Obstacles to Macrosecuritization of Global Threats: Cases of Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change
https://doi.org/10.46272/2221-3279-2024-3-15-7
Abstract
Despite the multitude of attempts to macrosecuritize nuclear weapons and climate change, none of them has succeeded so far. Existing studies struggle to convincingly explain these failures, which can be attributed both to the general neglect of unsuccessful cases of securitization and to the disparate, ad hoc nature of suggested explanations. Meanwhile, it has been little noticed that, as the discourse of existential threat implies judgements about the potential finitude of objects in time, there is a close link between securitization and temporality. By defining humanity’s time as potentially finite, the attempts to macrosecuritize nuclear weapons and climate change clash with the dominant indefinite temporality of modernity, as well as with the system of sovereign states that depends on indefinite temporality as its ideational condition of possibility. Consequently, macrosecuritizing moves, on the one hand, end up attempting to delegitimize and transform the system of sovereign states. On the other hand, the social structure of this system nudges the actors to ‘eternalize’ nuclear weapons and climate change, that is, to interpret them as compatible with humanity’s indefinite existence in the world. We demonstrate the workings of these ideational mechanisms during the discussions on international control of atomic energy in the 1940s and during the debates on international climate cooperation in 19871992. The cases show how, operating within a state-centric international political structure, policy makers are indeed inclined to ‘eternalize’ global existential threats.
Keywords
About the Authors
Ye. I. UchaevRussian Federation
Yevgeny I. Uchaev – Lecturer, PhD student, World Politics Department
76 Prospekt Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119454
A. A. Kvartalnov
Russian Federation
Artem A. Kvartalnov – MA in International Relations, Member of the research team, research project "Temporality of international relations in the context of global threats of nuclear war and climate change"
76 Prospekt Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119454
References
1. Adler E. (1992) The Emergence of Cooperation: National Epistemic Communities and the International Evolution of the Idea of Nuclear Arms Control. International Organization 46(1): 101-145. DOI: 10.1017/S0020818300001466.
2. Allan B.B. (2017) Second Only to Nuclear War: Science and the Making of Existential Threat in Global Climate Governance. International Studies Quarterly 61(4): 809-820. DOI: 10.1093/isq/sqx048.
3. Allan B.B. (2018) Scientific Cosmology and International Orders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 346 p. DOI: 10.1017/9781108241540.
4. Arbatov A.G. (2023) Yadernyye metamorfozy [Nuclear metamorphoses]. Polis. Politicheskiye issledovaniya [Polis. Political Studies] 5: 7-28. DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2023.05.02. (In Russian).
5. Arias S.B. (2022) Who Securitizes? Climate Change Discourse in the United Nations. International Studies Quarterly 66(2): sqac020. DOI: 10.1093/isq/sqac020.
6. Baele S.J., Jalea D. (2023) Twenty-five Years of Securitization Theory: A Corpus-based Review. Political Studies Review 21(2): 376-389. DOI: 10.1177/14789299211069499.
7. Balzacq T., Léonard S., Ruzicka J. (2016) ‘Securitization’ revisited: theory and cases. International Relations 30(4): 494-531. DOI: 10.1177/0047117815596590.
8. Baratta J.P. (1985) Was the Baruch Plan a Proposal of World Government? The International History Review 7(4): 592-621. DOI: 10.1080/07075332.1985.9640394.
9. Brodie B. (1948) The Atom Bomb as Policy Maker. Foreign Affairs 27(1): 17-33. DOI: 10.2307/20030159.
10. Bundy M. (1990) Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Vintage Books. 736 p.
11. Burke A. (2016) Nuclear Time: Temporal Metaphors of the Nuclear Present. Critical Studies on Security 4(1): 73-90. DOI: 10.1080/21624887.2016.1162394.
12. Buzan B., Waever O. (2009) Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation Theory. Review of International Studies 35(2): 253-276. DOI:10.1017/S0260210509008511.
13. Buzan B., Waever O., de Wilde J. (1998) Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 240 p.
14. Corry O. (2012) Securitisation and ‘Riskification’: Second-order Security and the Politics of Climate Change. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 40(2): 235-258. DOI: 10.1177/0305829811419444.
15. Douglas M. (2020) Kak mysliat instituty [How Institutions Think]. Moscow: Elementarnye formy. 250 p. (In Russian).
16. Dupont C. (2019) The EU’s collective securitisation of climate change. West European Politics 42(2): 369–390. DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2018.1510199.
17. Einstein A. (1946) The Way Out. In: Masters D., Way K. (eds.) One World or None. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, pp. 76-77.
18. Federation of American (Atomic) Scientists (1946) Survival is At Stake. In: Masters D., Way K. (eds.) One World or None. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, pp. 78-79.
19. Habermas J. (2008) Filosofskii diskurs o moderne. Dvenadtsat’ lektsii [The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures]. Moscow: Ves’ Mir. 416 p. (In Russian).
20. Hanau Santini R. (2010) European Union discourses and practices on the Iranian nuclear programme. European Security 19(3): 467–489. DOI: 10.1080/09662839.2010.531704.
