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As Jordan Buning, CEO of ddm marketing + communications, put it in our latest CEO Confidence Index poll, conducted last week among 129 CEOs across the country: “It seems like we’re living through a series of waves based on what industries are feeling the effects (or fearing the effects).” That would certainly explain the wavering of our leading indicator in recent months. After starting the year on a climb (our forward-looking CEO Confidence Index rose 21 percent from October to March), CEO optimism fell in April (blame the Fed?) before clawing back some of the losses in May. (You can .)

The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence™ in collaboration with The Business Council rose to 54 in Q2 2024, up from 53 in the previous quarter. This marks the second consecutive quarter in which the Measure is above 50, indicating that CEOs are cautiously optimistic following two years of gloom. (A reading above 50 reflects more positive than negative responses.) A total of 136 CEOs participated in the Q2 survey, which was fielded from April 15 through 29. “CEOs’ views about the economy have shifted from six months ago,” said Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Vice Chairman of The Business Council and Trustee of The Conference Board. “Recession fears have faded considerably: Only 35% of CEOs surveyed in April anticipate a recession within the next 12 to 18 months, down from 72% in Q4 2023. Nonetheless, CEOs remain only cautiously optimistic. Expectations for the economy six-months ahead were a tad worse compared to Q1, with fewer CEOs saying conditions will be ‘much better’ or ‘better’ and more saying conditions will be the ‘same.’ Regarding expectations for their own industries, fewer CEOs expect conditions to worsen, while 46% think conditions will be the ‘same.’”

Small and midsize business (SMB) CEOs' confidence in the economy continued its upward trajectory in Q1 2024, per the latest CEO Confidence Index fromVistage, a CEO coaching and peer advisory organization.

This quarter marks four consecutive quarters of increased confidence, signaling sustained growth in economic optimism. In Q1 2024, the Vistage CEO Confidence Index surged nearly four points to 85.9, maintaining its steady climb from 82 in Q4 2023, 76 in Q3 2023, 74.2 in Q2 2023, and 72.6 in Q1 2023.

Small business owners across the nation are the most optimistic they’ve been since early 2020. In a post-pandemic climate, inflation remains a challenge for owners, but they are optimistic about artificial intelligence.

That’s according to the Small Business Index, released Wednesday, by Met Life, which has a presence on Long Island, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The index is based on an online survey of small business owners and decision makers that was conducted between April 19 and May 6.

U.S. small business sentiment increased for a second month in a row in May to reach its highest level thus far this year, but the uncertainty perception rose to its highest in three-and-a-half years ahead of the general election, and inflation remained the main worry for business owners, results of a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business showed Tuesday. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index gained 0.8 points to reach 90.5, but the reading remained below the historical average of 98 for the 29th month. Economists were looking for a score of 89.8. The index had sunk to 88.5 in March, which was the lowest level since December 2012. The Uncertainty Index of the survey climbed nine points to hit 85, the highest reading since November 2020. "The small business sector is responsible for the production of over 40 percent of GDP and employment, a crucial portion of the economy," NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said. "But for 29 consecutive months, small business owners have expressed historically low optimism and their views about future business conditions are at the worst levels seen in 50 years." "Small business owners need relief as inflation has not eased much on Main Street," Dunkelberg added. The NFIB survey said that 22 percent of owners reported inflation as their single most important problem in operating their business, unchanged from April. Inflation was also the top business problem among owners. The share of survey respondents planning to hike prices rose to net 28 percent from 26 percent in April. The net percent of owners raising average selling prices was 25 percent, unchanged from April. Hiring plans among small business also increased in May with the number of businesses planning to add staff rising to 15 percent, the highest reading of the year, from 12 percent. Financing was a main problem for 6 percent of owners in May, up two points from April. The last time financing as a top business problem was this high was in June 2010, NFIB said. Small businesses were turning slightly cautious on compensation packages, and 37 percent of owners plan to raise pay in May versus 38 percent in April. The Federal Reserve is set to announce its latest interest rate decision on Wednesday. The FOMC, led by Chair Jerome Powell, is widely expected to leave the benchmark interest rate at 5.50 percent. The stronger than expected growth in payroll employment and the increase in average earnings revealed by last Friday's jobs report damped expectations for a September rate cut. The strong labor market and wage growth are likely to make policymakers more cautious regarding policy easing. Economists continue to expect at least one interest rate cut this year. The NFIB's monthly jobs report had shown that net 18 percent businesses plan to raise compensation in the next three months, down three points from April and the lowest reading since March 2021. Moreover, 42 percent of all owners reported job openings they could not fill in the current period.

