Secur(itiz)ing the West. The Transformation of Western Order

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Gunther Hellmann

The project examined the security policy dimensions of the formation and transformation of the Western order. As a concept of order, “the West” is used ubiquitously in both political and academic discussion contexts. However, its routine usage all too easily obscures the constitutive vagueness and controversial nature of “the West”. However, “the West” seems to be able to develop its integrative power precisely because very different positions and projects can be justified “in the name of the West”. This is exemplified by the controversies surrounding appropriate forms of combating terrorism, in which almost every position articulated in Europe or the USA sees itself in agreement with the basic normative principles of the West, while opposing positions are accused of deviating from such basic principles. Against this background, it is interesting from a social science perspective to look at the different references to the West and their institutional consequences.

To this end, a methodologically innovative, open research approach was developed, which reconstructed the performative references in three different security policy fields in hermeneutic detailed analyses. The first field of research focused on the traditional dimension of great power rivalry. In security policy circles, the emergence of new powers, particularly China, but also the open development of Russia, is observed from the perspective of possible shifts in polarity. How to react to such possible shifts is controversial within the West and is therefore a suitable starting point for the reconstruction of performative references to the West. In politically diametrically opposed positions, clear similarities could be identified in the way in which the West was referred to. For example, the West appeared to both the proponents of a cooperative strategy towards China and the proponents of a more confrontational stance as a threatened space that must be protected at all costs. The assessment that the material foundations of the West’s supremacy are under threat typically went hand in hand with the rearticulation of the idea of the West’s normative and moral superiority and its role model function for emerging states. However, it is precisely because the West sees itself as morally superior that the scenario of the geopolitically threatened West can gain plausibility.

A second field of research focused on NATO as the central institutional embodiment of the West in terms of security policy. NATO emerged as a defense alliance in the strategic constellation of the East-West conflict, but in its self-descriptions it is always more than just a strategically justified alliance. As an institutional expression of the “Western community of values”, it initially saw itself as a line of defense against Soviet communism. After the East-West conflict and thus the end of bloc confrontation and systemic competition, NATO’s continued existence therefore requires justification. A detailed hermeneutic analysis of the relevant strategic documents showed that NATO made use of rhetorical strategies of self-empowerment, which can be traced back to the beginnings of the Alliance in variations adapted to the respective strategic constellation. The topos of a threatened West that must be protected at all costs reinforces this tendency towards self-empowerment and at the same time establishes a specifically Western conflict structure in transatlantic relations. Political differences of opinion between Europe and the USA are not described as ordinary differences of position and opposition, but rather as different interpretations of a shared Western foundation of values. The fact that the opposing party is always observed as a renegade who abandons this common foundation explains the specific escalation dynamic, but also the integration effect of transatlantic conflicts.

Finally, the third field of research dealt with the domestic political dimensions of the “war on terrorism”, in particular the example of the re-legitimization of torture and the tendency to suspend the protective provisions of the rule of law. It is well known and documented that the normative-institutional achievements of the democratic constitutional state tend to come under pressure in the course of the fight against terrorism. In a hermeneutic detailed analysis of the relevant torture memos, mass media treatments of the torture issue and the European controversy surrounding extraordinary renditions, the focus was rather on the question of the justification and justification of such restrictions. Here, too, the topos of the “threatened West” initially authorized extraordinary defensive measures, of which the creeping relegitimization of torture is only the most prominent example. Of analytical interest, however, was the question of how such restrictions could be made permanent. A discursive shift could be reconstructed that led away from the originally authorizing topos of the situational exception for the purpose of defence and towards a bureaucratic-technocratic risk semantics. Not the knowledge of a threat, but the ignorance of its temporal end thus became the central figure of justification. The non-committal communication created in this way enabled the European side in particular to immunize its toleration of and participation in the transfer of suspects to CIA black sites from public criticism.
In all three fields of research, a fundamental but at the same time always controversial tendency towards securitization of the West could be observed. In the critical security theory of the Copenhagen School, securitization refers to the discursive process by which an object of reference is described as existentially threatened in such a way that extra-legal measures appear justified for defence purposes. The reference objects in the literature are usually the state, occasionally also society or the environment. Introducing and analyzing the West as a reference object thus also makes an innovative contribution to the current discussion on security theory. The securitization of the West does not represent a necessary or irreversible development; rather, it should be understood as a practical consequence of reactions to terrorist threats in particular. The image of a securitized West that threatens to abandon its normative foundations in the name of self-defence is therefore always countered by the image of a genuinely Western culture of constitutional-democratic formalism. As equally virulent topoi in the security policy discourse, these contrasting self-descriptions of the West are in a polar tension with one another. Any securitization can be criticized with arguments based on the rule of law, just as any achievement of the democratic constitutional state remains threatened by the dynamics of securitization. Within this field of tension, however, a discursive shift towards an increasing securitization of the West has been observed, particularly since the attacks of 11 September 2001.

In addition to the subject-related research results from the individual fields and the resulting overall picture of the transformation of the Western order, the project also makes a fundamental theoretical and methodological contribution to the social science analysis of the formation of normative orders. By consistently observing normative orders under the aspect of their formation, it becomes possible to overcome static concepts of order and to focus on the process dimension of order formation. Order formation can then be understood as a practical consequence of the performative reference to concepts of order. Their reconstructive analysis is made possible by the basic conceptual instruments developed in the project.

The most important publications in the research project include
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin (2008): “Fishing in the Mild West. Democratic Peace and Militarized Interstate Disputes in the Transatlantic Community”, in: Review of International Studies, 34(3), 481-506.
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin (eds.) (2016): Uses of the West. Security and the Politics of Order Cambridge University Press.
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin/ Schlag, Gabi/Weber, Christian (2017): “The West: A Securitizing Community”, in: Journal of International Relations and Development, 20(2), 301-330.
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin/ Schlag, Gabi/Weber, Christian: Securitizing the West? The Politics of Security and the Transformation of Western Order (joint monograph, forthcoming).

The project included the workshop “Securitization Theory and the Formation of Normative Orders, Theoretical Problems and Methodological Challenges”, 6-8 September 2008, Goethe University Frankfurt and the international conferences “Secur(itiz)ing the West – The Transformation of Western Order” 21-23 November 2008, SAIS Bologna Center, Johns Hopkins University and “Uses of the West: Security – Democracy – Order” 8-10 October 2009, Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg.