533575276
DDI 2011
Security K – DDI 11
Security K – DDI (working file 7/23) ............................................ 1
Security K 1NC (softline)............................................................... 2
Security K 1NC (hardline) ............................................................. 5
***SOFTLINE LINKS .................................................................. 9
Exploration link ............................................................................ 10
Exploration link ............................................................................ 11
“Peaceful development” link ........................................................ 12
Cooperation link ........................................................................... 20
State link ...................................................................................... 25
Economics/development link ....................................................... 27
Surveillance link........................................................................... 29
Space tourism link ........................................................................ 33
Colonization link .......................................................................... 34
Mars link ...................................................................................... 37
Satellite link ................................................................................. 38
Asteroids link ............................................................................... 41
Natural disaster links .................................................................... 48
Technology link ........................................................................... 49
Science link .................................................................................. 53
Framing/representations link ........................................................ 57
Gender link ................................................................................... 58
Gender link (satellites) ................................................................. 60
Capitalism link – development ..................................................... 61
Capitalism link – satellites ........................................................... 63
Alienation links ............................................................................ 65
Foreign policy link ....................................................................... 66
Environment link .......................................................................... 67
Global warming link..................................................................... 69
Territory link ................................................................................ 70
***HARDLINE LINKS ............................................................... 71
Militarization link......................................................................... 72
Militarization link (self fulfilling prophecy)................................. 75
Militarization link – A2: Dolman ................................................. 76
Militarization links – imperialism ................................................ 79
Militarization ‘inevitability’ link .................................................. 80
Space leadership link.................................................................... 82
Hegemony link ............................................................................. 83
Hegemony link – A2: Thayer ....................................................... 88
Hegemony link – A2: Realism ..................................................... 89
Soft power link ............................................................................. 90
Competitiveness link .................................................................... 95
China link ..................................................................................... 98
Russia Link................................................................................. 107
Accidental launch link ................................................................ 109
Proliferation link ........................................................................ 111
Nuclear terror link ...................................................................... 114
Airpower link ............................................................................. 115
Smart bomb link ......................................................................... 116
***IMPACTS ............................................................................ 117
Impact – biopower...................................................................... 118
Impact – biopower...................................................................... 119
Impact – value to life.................................................................. 120
Impact – serial policy failure ...................................................... 121
Turns case .................................................................................. 123
Impact – Truth claims / epistemology ........................................ 124
Threats false – exaggerated ........................................................ 127
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Impact – depoliticization ............................................................ 128
Impact – general ......................................................................... 129
Impact – war ............................................................................... 130
Impact – extinction ..................................................................... 132
Self fulfilling prophecy .............................................................. 133
Wrong priorities ......................................................................... 134
Impact – gender .......................................................................... 135
Space weaponization impact – bare life ..................................... 136
Space weaponization impact – empire ....................................... 138
Space weaponization impact – A2: US will be good.................. 139
***NATIONALISM MODULE ................................................ 140
Nationalism links ....................................................................... 141
Nationalism impact .................................................................... 142
Cosmopolitanism alt ................................................................... 144
***ALT ...................................................................................... 145
Alternative – performative resistance ......................................... 146
Alternative – specific intellectual ............................................... 147
Alternative – prerequisite to action ............................................ 148
Alternative – exile ...................................................................... 150
Alternative – K prior .................................................................. 152
Discourse matters ....................................................................... 154
Alternative – role of the ballot ................................................... 155
Alternative – must resist policy approach .................................. 156
Alternative – marginal voices ..................................................... 157
Alt solves – challenges security ................................................. 158
Alt solves China ......................................................................... 159
***A2: STUFF ........................................................................... 160
A2: Perm .................................................................................... 161
A2: Perm – realism coopts ......................................................... 164
A2: State Good ........................................................................... 165
A2: Cede the political................................................................. 166
A2: Schmitt / friend-enemy good ............................................... 169
A2: The aff is true / threats are real ............................................ 171
A2: Realism................................................................................ 174
A2: Realism inevitable – human nature ..................................... 178
A2: Realism inevitable – Guzzini............................................... 179
A2: Human Security / Solidarism............................................... 180
A2: We use our power for good ................................................. 181
A2: Aff  public participation .................................................. 182
A2: Overview Effect .................................................................. 183