US private-sector output growth in June rose to its highest level since April 2022, led by the services sector as price pressures eased while business confidence for the year ahead improved, according to S&P Global's (SPGI) flash purchasing managers' index released Friday. The composite output index edged up to 54.6 this month from 54.5 in May, above the 53.5 consensus in a survey complied by Bloomberg. The 50-point mark separates expansion from contraction. Output has now increased for 17 straight months, with the expansion rate having improved "markedly" in May and June, S&P Global said. "The PMI is running at a level broadly consistent with the economy growing at an annualized rate of just under 2.5%," S&P Global Market Intelligence Chief Business Economist Chris Williamson said. "The upturn is broad-based, as rising demand continues to filter through the economy." Service sector output increased to a 26-month high of 55.1 in June from 54.8 last month, while manufacturing PMI rose to 51.7 -- a three-month high -- from 51.3. Wall Street was looking for 53.4 and 51, respectively. New work inflows into the service sector increased at the sharpest pace for a year amid growing domestic demand, while export orders dropped at the slowest rate seen over the last five months, the survey showed. Employment increased for the first time in three months, while survey's measure of selling price inflation dropped, tied to slower input cost growth. One year out, overall optimism regarding output rose to a three-month high this month, as service sector outlook hit a five-month high, though optimism in manufacturing dropped to its lowest for just over one-and-a-half years, the survey showed.

U.S. manufacturing sector grew in May led by a rebound in new orders, albeit marginal, that led to faster growth in production and employment, final data from the purchasing managers' survey by S&P Global showed Monday.

The seasonally adjusted S&P Global US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index rose to 51.3 in May from the 50.0 no-change mark in April.

The latest surveys by S&P Global reveal an American economy firing on all cylinders in June, with robust activity and cooling inflation creating a goldilocks environment, giving the Fed more leeway to cut interest rates.

S&P Global Purchasing Managers' Indices (PMIs) For June: Key Highlights

Broadly shared economic prosperity is a bedrock of America’s economic and political strength—both domestically and in the international arena. A strong and equitable recovery from the economic crisis created by COVID-19 would be a powerful testament to the resilience of the American system and its ability to create prosperity at a time of seismic change and persistent global crisis. Such a recovery could attack the profound economic inequities that have developed over the past several decades. Without bold action to help all workers access good jobs as the economy returns, the United States risks undermining the legitimacy of its institutions and its international standing. The outcome will be a key determinant of America’s national security for years to come. An equitable recovery requires a national commitment to help all workers obtain good jobs—particularly the two-thirds of adults without a bachelor’s degree and people of color who have been most affected by the crisis and were denied opportunity before it. As the nation engages in a historic debate about how to accelerate economic recovery, ambitious public investment is necessary to put Americans back to work with dignity and opportunity. We need an intentional effort to make sure that the jobs that come back are good jobs with decent wages, benefits, and mobility and to empower workers to access these opportunities in a profoundly changed labor market. To achieve these goals, American policy makers need to establish job growth strategies that address urgent public needs through major programs in green energy, infrastructure, and health. Alongside these job growth strategies, we need to recognize and develop the talents of workers by creating an adult learning system that meets workers’ needs and develops skills for the digital economy. The national security community must lend its support to this cause. And as it does so, it can bring home the lessons from the advances made in these areas in other countries, particularly our European allies, and consider this a realm of international cooperation and international engagement.

Shared Economic Prosperity Is a National Security Asset

While giants in technology and multinational corporations often capture the public’s attention, it’s small businesses that form the crux of the American economy. As we step into 2024, these businesses continue to evolve, reflecting not only their enduring role in job creation but also their significant contributions to innovation, economic dynamism and the country’s overall prosperity. The latest small business statistics for 2024 do more than just present a snapshot of the current state of affairs; they offer a window into the emerging trends and future directions.

Small Business Employment Statistics

Small business owners are feeling more confident about their businesses despite today’s inflation, according to The Q2 MetLife and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index. In fact, the index score has now hit its highest score since 2019. Joining us on the latest episode of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Update to discuss this further is Tom Sullivan, the Vice President of Small Business Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Key Takeaways

At this point, I would like to go back to policy. Grant applications often ask researchers to detail broader implications, and many are very eager to emphasize that research is important if it is “policy relevant.”28 My usual response to calls to be more policy relevant is that research can only be relevant to policy objectives that are clearly specified in advance. Research may be able to tell you whether one proposed policy A is more likely to be helpful for an objective than another policy B. However, in many cases, we have multiple objectives. In some cases, policies A and B may also entail costs of a different kind than the potential benefits. In many cases, researchers are eager to talk about policy objectives, but research alone cannot tell you what your priorities ought to be or how to weigh different objectives and concerns against one another. To use a pandemic example, restrictive public health measures can reduce mortality and disease, but if they also reduce economic activity, undermine education, and increase mental health problems, what metric can we use to weigh lives saved against economic losses and loss of education? Or in Afghanistan, what should be the relative weight in US policy of minimizing active conflict, protecting women’s rights, and curtailing the cost of ongoing military operations?

