2AC To Ks

Security

Security good
Rejection of securitization leads to instability and
international intervention turns their impact
McCormack 10 Lecturer in International Politics

Tara McCormack, is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of

Leicester and has a PhD in International Relations from the University of
Westminster. 2010, Critique, Security and Power: The political limits to
emancipatory approaches, pg. 127-129
The following section will briefly raise some questions about the rejection
of the old security framework as it has been taken up by the most
powerful institutions and states. Here we can begin to see the political
limits to critical and emancipatory frameworks. In an international
system which is marked by great power inequalities between states, the
rejection of the old narrow national interest-based security framework
by major international institutions, and the adoption of ostensibly
emancipatory policies and policy rhetoric, has the consequence of
problematising weak or unstable states and allowing international
institutions or major states a more interventionary role, yet
without establishing mechanisms by which the citizens of states
being intervened in might have any control over the agents or
agencies of their emancipation. Whatever the problems associated
with the pluralist security framework there were at least formal
and clear demarcations. This has the consequence of entrenching
international power inequalities and allowing for a shift towards a
hierarchical international order in which the citizens in weak or
unstable states may arguably have even less freedom or power
than before. Radical critics of contemporary security policies, such as
human security and humanitarian intervention, argue that we see an
assertion of Western power and the creation of liberal subjectivities in the
developing world. For example, see Mark Duffields important and
insightful contribution to the ongoing debates about contemporary
international security and development. Duffield attempts to provide a
coherent empirical engagement with, and theoretical explanation of, these
shifts. Whilst these shifts, away from a focus on state security, and the socalled merging of security and development are often portrayed as positive
and progressive shifts that have come about because of the end of the
Cold War, Duffield argues convincingly that these shifts are highly
problematic and unprogressive. For example, the rejection of sovereignty
as formal international equality and a presumption of nonintervention has
eroded the division between the international and domestic spheres and
led to an international environment in which Western NGOs and powerful
states have a major role in the governance of third world states. Whilst for
supporters of humanitarian intervention this is a good development,
Duffield points out the depoliticising implications, drawing on examples in
Mozambique and Afghanistan. Duffield also draws out the problems of the
retreat from modernisation that is represented by sustainable
development. The Western world has moved away from the development
policies of the Cold War, which aimed to develop third world states

industrially. Duffield describes this in terms of a new division of human life

into uninsured and insured life. Whilst we in the West are insured that is
we no longer have to be entirely self-reliant, we have welfare systems, a
modern division of labour and so on sustainable development aims to
teach populations in poor states how to survive in the absence of any of
this. Third world populations must be taught to be self-reliant,
they will remain uninsured. Self-reliance of course means the
condemnation of millions to a barbarous life of inhuman bare
survival. Ironically, although sustainable development is celebrated by
many on the left today, by leaving people to fend for themselves rather
than developing a society wide system which can support people,
sustainable development actually leads to a less human and humane
system than that developed in modern capitalist states. Duffield also
describes how many of these problematic shifts are embodied in the
contemporary concept of human security. For Duffield, we can understand
these shifts in terms of Foucauldian biopolitical framework, which can be
understood as a regulatory power that seeks to support life through
intervening in the biological, social and economic processes that constitute
a human population (2007: 16). Sustainable development and human
security are for Duffield technologies of security which aim to create selfmanaging and self-reliant subjectivities in the third world, which can then
survive in a situation of serious underdevelopment (or being uninsured as
Duffield terms it) without causing security problems for the developed
world. For Duffield this is all driven by a neoliberal project which seeks to
control and manage uninsured populations globally. Radical critic Costas
Douzinas (2007) also criticises new forms of cosmopolitanism such as
human rights and interventions for human rights as a triumph of American
hegemony. Whilst we are in agreement with critics such as Douzinas and
Duffield that these new security frameworks cannot be empowering,
and ultimately lead to more power for powerful states, we need to
understand why these frameworks have the effect that they do. We can
understand that these frameworks have political limitations without having
to look for a specific plan on the part of current powerful states. In new
security frameworks such as human security we can see the political limits
of the framework proposed by critical

Securitization is the best method to break down self-other

antagonism and generate political responses to ongoing
violence perm solves best.
Trombetta 8 (Maria Julia Trombetta, (Delft University of Technology,

postdoctoral researcher at the department of Economics of Infrastructures)

3/19/08 http://archive.sgir.eu/uploads/Trombettathe_securitization_of_the_environment_and_the_transformation_of_security.pd
f
On the one hand, an approach that considers the discursive formation of
security issues provides a new perspective to analyse the environmental
security discourse and its transformative potential. First, it allows for an
investigation of the political process behind the selection of threats,
exploring why some of them are considered more relevant and urgent than
others. The focus shifts from the threats to the collectivities, identities and

interests that deserve to be protected and the means to be employed.

