The Agenda of Securitization
and Military Force
Since the end of the Cold War,
facilitated by the breakup of the Soviet Union, the war on terror is now the main
military agenda for the United States; it is also an attempt at a
securitization of potential future economic markets in a neoliberal political
agenda. The creation of new political entities and the reshaping and
streamlining of the American military are a reflection of a new political and
economic reality facing the United States in the twenty-first century—mainly
the unseen enemy in a global economy—fear of the unknown. The United States has
maintained a tight control over its domestic economic and political policies
but it has limited control over global concerns—especially in the third world
countries that are not participating partners in the capitalist marketplace.
The subaltern economies that have little residual value to the economic
hegemonies ruling the global economy have made inroads into the economic and
political discourse by way of fostering and harboring those who believe that
recognition, for them, can only be achieved through anarchy. The most obvious
example being that it is politically and economically impossible for the
hegemonic powers to compete, in a market sense, with a monopoly that has very
little overhead—the suicide bomber as a political and military arm of Islamic
radicals.
The department of Homeland security was
created in the wake of the 9/11 to protect the United States from future
terrorist attacks. One of the main tenets of good government is to protect its
citizens from danger. While many may assume that this is strictly referring to
physical danger it is also, perhaps equally important, to protect financial
security as well. According to the Homeland Security websites section,
Preventing Terrorism and Enhancing Security,
Protecting
the American people from terrorist threats is the reason the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) was created, and remains our highest priority. Our
vision is a secure and resilient nation that effectively prevents terrorism in
ways that preserve our freedom and prosperity… The Department’s efforts to
prevent terrorism are centered on a risk-based layered, approach to security in
our passenger and cargo transportation systems and at our borders and ports of
entry. (1).
Two very important factors in this directive reference
prosperity and risk. When thinking of the Department of Homeland Security, the
immediate image is of the need for protection from the al-Qaeda operatives who
hijacked the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and
the Pennsylvania plane crash. What is not generally considered is the amount of
money, real and potential, that become ‘at risk’ when terrorists bring chaos to
the market place by way of an attack. The attacks need not be physical; they
could be, and most certainly will become, more cyber in nature. In Randy
Martin’s book, An Empire of Indifference, American War and the Financial
Logic of Risk Management, Martin informs that the ideals of physical and
financial danger exist in a symbiotic space: “Risk management bridges security
and finance. Financial risk is the prospect of a greater than expected return
on investments. Security is the converse: ‘preventing adverse consequences from
the intentional and unwarranted actions of others’ (18).” It would seem that
the task for Homeland Security would be to eliminate risk, not perpetuate a
‘risk-based’ policy to stifle risk. This would appear counter-intuitive but,
certainly since the 9/11 attacks, action is the order of the day and this
action comes in the intervention ability of American military’s Special Forces.
The Special Forces has taken on a more
expanded role in securitization with respect to American foreign policy and the
global economy. Where the United States relies on the Federal Reserve Board to
enact preemptive financial security within the United States—as far as keeping
inflation under control and the economy free from disruption—the Special Forces
are more frequently deploying forces to preempt any geopolitical disruptions to
our interests in the global economy. This is evidenced by the guiding
principles taken from the Special Forces website titled: Counterterrorism,
Stopping Terrorists Before They Strike,
Special
Forces are often deployed to preclude, preempt and resolve terrorist incidents
abroad. They prevent, deter and respond to terrorist activities and train other
nations' military in the basics of fighting terrorism. One of the current main
goals of the Counter Terrorism exercise is to thwart terrorist uprisings or
cells from forming. Special Forces Soldiers are now more important than ever in
the fight against global terrorism. Since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade
Center in New York, Special Forces Soldiers, working with our allies, have
captured numerous al-Qaeda members, disassembled terrorists cells and cut off
funding to those groups in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. Soldiers
continue to work with local governments and police forces to watch and hunt
down growing terror networks around the globe (1).
There is evidence that the Special Forces branch of
the American military is taking a greater role in the protection of American
interests globally. According to a nytime.com article,
The
importance of Special Forces appears likely to grow in coming years. In
February 2012, American officials said that the plan to wind down the combat
role of the United States in Afghanistan a year earlier than
expected would rely on shifting responsibility to Special Operations
forces to hunt militants and train foreign security forces. At a time of
declining Pentagon budgets and a waning public appetite for large wars of occupation,
the Obama administration hopes to depend more on foreign troops and security
forces to tackle extremist threats abroad (1).
Does this development signal that the military is also
moving to more information based, services oriented platform of operations? By
using its special forces to train local populations to mediate America’s global
interests, it is outsourcing its manpower to foreign entities to mitigate risk,
financial and physical, as well as creating a more cost effective strategy.
While it may be disturbing to think of an elite, secretive, military killing
force in the terms of the policy directives of a multi-national corporation, it
is merely the unfolding of a measure of transparency as to the historical
operational principles of the United States military complex—as not only the
defenders of a more peaceful world, but also a more profitable world for
ourselves and our allies.