21. Hanusch F., Meisch S. (2022) The Temporal Cleavage: The Case of Populist Retrotopia vs. Climate Emergency. Environmental Politics 31(5): 883-903. DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2022.20 44691.
22. Hardin G. (1972) Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle. New York: The Viking Press, Inc. 273 p.
23. Hayes J. (2009) Identity and Securitization in the Democratic Peace: The United States and the Divergence of Response to India and Iran’s Nuclear Programs. International Studies Quarterly 53(4): 977–999. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2009.00565.x.
24. Latour B. (2017) Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press. 300 p.
25. Makarov I.A., Shuranova A.A. (2023) Klimaticheskiye izmeneniya kak novyy faktor mezh- dunarodnykh otnosheniy [Climate Change as a New Factor of International Relations]. Mezhdunarodnaia Analitika [Journal of International Analytics] 14(4): 52-74. DOI: 10.46272/2587-8476-2023-14-4-52-74. (In Russian).
26. Matthews H.D., Wynes S. (2022) Current Global Efforts Are Insufficient to Limit Warming to 1.5°C. Science 376(6600): 1404-1409. DOI:10.1126/science.abo3378.
27. McDonald M. (2012) The Failed Securitization of Climate Change in Australia. Australian Journal of Political Science 47(4): 579–592. DOI: 10.1080/10361146.2012.731487.
28. Mikhaylenko E. (2022) Ot politiki ubezhdeniya k diplomatii: uroki Mezhdunarodnoy kampanii po zapreshcheniyu yadernogo oruzhiya [From advocacy to diplomacy: The case of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons]. Mezhdunarodnye protsessy [International Trends] 20(1): 55-79. DOI 10.17994/IT.2022.20.1.68.5. (In Russian).
29. Neal A.W. (2009) Securitization and Risk at the EU Border: The Origins of FRONTEX. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 47(2): 333-356. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5965.2009.00807.x.
30. Pelopidas B. (2021) The Birth of Nuclear Eternity. In: Kemp S., Andersson J. (eds.) Futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 484-500. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198806820.013.28.
31. Reus-Smit C. (1999) The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 208 p.
32. Ruzicka J. (2019) Failed Securitization: Why It Matters. Polity 51(2): 365-377. DOI: 10.1086/702213.
33. Sakamoto T. (2023) Threat Conceptions in Global Security Discourse: Analyzing the Speech Records of the United Nations Security Council, 1990–2019. International Studies Quarterly 67(3): sqad067. DOI: 10.1093/isq/sqad067.
34. Toropchin G. V. (2021) Severokoreyskaya raketno-yadernaya programma s tochki zreniya teorii sek’yuritizatsii [North Korean Missile and Nuclear Programme from the Securitisation Theory Standpoint]. Oikumena. Regionovedcheskie issledovaniia [Ojkumena. Regional researches] 2: 117-129. DOI: 10.24866/1998-6785/2021-2/117-129. (In Russian).
35. Timerbaev R.M. (2003) Mezhdunarodnyi kontrol’ nad atomnoi energiei [International Control of Atomic Energy]. Moscow: Izd-vo “Prava cheloveka”. 367 p. (In Russian).
36. Toropchin G. V. (2021) North Korean Missile and Nuclear Programme from the Securitisation Theory Standpoint. Ojkumena. Regional researches [Oikumena. Regionovedcheskie issledovaniia] 2: 117-129. DOI: 10.24866/1998-6785/2021-2/117-129. (In Russian).
37. Trombetta M. J. (2008) Environmental security and climate change: analysing the discourse. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 21(4): 585–602. DOI: 10.1080/09557570802452920.
38. Trombetta M.J. (2023) Climate change and the transformation of security: securitization and beyond. In: Trombetta M.J. (ed.) Handbook on Climate Change and International Security. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 77–95. DOI: 10.4337/9781789906448.00012.
39. Uchaev Ye.I., Kvartalnov A.A. (2022) Temporal’nyy podkhod k probleme ustoychivosti yadernoy anarkhii [Is Nuclear Anarchy Sustainable? A Temporal Approach]. Vestnik MGIMO-Universiteta [MGIMO Review of International Relations] 15(6): 112-134. DOI: 10.24833/2071-8160-2022-olf3. (In Russian).
40. Urey H.C. (1946) How does it all add up? In: Masters D., Way K. (eds.) One World or None. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, pp. 53-60.
41. Vogler A. (2023) Tracking Climate Securitization: Framings of Climate Security by Civil and Defense Ministries. International Studies Review 25(2): viad010. DOI: 10.1093/isr/viad010.
42. Wendt A. (1995) Constructing International Politics. International Security 20(1): 71-81. DOI: 10.2307/2539217.
Review
For citations:
Uchaev Ye.I., Kvartalnov A.A. Obstacles to Macrosecuritization of Global Threats: Cases of Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change. Comparative Politics Russia. 2024;15(3):141–164. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.46272/2221-3279-2024-3-15-7