Second, securitization suggests that the awareness of environmental issues
can have a relevant role in defining and transforming political communities,
their interests and identities, since the process creates new ideas about who
deserve to be protected and by whom. Finally, as Behnke points out,
securitization can open the space for a genuinely political
constitutive and formative struggle through which political
structures are contested and reestablished .(Behnke 2000: 91)
Securitization allows for the breaking and transforming of rules that
are no longer acceptable, including the practices associated with an
antagonistic logic of security . On the other hand, securitization is
problematic because of the set of practices it is supposed to bring about. For
the CopS security carries with it a history and a set of connotations that it
cannot escape.(Wver 1995: 47) While securitizing an issue is a political
choice, the practices it brings about are not. Accordingly, transforming an
issue into a security issue is not always an improvement. In the case of the
environment, the warning seems clear: When considering securitizing
moves such as environmental security...one has to weigh the always
problematic side effects of applying a mind-set of security against the
possible advantages of focus, attention, and mobilization.(Buzan, Wver
and Wilde 1998: 29) The School shares the normative suggestion that [a]
society whose security is premised upon a logic of war should be re-shaped,
re-ordered, simply changed.(Aradau 2001: introduction) For the CopS this
does not mean to transform the practices and logic of security, because, as it
will be shown below, for the School, this is impossible. The CopS suggests
avoiding the transformation of issues into security issues. It is necessary to
turn threats into challenges; to move developments from the sphere of
existential fear to one where they could be handled by ordinary means, as
politics, economy, culture, and so on.(Wver 1995: 55, quoting Jahn). This
transformation, for the CopS, is desecuritization, and the School has
introduced a distinction between politicization - meaning the issue is part of
public policy, requiring government decision and resources allocation
s(Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998: 23) - and securitization - meaning the
issue is presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures
and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political
procedure.(Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998: 23) The slogan is: less security,
more politics!(Wver 1995: 56) Nevertheless, there are two major
problems behind this suggestion. First, if securitization is normatively
problematic, desecuritization can be even more problematic . It can
lead to a depoliticization and marginalisation of urgent and serious
issues, while leaving unchallenged the practices associated with
security. In the case of the environment, many appeals to security are
aimed at both soliciting action and transforming what counts as security and
the way of providing it. Second, within the Schools framework,
desecuritization cannot be possible. Securitization in fact can be
inescapable, the unwanted result of discussing whether or not the
environment is a security issue. As Huysmans has noticed, the performative,
constitutive approach suggested by the speech act theory implies that even

talking and researching about security can contribute to the securitization of

an issue, even if that (and the practices associated with it) is not the desired
result. The normative dilemma thus consists of how to write or speak about
security when the security knowledge risks the production of what one tries
to avoid, what one criticizes: that is, the securitization of migration, drugs
and so forth.(Huysmans 2002: 43) When the understanding of security is
the problematic one described by the CopS, research itself can become a
danger. This captures a paradox that characterizes the debate about
environmental security. As Jon Barnett has showed in The Meaning of
Environmental Security (2001) the securitization of the environment can
have perverse effects and several attempts to transform environmental
problems into security issues have resulted in a spreading of the national
security paradigm and the enemy logic, even if the intentions behind them
were different. Barnett has argued that environmental security is not about
the environment, it is about security; as a concept, it is at its most
meaningless and malign(2001: 83) in this way, he seems to accept the
ineluctability of the security mindset or logic evoked by securitization.
However, his suggestion of promoting a human centered understanding of
security, in which environmental security is not about (national) security but
about people and their needs, within the securitization logic, cannot escape
the trap he has described. Why, in fact, should the sort of his claim be
different from that of similar ones? 2. The fixity of Security practices These
dilemmas, however, are based on the idea that security practices are
inescapable and unchangeable and the theory of securitization, as
elaborated by the CopS, has contributed to suggest so. The CopS has
achieved the result of making a specific, negative understanding of security
which has characterised the dominant Realist discourse within IR - appear as
natural and unchangeable since all the attempts to transform it appear to
reinforce its logic. To challenge this perverse mechanism it is necessary to
unpack securitization further. First, it will be shown that securitization is not
analytically accurate, the environment representing a relevant case. Second,
the assumptions behind this problematic fixity will be explored. The CopS
explores the specificity of the environmental sector in Security: A Framework
for Analysis (Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998) (Security hereafter), the
theoretical book where the CopS illustrates the theory of securitization and
analyses the dynamics of securitization within five relevant sectors. For each
sector the School identifies the actors or objects (referent objects) that are
threatened, specifies the relevant threats and the agents that promote or
facilitate securitization.11[11] The environmental sector is rather different
from the others and the transformative intent that is associated with the
appeal to environmental security is more evident.12[12] Amongst the
peculiarities of the environmental sector described by the School, three
deserve a specific analysis for their implications: First, the presence of two
agendas - a scientific and a political one; second, the multiplicity of actors;
third, the politicization/securitization relationship. They will be analysed in
turn One of the most striking features of the environmental sector, it is
argued in Security, is the existence of two different agendas: a scientific
agenda and a political agenda.(Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998: 71) The
scientific one refers mainly to natural science and non-governmental
activities. The scientific agenda is about the authoritative assessment of

threat,(Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998: 72) and Buzan, Wver and de Wilde
admit that the extent to which scientific argument structures environmental
security debates strikes us as exceptional.(Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998:
72) Quoting Rosenau, they suggest that the demand for scientific proof is a
broader emerging characteristic in the international system.(Buzan, Wver
and Wilde 1998: 72) This
11[11] So for
instance in the military sector the referent object is usually the state and the
threats are mainly military ones, while in the societal sector the referent
objects are collective identities that can function independent of the state,
such as nations and religions.(Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998: 22-3) 12[12]
This is the case even if the School adopts a conservative strategy that
appears from the choice of the referent object (or what is threatened). In the
first works of the School, the referent object within the environmental sector
was the biosphere: Environmental security concerns the maintenance of the
local and the planetary biosphere as the essential support system on which
all other human enterprises depend. (Buzan 1991: 19) In Security the School
narrows down this perspective and identifies the level of civilization (with all
the contradictions that contribute to environmental problems) as the main
referent object. This move favours a conservative perspective which
considers the securitization of the environment as a way to preserve the
status quo and the security strategies on which it is based. Despite this, the
description of the environmental sector captures the specificity of the sector
and reveals the tensions within the overall framework. questions the self
referentiality of the speech act security. Are some threats more real than
others thanks to scientific proof? Can considerations developed to
characterize reflective behaviours be applied to natural systems? Even if
dealing with these issues is beyond the scope of this article, it is necessary
to note that the appeal to an external discourse has serious implications.
First, it questions the possibility and opportunity of desecuritization. Is it
possible and what does it mean to desecuritize an issue which is on the
scientific agenda? If scientific research outlines the dangerousness of an
environmental problem, how is it possible to provide security? Second, it
suggests that security and the practices associated with it can vary from one
sector to another and thus from one context to another. The second
peculiarity of the environmental sector is the presence of many actors. This
contrasts with Wvers suggestion that security is articulated only from a
specific place, in an institutional voice, by elites.(Wver 1995: 57) The
multiplicity of actors is largely justified by the School with the relative
novelty of the securitization of the environment. The discourses, power
struggles, and securitizing moves in the other sectors are reflected by and
have sedimented over time in concrete types of organizations - notably
states...nations (identity configurations), and the UN system,(Buzan, Wver
and Wilde 1998: 71) however, this is not the case with the environment: It is
as yet undetermined what kinds of political structures environmental
concerns will generate.(Buzan, Wver and Wilde 1998: 71). In this way a
tension appears since the attempts to securitize the environment are
described as having a transforming potential, requiring and calling for new
institutions. Within the environmental sector securitization moves seem to
have a transformative intent that contrasts with the conservative one, that
characterizes other sectors. The third peculiarity is that many securitizing