A2: Regime theory ..................................................................... 188
***BLOCKS .............................................................................. 189
AT: Perm .................................................................................... 190
AT: Specific Scenarios ............................................................... 191
AT: Threats Real ........................................................................ 192
AT: Realism Good ..................................................................... 193
AT: Realism Inevitable .............................................................. 196
Framework ................................................................................. 198
A2: Cede the Political ................................................................ 201
Alternative Overview ................................................................. 202
Link – A2 We’re Benign ............................................................ 203
Link – SPS ................................................................................. 204
Link – Aliens/SETI .................................................................... 205
Link – Colonization.................................................................... 206
Link – Cooperation..................................................................... 207
Link - Asteroids/Super – Volcanoes/We’re all going to die ....... 208
1
533575276
DDI 2011
Security K 1NC (softline)
The attempt to explore space reflects an insatiable urge to colonize and dominate. Going to space does
not resolve problems on earth – it merely expands the destructive potential of our worst impulses
Bormann and Sheehan, 2009 (Natalie Bormann, Department of Politics, Northeastern University, Boston, and Michael
Sheehan, Professor of International Relations at Swansea University, Securing Outer Space, 2009, p. 1-3)
That day in October 1957 also marked the beginning of serious concerns regarding the modes and kinds of space activities
that we would be witnessing, and these concerns were dominated from the outset by the fact that the first journey into space
was accompanied by - if not entirely driven by - the Cold War arms race. The initial steps in the exploration of space were
inexorably linked with pressures to militarize and securitize this new dimension. As a geographical realm that had hitherto
been pristine in relation to mankind's warlike history, this immediate tendency for space exploration to be led by military
rationales raised profound philosophical and political questions. What should the purpose of space activity be, and what
should it not be? And how would we approach, understand and distinguish between military activities, civilian ones,
commercial ones, and SO forth? More than a half century later, the questions as to what we bring to space' as well as how
space activities challenge us, and to what effects, seem ever more pressing. While the debate over some of the assumptions,
modes and effects of the space age never truly abated, most of the contributors in this volume agree that there is sense of
urgency in raising concern, re-conceptualizing the modes of the debate, and engaging critically with the limits and
possibilities of the dimension of space vis-a-vis the political. This sense of urgency reflects the revitalization of national
space programmes, and particularly that of the United States and China since the start of the twenty-first century. In January
2004, at NASA headquarters, US President George W. Bush announced the need for a new vision for America's civilian
and scientific space programme. This call culminated in a Commission's Report on Implementation of United States Space
Exploration Policy, which emphasized the fundamental role of space for US technological leadership, economic validity,
and most importantly, security. While this certainly stimulated the debate over the future direction of US space exploration,
it has led many to express concern over the implicitly aggressive and ambitious endeavor of colonizing space in the form of
calling upon the need for permanent access to and presence in space. A critical eye has also been cast on the Commission's
endorsement of the privatization and commercialization of space and its support for implementing a far larger presence of
private industry in space operations. Certainly also at the forefront of the current debate on space activities are notions of its
militarization and securitization. The deployment of technologies with the aim to secure, safeguard, defend and control
certain assets, innovations and activities in space is presented to us as an inevitable and necessary development. It is argued
that just as the development of reconnaissance aircraft in the Fitst World War led inexorably to the emergence of fighter
aircraft to deny the enemy the ability to carry out such reconnaissance and then bombers to deliver weapons against targets
that could be identified and reached from the air, so too has the 'multiplier effect' on military capabilities of satellites
encouraged calls for the acquisition of space-based capabilities to defend one's own satellites and attack those of
adversaries, and in the longer term, to place weapons in space that could attack targets on Earth. Here, the Bush
administration's indication that it envisaged a prominent role for space-based weapons in the longer term as part of the
controversial national missile defence system contributed to the atmosphere of controversy surrounding space policy. As
space has become crucial to, and utilized by, far more international actors, so the political implications of space activities
have multiplied. The members of the European Space Agency have pursued space development for economic, scientific
and social reasons. Their model of international space Cooperation has been seen as offering an example to other areas of
the world, particularly in their desire to avoid militarizing efforts. Yet even Europe has begun to develop military space
capabilities, following a path that has already been pursued by other key states such as China and India, suggesting that
there is an inevitability about the militarization, and perhaps ultimately the weaponization, of space. How we conceptualize
space has therefore become of fundamental moral, political and strategic importance. Outer space challenges the political
imagination as it has always challenged the human imagination in many other fields. For millennia people have looked up
to the stars and imagined it as the home of gods or the location of the afterlife. For centuries they have looked to it for
answers about the physical nature of the universe and the place of mankind's ancestral home within it. And for decades, it
has been seen as the supreme test for advanced technology. Space exploration is a driver of innovation, encouraging us to
dream of what might be possible, to push back the boundaries of thought and to change the nature of ontological realities by
drawing on novel epistemologies. The physical exploration of the solar system through the application of science and
technology has been the visible demonstration of this. The challenges that Space poses for political theory are profound. If
space-is about the use of imagination, and the application of novel developments to create new possibilities for human
progress, how has political theory and political reality responded to this challenge'? The
[continued…no text removed]
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2
533575276
DDI 2011
Security K 1NC (softline)
[continued…no text removed]
answer, at least thus far, is both that it has changed everything, and that it has changed very little. For international law,
most notably in the Outer Space Treaty, the denial of territoriality and limitations on sovereignty beyond planet Earth offers
a fundamental challenge to the way in which international relations has been conceptualized and operationalized in the
modern era. On the other hand, the dream of many, that humanity would leave behind its dark side as it entered space, has
not been realized. For the most part, the exploration and utilization to space has reflected, not challenged, the political
patterns and impulses that characterized twentieth-century politics and international relations. Propaganda, military rivalry,
economic competition and exploitation, North—South discrimination and so on have extended their reach beyond the
atmosphere. Industrialization and imperialism in the nineteenth century helped produce powerful new social theories, as
well as new philosophy, political ideologies and conceptualizarions of the meaning of politics and the nature of human
destiny. The realities of the space age demand novel social theories of the same order.