In short, policy priorities must inevitably be political decisions, and researchers have no special competence here over the general public. Many people implicitly assume that everyone would be likely to accept their own views as inherently reasonable if they had the same information. There may be areas where we all would converge if we had the same information. However, knowledge problems and political priorities are distinct, and I for one have many views and preferences that I know are not widely shared. That policy must be political is as trivially true as the claim that prediction is difficult. To dismiss prediction because it is difficult is a cop-out. But so is dismissing interest in policy as something that lies outside research.

c) The Consequentialist Response In ‘Towards a consequentialist evaluation of security’ Floyd discusses a manner in which the security analyst can become more critically engaged with the securitization process by combining the CS normatively objective approach to security studies with that of the Welsh School, which is a Critical approach with clear emancipatory goals (Floyd 2007). These two schools propose very different perspectives on security; the former portrays a very negative image of security, where in fact securitization should be avoided and “desecuritization should be the optimal long-range option” (Buzan et al 1998: 29). The latter, conversely, depicts a very positive view of security, where security (understood as security of the individual) should be the objective, security then becomes equated with emancipation (Booth 2005). Floyd, on the other hand, argues that “security is neither always positive nor negative, but rather is issue dependent”, and the role of the security analyst is to measure the consequences of, and benefits from each approach (Floyd 2007: 338). Floyd endows the security analyst with a more engaging and critical position within the securitization process, whereby “it is the task of the analyst to fight ignorance (or, put differently, false consciousness) on part of the existing and/ or potential securitizing actor, and inform (or better enlighten) them of the best possible action” (Floyd 2007: 338). Floyd speaks directly to the implications of writing security with her approach, which she argues overcomes the normative dilemma by allowing the security analyst to “critically evaluate” his or her own speaking/ writing of security (Floyd 2007: 339). This is a very honest and reflective attempt to overcome the normative dilemma of how to discuss the social reality of securitization by remaining conscious about how one is contributing to the co-constitution of the ‘security reality’. Floyd rightly claims that it is essential that the security analyst remains critical of his/her own writing of security and how it may inadvertently lead to the further securitization of an issue or result in negative security measures. However, it is contended here that her proposition to critically engage with the CS approach to securitization by comparing it to alternative or human security approaches remains incapable of offering the security analyst with the adequate means to overcome the normative dilemma. This article assents with Bigo and Huysmans, that “speaking truth” or offering alternatives to securitization cannot prevent negative securitization processes if it does not first deconstruct the structural power relations inherent within the dominant discourses of security. It was noted above, and it will be further addressed in the second portion of this paper, that security, as an academic and professional field, remains a largely closed and elitist domain, directed by powerful interests and controlled by disciplinary mechanisms, such as control over information and the media, as wells as through the ability to coerce or co-opt dissenting voices and subjectivities (Bigo 2002). As a consequence of this regulated sphere alternative voices are often marginalized; Bigo contends that “the discourses of securitization continue to be so powerful [that] even when alternative discourses are well known […they] have little effect in either the political 23 arena or in daily life” (Bigo 2002: 65). Hoogensen and Rottem also note the challenge that the marginalized face in attempting to challenge mainstream views with the observation that “positive connotations of security have not really penetrated the dominant discourses” (Hoogensen and Rottem 2005: 158). Therefore, Floyd’s attempt to overcome the normative dilemma by suggesting that the security analyst should actively engage with these dissenting or marginalized perspectives, by bringing the notion of positive or human security into their critical analysis, remains at the mercy of dominant discourses. For example, feminist security author Lee-Koo argues that the occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan disproportionately affect the lives of women, however she correctly asserts that this challenge, presented from a human security perspective, has had little success in directing the course of military action (Lee-Koo 2008). Without a critical understanding of the power relations which inform security policy the consequentalist approach does not grant the security analyzer the means to discuss and engage with securitization without encouraging the negative securitization processes. The security analyst may be able to address how the current economic failures are affecting factory workers around the world, but the discussion of security in the economic sector remains subjugated by dominant liberal actors and subjectivities. It will be argued that a critical procedural method is better suited to overcome the normative dilemma of speaking and writing security without replicating dominant modes of addressing security issues resulting in negative securitization instances. This response intends to offer the security analyst with the tools to critically apply ST by, firstly, opening up the structural power relations within the securitizing process and critically evaluating the social and political power of the securitizing actor. This critical evaluation intends to create space for alternative or marginalized approaches to securitization. Secondly, it suggests that applying securitization with a reconceptualized understanding of security, which aims to tackle the symbolic power inherent within the securitization process allows for alternative approaches to security to be observed and analyzed. Endowing the security analyst with these critical tools allows for the normative dilemma of writing security to be challenged.

