ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies and explores a paradigm shift in the security strategy of the European Union (EU), characterized by the pursuit of the US military doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance,” a euphemism for control over all elements of the “battlespace” using land, air, maritime, and space-based assets (Department of Defense, 2000). As military apparatuses have been given a “security” mandate, and “Homeland Security” policy has adopted a quasimilitarist posture, Full Spectrum Dominance has become a coherent political project geared toward imposing a ubiquitous and global surveillance system for the express purposes of maintaining and extending (Western) state power, authority, and control in the twenty-first century. The EU has not formally adopted a strategy of Full Spectrum Dominance.
Rather, EU policies on a whole host of formerly distinct “security” issuesincluding policing; counterterrorism; critical-infrastructure protection; border control; crisis management; external security; defence, maritime, and space policy-are converging around two interrelated objectives. The first is the widespread implementation of surveillance technologies and techniques to enhance security and law-enforcement capacity in these core “mission areas.” The second is the drive for “interoperability,” or the integration of surveillance tools with other government information and communications systems so that they may be used for multiple tasks across the spectrum of law enforcement and security. A culture of “joined-up surveillance” embedded in a culture of “joined-up government” is another way to describe this trend. Characterizing these developments as constituting a “NeoConOpticon”
accentuates concerns about the influence of transnational defence and security corporations in promoting the Full Spectrum Dominance agenda and the ideological orientation of this and other “Homeland Security” discourses. On one hand, the concept flags the close bond between corporate and political elites in the homeland-security sector (the “right to limitless profit-making” at the centre of “neoconservative” ideology [Klein 2007:322]). On the other, it refers to the inherently neoconservative appeal to the defence of the homeland and the eradication of threats to the Western way of life abroad, in which Full
Spectrum Dominance and related doctrines are embedded (Project for the New American Century, 2000; Department of Defence, 2000). The NeoConOpticon provides a fruitful line of enquiry for this analysis, but not a comprehensive theory of the contemporary security or surveillance policies of the EU. This chapter argues that Full Spectrum Dominance in a European context
relates to converging trends in the historical development of the EU: an increasingly sophisticated security apparatus; policy frameworks facilitating police surveillance and the collection and exchange of police information in the EU; the EU’s external security, defence, and space policies; and the increasing influence of transnational defence and security corporations on the EU policy agenda. The second part of this chapter examines some of the policy programs, surveillance systems, and actors contributing to the development of Full Spectrum Dominance infrastructure for the EU. The final section considers some of the wider implications of this potentially omnipotent program of surveillance.
