefit from an engagement with real people in real places (rather than hypotheticals) to show, and presumably redress, just how much unethical behavior it would allow. Finally, (4) James Pattison focuses on my claims about RtoP. Mandatory securitization, he argues, does not address shortfalls with RtoP, because a proper reading of RtoP already includes the responsibility to react and the responsibility to prevent. Moreover, the language of duties is more likely to repel reluctant policymakers than the language of responsibility.

Chris Brown’s dislike of hypotheticals to generate substantive principles of just war theory is shared by many – but not all – IR scholars working within the just war tradition. These scholars are critical of revisionist just war theorists, all of whom are resident in philosophy. It is true that revisionists’ works are – compared to for example, Michael Walzer – ahistorical. Such works also tend to be ‘a-practical’, in the sense that they do not invoke real conflicts, or work with knowledge of relevant defense institution, alliances and defense capabilities. And that the resulting theory can be too demanding. Shue (2008) observed that the leading revisionist Jeff McMahan developed a just war theory for peace-time, one not suitable for the messy reality of war. However, once read, revisionist just war scholars’ forays into just war tradition’s logic are impossible to unknow including interpretation of various principles and on symmetry regarding jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria (cf. Lazar, 2017). Once laid bare, it is difficult, to go back to traditionalists’ vague ruminations on just wars. And why should we? Surely an attempt at the theory of just and mandatory securitization informed by all that has gone before is superior, even if the resulting theory proves demanding. In any case, whether the ensuing theory is too demanding and thus not practical can only be judged in application not a priori by virtue of how it was developed.

Kamilla Stullerova shares Brown’s view of revisionist just war theory and suggests I should have aligned myself with established views on ethics in critical security studies. Regarding securitization studies, this would have meant inclusion of audience consent as a criterion of just securitization, or – in her view better still – close alignment with Ken Booth (founder of the Welsh school), who – like me – believes in real threats and in a duty to secure. My reasons for not including audience acceptance as part of the criteria of just securitization are plentiful ¹ chief among them is that audience acceptance exonerates securitizing actors when things go wrong. In any case, audience inclusion makes for procedural justice not moral rightness of securitization.

Stullerova rightly asserts that my rejection of intersubjective agreement of threat status moves me closer to Ken Booth. Stullerova bemoans that I do not follow in Booth’s cosmopolitan footsteps and champion – as a matter of justice – the poorest and the neediest but instead opt for an ethics drawn from – in her view – unrealistic revisionist just war theory. Three things can be said in response. First, political cosmopolitans do not have a monopoly on the definition of morality/justice; they are – in the global ethics space – merely in the majority. Second, JST including mandatory securitization is not about increasing security. Instead, it is about justified security practice. Third, special obligations to one’s nearest and dearest, remedial responsibility for prior wrongs, and the overridability of duties of security to others, to name but a few components of mandatory securitization, plausibly limit our cosmopolitan duties. In short, duties to the needy are not the only moral reasons in existence. Moreover, unlike cosmopolitanism, my theory does not require the upending of existing political structures, and it taps into common-sense morality.

Brunstetter’s critique of the possibility of perpetual securitization, the abuse of mandatory securitization and a possible lack of regard for those that bear the cost of mandatory securitization will be shared by many in critical security studies. These scholars tend toward the view that no one is allowed to be harmed, let alone killed in the pursuit of the security of others (cf. Aradau, 2004). In other words, they are pacifists. If that is the starting base, then a theory of just and mandatory securitization is impossible and desecuritization the only ethical choice. Brunstetter does not share that view, he knows that such an ethics is unsuitable for the real world, and that there is a pressing need to develop ethical theories.

He is also right to warn that morally mandatory securitization could be abused. However, no theory of just or mandatory securitization can fully guard against abuse. All one can do is to build safeguards into the theory. I do this by setting demanding thresholds for when securitization is permissible and an even higher one for when it is morally mandatory. But some harm to bystanders, beneficiaries of just securitization and securitization subjects is part and parcel of the messy reality of emergency measures. In the wider edifice of JST those wrongfully or unduly harmed are not ignored. In Floyd (2019), I set out criteria for just desecuritization. An important part of these is restorative measures that seek to rebalance harm caused during securitization. Moreover, JST is targeted not merely at practitioners and scholars, but it also affords members of the public tools to criticize governments and other securitizing actors. That is, I offer a theory that provides an account of when securitization is morally wrong. As such my theory can achieve emancipation from bad security practice more straightforwardly than the Welsh school. That approach has, in any case, been widely criticized for not being clearer on who the agents of emancipatory change are, on how we get from the present to an emancipatory situation and whether violence can play a role in such change (cf. McDonald, 2012; Peoples, 2011).

Pattison and Baciu do not have the same concerns as Brown, Stullerova and Brunstetter. Both consider the multiple semi-hypothetical situations and cases instructive. This only goes to show that different ways of doing just war research abound.

Notwithstanding, they realize that practice may play out differently than in an idealized scenario. Moral duty or not, as Baciu observes the United Nations Security Council does not make good on its role. Pattison is not convinced by my claim that morally mandatory securitization can refocus and hence save the embattled RtoP norm. Widening the norm’s scope, focusing on duties rather than responsibilities, and stressing the norm’s concomitant parts won’t sway practitioners already reluctant to practice a more basic version of the same. In many ways Pattison’s comments are not criticisms of my argument but lamentations about the current state of the world. My response to this is twofold. First, moral theory is at its most practicable when it works with existing structures. Second, while normative change in international relations is slow, the history of RtoP shows that academics can play an important role in bringing about that change. This aspect of JST and mandatory securitization is picked up by Baciu’s own reflections on the relevance of normative theorizing in IR.

One way or another, the proverbial ‘proof of the [JST] pudding’ will lie in its relevance for the real world. All authors point into that direction. Brown, Stullerova and Brunstetter think that the real world is so messy that it will challenge, perhaps undermine, some of my neat criteria. Pattison and Baciu, in turn, ask what JST demands of actors, including how to handle illiberal forces that threaten democracy, or how noncompliance (prevalent even among liberal actors) with moral principles can be avoided. All these insights are fruitful to the wider project of just securitization studies which I am keen to see emerge. They show that alternative versions of just securitization and mandatory securitization are possible. This debate is precisely what we need. Work on JST could take at least three forms: (1) Examine to what extent principles of just securitization are already practiced by different actors. (2) Test the principles of JST on one or more empirical example. (3) Interview security practitioners and assess to what extent they are guided by the moral criteria.