moves result in politicization. This is problematic for the School,

which argues that transcending a security problem by politicising it
cannot happen through thematization in security terms, only away
from such terms.(Wver 1995: 56) For the School, once the enemy logic has been inscribed in a context, it is very
difficult to return to an open debate. Nevertheless the various politicizations of environmental issues that followed the appeal to security
those the CopS dismissed as failed securitizations - seem to reinforce the argument, suggested by Edkins, that there is a tendency to

securitization, within
the environmental sector, can take a different form, and that the
problematic aspects of evoking security are not so evident.
Securitization theory, for the CopS, is meant to be descriptive, however the
environmental sector suggests that some of its aspects prevent it from
providing an adequate instrument for analysis. To understand why this
occurs, it is necessary to explore in more detail the conceptualization of
security by Wver, who has introduced securitization within the School and is
the strongest opponent of any attempt to securitize the environment.
politicize issues through their securitization. (Edkins 1999: 11) This represents another signal that

Debating security is essential to further research skills

and to become better decision makers this is true
especially in the context of China
Shaun Breslin 15 - Department of Politics and International Studies,
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK (Debating Human Security in China:
Towards Discursive Power?, 2015, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 45:2, 243265) hk
hs = human security
Debating and defining HS in China is a task that is closely related to national foreign
policy goals and objectives. However, it is important to remember that it is not just a state project. As we have seen, there

to
promote further study and research, and perhaps in the long term
even to influence policy-makers. The states suspicion of any analysis or political action that
focusses on the individual means that it is not always easy to pursue this research agenda. The intellectual
space that exists for scholars to debate not just HS, but issues such
as sovereignty and the right to protect can be quickly squeezed out
or even closed off as the political context in which research takes
place changes. While there might not be a great deal of good writing on HS in China, the remarkable thing is
that there is as much as there is. In a very modest way, thinking about and responding to HS concerns and
discourses has played a role in changing understandings of the
nature of security in contemporary China. Most clearly, it has contributed
to Chinese debates over whether existing dominant modes of
theorising about international relations and security are best placed
to generate effective solutions to new threats. It has also been a
factor in rethinking the efficacy of developing a cooperative foreign
policy to deal with new security challenges, and seems to have some relationship
are a number of scholars who have a real and deep academic interest in HS as it is defined outside China, who want

with the evolution of the favoured people-centred harmonious development agenda. The case for influence should not be
overstated. If HS did not exist, these changes might well have emerged in any case. But HS does exist and some scholars
have indeed decided to deploy HS concepts with Chinese characteristics in ways which have fed into other new security
discourses to play at least some role in generating change. If HS did not exist, it is also unlikely that Chinese thinkers
would be working to create and define it. But given that it does exist, then it makes no sense to simply let others define it
particularly if they define it in ways that could lead to China being criticised or perhaps even penalised by the

So by exercising definitional or discursive power, the

concept of HS has become Sinicised with a focus on the most
important and imminent HS challenges. As these challenges are primarily rooted in Chinas
relative lack of development, this places human dignity rather than freedom
international community.

from fear as the fundamental starting point (Feng 2006; 2010). As a result,
promoting socio-economic development is considered the best way
of reducing human insecurity in the Chinese case a task that falls largely to the
state (Li 2010). Indeed, the frequent use of the concept of the security of humanity as a whole rather than the individual
human means that the state is central to the discourse of HS in China in many analyses.

Consequences first
Weigh consequences firstmoral absolutism reproduces
evil.
Isaac 2 Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and

Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana
University-Bloomington, 2002 (Ends, Means, and Politics, Dissent, Volume
49, Issue 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via
EBSCOhost, p. 35-36)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and
Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness
undercuts political responsibility . The concern may be morally
laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three
fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of ones intention does
not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or
refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties
may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence,
then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the
clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world
of real violence and injustice , moral purity is not simply a form of
powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice . [end page
35] This is why, from the standpoint of politicsas opposed to religion
pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating
violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any
effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended
consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action,
rather than the motives of action, that is most significant . Just as
the alignment with good may engender impotence, it is often the
pursuit of good that generates evil . This is the lesson of communism
in the twentieth century: it is not enough that ones goals be sincere or
idealistic; it is equally important , always , to ask about the effects of
pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and
historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this
judgment . It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes
arrogance . And it undermines political effectiveness .