[optional]
The Dream of Security Ensures Apocalypse From Now On – Constructions of Existential Risk ensures the
Enactment of Annihilation.
Pever Coviello, Prof. of English @ Bowdoin, 2k [Queer Frontiers, p. 39-40]
Perhaps. But to claim that American culture is at present decisively postnuclear is not to say that the world we inhabit is in
any way postapocalyptic. Apocalypse, as I began by saying, changed-it did not go away. And here I want to hazard my
second assertion: if, in the nuclear age of yesteryear, apocalypse signified an event threatening everyone and everything
with (in Jacques Den-ida's suitably menacing phrase) "remairiderless and a-symbolic destruction,," then in the postnuclear
world apocalypse is an affair whose parameters are definitively local. In shape and in substance, apocalypse is defined now
by the affliction it brings somewhere else, always to an "other" people whose very presence might then be written as a
kind of dangerous contagion, threatening the safety and prosperity of a cherished "general population." This fact seems
to me to stand behind Susan Sontag's incisive observation, from 1989, that, 'Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not
'Apocalypse Now' but 'Apocalypse from Now On."" The decisive point here in the perpetuation of the threat of
apocalypse (the point Sontag goes on, at length, to miss) is that apocalypse is ever present because, as an element in a vast
economy of power, it is ever useful. That is, through the perpetual threat of destruction-through the constant
reproduction of the figure of apocalypse-agencies of power ensure their authority to act on and through the bodies of a
particular population. No one turns this point more persuasively than Michel Foucault, who in the final chapter of his first
volume of The History of Sexuality addresses himself to the problem of a power that is less repressive than productive, less
life-threatening than, in his words, "life-administering." Power, he contends, "exerts a positive influence on life land,
endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations?' In his
brief comments on what he calls "the atomic situation;' however, Foucault insists as well that the productiveness of modern
power must not be mistaken for a uniform repudiation of violent or even lethal means. For as "managers of life and
survival, of bodies and the race," agencies of modern power presume to act 'on the behalf of the existence of everyone."
Whatsoever might be construed as a threat to life and survival in this way serves to authorize any expression of force, no
matter how invasive or, indeed, potentially annihilating. "If genocide is indeed the dream of modem power," Foucault
writes, "this is not because of a recent return to the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the
level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population." For a state that would arm itself not with
the power to kill its population, but with a more comprehensive power over the patterns and functioning of its collective
life, the threat of an apocalyptic demise, nuclear or otherwise, seems a civic initiative that can scarcely be done without.
Last printed 3/6/2016 5:53:00 PM
3
533575276
DDI 2011
Security K 1NC (softline)
Alternative – Reject the affirmative’s security logic – only resistance to the discourse of security can
generate genuine political thought
Mark Neocleous, Prof. of Government @ Brunel, 2008 [Critique of Security, 185-6]
The only way out of such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is perhaps to eschew the logic of security altogether - to reject it
as so ideologically loaded in favour of the state that any real political thought other than the authoritarian and reactionary
should be pressed to give it up. That is clearly something that can not be achieved within the limits of bourgeois thought
and thus could never even begin to be imagined by the security intellectual. It is also something that the constant iteration
of the refrain 'this is an insecure world' and reiteration of one fear, anxiety and insecurity after another will also make it
hard to do. But it is something that the critique of security suggests we may have to consider if we want a political way out
of the impasse of security. This impasse exists because security has now become so all-encompassing that it marginalises
all else, most notably the constructive conflicts, debates and discussions that animate political life. The constant
prioritising of a mythical security as a political end - as the political end constitutes a rejection of politics in any meaningful
sense of the term. That is, as a mode of action in which differences can be articulated, in which the conflicts and struggles
that arise from such differences can be fought for and negotiated, in which people might come to believe that another world
is possible - that they might transform the world and in turn be transformed. Security politics simply removes this; worse, it
remoeves it while purportedly addressing it. In so doing it suppresses all issues of power and turns political questions into
debates about the most efficient way to achieve 'security', despite the fact that we are never quite told - never could be told what might count as having achieved it. Security politics is, in this sense, an anti-politics,"' dominating political discourse
in much the same manner as the security state tries to dominate human beings, reinforcing security fetishism and the
monopolistic character of security on the political imagination. We therefore need to get beyond security politics, not add
yet more 'sectors' to it in a way that simply expands the scope of the state and legitimises state intervention in yet more and
more areas of our lives. Simon Dalby reports a personal communication with Michael Williams, co-editor of the important
text Critical Security Studies, in which the latter asks: if you take away security, what do you put in the hole that's left
behind? But I'm inclined to agree with Dalby: maybe there is no hole."' The mistake has been to think that there is a hole
and that this hole needs to be filled with a new vision or revision of security in which it is re-mapped or civilised or
gendered or humanised or expanded or whatever. All of these ultimately remain within the statist political imaginary, and
consequently end up reaffirming the state as the terrain of modern politics, the grounds of security. The real task is not to
fill the supposed hole with yet another vision of security, but to fight for an alternative political language which takes us
beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois security and which therefore does not constantly throw us into the arms of the
state. That's the point of critical politics: to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of society we want.