Securitization—or the representation of a particular issue as an existential threat to national security—can be a powerful means to mobilize support for and legitimate certain policies. Securitization theorists hold that “national security” is a social and political construct, rather than a rational response to an external world rife with self-evident dangers. Political actors use discourse to identify existential threats and seek legitimation from an audience for the exceptional measures necessary to handle them. An appeal to “national security” denotes urgency and necessity, and successfully securitizing can make a swift and powerful response to an issue appear logical and natural. Speaking and practicing security, then, has the potential to reorganize social reality by mobilizing resources and legitimating the actions required to address existential threats, however these may be defined. The task for scholars, then, is not to try to observe what threats are out there in the world, but to look at discourse and identify what issues are framed as so threatening that they might require the breaking of normal political rules.

Since its inception, securitization theory has had a normative edge. The original securitization scholars of the Copenhagen School write that:

Mearsheimer understands this problem when he says that when states behave in ways that defeat their interests, it embarrasses his theory, 64 and it is the very discrepancy between what he and Walt see as the dictates of realism and the policies the United States followed that motivate these books and their earlier critique of US policy in the Middle East. But when we see realism can be prescriptive rather than descriptive, then national misbehavior no longer necessarily disconfirms the theory. While it does have to be explained or at least considered, it does not dispute the claim that the state would have secured better outcomes had it followed realist precepts. Thus Waltz argues that states that ignore realism will “fall by the wayside,”65 and while the evidence for the proposition is limited, it has the advantage of separating prescriptive and descriptive aspects of the theory.

The separation creates and solves problems, however. For one thing, it raises the question of how often states in fact behave in a realist fashion, and since realism is more a school of thought and a general approach than a tight theory it also raises the possibility that realist scholars will attach this label to successful policies and deny it to failed ones. (I wonder if our explanation and evaluation of the US invasion of Iraq would have been different if Saddam did in fact have advanced WMD programs and plans to use them.) For another thing, it implies we scholars are smarter, or at least more knowledgeable, than decision makers. We can avoid this self-serving and implausible claim by arguing that leaders are often unable to work toward the national interest because they are thwarted by domestic politics, pathologies in society, or impediments to rational decision making. Of course one would want to specify when, why, and how states are led astray,66 and even if these claims are subject to dispute, they make clear the limits of realism’s ability to explain national behavior.

Yet is IR realism sufficient to our needs? As we saw in previous chapters, the revival of classical realism in IR carries with it many of the traits of post-political liberalism, so much so that it might best be called “cosmopolitan realism.”8 Slavoj Žižek has observed that contemporary Western culture is characteristically “decaffeinated” – that is, many domains of life have had the dangerous elements pre-emptively extracted to avoid risk. Thus we have coffee without caffeine, beer with low or zero-alcohol, tightly controlled algorithmic dating in place of falling in love – and in politics, wars with zero casualties (for our side), and we might add in human rights, rights without rights … To this series we might also add that we now have realism without realism – that the intellectual revival of classical realism in IR offers us a decaffeinated version in which the dangerous, disruptive elements – those of political power, the state and political interests – have been extracted, leaving a more tepid brew barely distinguishable from the proverbial liberal idealism, no less focussed on cosmopolitanism, ethics, international cooperation. It is probably already too late to make realism more real again.

In the domestic sphere, so-called left Schmittianism has, unsurprisingly, fed through into the delusions of left Euro-populism, such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece.9 Weber’s own dramatic posture of crisis offers us only an atavistic revisionism as the basis for politics. This would not serve us well, as it would merely act to reproduce our problem – to recreate the spectre of catastrophism. Unlike Carr, Weber was, after all, writing at the start of the twenty years’ crisis, not at its end, and his political realism evinced his desire to overthrow the nascent Paris peace system. Invoking Weberian realism today would simply reproduce the twenty years’ crisis, not help us get beyond it – not to mention the fact that Weber’s putative realism is built on a foundation of romantic political existentialism and bitter revanchist nationalism.