Alt fails
Alternative increases inequality and violence.
McCormack 10 Tara, is Lecturer in International Politics at the
University of Leicester and has a PhD in International Relations from the
University of Westminster. 2010, (Critique, Security and Power: The political
limits to emancipatory approaches, page 137-138)
In chapter 7 I engaged with the human security framework and some of the
problematic implications of emancipatory security policy
frameworks. In this chapter I argued that the shift away from the
pluralist security framework and the elevation of cosmopolitan and
emancipatory goals has served to enforce international power
inequalities rather than lessen them . Weak or unstable states are
subjected to greater international scrutiny and international institutions
and other states have greater freedom to intervene, but the citizens
of these states have no way of controlling or influencing these
international institutions or powerful states. This shift away from the
pluralist security framework has not challenged the status quo , which
may help to explain why major international institutions and states can easily
adopt a more cosmopolitan rhetoric in their security policies. As we have
seen, the shift away from the pluralist security framework has entailed a shift
towards a more openly hierarchical international system, in which states are
differentiated according to, for example, their ability to provide human
security for their citizens or their supposed democratic commitments. In this
shift, the old pluralist international norms of (formal) international sovereign
equality, non-intervention and blindness to the content of a state are
overturned. Instead, international institutions and states have more freedom
to intervene in weak or unstable states in order to protect and emancipate
individuals globally. Critical and emancipatory security theorists argue that
the goal of the emancipation of the individual means that security must be
reconceptualised away from the state. As the domestic sphere is understood
to be the sphere of insecurity and disorder, the international sphere
represents greater emancipatory possibilities, as Tickner argues, if security is
to start with the individual, its ties to state sovereignty must be severed
(1995: 189). For critical and emancipatory theorists there must be a shift
towards a cosmopolitan legal framework, for example Mary Kaldor (2001:
10), Martin Shaw (2003: 104) and Andrew Linklater (2005). For critical
theorists, one of the fundamental problems with Realism is that it is
unrealistic. Because it prioritises order and the existing status quo, Realism
attempts to impose a particular security framework onto a complex world,
ignoring the myriad threats to people emerging from their own governments
and societies. Moreover, traditional international theory serves to obscure
power relations and omits a study of why the system is as it is: [O]mitting
myriad strands of power amounts to exaggerating the simplicity of the entire
political system. Todays conventional portrait of international politics thus
too often ends up looking like a Superman comic strip, whereas it probably
should resemble a Jackson Pollock. (Enloe, 2002 [1996]: 189) Yet as I have
argued, contemporary critical security theorists seem to show a marked lack

of engagement with their problematic (whether the international security

context, or the Yugoslav break-up and wars). Without concrete
engagement and analysis, however, the critical project is
undermined and critical theory becomes nothing more than a
request that people behave in a nicer way to each other .
Furthermore, whilst contemporary critical security theorists argue that
they present a more realistic image of the world, through exposing
power relations, for example, their lack of concrete analysis of the
problematic considered renders them actually unable to engage
with existing power structures and the way in which power is being
exercised in the contemporary international system. For critical and
emancipatory theorists the central place of the values of the theorist mean
that it cannot fulfil its promise to critically engage with contemporary power
relations and emancipatory possibilities. Values must be joined with
engagement with the material circumstances of the time.

Epistemology and ontology dont come first the

alternative cedes the political.
Jarvis 2K (D.S.L., Lecturer n Government - U of Sydney, INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGE OF POSTMODERNISM, p. 128-9)
Certainly it is right and proper that we ponder the depths of our theoretical
imaginations, engage in epistemological and ontological debate, and
analyze the sociology of our knowledge. But to suppose that this is the
only task of international theory, let alone the most important one ,
smacks of intellectual elitism and displays a certain contempt for those
who search for guidance in their daily struggles as actors in international
politics. What does Ashley's project his deconstructive efforts, or valiant tight
against positivism say to the truly marginalized, oppressed and destitute?
How does it help solve the plight of the poor, the displaced refugees, the
casualties of war, or the emigres of death squads? Does it in any way
speak to those whose actions and thoughts comprise the policy and practice
of international relations? On all these questions one must answer no. This is
not to say, of course, that all theory should be judged by its technical
rarionality and problem-solving capacity as Ashley forcefully argues. But to
suppose that problem-solving technical theory is not necessaryor is
in some, way badis a contemptuous position that abrogates any hope of
solving some of the nightmarish realities that millions confront daily.
Holsti argues, we need ask of these theorists and these theories tne
ultimate question, So what? to what purpose do they deconstruct
problematize, destabilize, undermine, ridicule, and belittle modernist and
rationalist approaches? Does this get us any further, make the world any
better, or enhance the human condition? In what sense can this
"debate toward [a] bottomless pit of epistemology and metaphysics"
be judged pertinent relevant helpful, or cogent to anyone other than
those foolish enough to be scholastically excited by abstract and
recondite debate.

Abstract critiques dont actualize into material change

David Chandler 09 - Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Westminster ("War Without End(s): Grounding the Discourse of
`Global War', June 2009, security dialogue vol. 40 no. 3 243-262, Sage
Journals) hk
In focusing on biopower as a means of critiquing universalist policy
discourses of global security, critical theorists of global war from diverse fields such as
security studies (Jabri, 2007), development (Duffield, 2007) or critical legal theory (Douzinas, 2007) are in
danger of reducing their critique of war to abstract statements
instrumentalizing war as a technique of global power. These are
abstract critiques because the political stakes are never in
question: instrumentality and the desire for regulation and control
are assumed from the outset. In effect, the critical aspect is merely in the reproduction of the
framework of Foucault that liberal discourses can be deconstructed as an
exercise of regulatory power . Without deconstructing the dominant
framings of global security threats, critical theorists are in danger
of reproducing Foucaults framework of biopower as an ahistorical
abstraction . Foucault (2007: 1) himself stated that his analysis of biopower was not in any way a general theory
of what power is. It is not a part or even the start of such a theory, merely the study of the effects of liberal governance
practices, which posit as their goal the interests of society the population rather than government. In his recent
attempt at a ground-clearing critique of Foucauldian international relations theorizing, Jan Selby (2007) poses the question
of the problem of the translation of Foucault from a domestic to an international context. He argues that recasting the
international sphere in terms of global liberal regimes of regulation is an accidental product of this move. This fails to
appreciate the fact that many critical theorists appear to be drawn to Foucault precisely because drawing on his work
enables them to critique the international order in these terms. Ironically, this Foucauldian critique of global wars has
little to do with Foucaults understanding or concerns, which revolved around extending Marxs critique of the freedoms
of liberal modernity. In effect, the post-Foucauldians have a different goal: they desire to understand and to critique war
and military intervention as a product of the regulatory coercive nature of liberalism. This project owes much to the work
of Agamben and his focus on the regulation of bare life, where the concentration camp, the totalitarian state and (by
extension) Guantnamo Bay are held to constitute a moral and political indictment of liberalism (Agamben, 1998: 4).

