ABSTRACT

One of the main assumptions in liberal democracies shared both by experts and professionals of security (such as police, intelligence services, customs, immigration services, border guards and the military) after 11 September 2001 has been that security is a core value threatened by ‘global terrorism’. Security is about the protection of the individual, but also of the collective self, of the nation state. Security becomes intrinsically intertwined with survival. This was already the case during the Cold War, but in present times these assumptions claim that it is even more critical. According to them the world has changed, and a small group of ‘terrorists’ with weapons of mass destruction might be targeting a city or an entire country. From this first assumption of a radically new era in which the state cannot pretend anymore to have an effective monopoly on violence, a second assumption according to which security is first, liberty is second has emerged. 1 In addition, security is about life and death, about survival, and the conditions of life depend on the existence of life itself. Therefore, liberty and democracy as conditions of life are consequential and derivative, as they depend on security for life to exist. Many academics from structural realism have supported these views, which Morgenthau and Raymond Aron had already suggested back into the 1960s. This literature has advocated that after 11 September 2001 we are facing a new era putting an end to the supremacy of state actors, and giving way to a global world of violence and insecurity; a world that forces states to collaborate among each other and to move beyond purely nationally oriented interests. States have promoted a supranational interest to respond to their local violent contenders globally. This specific combination has diminished the national sovereignty argument in favour of one calling for global security and it has created a certain consensus among the realists, globalists and neo-conservatives. If anyone dares to challenge the discourse of a global insecurity after 11 September, they will be accused to be unconscious about current ‘dramatic changes’. Any opponents of the security first argument, coined by Etzioni, will be considered to be ‘idealists’ or, even worse, accomplices with the new enemy: ‘the home-grown terrorist’. Professionals of security are often more direct in their comments. Some professional of politics have often threatened the civil liberties of religious minorities and certain NGOs at times of treating them like allies of ‘the terrorists’. This security strategy however creates more insecurity. By choosing who is to be protected and who is to be targeted, this kind of narrative forgets that a small part of those being targeted could mobilize and engage into physical violence, and therefore lead to more insecurity. They also neglect all the lessons learned from the Cold War about escalation and de-escalation.