Perm do both---the alt fails, our securitization is good, no impact, and only the perm solves

Tragedy is largely absent from the existing normative debate on securitization. Instead, the debate has become organized around whether securitization is a “negative” or “positive” concept. In the classic formulation, the Copenhagen School points to how “[n]ational security should not be idealized. It works to silence opposition and has given power-holders many opportunities to exploit ‘threats’ for domestic purposes” (Buzan et al. 1998, 29; Williams 2003). Securitization has negative effects when it functions as “a political technology that consistently favors the interests of the powerful and enables violence and exclusion” (McDonald 2015, 154). Correspondingly, Wæver admits a “‘bias’ for desecuritization” or de-escalation, although he quickly notes that this is “not always better than securitization” (Wæver 2011, 469). At the same time, a number of approaches point to cases where securitization is ethically desirable. In her compelling consequentialist argument, for example, Floyd asks “whether the consequences of, and the gains from, the securitization are preferable relative to the consequences and gains from a politicization” (2007, 338). Relatedly, Roe contends that “the extent to which securitization necessitates a lack of openness and deliberation has been overexaggerated” and suggests it may even elicit unappreciated forms of cooperation (2012, 250).

The problem with the negative/positive debate is that it appears to impose moral certitude where there often is none. Registering securitizing moves as clearly positive or negative can be difficult because their effects can be mixed and temporally distant. The difficulty in making this determination may also be an indicator of the uncertainty surrounding securitizing moves. In the end, because the outcomes of security claims are uncertain, we cannot know in advance whether they will lead to positive or negative consequences. Instead, we should entertain a distinctly tragic vision of securitization that councils an ethic of self-limitation. The core of this tragic vision is a recognition that the powerful allure of using security talk to “gain control” over a situation will always be present (Wæver 1995, 54). However, we should also recognize that this control is always illusory because it presumes all of its effects can be predetermined. The tragedy of securitization is that the failure to recognize how contingency imposes limits on action lures political actors into a false sense of certainty and the conviction that they can determine the future. This leads to a hubristic adoption of “misplaced certainty,” such as when Vice President Dick Cheney declared in August of 2002 that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction” (quoted in Mitzen and Schweller 2011, 3). A similar situation emerged when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld subsequently claimed in November that the Iraq conflict could be “[f]ive days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that” (Esterbrook 2002). A similarly misplaced certainty is evident in US General Stanley McChrystal’s assurances to the Obama administration in 2009 that a surge in troops and resources were critical to stave off American defeat in Afghanistan (Woodward 2009). More recently, it is visible in President Donald Trump’s 2018 assertion that he was “100 percent right” on the weaknesses of the Iran nuclear deal (CNN 2018).

Yet, tragedy cuts both ways. Blanket opposition to securitizing moves can also have unanticipated effects. Ironically, the desecuritization of an issue may not just result in its repoliticization, but in its disappearance from public view (Floyd 2010, 57–58). Viewing security discourse as negative also underplays how the management of threats can serve as a focal point for democratic cooperation among different political actors (Roe 2012, 250, 257–58). The point is not that every security discourse and the practices it justifies has catastrophically perverse consequences. Instead, the goal is to highlight a sensible restraint over the limits of seeing into the future, how this shapes choice, and the dangers of hubris that follow. When properly adapted to this constructivist context, the tragic vision of securitization can be an important tool in cultivating prudence and restraint (cf. Lebow 2003, 364).

The problem with this tragic vision is that it points to processes that are never entirely in our possession. Whether in the form of background knowledge (Pouliot 2008), habits (Hopf 2010), or routines (Mitzen 2006), much of social life occurs without conscious deliberation and reflection. These forms of unthinking action impair reflexivity and limit actors’ ability to see how the world might be different and thus how outcomes can be uncertain. In some cases, this can be benign, such as the unreflexive amity between Canada and the United States that allows these countries to “escape” from the traditional security dilemma (Collins 2014, 572–73). But just as practices of amity can be habitual, so too can enmity. The hawkish US senator may designate Iran’s nuclear program as threatening because that is what hawkish US senators do, and there is no perceived way to be hawkish otherwise. The result is that the uncertainty surrounding securitizing moves becomes concealed under an unthinking veil of common sense. The tragedy of securitization then is not only that political figures often exceed their limitations by ignoring how contingency can derail securitizing moves—it is that these limitations often never even register

This means overcoming the tragedy of securitization require a certain degree self-reflexivity. This is similar to what Booth and Wheeler describe as the “security dilemma sensibility,” or an actor’s ability and willingness to reflect upon their actions, including one’s own role in provoking insecurity in others (2008, 7). By sensitizing leaders to how uncertainty is an endemic feature of political life, and how their actions can be interpreted in unintended ways, security competition can be mitigated, at least in part (Booth and Wheeler 2008, 265). Yet, these moments of self-awareness and reflection are difficult precisely because there are powerful forces that demand simplicity and closure: namely our desire for a stable sense of self or what is widely referred to as ontological security (Mitzen 2006). Reflecting on the uncertainty of international politics can erode one’s sense of identity and agency, ultimately leading to a “deep, incapacitating state of not knowing how to get by in the world” (Mitzen and Schweller 2011, 29). Booth and Wheeler’s security dilemma sensibility may have the laudable goal of alerting leaders to the role of uncertainty in political life, but this confronts the problem that many would prefer that it remain hidden.