Understanding the intrincacies of politics, the state, and

the military is a PREREQUISITE to addressing oppression
means our ACADEMIC theorizing is methodologically
valuable and a PREREQUISITE to the alternative.
Bryant 12 (9/15, Levi, professor of Philosophy at Collin College and Chair of
the Critical Philosophy program at the New Centre for Research and Practice,
War Machines and Military Logistics: Some Cards on the Table,
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/war-machines-and-militarylogistics-some-cards-on-the-table/)
We need answers to these questions to intervene effectively. We can call them questions of military
logistics. We are, after all, constructing war machines to combat these intolerable conditions. Military logistics asks two
questions: first, it asks what things the opposing force, the opposing war machine captured
by the state apparatus, relies on in order to deploy its war machine: supply lines,
communications networks, people willing to fight, propaganda or ideology, people
believing in the cause, etc. Military logistics maps all of these things . Second, military logistics
asks how to best deploy its own resources in fighting that state war
machine. In what way should we deploy our war machine to defeat war machines like racism, sexism,
capitalism, neoliberalism , etc? What are the things upon which these state based war machines are based, what are

the privileged nodes within these state based war machines that allows
them to function? These nodes are the things upon which we want our nomadic war machines to intervene. If we are to be effective in
producing change we better know what the supply lines are so that we might make them our target.

What Ive heard in these discussions is a complete indifference to

military logistics . Its as if people like to wave their hands and say this is
horrible and unjust! and believe that hand waving is a politically
efficacious act . Yeah, youre right, it is horrible but saying so doesnt go very
far and changing it. Its also as if people are horrified when anyone discusses anything besides how horribly unjust everything is.
Confronted with an analysis why the social functions in the horrible
way, the next response is to say youre justifying that system and
saying its a-okay! This misses the point that the entire point is to
map the supply lines of the opposing war machine so you can
strategically intervene in them to destroy them and create
alternative forms of life. You see, we already took for granted your
analysis of how horrible things are. Youre preaching to the choir . We
wanted to get to work determining how to change that and believed for that we needed good maps of the opposing state based war machine so we can decide how to
intervene.
We then look at your actual practices and see that

your sole strategy seems to be ideological

critique or debunking . Your idea seems to be that if you just prove

that other peoples beliefs are incoherent, theyll change and things
will be different. But weve noticed a couple things about your strategy: 1) there
have been a number of bang-on critiques of state based war machines,
without things changing too much, and 2) weve noticed that we
might even persuade others that labor under these ideologies that their position is
incoherent, yet they still adhere to it as if the grounds of their ideology didnt matter much. This leads us to suspect
that there are other causal factors that undergird these social assemblages and cause them to endure is they do. We thought to ourselves, there are
two reasons that an ideological critique can be successful and still
fail to produce change: a) the problem can be one of distribution. The critique is right but
fails to reach the people who need to hear it and even if they did receive the message
they couldnt receive it because its expressed in the foreign
language of academese which theyve never been substantially exposed to (academics seem to enjoy only speaking to other academics
even as they say their aim is to change the world). Or b) there are other causal factors involved in why social worlds
take the form they do

that are not of the discursive, propositional, or semiotic

order. My view is

it is a combination of both.
I dont deny that ideology is one component of why societies take the form they do and why people
tolerate intolerable conditions. I merely deny that this is the only causal factor . I dont
reject your political aims, but merely wonder how to get there . Meanwhile,
you guys behave like a war machine that believes its sufficient to drop pamphlets out of an airplane
debunking the ideological reasons that persuade the opposing
forces soldiers to fight this war on behalf of the state apparatus, forgetting supply lines, that there
are other soldiers behind them with guns to their back , that they
have obligations to their fellows, that they have families to feed or debt to pay off, etc. When I point
that

out these other things its not to reject your political aims, but to say that perhaps these are also good things to intervene in if we wish to change the world. In other

Im objecting to your tendency to use a hammer to solve all

problems and to see all things as a nail ( discursive problems ), ignoring the role
words,

that material nonhuman entities play in the form that social assemblages take.
This is the basic idea behind what Ive called terraism. Terraism has three components: 1) Cartography or the mapping of assemblages to understand why they take
the form they take and why they endure. This includes the mapping of both semiotic and material components of social assemblages. 2) Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a practice. It includes both traditional modes of discursive deconstruction (Derridean deconstruction, post-structuralist feminist critique, Foucaultian
genealogy, Cultural Marxist critique, etc), but also far more literal deconstruction in the sense of intervening in material or thingly orders upon which social assemblages

It is not simply beliefs, signs, and ideologies that cause

oppressive social orders to endure or persist, but also material
arrangements upon which people depend to live as they do . Part of
are reliant.

changing a social order thus necessarily involves intervening in

those material networks

to undermine their ability to maintain their relations or feedback mechanisms that allow them to perpetuate

the hardest thing of all, as it

requires the activist to be something more than a critic , something more
certain dependencies for people. Finally, 3) there is Terraformation. Terraformation is

than someone who simply denounces how bad things are , someone more than
someone who simply sneers, producing instead other material and semiotic
arrangements rendering new forms of life and social relation
possible. Terraformation consists in building alternative forms of life. None of this, however, is possible
without good mapping of the terrain so as to know what to
deconstruct and what resources are available for building new
worlds. Sure, I care about ontology for political reasons because I believe this world sucks and is profoundly unjust. But rather than
waving my hands and cursing because of how unjust and horrible it
is so as to feel superior to all those about me who dont agree, rather than playing the part of the beautiful soul
who refuses to get his hands dirty, I think we need good maps so we
can blow up the right bridges, power lines, and communications
networks , and so we can engage in effective terraformation.

