The UN and Counter-Terrorism

Global Hegemonies, Power and Identities

Alice Martini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000344219
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book traces the evolution of the UN Security Council's actions against terrorism and extremism.

The work examines the progression of the UN Security Council's fight against international terrorism and its development of practices to prevent radicalisation and extremism. It also looks at the consequences of these processes and how they have deeply moulded global counter-terrorism. The book looks at the discursive construction of a global threat and tracks how this construction evolved in relation to the Council's establishment of legal practices and bodies, and by its Members' discourses. It argues that the very specific definition the Council provided on international terrorism in the 2000s is profoundly shaped by global hegemonies, relations of power shaping the international community, and its own identity. To demonstrate this, it offers a long genealogical perspective of the structure of the UN since the 1930s and then focuses specifically on the developments taking place in the 2000s. The book thus looks at the Security Council's fight against international terrorism as a global, globalised, and globalising enterprise.

This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, security studies, global governance, and International Relations.

1 A constructivist theory of international terrorism

Introduction

Theory is an instrument that allows us to understand the complexity of reality and, in this chapter, I present the theoretical tools that will permit me to deconstruct the UN Security Council’s fight against international terrorism. Here, I lay the philosophical and theoretical bases needed to understand the evolution of this global fight but also, and more specifically, the construction of the specific threat of international terrorism. To explain what it means to consider international terrorism and the international community as social constructions, in the first part of the chapter I present a reflection on language, discourses, and the discursive production of the Self and the Other. In the second part, I link these reflections with the dynamics of power conforming the international sphere – and thus the Council’s fight. In other words, I inquire into how these dynamics formed and shaped both categories and placed them in a mutually constitutive relation – (re)produced by discourses and practices. It is, I argue, these power relations that the international community safeguards by constructing a specific kind of political violence as international terrorism.

On words, discourses, and identity

In this book, I am interested in the global processes that make a certain kind of political violence into international terrorism at a global level. Therefore, this part of the chapter is dedicated to explaining how I understand these processes. Here, I look specifically at the power of language and how discourses can create a specific meaning – although unstable and not fixed – for the category of “international terrorism”. I then focus on the formation of identity, this also being a discursive process.

The power of words

I understand that language is at the core of the processes of construction or reality. Following Wittgenstein, I understand that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein 2009, 88), meaning not only that language constructs (the perception of) the world, but also, roughly speaking, that all that is knowable depends on language. This implies that, as Hacking put it, “the world with which I am acquainted, is bounded by my language” (Hacking 1975). This point of view understands that there is nothing we can know outside of language and gives life to many of the post-structuralist interpretations of reality, according to which it is impossible to access reality outside of language. Nevertheless, I am not concerned with the philosophical problem of access to “reality” because my object of study is mostly language – or, better said, discourses. Language constructs “immense edifices of symbolic representations that appear to tower over the reality of everyday life” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 55), and this book describes the edifice of “international terrorism” over the reality of violence. This category is “built on word and with words” (Onuf 2013, 11) and, like all political institutions, it is “predicated on the lie that is the word” (Norton 1988).

It is in this understanding of language that Critical Security Studies and Critical Terrorism Studies find their philosophical roots. Here, following Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics, a distinction is made between the signifier – the word – and the signified – the concept this word evocates to different individuals (de Saussure 1916). Similarly, following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, it is argued that “terrorism” could be conceptualised as an “empty signifier” or a “signifier without (a clear) signified” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). This is not to suggest that “terrorism” has no meaning, but that there is a discursive process that constructs the link between the signifier and the signified. This argument is based on the understanding that there is nothing evident in armed violence, understood here as Galtung’s direct violence, the “somatic incapacitation, or deprivation of health, alone (with killing as the extreme form), at the hands of an actor who intends this to be the consequence” (Galtung 1969, 168). In other words, armed violence does not present an intrinsic characteristic that renders it evidently distinguishable from other forms, or an intrinsic “terrorist” nature (R. Jackson et al. 2011). “Terrorism” is a linguistic and political label, and it is better conceptualised as a signifier whose signified – the violence – is assigned to the word through discursive processes (R. Jackson et al. 2011; Jackson, Breen-Smyth, and Gunning 2009). Moreover, “things exist only insofar they are named as such” (Onuf 2013) because the act of naming structures social agents’ perception of the world. To give a name to an object means to characterise it, to interpret it from a vantage point, and to structure its understanding (Connolly 1993, 22–24).

