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‘I am the least racist person,’ Donald Trump declared. This book unpacks how it is possible for various American administrations to impose discriminatory counterterrorism (CT) and countering violent extremism (CVE) measures on Muslim communities and yet declare that ‘Islam is peace’ or that ‘Muslims are our friends’. The book addresses some of the paradoxes of the securitisation by linking discourses about the role of Muslims in the war on terror in the United States with covert forms of racism. The book is concerned with a securitisation that is covertly rather than overtly expressed, which enables securitising actors like Trump to deny plausibility of racism and claim that they are ‘the least racist person’. The book offers a critique of the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to CT and CVE and advances an alternative way to understand radicalisation and terrorism by introducing a quantum perspective. Lastly, drawing on the affective turn, the book adds body to the analysis by theorising emotions and affect in the securitisation of Islam. The book argues that this covert securitisation constructs white American subjects as innocent, unprejudiced and living in a post-racial society averse to racism, whilst constructing Muslim subjects as potential terrorists and thus as sites of securitisation. This book is a timely analysis of the securitisation of Islam since 9/11 and presents an original study that contributes to debates on Islamophobia, white fragility and white victimhood, which have proliferated since the rise of far-right (populist) parties in Europe and the US.
rather a performative one that brings securitisation into being. In other words, issues become securitised not necessarily because a real existential threat exists ‘out there’ but rather because a security actor has labelled an issue ‘security’ (Buzan et al. 1998 , 24). However, it is not only by saying ‘security’ that securitisations occur. At times, saying the opposite and using a language of amity – that is, the issue is ‘not security’ – also works in the securitisation process. For example, when actors like the president of the United
This chapter explores the securitisation of development aid from the pre-2010 Labour Government to the post-2010 Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition. It finds a number of consistencies in the approaches of the two Governments, but also an intensification of the securitisation of development aid, both in discourse and in practice, under the Conservative Coalition. In December 2017, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson explicitly committed to using the aid budget to support UK foreign policy aims, including
that aid is rapidly becoming more dangerous. Simultaneously, there has been a notable growth of interest in aid security, as evidenced by a number of key publications ( Fast, 2014 ; Stoddard, 2020 ) and the advent of the AWSD in 2005. Among aid organisations, there has also been a proliferation of security guidance and training. This perception of increasing risks has provoked two key responses: the securitisation of aid and the development of a ‘duty of care’. The
decisions and polices from their (often contested) origins through their implementation and their consequences. Taking this a step further, the process of mapping those narratives on to national, regional and international spaces also helped to stimulate reflection on how changes in the operating environment, such as the securitisation and militarisation of aid, shaped the practice of humanitarianism in Somalia. 4 Managing
This chapter looks at the implementation and perception of the EU’s largest investment into the rule of law sector in the Western Balkans: the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo (EULEX). EU judges, prosecutors, investigators and customs officials were embedded into Kosovo’s rule of law institutions, directly dispensing justice in the most sensitive criminal proceedings. We argue that while the design of EULEX suffers from problems typically associated with liberal peacebuilding operations – lack of local ownership, technocratic approaches, and lack of accountability – the mission mandate embodied ambitions for conflict transformation. We build our argument by drawing on experiences of those most directly responsible for the execution of the EULEX mandate and those directly affected by its outcomes. Our data was collected as part of the EU Horizon 2020-funded EUNPACK project and comes from twenty-five in-depth interviews with practitioners familiar with the day-to-day work of the mission and its reception on the ground.
This book is about the language of the European Union’s response to the threat of terrorism: the ‘fight against terrorism’. Since its re-emergence in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the ‘fight against terrorism’ has come to represent a priority area of action for the European Union (EU). Drawing on interpretive approaches to International Relations, the author outlines a discourse theory of identity and counter-terrorism policy in order to explore the ways in which the EU’s counter-terrorism discourse has been constructed and the ways in which it functions. Importantly, the author shows how the ‘fight against terrorism’ structures the EU response to terrorism through the prism of identity, drawing our attention to the various ‘others’ that have come to form the target of EU counter-terrorism policy. Through an extensive analysis of the wider societal impact of the EU’s ‘fight against terrorism’ discourse, the author reveals the various ways in which EU counter-terrorism policy is contributing to the ‘securitisation’ of social and political life within Europe.
On the afternoon of September 11 2001 the Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach), Bertie Ahern ordered the ‘heads of the security services of key government departments’ to undertake a complete re-evaluation of measures to protect the state from attack. Hence, underway within hours of the 9/11 outrage in the United States was potentially the most far-reaching review of Irish national security in decades. This book, an academic investigation of Irish national security policy as it has operated since 9/11, provides a theoretically informed analysis of that re-evaluation and the decisions that were taken as a consequence of it up until September 2008. In so doing, it draws on unprecedented access to Ireland's police, security and intelligence agencies; over twenty senior personnel agreed to be interviewed. Questions are raised over the effectiveness of the Irish agencies, the relative absence of naval and airborne defence and the impact on national security of the policy imperative to transform the Defence Forces, particularly the army, for more robust missions overseas. The book also considers the securitisation of Irish immigration policy and the apparent absence of a coherent integration policy despite international evidence suggesting the potential for radicalisation in socially marginalised western communities. Theoretically, the book demonstrates the utility to the analysis of national security policy of three conceptual models of historical institutionalism, governmental politics and threat evaluation.
Thus far, I have concentrated on the CT and counter-radicalisation practices in the US and on the representational aspect of the indirect securitisation of Islam – that is, the discursive dimension of this securitisation – in other words, on practices that can be analysed through language. This chapter adds body to this analysis by exploring the emotional experiences that accompany the indirect securitisation of Islam and the affective process of indirect securitisations more generally. Following the work of social psychologist Margaret
attitudes in American society. This book has sought to unpack this semantic terrain, how it speaks to the norm of racial equality, and has juxtaposed the language of amity with discriminating CT and CVE practices in the US. In so doing, the book has complicated the securitisation of Islam in the US as a straightforward construction of Muslims as the enemy, or as an instance of politicians lying to the public. Avoiding the polarity of these two frames – securitisation is the act of saying ‘security’ or that ‘talk is cheap’ – the book has revealed how security practices