Alt fails cooption political engagement key

McCormack, 10 [Tara, is Lecturer in International Politics at the

University of Leicester and has a PhD in International Relations from the

University of Westminster. 2010, (Critique, Security and Power: The political
limits to emancipatory approaches, page 137-138]
In chapter 7 I engaged with the human security framework and some of the problematic implications of

the shift away from the

pluralist security framework and the elevation of cosmopolitan and emancipatory goals has
served to enforce international power inequalities rather than
lessen them . Weak or unstable states are subjected to greater international
scrutiny and international institutions and other states have greater freedom to
intervene, but the citizens of these states have no way of controlling or
influencing these international institutions or powerful states. This shift away
from the pluralist security framework has not challenged the status quo , which
may help to explain why major international institutions and states can easily adopt a
more cosmopolitan rhetoric in their security policies . As we have seen, the shift away
emancipatory security policy frameworks. In this chapter I argued that

from the pluralist security framework has entailed a shift towards a more openly hierarchical international
system, in which states are differentiated according to, for example, their ability to provide human security
for their citizens or their supposed democratic commitments. In this shift, the old pluralist international
norms of (formal) international sovereign equality, non-intervention and blindness to the content of a
state are overturned. Instead, international institutions and states have more freedom to intervene in weak
or unstable states in order to protect and emancipate individuals globally. Critical and emancipatory

theorists argue that the goal of the emancipation of the individual

means that security must be reconceptualised away from the state. As the
security

domestic sphere is understood to be the sphere of insecurity and disorder, the international sphere

Tickner argues, if security is to start with

the individual, its ties to state sovereignty must be severed (1995: 189). For critical
represents greater emancipatory possibilities, as

and emancipatory theorists there must be a shift towards a cosmopolitan legal framework, for example

For critical theorists,

one of the fundamental problems with Realism is that it is unrealistic . Because it
prioritises order and the existing status quo, Realism attempts to impose a particular
security framework onto a complex world, ignoring the myriad threats to
people emerging from their own governments and societies . Moreover, traditional
Mary Kaldor (2001: 10), Martin Shaw (2003: 104) and Andrew Linklater (2005).

international theory serves to obscure power relations and omits a study of why the system is as it is:
[O]mitting myriad strands of power amounts to exaggerating the simplicity of the entire political system.
Todays conventional portrait of international politics thus too often ends up looking like a Superman comic
strip, whereas it probably should resemble a Jackson Pollock. (Enloe, 2002 [1996]: 189) Yet as I have

theorists seem to show a marked lack of

engagement with their problematic (whether the international security context, or the
Yugoslav break-up and wars). Without concrete engagement and analysis,
however, the critical project is undermined and critical theory
becomes nothing more than a request that people behave in a nicer
way to each other . Furthermore, whilst contemporary critical security theorists
argue that they present a more realistic image of the world, through exposing
power relations, for example, their lack of concrete analysis of the problematic
considered renders them actually unable to engage with existing power
structures and the way in which power is being exercised in the
contemporary international system. For critical and emancipatory theorists the central place
argued, contemporary critical security

of the values of the theorist mean that it cannot fulfil its promise to critically engage with contemporary
power relations and emancipatory possibilities. Values must be joined with engagement with the material
circumstances of the time.

Single issue focus good

Single issue rights focus spills over and is distinct from
the ideologies that determine its use
Hunt 90 (Alan, Professor of Law and Sociology, Carleton University,
Ottawa, Canada, Rights and Social Movements: Counter-Hegemon
Strategies, Journal of Law and Society Vol. 17 No. 3, 1990)

Beyond questions concerning the criteria of 'success' there is another and

perhaps more fundamental problem with the existing studies of the use of
litigation by social movements. There is a failure to distinguish between the
very different types of social movements that have been studied.26 What is
missing is a concern with what I propose to call the 'hegemonic capacity' of
social movements. In a first approximation the distinction can be drawn
between 'single issue' movements and those whose goals would
constitute a wider set of social changes than their immediate objectives.
But this approximation requires further refinement because some movements
which are apparently single issue have extensive ramifications . The
abortion rights movement, whilst superficially focusing on a single issue, has
ramifications extending beyond the immediate question of women's right to
control their fertility. The abortion rights movement is a prime example of the
concept of 'local hegemony'. Such a movement is not directed to the kind of
global hegemony that Gramsci had in mind with his focus on the role of the
revolutionary party. But movements directed towards local (or regional)
hegemony can only be adequately judged in their capacity to transform a
wide range of social practices and discourses. For present purposes I
suggest that, in addition, the environmental movement and the civil rights
movement also serve as my example of movements of 'local hegemony' in
that while focused on a set of specific demands , their realization
would both necessitate and occasion wider structural changes . The
most immediate implication is that their 'success' is not a matter of securing
some immediate interest. It follows that to evaluate the role of litigation for
such movements necessitates that focus be directed to the articulation
between the elements that make up the strategic project of the movement.
My suggestion is that a key feature of any such assessment revolves around
their capacity to put in place a new or transformed discourse of rights which
goes to the heart of the way in which the substantive issues are conceived,
expressed, argued about, and struggled over. My more controversial
suggestion is that the immediate 'success' or 'failure' of specific litigation has
to be approached in a different way which requires that we take account of
the possibility that litigation 'failure' may, paradoxically, provide the
conditions of 'success' that compel a movement forward. In current struggles
over wife abuse, all those cases in which judges impose derisory sanctions
are contexts which drive the movement forward because they provide
instances of a dying discourse in which women 'deserve' chastisement by
their husbands. Such judicial pronouncements become more self-evidently
anachronistic and in this inverted form speak of a new and emergent
discourse of rights and autonomy. The implications of this line of thought are

