Security logic is inevitable and good---epistemology focus is demobilizing and incapable of spilling up---nuclear war.

RONNIE LIPSCHUTZ: Well, many, many years ago…one day when I was reading the San Francisco chronicle, I clipped a little phrase. I’ve never been able to find it, but it was something like, one of the emperor Fredricks said, “The surest way to ruin your country is to put it under the charge of college professors.” I have to say that I am now fully convinced of the truth of that statement. But since I have been charged here with taking on the philosophical side of things, I want to make a few points about – in particular the negative arguments – but also I think about the affirmative. I’m not a debater, by the way, so I don’t quite understand what’s been going on. But what I think in particular is a problem is, first of all, we have incommensurate conceptual categories going on here; that the affirmative is taking a very narrow policy question and proposing a change to it. The negative then raises these questions of epistemology and ontology which, in a way, are not obviously confronting the policy question which, and I agree with Erin, is very, very narrowly construed. I mean, there was no question about – well, let me put it this way: that although there was a discussion of the virtues of the alliance with Japan, it was largely taken as a given, and therefore of course that causes a problem, and by taking this epistemological and ontological approach, it is…ships passing in the night. And then, of course, the theory question came up and that, I thought, was problematic for both sides. A couple of things I want to say: the first one is that social constructions can kill. And I think this is a very important thing to remember that, threats can be socially constructed but threats, social constructions have material components, and they are aimed in particular directions. So the fact that something is a social construction or is epistemologically and ontologically questionable does not mean that there aren’t missiles being deployed, and that those missiles are not going to go off. These arguments are, I think, operating at a somewhat different space, and it does raise the question: how is it that we judge what is a threat in the first place? And of course we have nuclear friends and nuclear enemies. You ought to ask the question, “Why is it that Great Britain has nuclear weapons and yet there is nobody, as far as I know, that is planning a war with Great Britain?”. Now I could be wrong about this, since the Pentagon probably has plenty of analysts who have nothing to do.

ERIN SIMPSON: They make Powerpoints.

LIPSCHUTZ: Yeah, they make Powerpoints. So that, then, of course raises some of these epistemological questions. Which, I think if you want to somehow deploy the stuff that it seems like, sadly, I have said somewhere, it is important to take that much more carefully into account. The other thing that I am struck by is that I’ve become in recent – in the last year or so – a great fan of Pierre Bourdieu. All of these guys, all of my "friends" that you were citing – though I don’t consider Mearsheimer a friend – as I listen to this I think, “What patent nonsense it is that they are basically spouting.” But this is the way that the academic realm goes. I mean, it’s attack and counter-attack. And, I think you have to be very careful, again, in interrogating. So, if you’ve got to be critical, you should be very critical of those who are critical, to ask what is the politics behind the critique. Because there are politics in all of this. Not just politics in the policy—interests and all kinds of deeply imbedded commitments, which are impossible to change. If you watch Congress in action right now, you can see that. But also that there is a kind of…I mean it is – academics is war by other means, I guess, to take a leaf from both Clausewitz and Foucault. Anyway, to go back to Bourdieu. Bourdieu, who’s a sociologist who died several years ago, has a very interesting approach to some of these things which is oriented around practice. What are the practices that groups and societies engage in, and how do we understand those practices reinforcing normative beliefs and policies and approaches. And if you really are interested in “how do things change?,” you have to look at how practices change rather than intellectual arguments on the one hand or arming to the teeth on the other. So perhaps I would encourage, if you are to go on with debate, you should probably take a look at Bourdieu. I’m done.