The consequence is that this tragic aspect of the securitization dilemma takes on an intractable character. Either unwilling or unable to “know one’s limits,” as Herz would say (1950, 179), the role of uncertainty becomes hidden and security claims appear as a reliable strategy for control and influence. Like the classic realist dilemma, the securitization dilemma is pervasive because it is often invisible. The compelling need for a logic of selflimitation—of a careful and reflective use of security language and how it can be derailed by contingency— is obscured because of an aversion to recognizinguncertainty. It is this specter of a need for reflection and restraint that may not be realized, I suggest, which demands that we rethink the role of the analyst in provoking reflexivity among power-holders.

Conclusion: Rethinking the Role of the Analyst

Motivated by the absence of unintended and perverse consequences in constructivist theorizing of security, this article has pursued a reconceptualization of the security dilemma. Viewing the dilemma as a logic of limitation shaped by choice, uncertainty, and tragedy, the argument focuses on transposing this logic to the constructivist context of securitization theory. By showing how the choice to engage in the social construction of threats is complicated by uncertainty and the tragic failure to recognize one’s own limits, the dilemma analytic helps us to understand how securitization can be both a potent instrument for mobilization, as well as a volatile source of unpredictability. Moreover, this conceptual lens lays the foundation for an ethical imperative of self-limitation among securitizing actors—albeit one made difficult given the desire for simplicity and closure. Far from a rebuke of constructivist theorizing, the argument shows that taking the social character of security seriously means appreciating how political claims are always vulnerable to being derailed by different types of contingency.

This reconstructive move has important implications for studying the social construction of security. First, while the initial influence of realism on securitization theory is well-documented (Floyd 2010; Gad and Peterson 2011), few attempts have been made to show how engaging with these realist roots can yield new insights.22 Here, the reconstruction of the security dilemma demonstrates how returning to realist themes can yield a fresh insights. Second, the argument pushes scholars studying securitization to expand their universe of outcomes beyond the reductive binary of success and failure and to consider cases of perverse and unintended consequences. Not only are these outcomes relatively common, they undercut the prevailing image of securitization as a reliable technology of control. Third, the securitization dilemma shows why uncertainty is more of an enduring problem for social action than constructivists typically acknowledge. Contra earlier arguments where learning and socialization effectively mitigate the problem of uncertainty (Wendt 2006, 208–9), this perspective stresses how contingency means that social acts like securitizing moves can have unpredictable effects.

The most important result of this reconstruction, however, may be in how taking the tragic element of the dilemma seriously reorders the political role of the analyst. Rather than assessing the validity of a particular security discourse, or exposing its socially constructed nature, this perspective asks the analyst to provoke reflexivity on behalf of power-holders over the risks associated with securitization. While this entails a bias toward deescalation and desecuritization, unlike other approaches this is not achieved through overt references to any liberal, democratic, or emancipatory ideal. Instead, it is packaged for power-holders as a strategy of self-preservation. Here, the analyst presents the move to securitize as a risk-laden and potentially self-defeating strategy. The analyst points to a series of precedents showing how such a strategy can produce perverse consequences: how today's tough talk can become tomorrow's liability; how audiences can interpret threatening messages in unexpected ways; and how today's framing of security can lead to perverse consequences tomorrow. By foregrounding the problem of uncertainty, the analyst works to accentuate and impress upon actors the dilemmatic quality of securitizing moves.

Yet, the problem with presenting the move to securitize as a risk is that it may become accepted. Ironically, framing an escalation in enmity as possible but dangerous is precisely what may legitimize such a move in the eyes of risk-insensitive actors. This is Huysmans’ (2002) now familiar normative dilemma of writing security. The indeterminacy of language means that political actors may interpret advice in unpredictable ways. Frustratingly, this may include the precise opposite of the analyst's intention. This situation is likely inescapable, but it may be mitigated. What I suggest is that analysts should strive to cultivate a deeper subjectivity of risk sensitivity, comparable to Booth and Wheeler's security-dilemma sensibility, among political actors.

Key to this argument is how visions of the future satisfy the human desire for certainty. As Berenskoetter argues, “visions depicting the self in an imagined future order serve as anxiety controlling mechanisms” (2011, 654). Visions of the future inoculate actors against the anxiety of uncertainty by providing a narrative of where they are going and how to get there. Indeed, normative debates on securitization are already loaded with such visions. The impulse to securitize is underpinned by a utopian future where the security frame can finally mobilize a response to an otherwise intractable problem. Conversely, the impulse to desecuritize is sustained by a dystopian future defined by unrestrained authoritarian politics. A tragic vision of the future does something different: it presents a future where the only thing we can know decisively is that it is indeterminate and attempts to conclusively control it are vulnerable to failure. The very recognition of fundamental limits on human freedom (Steele 2007, 281–82) becomes transformed into a source of ontological security. This tempers the human need for cognitive closure by reconfiguring it into what Herz understood as a “fundamentally humble posture toward the value and precariousness of life” (Sylvest 2008, 442). An actor with a greater sensitivity to indeterminacy may still pursue securitizing moves, but with a cautious awareness that they are volatile acts best pursued sparingly. The analyst does not simply educate political leaders by pointing to the indeterminacy of the world; she seeks to make political subjects more sensitive toward it by crafting visions of a precarious future.

Finally, this tragic vision cannot, and should not, escape its own need for reflexivity. Its scholarly proponents need to engage in their own process of self-reflection, focusing on how their knowledge and interests are themselves historically situated. The ethic of restraint is a value, and not necessarily the value for all historical circumstances. A recognition of the social construction of security “facts” must be sobered by a recognition of the social construction of security “values” (Hamati-Ataya 2012, 685).