ABSTRACT
With this book I have sought to understand how war becomes acceptable. The empirical puzzle at the centre of this endeavour has been how a second postCold War military campaign by Russia against Chechnya became a legitimate undertaking. Not only had the first campaign against this tiny Russian republic turned out to be a totally unacceptable enterprise, a second campaign was unthinkable for most Russians only months before it was launched in autumn 1999. Yet, the Second Chechen War, a war just as violent as the First Chechen War, was acceptable, even required, in the eyes of the Russian public at the outset and as the war dragged on. The main part of this concluding chapter will recap the findings on how the social process that made the war acceptable unfolded and provide some broader perspectives on Russia and the consequences of this so-called counter-terrorist campaign. However, given the ambition of the book to also say something about war and legitimation in general, I wish to start with presenting some claims about how securitization works before and during war. First, rhetorical preparations before war matter. Many wars are launched on a weak rhetorical foundation. They might still be launched and fought, as was the First Chechen War, but support for such a war is weak in the first place and easily dwindles. By contrast, other wars – such as the Second Chechen War – become acceptable. They are launched accompanied by a thick securitizing narrative that is consistent, in the sense that the representation of the enemy can be placed at the top of a scale in terms of danger and matches the policy of war that is indicated. Second, discursive context matters. Official securitizing attempts before and in war can acquire legitimacy if they draw on ingrained and established representations of threat in the national discursive terrain and/or on a threat representation that is dominant in the international discursive terrain at the time. It is easier to fight an acceptable war against someone if this ‘someone’ has historically been constructed as different and dangerous and/or if the classification in which this someone is placed is particularly salient at the time. It might not matter if the war is fought close to home or far away, but it does matter how this someone has been represented over time and how predominantly this representation figures in the national (or international) discourses of threat as such. There
are such things as habitual enemies: choosing them as an object of war contributes to making the war acceptable. A third and perhaps controversial claim about securitization and war is that when war becomes acceptable this is thanks to the discursive efforts of many. Both what Buzan and Wæver refer to as the ‘securitizing actor’ and ‘the audience’ contribute. Guzzini has claimed that ‘many analysts (and innumerable student papers) fall prey to reducing securitization to studies in which they simply expose the intentional war-mongering of some political actors’.1 This study indicates that, by emphasizing securitization as an intersubjective process of legitimation, the spotlight is broadened beyond the war-mongering leadership and can shed light on how the political opposition, experts, generals, police and especially the media not only accept but contribute to the construction of the object as an existential threat and to making the war a legitimate undertaking. If we want to assign responsibility for war and violence, it is important to recognize the role played by ‘actors’ other than the political leadership. After all, these actors always have some possibility of voicing representations that counter those depicting the object as an existential threat. Fourth, this study indicates that the type of classification/representation agreed upon during the process of securitization effects how that war can be waged. While it is impossible to rank different wars according to degree of ‘cruelty’ along an objective standard, some wars are clearly more violent than others in terms of how massive and indiscriminate the violence is, and how long it can be carried out and still be acceptable. Securitizing narratives in war that cast the enemy as extremely dangerous and different make massive and indiscriminate violence possible and acceptable. Further, such acceptance must be nurtured as the war rolls on. Securitization is never a stable social arrangement; neither are acceptable wars. Discourses that negate the image of the enemy as different and dangerous, and represent the victims of war as fellow human beings can emerge to challenge this representation. In particular, a war that entails heavy human costs must be constantly legitimized through representations of the enemy as an existential threat. Again, continued acceptance is not necessarily the work of the political leadership alone: it is better seen as a collective endeavour where the entire potential audience plays a role. Scaling down threat representations can always be undertaken, and it may start among the putative ‘audience’. Finally, securitization for and in war creates conditions not only for acceptable war, but also for re-drawing the identity of the referent object. The urgent focus and discursive detailing of the threat which a securitizing attempt in war can elicit will also produce a new articulation of the Self that is said to be threatened. It might be argued that this re-articulated Self in time of war is negatively constituted, that it is more through what it is not than through what it is that the Self becomes re-defined and united. Nevertheless, no social group wages an acceptable war and remains the same. There will always be some benefit in terms of social cohesion. But, as I will turn to below in my discussion of the empirical case studied throughout this book, such cohesion may be precarious and come at a price.