Thus while much of what I have said here has been of a negative order, part of the tradition of critical theory is that the
negative may be as significant as the positive in setting thought on new paths. For if security really is the supreme concept
of bourgeois society and the fundamental thematic of liberalism, then to keep harping on about insecurity and to keep
demanding 'more security' (while meekly hoping that this increased security doesn't damage our liberty) is to blind
ourselves to the possibility of building real alternatives to the authoritarian tendencies in contemporary politics. To situate
ourselves against security politics would allow us to circumvent the debilitating effect achieved through the constant
securitising of social and political issues, debilitating in the sense that 'security' helps consolidate the power of the existing
forms of social domination and justifies the short-circuiting of even the most democratic forms. It would also allow us to
forge another kind of politics centred on a different conception of the good. We need a new way of thinking and talking
about social being and politics that moves us beyond security. This would perhaps be emancipatory in the true sense of the
word. What this might mean, precisely, must be open to debate. But it certainly requires recognising that security is an
illusion that has forgotten it is an illusion; it requires recognising that security is not the same as solidarity; it requires
accepting that insecurity is part of the human condition, and thus giving up the search for the certainty of security and
instead learning to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and 'insecurities' that come with being human; it requires
accepting that 'securitizing' an issue does not mean dealing with it politically, but bracketing it out and handing it to the
state; it requires us to be brave enough to return the gift."'
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4
533575276
DDI 2011
Security K 1NC (hardline)
Space weapons establish a regime of biopolitical control – the entire population of earth becomes subject
to absolute levels of disciplinary regulation
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, University of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 52-57//DN)
In light of Foucault's incisive analysis, focusing on how new technologies will alter the balance of power between
sovereign states is precisely the wrong way to theorize the astropolitical impact of space weapons. Instead we should focus
on the bio-political aspects of space weaponization along two axes: the management of populations and the
disciplining/subjection of individuals. On the population axis of biopolitics, the ability to project force to any point on Earth
constitutes all the Earth's inhabitants as a single population to be governed through surveillance and management. The
possessor of space weapons, through its ability to potentially project force at all of the Earth's inhabitants, in effect gains a
monopoly on the means of violence over all of the earth. This leads to a dramatic re-ordering of the mode of protection that
governs the international system. As opposed to the internal monopoly of violence and external anarchy of real-statism and
the internal division of powers and external symmetrical binding of federal-republicanism, space-based empire has an
external monopoly on violence that asymmetrically binds all people and institutions, including states, together under the
hegemony of the imperial center. Again following Foucault, however, the most significant effect of this imperial center's
power is not apt to be its juridical capacity of interdiction and sanction. Instead, the most consequential effects of this
asymmetrical power relationship may be the ability of the imperial center to govern its subaltern subjects by altering their
interests and re-constituting their identities. The imperial center may need to use its space weapons only as a last resort.
Simply by possessing this monopoly on violence, the imperial center will be able to conduct the conduct of its subjects,
including client states, in a manner that is amenable to the interests of the empire. On the individual axis, space weapons
represent a powerful disciplinary capacity in the ability to target individuals with great precision. Many of the proposed
weapons systems — most notably space-based lasers — are designed to project lethal force at very precise targets, even
individuals. Presumably then a primary use of such weapons would be to destroy specific enemies of the imperial center.
This ability to project force precisely to any point on Earth would have two political effects. First, it will strip all states that
do not possess them of their ability to protect themselves from intervention by the space-based empire, and thereby vitiate
their claims to sovereignty. Second, the sole possessor of space-based weapons will be able to govern the conduct of
individuals,7 This bio-political power over individual lives would be far more significant than the ability to merely punish
and kill dissidents to imperial power. The possession of the power to target any individual, anywhere on Earth, on very
short notice would give the possessor of these weapons unprecedented power to discipline these individual's interests and
identities so that their actions comply with the will of the imperial center.
