The State and Terrorism

National Security and the Mobilization of Power

Joseph H. Campos Ii

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317014829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Adopting an innovative approach to the ongoing debate over homeland security and state response to terrorism, Joseph Campos investigates the contextualizing of national security discourse and its management of terrorism. New ideas developed in this book reflect ways in which national security is mobilized through specific discourse to manage threats. In addition, a review of presidential rhetoric over the last 30 years reveals that national security discourse has maintained an ideological hegemony to determine what constitutes violence and appropriate responses. The volume incorporates historical depth and critical theory in a comparative framework to provide an invaluable insight into how national security is developed and how it works with the concept of terrorism to secure the state.

1 The State in a Time of Terror

DOI: 10.4324/9781315552507-2

Danger is not an objective condition. It [sic] is not a thing that exists independently of those to whom it may become a threat. (Campbell, 1998: 1 italics as in original)

In a time of terror, in the face of terrorism, the state is confronted with a perceived challenge to its legitimacy and authority. Terrorism is constructed as an illegitimate action used by non–state actors or rogue states. The interpretive potential existent in terrorism allows a space for the hegemonic power to execute a specific story about security, legitimacy, and authority that applies the pejorative attributes of terrorism to non–state actors and rogue states. ¹ Both non–state actors and rogue states that employ violence are constituted as not having legitimacy or authority in the eyes of the state. As such, the state takes the interpretive potential of terrorism, constructs and provides it meaning as a threat to the state’s security. National security discourse is the language in and through which terrorism is mediated as a threat and legitimizes the creation and implementation of national security policies.

1 Although state sponsored terrorism is not a focus of this text, the concepts of legality and illegality deployed in the discussion of state sponsored terrorism are intriguing. In proclaiming that rogue states are part of the terrorist’s network, the hegemonic power is dictating a specific sense of legality within the construction of a state’s authority to employ violence. In the making of terrorism as part of the security domain of the state, terrorism is inextricably linked to the life of a state. All the hegemonic power needs to do is construct an image of a rogue state as antithetical to the legitimate construction of statist regimes. In doing so, the pejorative characteristics of terrorism are transferred to the rogue state and in turn also made an enemy to the survival and security of the state. The build up to the 2002 invasion in Iraq is evidence of the hegemonic power transferring the pejorative aspects of terrorism to a “rogue” state.

The state consistently articulates itself as a domain of security that is manifested in a variety ways and includes all features of the political. Security is the benchmark on which all aspects of society are based and judged. In the articulation of the security state precise practices of statecraft emerge that serve to legitimize the state and its actions in the face of terror. National security discourse ratifies perceived realities that the state maintains as necessary to its survival – realties that include economic, political, and health issues. In the ratification of these realities, the state sets forth a culture of security in which the citizenry is embedded. The culture of security makes the citizenry controllable and susceptible to the ideas of security put forth by the state. The role of national security discourse here is to hide particular practices of statecraft and make others visible.

Given that the idea of security is constructed, it is possible to see how security can be challenged by terrorism. The state, in the construction of security, paradoxically creates environments in which insecurity prospers. The fostering of insecurity is in part based on security’s construction in relation to an other – something that is not secure. As a result of this formulation of security in relation to insecurity, an environment is created that allows challenges to manifest. The state can not shed the fact that a realm of insecurity is a necessity for it to be secured. Said another way, the creation of security produces and re–produces insecurity. An example of this is seen in the development of the national security state that occurred in the United States after the Second World War.

The development of an idea of national security, mediated through a specific discourse, created an environment that supported the claims of states’ legitimacy and authority based on the need to secure the artifacts of the state – borders, peoples, ideas, and, of course, violence. Artifacts of statecraft not only provide states their perceived legitimacy, authority, and sovereignty, but also facilitate the state’s interaction within a global, interdependent, and intertextual world. ² States created a security binary – the “us”/them” dyad – to maintain legitimacy and authority to ensure the continuation of the international statist system. This security binary is best evidenced in the creation of the U.S. national security state.

2 Intertextual is used to describe how an event can only be read and made meaningful in relation to other events. In the case of terrorism, its intertextual nature is revealed as it is constantly located within a relation to a variety of aspects of domestic and international life.