Furthermore, language is constitutive of multiple possibilities (Hiesserich 2008, 20) because meaning is not fixed but context-dependent. Words acquire their meanings through what Wittgenstein called the Spachspielen (Wittgenstein 1988) – the language-games, which set them into relations with other signifiers (Epstein 2008, 7). This is usually a relation of differentiation: language is constructed on linguistic binaries, and words acquire their meaning through their distinction from others. As Richard Jackson et al. argued, the conceptualisation of terrorism may be contextual, to the point that at times “it is impossible to separate the term from the conditions in which it is used and understood” (R. Jackson et al. 2011, 105). Nevertheless, the meaning of a violent act – its interpretation and the following responses – does not take shape in a vacuum. On the contrary, the conditions of the application of this term and its meaning are constructed and determined through discourses and social practices, which contribute to the labelling and categorisation of a (violent) event (R. Jackson et al. 2011, 3). It is because of these processes that language in politics becomes a tool of power (Connolly 1993, 1). In the political sphere, language is used to create subjectivities, to relate them, and to give order to reality. The “linguistic production of reality” is what power uses to perpetrate and maintain itself. Power circulates in societies through discourses (Martini 2016, 92–105) which construct these relations of meaning. Focusing on the international community’s construction, “terrorism” has been crystallised on a kind of violence that has political claims, which targets “innocents” to spread “terror” and aims to achieve a specific political goal. This crystallisation of the term depends on the discourse that constructs it and assigns it specific characteristics.

The power of discourses and dispositifs

Language gives meaning to social reality through discourses. Discourses, as Foucault argues, are “composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things […] (they are) practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault 2002, 49). Similarly, Epstein defined discourses as “a cohesive ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorizations about a specific object that frame that object in a certain way and, therefore, delimit the possibilities for action in relation to it” (Epstein 2008, 2). In this sense, Epstein argues that discourses are articulatory practices; they create relations of meaning and, in the end, meaning itself (Epstein 2008, 6). Discourses are sense-making practices which shape reality by pinning meaning to objects and subjects (Epstein 2008, 2; R. Jackson 2005, 18). As Jennifer Milliken argued, discourses are “systems of signification” and thus constitutive of (the meaning of) the social world (Milliken 1999, 229).

Discourses “establish a gnoseological order: the immediate meaning of the world” (Foucault 2002) through the production of specific knowledge about this object, knowledge that is always the product of power because “power is everywhere; not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere” (Foucault 1981, 121–22). Discourses create a “space of objects”, by making specific things matter in different ways. The Council’s discourse on international terrorism constructs a “grid of intelligibility” (R. Jackson et al. 2011, 11) through which sense is made of a specific kind of violence. Through the terroristisation act, the discourse does two things. First, it constructs a certain kind of violence as “terrorism”: i.e., it provides the conditions of possibility for the interpretation of a certain violence as “terrorism”, through precisely the application of this label to the violence – whereas, other kinds of, for example, direct armed violence are constructed in a different way. Second, it shapes “terrorism” by assigning it specific characteristics.

A discourse is constructed through many narratives that protect its legitimacy by presenting it as the unique, ahistorical, and only plausible way of interpreting the object (Milliken 1999, 229). Not all discourses achieve the same degree of success; some of them fail, but others become normalised and eventually institutionalised. Discourses emerge under specific rules of formation, conditions of existence, maintenance, modification, and disappearance (Foucault 2002). Discourses exist as a conglomerate of relations and need favourable historical conditions to emerge when they “can”, when they have the possibility, and when they are not prevented from by a set of material interests against them (Epstein 2008, 50). Furthermore, because of the “play of practice”, discourses are unstable, they have to be created, maintained, and rearticulated continuously, and they present internal and external contradictions (Milliken 1999, 230). Discourses emerge when they have the possibility and become hegemonic by imposing themselves on other discourses. Their narratives need to be constantly rearticulated to maintain this hegemony (Crawford 2002). To do this, they evolve, encompass different dynamics, reach stabilisation until contestation emerges. Here, the articulation of new narratives may safeguard their hegemony, but they may also lose this status and a new discourse may become hegemonic. The play of practice is visible in the Council’s fight against international terrorism that, as already mentioned, has undergone an evolution through different phases of stabilisation and rearticulation.

Discourses construct the social world and the actors within it, and their interpretation and understanding of reality. Actors and discourses – as agents and structures – are co-constituted (see Figure 1.1). Nevertheless, because of this co-constitution, it is important not to overestimate the agency single actors have, but also not to underestimate their power. In fact, within this space, actors are constructed by discourses; however, they also construct discourses. Their relation is co-constitutive and, therefore, as Christopher Baker-Beall argued, “discourses structure the social world and the actors within it but importantly actors have agency to change the social world” (Baker-Beall 2016, 42) and thus to use discourses politically. Discourse shapes actors’ understanding of the world and, to a certain extent, powerful actors are “like anyone else […] bound by discourses” (Spencer 2010, 81). In other words, the discourse on terrorism constructs actors’ understanding of a specific kind of political violence as a threat and as terrorism and drives their interpretation of, for example, an act with specific characteristics as “terrorism”. This does not mean that actors cannot resist the discourse or reproduce it according to their own political aims, material, and economic interests (but also, political capital, reputation, etc.). They are also historically and politically contingent on and shaped by discourses in a relation of co-constitution.

Figure 1.1 Co-constitution of actors and discourses.

Actors have different levels of power within a discourse, depending on the discourse and on the specific social, historical, and political context. For discourses to be successful, they need to be articulated by actors with the authority to do so or, as Pierre Bourdieu stated, by actors with enough “symbolic power” (Bourdieu 1991). Concurrently, it is also important that those who listen – i.e., the audience – acknowledge the authority of the discourse entrepreneurs (John Thomson’s foreword to Pierre Bourdieu 1991, 8). In fact, “a discourse may sometimes have some sort of power, nevertheless it is from us and us alone that it gets it” (Bourdieu 1991, 8). It is on this process that securitisation theory is based (see Figure 1.2 ¹ ). As Onuf argued, “the co-constitution of agents and structures implies that we all make terrorism what (we say) it is whether by committing, thwarting, applauding, condemning, anticipating, investigating or dismissing acts of terror and terrorist activities” (Onuf 2009, 54). Hence, a discourse includes the participation of all the social actors; all of them co-constitute the discourse by abiding to it, giving it shape and strength. It is not enough that an actor names an event “terrorism”, the audience must view the act as such too, and it does so through the frames provided by the – previous and present – discourses. Moreover, neither the discourse entrepreneur, nor the audience, nor the context is a static category. Conformed gradually through a long-term genealogical process, they are historical, political, and social conformations and their identity is shaped by intrinsic relations of power. When looking at the Council’s fight, the genealogical conformation of the categories involved becomes key to understand its historical and political evolution, and its crystallisation on a specific violence.

Figure 1.2 Representation of the discursive move.

In this sense, discourses constitute new identities for the social actors through the creation of new-subject positions (Epstein 2008, 6) – for example, terrorism and the international community that counters it. They structure the binary oppositions on which language is based and establish a hierarchical relation between terms, where one is privileged over the other – e.g., legal/illegal, good/evil, and civilisation/barbarism. Furthermore, they generate behaviours, understandings, and prac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures, tables, and illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 A constructivist theory of international terrorism
• 2 The UN and international terrorism: A genealogy
• 3 The emergence of the dispositif of international terrorism
• 4 The consolidation of the dispositif: Writing the Self and the Other
• 5 Broadening the dispositif to radicalisation and extremism
• 6 Where consensus was not reached
• Conclusion: The long evolution of global counter-terrorism
• Appendix
• Index