No matter how suggestive Vygotsky’s concepts of sense and perezhivanie were in the thinking behind new units capable of integrating intellectual operations and emotions, the fact is that emotions have never integrated intellectual operations as processes external to them, as Vygotsky aimed to focus on the unity of intellectual operations and emotions. Emotions are integrated in new units, subjective senses, which are generated together with intellectual functions by subjective configurations. Intellectual processes become subjective ones due to the subjective senses attached to their emergence within a subjective configuration of ongoing performances and actions. As a result, intellectual operations represent one side of the coin and subjective senses the other. Within subjective configuration, imagination, fantasy and creativity, which are inseparable from emotions, appear embedded within this complex subjective intellectual process. When intellectual operations mobilize themselves to engage in one subjective configuration, the units from which they emerge are the subjective configurations, provoking a process such that intellectual operations carry motivational character through the subjective senses that are part of them as subjective operations.

The Contemporary Racial Repertoire of the “China/Chinese” Threat

The outbreak of the pandemic could not have had worse timing (as if it could be timed), but timing is critically important here. Its emergence amid the ongoing intensive trade war between the United States and China is significant in that the prevailing tensions between the two countries and the discourses of Chinese unfair trade competition, scientific espionage, and technological surveillance frame the reception of the pandemic. One may argue that President Trump’s insistence on blaming China for the spread of the deadly virus is yet another tactic in his administration’s sustained attempt to quell China’s economic power at the same time that it provides a foil to distract from—and a scapegoat to blame for—the economic and public health crisis in which we find ourselves.

Bringing together the four different empirical analyses in Table 11.1, above, illuminates the fluid nature of any particular discursive formation, such as the discourse of security and counter-terrorism that we have analyzed in this book. This fluidity is realized across both time and space: first, through the temporal flow of discourse as language within a discursive formation undergoes transformations as one set of documents supersedes another over time; and secondly by the institutional differentiation of networks of discourse across space, as language within a discursive formation is delocated from one site and relocated in another. Temporal transformation is governed in the last instance by the material conditions of history, such as the 7/7 attacks and the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War; recontextualization across space is governed in the last instance by the power relations and economic interests of different agents and institutions, such as those within the political sphere and the public sphere (see also Hunter and MacDonald 2017; MacDonald et al. 2015). In the preceding chapters, the flow of discourse through time has been revealed by our analysis of documents relating to UK security and counter terrorism (Chapter 7); the relocation of discourse across space has been revealed by our analysis of documents relating to nuclear proliferation (Chapter 9). Both of these analyses entailed the use of more conventional corpus techniques, in particular the machine-driven generation of keywords. However, as outlined in Chapter 5, these were augmented by the intuitive analysis of concordance data to verify and interpret salient lexis in context. In what follows we review the substantive and theoretical implications of the transformation and recontextualization of the documents across time and space which we have analyzed in the previous chapters.

Transformation Over Time

Answering these kinds of questions requires assessing foreign policy competence, defined here as a leader’s ability to make foreign policy decisions that promote expected national interests. Foreign policy competence is notoriously challenging to evaluate, because it is generally impossible to know how well decisions maximize expected national interests without making value judgments or assessing subjective probabilities (Jervis 1997; Renshon and Larson 2003; Burchill 2005). As Betts (2000) puts it, the complexity, uncertainty, and subjectivity of foreign policy decision-making raise the troubling prospect that “strategy is an illusion”—that there are no objective criteria for determining which foreign policy choices are more defensible than others.

Subjective evaluations can play valuable roles in structuring foreign policy analysis. For example, even if it is generally impossible to say that foreign policy decisions are objectively “right” or “wrong,” careful reasoning can winnow complex debates down to the core assumptions one must adopt in order to justify high-stakes choices.1 The balance of expert consensus also provides a useful heuristic for judging leaders’ competence, subject to the caveat that widely shared opinions do not always reflect rigorous analysis (Badie 2010; Schafer and Crichlow 2010).2 The subjectivity that surrounds foreign policy analysis nevertheless raises fundamental problems for scholarship and policy. If researchers lack objective methods for separating good choices from bad, then reasonable people will generally be able to disagree about whether foreign policy decisions were mistaken. That ambiguity makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about how foreign policy can be systematically improved (Betts 2000). Moreover, any time scholars claim that foreign policy decisions were warped by factors such as domestic politics or personal psychology, they are implicitly claiming that competent leaders should have known that a different course of action was superior to the one they actually chose (Glaser 2010, 2–3; Stein 2013, 369). The subjectivity that is inherent to analyzing foreign policy decisions thus impedes making normative, prescriptive, and descriptive claims about the conduct of international politics.