that the whole question of the success or failure of litigation and its
connection with transformative strategies is far more complex than our
existing attempts to measure 'success' and 'failure' admit.
A more far-reaching criticism of litigation is that, rather than helping, 'law',
conceived variously as litigation or legal reform politics, is itself part of the
problem. This line of argument is at the root of Kristin Bumiller's study of the
civil rights movement.27 This strand of the anti-rights critique is, I want to
suggest, even if unintended, a form of 'Leftism' whose inescapable error
lies in the fact that it imagines a terrain of struggle in which a social
movement can, by an act of will, step outside the terrain on which the
struggle is constituted, Here a hegemonic strategy must insist that it is
precisely in the engagement with the actually existing terrain , in
particular, with its discursive forms, that the possibility of their
transformation and transcendence becomes possible. To refuse this
terrain is, in general, Leftist because is marks a refusal to engage with the
conditions within which social change is grounded.

Permutation do the plan and interrogate the 1acs

epistemological failures those failures are inevitable and
can be interrogated endlessly but if implementing the
aff can still be a good idea some failures, voting for the
perm enables transformative potential
Nunes 12 [Reclaiming the political: Emancipation and critique in security
studies, Joo Nunes, Security Dialogue 2012 43: 345, Politics and
International Studies, University of Warwick, UK, p. sage publications]

In the works of these authors, one can identify a tendency to see

security as inherently connected to exclusion, totalization and even
violence. The idea of a logic of security is now widely present in the critical
security studies literature. Claudia Aradau (2008: 72), for example, writes of
an exclusionary logic of security underpinning and legitimizing forms of
domination. Rens van Munster (2007: 239) assumes a logic of security,
predicated upon a political organization on the exclusionary basis of fear.
Laura Shepherd (2008: 70) also identifies a liberal and highly problematic
organizational logic in security. Although there would probably be
disagreement over the degree to which this logic is inescapable, it is
symptomatic of an overwhelmingly pessimistic outlook that a great
number of critical scholars are now making the case for moving away from
security. The normative preference for desecuritization has been picked up in
attempts to contest, resist and unmake security (Aradau, 2004; Huysmans,
2006; Bigo, 2007). For these contributions, security cannot be reconstructed
and political transformation can only be brought about when security and its
logic are removed from the equation (Aradau, 2008; Van Munster, 2009;
Peoples, 2011). This tendency in the literature is problematic for the
critique of security in at least three ways. First, it constitutes a blind spot
in the effort of politicization. The assumption of an exclusionary,

totalizing or violent logic of security can be seen as an essentialization

and a moment of closure . To be faithful to itself, the politicization of
security would need to recognize that there is nothing natural or necessary
about security and that security as a paradigm of thought or a register of
meaning is also a construction that depends upon its reproduction and
performance through practice. The exclusionary and violent meanings that
have been attached to security are themselves the result of social and
historical processes, and can thus be changed . Second, the
institution of this apolitical realm runs counter to the purposes of
critique by foreclosing an engagement with the different ways in
which security may be constructed. As Matt McDonald (2012) has argued,
because security means different things for different people, one
must always understand it in context . Assuming from the start that
security implies the narrowing of choice and the empowerment of an
elite forecloses the acknowledgment of security claims that may
seek to achieve exactly the opposite: alternative possibilities in an
already narrow debate and the contestation of elite power.5 In
connection to this, the claims to insecurity put forward by individuals and
groups run the risk of being neglected if the desire to be more
secure is identified with a compulsion towards totalization, and if
aspirations to a life with a degree of predictability are identified with
violence. Finally, this tendency blunts critical security studies as a
resource for practical politics . By overlooking the possibility of
reconsidering security from within opting instead for its
replacement with other ideals the critical field weakens its capacity
to confront head-on the exceptionalist connotations that security
has acquired in policymaking circles. Critical scholars run the risk of
playing into this agenda when they tie security to exclusionary and
violent practices, thereby failing to question security actors as they
take those views for granted and act as if they were inevitable.
Overall, security is just too important both as a concept and as a political
instrument to be simply abandoned by critical scholars. As McDonald (2012:
163) has put it, If security is politically powerful, is the foundation of political
legitimacy for a range of actors, and involves the articulation of our core
values and the means of their protection, we cannot afford to allow dominant
discourses of security to be confused with the essence of security itself. In
sum, the trajectory that critical security studies has taken in recent years
has significant limitations . The politicization of security has made
extraordinary progress in problematizing predominant security ideas and
practices; however, it has paradoxically resulted in a depoliticization of the
meaning of security itself. By foreclosing the possibility of alternative
notions of security, this imbalanced politicization weakens the
analytical capacity of critical security studies, undermines its ability
to function as a political resource and runs the risk of being
politically counterproductive . Seeking to address these limitations, the
next section revisits emancipatory understandings of security.

2ac security solves warming

Perm do both solves contextualized approaches of securitization in
the context of climate change are key
Jonna Nyman & Jinghan Zeng 16 Jonna: Department of Politics and
International Relations, University of
Leicester and Jinghan: Department of Politics and International Relations,
Royal Holloway, University of London (Securitization in Chinese climate and
energy politics, 24 JAN 2016 online, WIREs Clim Change, 7: 301313. Wiley
online library) hk
In real terms, Chinas energy consumptionin particular its coal dependence
poses an increasing threat to global environmental stability as well
as the countrys own ecological security. China is still developing its approaches
to energy and climate change, and is also increasingly linking the two issues together. The
dynamics of securitization differ, and there is growing focus on nontraditional
security issues. This also suggests that securitization may not be best avoided.
Clearly, a contextualized approach is needed to study securitization in
practice , in particular when studying securitization in a nonWestern context . Ultimately, climate change will pose challenges to
Chinas securitynational security, environmental security, and
energy security, alongside human security and water security.
Securitization is one potential way to approach it. But energy and climate
security also have to be balanced alongside other important security concerns, including
economic security and development, so there is no simple solution here. One of the biggest
challenges remains Chinas weak energy governance, which makes policy implementation
difficult. Use of renewable energy in China is increasing, but significant obstacles remain.85
One alternative is to consider energy conservation as a security issue86after all, it would
ease both energy security and climate change.