The Special Forces are in the business of
arbitrage—finding value in small, risk-based, highly disruptive incursions into
potential markets of security. Preemption is what the Special Forces do best—to
bring future problems into the present and eradicating them. Finding and
eliminating future roadblocks to securitization permits a mostly
neoconservative agenda to operate in a near monopolistic arena with little
opportunity for opposition. While there will always be a security/risk binary
to attend to, a proactive approach allows at the very least the opportunity for
speculation and potential partnerships in new and preexisting, though troubled
markets.
This leads to, what Randy Martin quotes
Noam Chomsky as espousing, a ‘new military humanism’ (56). Martin further
states the military’s task to be,
…an
assessment of the capacity to embrace private enterprise, which would become the
arbiter of a nation’s future viability. Political risk would be redefined in
financial terms as the ‘probability of politically determined losses for an
investment in the future.’ Financial derivatives could be designed to hedge
against these outcomes. Internal chaos could fetch a premium return for those
willing to undertake the risk. National instability would become a market
opportunity (56)
A new military humanism is much of what defines the Bush
Doctrine—especially with respect to the right of preemption against any foreign
government that threatens the United States’ global authority or that of their
allies—such as the hunt for weapons of mass destruction that led to the second
invasion of Iraq.
In a document generated by the Bush White
House in 2002 titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of
America, a neoconservative agenda was laid out that would combine a
national political, economic, and military agenda that had a global reach. In
an excerpt from this document, the rhetoric of a neoconservative agenda is
presented to the American people:
The
gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and
technology…We will cooperate with other nations to deny, contain, and curtail
our enemies’ efforts to acquire dangerous technologies. And, as a matter of
common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats
before they are fully formed. We cannot defend America and our friends by
hoping for the best. So we must be prepared to defeat our enemies’ plans, using
the best intelligence and proceeding with deliberation. History will judge
harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act. In the new world we
have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of action (2).
While much of the rhetoric of this document is justified in
light of the attacks of 9/11 it is also problematic as a directive in that is
an open-ended justification for aggression worldwide. Because neoconservatives
promote that, in reference to economics, the market is always right, they have
applied this economic principle to the military’s agenda as well. In many ways,
this doctrine is an homage to Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon—except
that it is aggression turned outward—President Bush effectively declaring to a
hostile world Caesar’s edict, taken from Setonious’ The Lives of the Twelve
Caesars, "Take we the course which the signs of the gods and the false
dealing of our foes point out. The die is cast… (Chapter 32).” By threatening
the interests of the United States and its allies, the aggressor is certain to
feel the wrath of capitalism’s sword: the American military complex, the
coalition of the willing, and their paramilitary operatives.
Not only is the military operating in the
financial realm now, they are now using the Special Forces commanders to employ
Special Forces tactics as part of the regular military training. The goal is to
reduce the number of forces needed by creating a more specialized and swift
deploying army. While this is seen as a cost effective strategy, it succeeds in
casting the regular soldier as ‘special,’ while in truth, he is not the elite
soldier that the Special Forces purport their members to be. In a nytimes.com
article by Thom Shanker titled, “Army Will Reshape Training, With Lessons From
Special Forces”,
The
initiatives are a recognition that the role and clout of Special Operations
forces are certain to grow over coming years. Faced with impending budget cuts
and public exhaustion with large overseas deployments, the military will focus
on working with partner nations to increase their ability to deal with security
threats within their borders. The goal is to limit the footprint of most new
overseas deployments (1)
The military is taking those who are at risk—soldiers who would
not be able to otherwise qualify as Special Forces soldiers—and charging them
with the task of arbitrageur. They are ordering the ‘at risk’ to become the
‘risk taker’. This is a similar tactic to that which was employed in the
housing crisis, where banks and lending institutions were offering up predatory
loans to potential ‘at risk’ credit applicants. Where the lending industry
turned a blind eye to the ability for these individuals to possess the ability
to successfully participate in the market, the military is running the same
risk with its soldiers. By downsizing the American military and relying on the
indigenous populations that are under occupation to perform security and
military operations, they are effectively creating a derivative market in the
arena of global security by bundling American economic risk and dispersing it
through the training of foreign security forces whom are, ostensibly,
disposable.
Another important aspect of ‘specializing’ the regular army is the inherent structural
unemployment that is the by-product of a technological upgrade. Where the
military has been a source of structure, discipline, and economic support for
many of the United States’ marginalized citizens, the technological and
physical demands of the new military may render this portion of the population
jobless. This scenario becomes additionally problematic because it also an
opportunity to reemploy those soldiers, usually as civilian contractors, who
are not only highly trained but also technically skilled—namely previously
discharged Special Forces soldiers. The United States has historically been
able to train its recruits to perform whatever duties it required but there are
many recruits who—because of a lack of post-secondary education—may not be
able, intellectually, to make the grade. For those who are entering the job
market with more technological expertise, they will be more likely to join a
company in a tech related industry, as their salaries would be greatly
increased in the private sector compared to a government military pay grade.