Last printed 3/6/2016 5:53:00 PM
5
533575276
DDI 2011
Security K 1NC (hardline)
Their attempts to frame the plan as merely responsive to inevitable threats is the logic that structures
violence in the first place. Distrust all aff claims
Webb 9 (Dave Webb is a Professor of Engineering Modeling, Director of the 'Praxis Centre" (a multidisciplinary research centre for
the 'Study of Information Technology to Peace, Conflict and Human Rights') and a member of the School of Applied Global Ethics at
Leeds Metropolitan University. "Securing Outer Space"; "Space Weapons: Dream, nightmare or reality?" Routledge Critical Security
Studies Series, 2009,
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Dmy5t_u1cuMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA221&dq=%22outer+space%22+exploration+David
+Campbell+and+Der+Derian&ots=dQPUQlUUSf&sig=hkL0lVD-nWxDJ8JZwAgcCXuHs78#v=onepage&q&f=false, JT)
Conclusion
War in space is undesirable for a number of reasons - not least of which are the problems associated with space debris and the
possibility of space-based weapons aimed at Earth — and most nations appear to be united in wishing to prevent weapons being
stationed in space. However, the US is determined not to give up*its superiority and dominance in space technology and has
consistently prevented progress in treaty negotiations and has in fact led space weapons development through missile defense and
other programmes claiming them to be defensive rather than offensive. However, offence is often in the eyes of the beholder and
other technologically capable (or near capable) states are concerned about the dominance and aggressive stance of the US in this area.
A major question often asked is what is the force behind the US drive to space dominance? Mow do major projects get huge amounts
of funding when eminent scientists can show that they are not technically feasible? Are concerns about national security and a national
faith in technological solutions to national and global problem too strong in the US? Does the drive come from a desire for world
domination and control? Perhaps it is a mixture of many things. Certainly the aerospace and defense industry (and, increasingly,
academia) is a major beneficiary in the effort to achieve full spectrum dominance*. It has been at the forefront of the development of
a philosophy of security through strength with a role for the US as a global police force through technological superiority. This also
fits well with some US right-wing political views concerning the destiny of America as world police and the Americans' trust in
technology to eventually find solutions to seemingly insoluble problems.
Another possible influence on all this is a continuing decline in non-military public support for science and engineering programmes
and training. The increasing reliance on industry to support military activities has meant that high technology projects in universities
are often linked to military programmes. Students and groups such as the Scientists for Global Responsibility in the UK and the Union
of Concerned Scientists in the US actively campaign on issues such as the ethical use of science and engineering and continue to lobby
politicians but there has been little positive response from government. Therefore, there is little choke for those wanting to follow a
career in engineering or science but to become an integral part of the 'military industrial complex' and contribute to the development
of lucrative military projects. Now must be the time for scientists, engineers and politicians to seriously consider what might
constitute a workable ethical policy on space. Although fears are that it is already too late.
At a time when satellite and missile-related technologies are growing rapidly, an international space weapons race cannot be the path
to follow. Many nations and NGOs agree on a number of issues, including the desirability of the ethical and sustainable use of space.
A firmly secure future can only be guaranteed if space remains weapon free and the increasing development of military-related space
systems is limited (or ideally reversed) and rigorously monitored and controlled. If there is the will then it can be done. There is a
significant role for the technologically able nations here. The world is seeing the warnings and suffering the consequences of illplanned technological growth. Global warming is beginning to be taken seriously by the major energy and resource consumers. Urgent
action is needed to prevent global disaster. Ignoring the environmental consequences of our actions is not an option and often results
in human misery and suffering.
A significant step for humanity would be made if the nations of the world could develop a collective dream, a meaningful respect and
trust that would enable an international agreement on the prevention of the weaponisation of space to be reached. To care enough to
make a space environment free of war a reality.
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6
533575276
DDI 2011
Security K 1NC (hardline)
The Dream of Security Ensures Apocalypse From Now On – Constructions of Existential Risk ensures the
Enactment of Annihilation.
Pever Coviello, Prof. of English @ Bowdoin, 2k [Queer Frontiers, p. 39-40]
Perhaps. But to claim that American culture is at present decisively postnuclear is not to say that the world we inhabit is in
any way postapocalyptic. Apocalypse, as I began by saying, changed-it did not go away. And here I want to hazard my
second assertion: if, in the nuclear age of yesteryear, apocalypse signified an event threatening everyone and everything
with (in Jacques Den-ida's suitably menacing phrase) "remairiderless and a-symbolic destruction,," then in the postnuclear
world apocalypse is an affair whose parameters are definitively local. In shape and in substance, apocalypse is defined now
by the affliction it brings somewhere else, always to an "other" people whose very presence might then be written as a
kind of dangerous contagion, threatening the safety and prosperity of a cherished "general population." This fact seems
to me to stand behind Susan Sontag's incisive observation, from 1989, that, 'Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not
'Apocalypse Now' but 'Apocalypse from Now On."" The decisive point here in the perpetuation of the threat of
apocalypse (the point Sontag goes on, at length, to miss) is that apocalypse is ever present because, as an element in a vast
economy of power, it is ever useful. That is, through the perpetual threat of destruction-through the constant
reproduction of the figure of apocalypse-agencies of power ensure their authority to act on and through the bodies of a
particular population. No one turns this point more persuasively than Michel Foucault, who in the final chapter of his first
volume of The History of Sexuality addresses himself to the problem of a power that is less repressive than productive, less
life-threatening than, in his words, "life-administering." Power, he contends, "exerts a positive influence on life land,
endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations?' In his
brief comments on what he calls "the atomic situation;' however, Foucault insists as well that the productiveness of modern
power must not be mistaken for a uniform repudiation of violent or even lethal means. For as "managers of life and
survival, of bodies and the race," agencies of modern power presume to act 'on the behalf of the existence of everyone."
Whatsoever might be construed as a threat to life and survival in this way serves to authorize any expression of force, no
matter how invasive or, indeed, potentially annihilating. "If genocide is indeed the dream of modem power," Foucault
writes, "this is not because of a recent return to the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the
level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population." For a state that would arm itself not with
the power to kill its population, but with a more comprehensive power over the patterns and functioning of its collective
life, the threat of an apocalyptic demise, nuclear or otherwise, seems a civic initiative that can scarcely be done without.
Last printed 3/6/2016 5:53:00 PM
7
533575276
DDI 2011
Security K 1NC (hardline)
Alternative – Reject the affirmative’s security logic – only resistance to the discourse of security can
generate genuine political thought
Mark Neocleous, Prof. of Government @ Brunel, 2008 [Critique of Security, 185-6]
The only way out of such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is perhaps to eschew the logic of security altogether - to reject it
as so ideologically loaded in favour of the state that any real political thought other than the authoritarian and reactionary
should be pressed to give it up. That is clearly something that can not be achieved within the limits of bourgeois thought
and thus could never even begin to be imagined by the security intellectual. It is also something that the constant iteration
of the refrain 'this is an insecure world' and reiteration of one fear, anxiety and insecurity after another will also make it
hard to do. But it is something that the critique of security suggests we may have to consider if we want a political way out
of the impasse of security. This impasse exists because security has now become so all-encompassing that it marginalises
all else, most notably the constructive conflicts, debates and discussions that animate political life. The constant
prioritising of a mythical security as a political end - as the political end constitutes a rejection of politics in any meaningful
sense of the term. That is, as a mode of action in which differences can be articulated, in which the conflicts and struggles
that arise from such differences can be fought for and negotiated, in which people might come to believe that another world
is possible - that they might transform the world and in turn be transformed. Security politics simply removes this; worse, it
remoeves it while purportedly addressing it. In so doing it suppresses all issues of power and turns political questions into
debates about the most efficient way to achieve 'security', despite the fact that we are never quite told - never could be told what might count as having achieved it. Security politics is, in this sense, an anti-politics,"' dominating political discourse
in much the same manner as the security state tries to dominate human beings, reinforcing security fetishism and the
monopolistic character of security on the political imagination. We therefore need to get beyond security politics, not add
yet more 'sectors' to it in a way that simply expands the scope of the state and legitimises state intervention in yet more and
more areas of our lives. Simon Dalby reports a personal communication with Michael Williams, co-editor of the important
text Critical Security Studies, in which the latter asks: if you take away security, what do you put in the hole that's left
behind? But I'm inclined to agree with Dalby: maybe there is no hole."' The mistake has been to think that there is a hole
and that this hole needs to be filled with a new vision or revision of security in which it is re-mapped or civilised or
gendered or humanised or expanded or whatever. All of these ultimately remain within the statist political imaginary, and
consequently end up reaffirming the state as the terrain of modern politics, the grounds of security. The real task is not to
fill the supposed hole with yet another vision of security, but to fight for an alternative political language which takes us
beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois security and which therefore does not constantly throw us into the arms of the
state. That's the point of critical politics: to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of society we want.