Energy security and climate

change are two of the most serious issues facing Chinas continued
development. Its policy choices play a key role in shaping global climate and energy dynamics.
Thus, we argue that the growing importance of security in Chinas energy
and climate debates is an important area for further research,
alongside the implications of securitization in these cases.

Pan
Pan is reductionist and the alt fails can never generate
a meaningful relationship with China.
Jones 14 David Martin Jones, Professor of Politics at University of
Glasgow, PhD from LSE, Australian Journal of Political Science, February 21,
2014, 49:1, "Managing the China Dream: Communist Party politics after the
Tiananmen incident ", Taylor and Francis Online
Notwithstanding this Western fascination with China and the positive
response of former Marxists, such as Jacques, to the new China, Pan
discerns an Orientalist ideology distorting Western commentary on
the party state, and especially its international relations (6). Following
Edward Said, Pan claims that such Western Orientalism reveals not
something concrete about the orient, but something about the
orientalists themselves, their recurring latent desire of fears and fantasies
about the orient (16). In order to unmask the limits of Western
representations of Chinas rise, Pan employs a critical methodology that
draws on constructivist and deconstructivist approaches (9). Whereas the
former questions the underlying dichotomy of reality/knowledge in Western
study of Chinas international relations, the latter shows how paradigmatic
representations of China condition the way we give meaning to that country
and are socially constitutive of it (9). Pan maintains that the two
paradigms of China threat and China opportunity in Western
discourse shape Chinas reality for Western China watchers (3). These
discourses, Pan claims, are ambivalent (65). He contends that this bifocal
representation of China, like Western discourses of China more generally, tell
us a great deal about the west itself, its self -imagination, its torn, anxious,
subjectivity, as well as its discursive effects of othering (65). This is a large
claim. Interestingly, Pan fails to note that after the Tiananmen
incident in 1989, Chinese new left scholarship also embraced Saids
critique of Orientalism in order to reinforce both the party state and a
burgeoning sense of Chinese nationalism . To counter Western liberal
discourse, academics associated with the Central Party School promoted
an ideology of Occidentalism to deflect domestic and international
pressure to democratise China. In this, they drew not only upon Said, but
also upon Foucault and the post-1968 school of French radical thought that,
as Richard Wolin has demonstrated, was itself initiated in an appreciation of
Maos cultural revolution. In other words, the critical and deconstructive
methodologies that came to influence American and European social science
from the 1980s had a Maoist inspiration (Wolin 2010: 1218). Subsequently,
in the changed circumstances of the 1990s, as American sinologist
Fewsmith has shown, young Chinese scholars adopted a variety of
postmodernist and critical methodologies (2008: 125). Paradoxically,
these scholars, such as Wang Hui and Zhang Kuan (Wang 2011), had been
educated in the USA and were familiar with fashionable academic
criticism of a postmodern and deconstructionist hue that
demythified the West (Fewsmith 2008: 12529). This approach,

promulgated in the academic journal Dushu (Readings), deconstructed, via

Said and Foucault, Western narratives about China. Zhang Kuan, in
particular, rejected Enlightenment values and saw postmodern critical
theory as a method to build up a national discourse of resistance
and counter Western demands regarding issues such as human
rights and intellectual property. It is through its affinity with this selfstrengthening , Occidentalist lens, that Pans critical study should
perhaps be critically read. Simply put, Pan identifies a political
economy of fear and desire that informs and complicates Western
foreign policy and, Pan asserts, tells us more about the Wests selfimagination than it does about Chinese reality. Pan attempts to
sustain this claim via an analysis, in Chapter 5, of the self-fulfilling
prophecy of the China threat, followed, in Chapters 6 and 7, by exposure of
the false promises and premises of the China opportunity. Pan certainly
offers a provocative insight into Western attitudes to China and their impact
on Chinese political thinking. In particular, he demonstrates that Chinas
foreign policy-makers react negatively to what they view as a hostile
American strategy of containment (101). In this context, Pan contends,
accurately, that SinoUS relations are mutually constitutive and the
USA must take some responsibility for the rise of China threat (107). This
latter point, however, is one that Australian realists like Owen Harries,
whom Pan cites approvingly, have made consistently since the late
1990s. In other words, not all Western analysis uncritically endorses
the view that Chinas rise is threatening. Nor is all Western
perception of this rise reducible to the threat scenario advanced by
recent US administrations. Pans subsequent argument that the China
opportunity thesis leads to inevitable disappointment and subtly
reinforces the China threat paradigm is, also, somewhat misleading . On the
one hand, Pan notes that Western anticipation of Chinas transformation and
democratization has become a burgeoning cottage industry (111). Yet, on
the other hand, Pan observes that Western commentators, such as Jacques,
demonstrate a growing awareness that the democratisation thesis is a
fantasy. That is, Pan, like Jacques, argues that China will neither democratize
nor collapse, but may instead remain politically authoritarian and
economically stable at the same time (132). To merge, as Pan does, the
democratisation thesis into its authoritarian antithesis in order to
evoke present Western disillusionment (132) with China is somewhat
reductionist . Pans contention that we need a new paradigm shift to
free ourselves from the positivist aspiration to grand theory or
transcendental scientific paradigm itself (157) might be admirable, but
this will not be achieved by a constructivism that would ultimately
meet with the approval of what Brady terms Chinas thought
managers (Brady: 6).