Their epistemology is wrong – based on securitizing logic that falsely creates a need for action and structures their world vision.

Securitisation endangers the international by virtue of presenting problem situations. When a thing is qualified as threat, a securitisation move projects it as a challenge onto the international, and it makes this presence known to a wider public. By presenting something as threatening, a securitisation move creates an epistemological reference point for society, as well as a need for political action: By arguing that there is danger in world politics, securitisation moves create an urge to do ‘something’ against that danger.10 Regardless of whether the basic rationale of this stimulus for activism is a quest for survival in the face of existential threats or the quest to master uncertainty, that is risk — endangerment in a basic sense creates knowledge of unacceptable foreign policy situations. Securitisation seen in this way ‘insecuritises’: 11 securitisation moves acknowledge that problems exist in world politics, bring knowledge of these into political (societal) existence, and — if accepted as truthful by the relevant local audience(s) — position these as mandatory objects of action. In terms of endangering, securitisation provides points of reference for agency and simultaneously asks for agency. How such agency is channelled, however, depends on how insecurity is circumscribed beyond its simple ‘naming’ or ‘identification’. This is to say that national insecurity is not merely acknowledged by securitisation moves, for these also invoke broader systems of meaning. By naming a threat, securitising actors haul topics into security logic, setting out problem situations and the imperative to act — but they also usually associate these topics with broader understandings of who (or what) threatens whom and how. Seen in this light, securitisation is a ‘relational’ or ‘positional’ process of international subjectification and subjectpositioning (Althusser 1971; Foucault 1981, 1982): The securitisation of a thing (or theme) comes with an identification of sources and targets of threats, and a specification of the nature of relations between them. Securitisation moves haul actors and things, whether foreign governments, cultural practices or non-state actors, into distinct roles. They recruit them as threatening or threatened subjects12 under the broader thematic umbrella of the securitised theme, attributing to them distinct functions in the known organisation of international security, and they relate the home nation to the international reality thus described.

With their subjectification components, securitisation moves have epistemological and political functions that go beyond those recognised by contemporary security studies. Epistemologically, the endangering and systematising of world politics gives structure to the undetermined social/international world. By setting out problem definitions, securitisation moves populate the world with originators and victims of danger, ordering the world and making it actionable. As a systematisation procedure, securitisation moves respond to ‘dread’, or ‘epistemological fear’, that is the fear of not knowing and the urge to make sense of the contingent context in which societies evolve (Huysmans 1998; Croft 2012). In the relational/positional development of securitisation theory of this article, the articulation of danger is thus a so-called ontological security strategy for the securitising actor. It gives a sense of place and location to the home nation, dividing the de facto always evolving and contingent world into temporarily stable categories of enemies, friends and fellows (Mitzen 2006). Politically, successful securitisation creates complex local truths about the presence and organisation of international danger, identifying numerous kinds of actors and relations. When issues are securitised, these topics are brought to local attention. Necessities for action are created, and knowledge of international security politics is produced and organised in distinct ways.