Thus while much of what I have said here has been of a negative order, part of the tradition of critical theory is that the
negative may be as significant as the positive in setting thought on new paths. For if security really is the supreme concept
of bourgeois society and the fundamental thematic of liberalism, then to keep harping on about insecurity and to keep
demanding 'more security' (while meekly hoping that this increased security doesn't damage our liberty) is to blind
ourselves to the possibility of building real alternatives to the authoritarian tendencies in contemporary politics. To situate
ourselves against security politics would allow us to circumvent the debilitating effect achieved through the constant
securitising of social and political issues, debilitating in the sense that 'security' helps consolidate the power of the existing
forms of social domination and justifies the short-circuiting of even the most democratic forms. It would also allow us to
forge another kind of politics centred on a different conception of the good. We need a new way of thinking and talking
about social being and politics that moves us beyond security. This would perhaps be emancipatory in the true sense of the
word. What this might mean, precisely, must be open to debate. But it certainly requires recognising that security is an
illusion that has forgotten it is an illusion; it requires recognising that security is not the same as solidarity; it requires
accepting that insecurity is part of the human condition, and thus giving up the search for the certainty of security and
instead learning to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and 'insecurities' that come with being human; it requires
accepting that 'securitizing' an issue does not mean dealing with it politically, but bracketing it out and handing it to the
state; it requires us to be brave enough to return the gift."'
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Space exploration is key way to help the military – dual uses means the plan will be used to help that
Raymond Duvall, Prrofessor of political science @ University of Minnesota, and Dr. Jonathan Havercroft, professor of political
science at Oklahoma University, October 2006, “Taking Sovereignty Out of This World: Space Weapons and Empire of the Future”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=2185920&jid=RIS&volumeId=34&issueId=04&aid=2185916 ACC
7/21/11
The placing of weapons in orbital space has an intimate relationship to space exploration, in that the history of the former
is embedded in the latter, while the impetus for space exploration, in turn, is embedded in histories of military
development. Since the launch of Sputnik, states that have ability to access—and hence to explore—orbital space have
sought ways in which that access could improve their military capabilities. Consequently, militaries in general and the
U.S. military in particular have had a strong interest in the military uses of space for the last half century. Early on, the
military interest in space had two direct expressions: enhancing surveillance; and developing rocketry technologies that
could be put to use for earth-based weapons, such as missiles. Militaries also have a vested interest in the “dual-use”
technologies that are often developed in space exploration missions. While NASA goes to great lengths in its public
relations to stress the benefits to science and the (American) public of its space explorations, it is noteworthy that many of
the technologies developed for those missions also have potential military use. The multiple interests that tie together
space exploration and space weaponization have been vigorously pursued and now are beginning to be substantially
realized by a very small number of militaries, most notably that of the United States. For example, since the 1990 Persian
Gulf War, the U.S. military has increasingly relied on assets in space to increase its C4ISR (Command, Control,
Communication, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) functions. Most of these functions are now
routed through satellites in orbit. In addition, new precision weapons, such as JDAM bombs, and unmanned drones, such
as the Predator, rely on Global Positioning System satellites to help direct them to their targets, and often these weapons
communicate with headquarters through satellite uplinks. 29 For another instance, NASA’s recently completed Deep
Impact mission, which entailed smashing part of a probe into a comet to gather information about the content of comet
nuclei, directly served the U.S. military in developing the technology and the logistical capabilities to intercept small
objects moving at very fast speeds (approximately 23,000 miles per hour). 30 As such, the technologies can be adapted
for programs such as missile defense, where a similar problem of intercepting an object moving at a very high speed is
confronted.
Space exploration is an extension of the imperial order
Fraser MacDonald, Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Melbourne, 2007 “Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit
of geography” Progress in Human Geography 35(1) p. 592-615 http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.full.pdf+html ACC 7/19/11
My basic claim, then, is that a geographical concern with outer space is an old project, not a new one. A closely related
argument is that a geography of outer space is a logical extension of earlier geographies of imperial exploration (for
instance, Smith and Godlewska, 1994; Driver, 2001). Space exploration has used exactly the same discourses, the same
rationales, and even the same institutional frameworks (such as the International Geophysical Year, 1957–58) as
terrestrial exploration. Like its terrestrial counterpart, the move into space has its origins in older imperial enterprises.
Marina Benjamin, for instance, argues that for the United States outer space was ‘always a metaphorical extension of the
American West’ (Benjamin, 2003: 46). Looking at the imbricated narratives of colonialism and the Arianne space
programme in French Guiana, the anthropologist Peter Redfi eld makes the case that ‘outer space reflects a practical
shadow of empire’ (Redfi eld, 2002: 795; see also Redfi eld, 2000). The historian of science Richard Sorrenson, writing
about the ship as geography’s scientifi c instrument in the age of high empire, draws on the work of David DeVorkin to
argue that the V-2 missile was its natural successor (Sorrenson, 1996: 228; see also DeVorkin, 1992). A version of the V-2
– the two-stage ‘Bumper WAC Corporal’ –became the fi rst earthly object to penetrate outer space, reaching an altitude of
244 miles on 24 February 1949 (Army Ballistic Missile Agency, 1961). Moreover, out of this postwar allied V-2
programme came the means by which Britain attempted to reassert its geopolitical might in the context of its own ailing
empire. In 1954, when America sold Britain its fi rst nuclear missile – a refi ned version of the WAC Corporal – its
possession was seen as a shortcut back to the international stage at a time when Britain’s colonial power was waning fast
(Clark, 1994; MacDonald, 2006a). Even if the political geography literature has scarcely engaged with outer space, the
advent of rocketry was basically Cold War (imperial) geopolitics under another name. Space exploration then, from its
earliest origins to the present day, has been about familiar terrestrial and ideological struggles here on Earth.