Through the decades of the cold war, the United States produced and intensified an international system through which politics were constituted as a clear binary of “us” versus “them” – a process that created the Soviet Union as a demonized other. ³ This demonized other became the entity against which the American state was secured (Campbell, 1998) as the Soviet Union was constructed as a challenger to U.S. democratic freedom and state supremacy. ⁴ The National Security Council (NSC) intensified the concepts of U.S. democratic freedom and state supremacy existent in the national security state. In April 1950, the NSC responded to a directive from President Truman to reexamine the U.S.’s strategic objectives in war and peace. The NSC came forth with document 68, which addressed growing concerns over the postwar redistribution of global–political power and what would become known as super détente and the Cold War. Document 68 enforces this concept as it states that

3 President Reagan’s proclamation to the House of Commons on 8 June 1982, that Soviet Union was “the evil empire” is representative of how there is a need to create the other, but more importantly create a demonized other. 4 What is meant here is that the United States continually proclaims that it is the guardian of democracy and the freedoms attached to this democracy. In the role of guardian, the United States also assumes a level of supremacy whose main purpose is to ensure that the democratic state proliferates in its image.

two complex sets of factors have now basically altered this historic distribution of power. First, the defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of the British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the Soviet Union in such a way that power increasingly gravitated to these two centers. Second, the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, anti–thetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non–violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever–present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war. (NSC–68, 14 April 1950)

Under the NSC–68 document, the state solidified its role as the “primary referent for security” (Krauss and Williams, 1997: 34).

The rise of the American security state is attributed to a security ideology framed in

Cold War discourse in a system of symbolic representations that defined America’s national identity by reference to the un–American ‘other’, usually the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or some other totalitarian power. (Hogan, 1998: 17)

The U.S. security state that emerged in the Cold War was founded conterminously with the idea of the state based on supremacy and security.

This chapter examines the formation of the security state in a world continually subjected to forces outside the state’s domain, especially the real and imagined threats of terror and the rise of terrorism. It reflects on the current global environment and discusses how the state constitutes and re–constitutes its role in the creation of security. As the state re–constitutes itself in the face of “terror” – in the face of fear – security is made to refer to national security and the threat that terrorism poses to the state. In the face of terror, the state also captures the imagination of the general citizenry to ensure that the state is afforded a site to manage terrorism in the name of security for the citizenry. Security assumes multiple faces that range from economic security to statist security. National security discourse is shown, in this chapter, to occupy multiple faces and create an environment in which the concept of security becomes intelligible and made specific in national security discourse.

This chapter first addresses the questions: What is the state? How does the state function within the realm of security that it constitutes? and How does the state define itself and its mission within the realm of security? These questions become especially significant given the confines of the current global environment where the movement of money, weapons, thoughts, and people across “borders” make possible a host of activities and challenges to the conventional understanding of the state.

The State

It is generally accepted by the citizenry that the state is a tangible entity that has authority and sovereignty and exercises control over peoples, ideas, and territories. This accepted perception was manufactured through the assent of the modern state that involved territorialization, continuity of space, and homogenization of peoples. The state became “real” with the creation of an imagination of the citizenry based on the formation of institutions and agencies that enacted specific practices and effects. ⁵ The formation of state effects afforded an environment that facilitated the general acceptance of the practices of a ruling authority. More importantly, states developed communities/national identities that became sites on which practices of statecraft were actualized. As a project of the state, a national community was developed as an image over time – an image that possessed shared values and ideals that were altered and passed through time – and space – an image of lived practices that existed before us and would exist after us (Paul, Ikenbury, and Hall, 2003; Anderson, 1983).

5 What is meant here is that by establishing specific effects of the state, institutions and agencies, the citizenry actually feels it can witness the state in action. The perception here is that if there are effects of a state (military, taxation, government, etc.), then there must be an actual entity that produces these effects.

The state, as currently perceived, constitutes institutions and practices that legitimize its existence and that are instrumental in the creation of a national, cultural core. The cultural core is a set of stories and imaginaries that construct a meta–culture of the state. The citizenry takes ownership of this meta–culture which in turn informs their perspectives of the surrounding environment. As a result, the cultural core constructed a perceived majority and enhanced a specific identity to be processed and implemented. To witness the effects of a cultural core, incorporating historical narratives, one can turn to the development of the U.S. state.

The U.S. state is one of several examples of states whose histories can be investigated to elucidate the formation of a cultural core. However, the development of the United States is scrutinized based on its declaration that it is able to manage and coordinate public space via set rules and laws that delimit rights and situate networks of sociability and intelligibility.

