Descriptive is constitutive. Instead of “problem solving” in this world as given, we should decolonize what makes the world.

Inclusion and Exclusion: Problem-Solving vs Critical Approaches

Reflecting on the attacks of 9/11 and the impending US led War in Iraq, Steve Smith, in his 2003 Presidential Address to the International Studies Association, argued that International Relations (IR) scholars are “complicit in the constitution of this world of international relations,” asserting that “the discipline has helped to sing into existence the world…by reflecting the interests of the dominant in what were presented as being neutral, and universal theories” (Smith 2004, 499). He went on to provocatively argue that scholars of IR held some share of culpability in world events because of what the discipline excluded or ignored—structural violence, economic inequality, and gender and racial injustices—all of which were issues viewed as lying outside the core concerns of the discipline. Urging scholars to beware of “political assumptions masquerading as technical ones,” he went on to reflect on how the theories and methods that scholars use are closely connected to their own position within the global system (Smith 2004, 503).

More than a decade and a half later, the essential point of Smith’s address—that the assumptions, categories, and language that we use to describe and understand the world also construct and constitute it—is still relevant, and forms an important starting point for thinking about dynamics of exclusion and inclusion in global security (studies). Although IR and security studies are less beholden to grand theories and paradigms than they were a decade and a half ago, many of the critiques that Smith lobbed at the discipline are nevertheless still salient. Global hierarchies of race, class, and gender, and the continuing influence of imperial and colonial legacies, are yet to be fully confronted and engaged within the discipline. Furthermore, security studies is almost silent on issues such as the global climate change emergency (Goldstein 2016).

As Hazelton notes in her contribution to this symposium, the majority of the articles in this special issue focus on the policy effects and security outcomes of inclusion and exclusion. This fits squarely within what Cox (1981) referred to as a “problem-solving” framework, which takes existing structures as given while seeking to solve problems that arise within them.

Hendrix notes that the case studies in this issue use different conceptualizations and proxies of inclusion and exclusion, including representational, processual, and outcomeoriented. Moreover, many of the articles are underpinned by liberal assumptions about the security benefits of inclusion—an assumption that is partially challenged by both Hazelton and Hendrix in this forum. The empirical focus of the articles—on refugees (Chu 2019), gender (Spindel and Ralston 2019; Henshaw 2019), religious actors (Mateson 2019), and the micro-foundations of human security (Benzing 2019)—are certainly “inclusive” to the extent that they all travel well beyond “traditional” approaches to security that have focused on the interests and grand strategies of powerful nation-states. Indeed, they draw attention to constituencies that have often been excluded and marginalized within the field of security studies, such as women (Henshaw 2019), transgender individuals (Spindel and Ralston 2019), Islamic parties (Mateson 2019), and noncombatant civilians (Valentino and Sagan 2019). With the notable and important exception of Benzing’s contribution, however, the contributions as a whole tend toward a focus on causal explanations of how dynamics of inclusion and exclusion play out in particular cases, rather than on a broader critical project that seeks to understand issues of inclusion and exclusion in global and systemic-level terms (see also Widdick, this issue).

For example, Spindel and Ralson importantly examine practices of inclusion and exclusion in the US military, but they do not, however, seek to open up discussions about or reflect on deeper questions about militarism, militarization, or US hegemony; Chu examines the ways in which state rivalries lead to more or less inclusive approaches to refugees, but she does not seek to call into question the processes and assumptions that construct the administrative category of “refugee;” Valentino and Sagan survey the extent to which US citizens value the lives of foreign civilians versus US military personnel, yet they do not seek to call into question the underlying logics of nationalism and national imaginaries; Henshaw examines the exclusion of women from Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) processes, yet she does not seek to critically interrogate the emergence of DDR as a key component in post-conflict peacebuilding; Mateson examines the security effects of excluding or repressing Islamist opposition groups, but does not necessarily aim to dissect the histories and structures that have produced such groups. The point here is not to critique individual articles—which all present important arguments that push the agenda of security studies forward in interesting ways. Rather, it is to use the opportunity that this special issue presents to contrast a “problem-solving” approach to the study of exclusion and inclusion with more radical and critical approaches. One such approach would be a “decolonial” approach, which provides an alternative perspective on inclusion and exclusion in global security studies.