Imperialism without occupation appears to
be the new mission statement in regard to foreign policy directives of the
United States government. While the United States declared war on Afghanistan
and Iraq simultaneously, the careful rhetoric of the White House was that the
American military would not be an occupying force—no flags would be flown to
signal the occupation by America. Meanwhile, the American military has been
fighting in the gulf region for the last ten years and although it has pulled
its forces from Iraq, they are still fighting insurgents in Afghanistan.
The war in Iraq was predicated on
supposed inside information of the stock piling of weapons of mass
destruction—which turned out to be false. This should have been the point where
the invading army would retreat, but quite the opposite happened. The lure of
economic surplus was ultimately the goal of the military—namely the prospect of
Iraqi oil. The politics of information—false information—opened the door to the
invasion and then continued to rationalize the sustained military presence in
the country. It became the inciting incident that would lead to the deaths of
many thousands of American soldiers, as well as Iraqi citizens and militants.
When using the military to expand the capitalistic ideals of a nation in the
global economy, the price of doing business is death—on a grand scale.
The logic of the preemptive strike has
become too great a temptation to resist. The United States military complex has
become a corporate raider as well as a force for civilian protection. The
technological innovations achieved by the military are cutting edge and the
military seems to be looking for any opportunity, large or small, to put the
new technologies to the test. By searching out the next potential danger
lurking around the corner the United States is securing its future security by
eliminating probable threats. The danger inherent in pursuing this line of
policy is that the global market is unpredictable.
The use of derivatives in American
foreign policy is in keeping with the current financial logic of the global
economy. According to investopedia.com, derivatives are characterized in this
manner: “Derivatives are contracts and can be used as an underlying asset.
There are even derivatives based on weather data, such as the amount of rain or
the number of sunny days in a particular region. Derivatives are generally used
as an instrument to hedge risk, but can also be used for speculative
purposes (1).” The ability for multiple agencies to combine their
resources by way of a derivative contract is the investment vehicle that
contains the value of our national security. Randy Martin solidifies this
notion of the derivative as a policy security. The office of Homeland Security
embodies this distinction; as shield of protection as well as an underlying
asset that is connected to the global economic policy of the United States.
According to Martin, “Billed by the Bush administration as a major initiative,
a reinvention of the scope of government as we know it, the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) is a derivative institution of state. It was assembled
from some twenty-two offices in existing secretariats like
treasury…justice…health and human services…and agriculture (59).” This
restructuring of government has not been seen for decades—perhaps since the end
of World War II and it directly reflects the reaction of the market to the new
world economy.
While the United States is bundling its
toxic security debt and trying to pawn it off on unwary investors, recent
history has shown that this sort of behavior leads to a false sense of value
and leads to the creation of a bubble that is sure to burst. Ernest Mandel
wrote in his 1991 paper, Economic Consequences of the War, in
regard to the first Gulf War, about the economic danger in attempting this
action,
The
American arms industry was already working at full stretch before the start of
the Gulf crisis. Thus there will be no extra stimulus to economic activity as a
result of the war. On the civilian sectors of the economy, the effects will be
wholly negative. Consumer income will fall. High interest rates will hit the
construction sector. It will be more expensive for enterprises to invest. Thus,
the war will slow down economic activity and employment. For the first time in
two centuries, the dominant capitalist economy will see recession and war at
the same time (1).
Mandel’s assessment has proven prophetic to say the least.
Many Americans, rightly or wrongly, seem to assume that war inherently brings
prosperity, certainly to the victor. The devil in this detail is that America
has not disbanded its military since the end of World War II. American has
become dependent on war to sustain its global influence, now at the expense of
its own economy.
Just like the new financial vehicles of
choice these days, the hedge fund and the derivative, the United States
Military complex is creating a financial vehicle in security. Where,
historically, security was used to defend an asset, the American government has
allowed the military to trade security as an asset, effectively securitizing
security. This strategy is creating a derivative market of security. What is
troubling in this policy is that security is the weapon to minimize risk in the
marketplace but it is now magnifying the risk.
Works Cited:
Investopedia. “Definition of Derivative.” 5 December 2012: Website
Mandel, Ernest. “Economic Consequences of the War” International Viewpoint, Issue 200,
(1991): pp. 9–10. Website
Martin, Randy. An Empire of Indifference, American War and the Financial Logic of Risk
Management. Durham: Duke University Press. 2007. Print
Shanker, Thom. Army Will Reshape Training, With Lessons From Special Forces
nytimes.com 2 May 2012: Website
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/us/politics/odierno-seeks-to-reshape-training-and-deployment-for-soldiers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Times Topics: “United States Special Operations Command.” nytimes.com 10 December
2012: Website
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/united_states_special_operations_command/index.html
Tranquillus, C. Suetonius. “The Lives of the Twelve Caesars: The Life of Julius Caesar.” December 2012: Website
United States. GoArmy.com: “Special Forces.” 5 December 2012: Website
http://www.goarmy.com/special-forces/primary-missions/counterterrorism.html
United States. Homeland Security: “Preventing Terrorism Overview.” Washington 5
December 2012: Website
United States. The White House. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of
America.” Washington 17 September 2002: Website
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/national/nss-020920.pdf