The cultural core and historical narratives, coupled with the U.S.’ unequaled strength in the world, created a specific hegemony that articulated the United States as the savior of the world, purveyor of democracy, and the beacon of hope – American exceptionalism reiterated. American exceptionalism (explicated further in Chapter 5) was taken as a birthright that maintained the United States as the only power capable of enacting democracy and maintaining world peace. American exceptionalism is based on the logic of a state that finds its foundation in the idea of legitimized democratic processes. The logic of the legitimized democratic process required a level of interdependence as individuals came together for safety and protection. The formation of a secured and protected environment transformed itself into a site for the manifestation of ideological and cultural expression of the United States as a unique and innovative state in space and through time. The United States manifested itself as the perfect union of democratic ideals from ancient civilizations and the “modern” sentiments of security and state formation. American exceptionalism was a natural progression of a state that embodied all positive aspects and attributes and actualized a specific image of a mission to spread and defend the ideals of a secured, democratic state to facilitate other states but also to ensure an environment of security and prosperity. American exceptionalism also encompasses the ideal that the exceptional is also exempt from the rules it promotes. The inclusion/exclusion dyad is prevalent within the employment of the exceptional mission.

In the mission to ensure an environment of security and prosperity, security of the state is made logical and rational. In the rationality of the state, violence is controlled and managed by the state. Violence was no longer viewed as being uncertain and unstable as long as it was part of the statist system. In the face of terrorism, however, violence is again viewed as uncertain and unstable as terrorists attempt to take control over the statist use of violence in an illegitimate manner. The uncertainty of violence in terrorism is made relevant to the existence of the state. The state utilizes terrorism’s relevance to create a “theater of terror” in which fear is confronted with fear, and individuals maintain the credence of the social contract in hopes of maintaining laws and liberty (Juergensmeyer, 2003: 119).

Within statist logic of violence, the state set forth specific ideas of territorial and communal sovereignty. In doing so, the state consistently put into motion a set of practices that was designed to maintain and perpetuate concepts vital to its existence. A host of activities – economy, health, security – are made viable to the control and operationalization of the state. Such practices invite new issues that the state is forced to address in order to maintain the image of the state as a legitimate, solidified process. The ideology of the state is to create its own raison d’être by fixing in the minds of the citizenry all meanings of safety.

In working to solidify its control, authority, and legitimacy, the state reveals itself as a movement, always in search of new resources through which it can exercise and enact its power. In this sense, terrorism becomes a site through which the state can enact its practices of statecraft. Thus, the state as a movement can no longer be viewed in and through traditional concepts that anchor the state in historical origins.

State formation has undergone dramatic changes and contradictions within the past thirty years. Security, however, maintains its status as a site for the practice of statecraft. U.S. security began to challenge old conceptions of what “we” were trying to defend. Given the absence of a clear and present threat to vital state interest, security became the tool through which the state was legitimized in a site where:

oceans are the puddles and sovereign national frontiers…markings on an old map, the daily realities of interdependence everywhere contradict the idea of sovereign autonomy. (Barber, 2003: 55)

The ideas of the effects of globalization espoused by Barber are furthered by Campbell (1992), Connolly (1991), Dillon (1996), and Walker (1993), who construct a position which enables an exploration of how identity politics has fostered the current state of affairs in the global environment. They warn of the need to be critical of the power of identity politics in international relations and national security. These theorists critique a state structure that was constructed in a manner that systematically reified the state as:

an historically specific spatial ontology, a sharp delineation of here and there, a discourse that both expresses and constantly affirms the presence and absence of political life inside and outside the modern state as the only ground on which structural necessities can be understood and new realms of freedom and history can be revealed. (Walker, 1993: ix)

The artifacts of the world critiqued consistently labor to re–produce themselves in order to maintain semblance of the historical state project – a project that roots itself in the world of eighteenth– and nineteenth– century enlightenment philosophers of statism and progress. The current environment is not a collection of static entities among which spatiotemporal relations are reified or polarized. In the current environment, theories, philos...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Terrorism and the State
• 1 The State in a Time of Terror
• 2 National Security Discourse on Terrorism in Cold War Presidential Rhetoric
• 3 National Security Discourse on Terrorism in Post–Cold War Presidential Rhetoric
• 4 Once They Were Human
• 5 State Versus Terror
• 6 Language, Knowledge, and Power in the Name of the State
• Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Bibliography
• Index