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Space exploration is set to the backdrop of the military
Fraser MacDonald, Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Melbourne, 2007 “Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit
of geography” Progress in Human Geography 35(1) p. 592-615 http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.full.pdf+html ACC 7/19/11
In this discussion so far, I have been drawing attention to geography’s recent failure to engage outer space as a sphere of
inquiry and i t i s impor t ant to c l a r i fy tha t thi s indi c tment appl ies more to human than to physical
geography. There are, of course, many biophysical currents of geography that directly draw on satellite technologies for
remote sensing. The ability to view the Earth from space, particularly through the Landsat programme, was a singular step
forward in understanding all manner of Earth surface p r o c e s s e s a n d b i o g e o g r a p h i c a l p a t t e r n s (see
Mack, 1990). The fact that this new tranche of data came largely from military platforms (often under the guise of ‘dual
use’) was rarely considered an obstacle to science. But, as the range of geographical applications of satellite imagery have
increased to include such diverse activities as urban planning and ice cap measurements, so too has a certain re- fl exivity
about the provenance of the images. It is not enough, some are realizing, to say ‘I just observe and explain desertification
and I have nothing to do with the military’; rather, scientists need to acknowledge the overall context that gives them
access to this data in the fi rst place (Cervino et al., 2003: 236). One thinks here of the case of Peru, whose US grant
funding for agricultural use of Landsat data increased dramatically in the 1980s when the same images were found to be
useful in locating insurgent activities of Maoist ‘Shining Path’ guerrillas (Schwartz, 1996). More recently, NASA’s
civilian SeaWide Field Studies (Sea-WiFS) programme was used to identify Taliban forces during the war in Afghanistan
(Caracciolo, 2004). The practice of geography, in these cases as with so many others, is bound up with military log i c s
(Smi th, 1992) ; the development of Geog r aphi c a l Informa t ion Sys tems (GIS) being a much-cited recent
example (Pickles, 1995; 2004; Cloud, 2001; 2002; see Beck, 2003, for a case study of GIS in the service of the ‘war on
terror’).
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The US would go to space to securitize it
David Grondin Ph.D., Political Science (International Relations and American Studies), Université du Québec à Montréal,
Montréal, 2008 M.A., International Relations, University of Toronto, Toronto, 2001 B.A., American History, Université du Québec à
Montréal, Montréal, 2000, 2009, Securing Outer Space: International Relations Theory and the Politics of Space, 7. The (power)
politics of space: the US astropolitical discourse on global dominance in the War on Terror, Chapter seven
forced to undertake military and policing operations abroad, the frontiers of the homeland are remapped to fit the nature of
the global terrorist threat. As illustrates one excerpt from the 9/11 Commission Report, "In this sense, 9/II has taught us that
terrorism against American interests 'over there' should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America 'over here.'
In this same sense, the Aimrican homeland is the planet" (9/11 Commission 2004: 362; my emphasis). Hence, with the War
on Terror, the US has become a "global homeland", where the boundaries are produced global in scope, yet they remain
unsettled and are constantly displaced depending on the situational context.As the 9/11 events and their diffusion through
the global media networks revealed the interconnectedness of all political spaces of the globe, Baumann pushes for an
assessment of the newfound "global space" as assuming "the character of a Jrontierland" (Baumann 2002: 83). In this very
sense, there is no more secured place, as there is no more outside — in fact, what was previously outside has been displaced
and assigned inside. . Rethinking the frontiers of the global space - the "globalness" (Fredriksson 2006) — to theorize about
the relationships of politics and Space, one must rethink the relation that links a territorial state to a political space, even
though one knows it to be a "fraught matter" (Dalby 2005: 417). The analytic framework upon which my argument stands
is known as critical geopolitics, a Foucauldian power/knowledge approach in political geography which sees the fields of
foreign policy and security studies as discursive spaces structured by contests between specialists and experts which
compete for the acquisition of knowledge and resources that grants them authority and legitimacy. For a long time,
geopolitics was associated with power politics and was taboo because of its intricate relationship with Nazi Germany. Due
to the work of French Marxist political geographer Yves Lacoste, who wrote in 1976 his seminal work La géographie, ça
sert dabord à faire la guerre (literally "Geography Is First and Foremost About Making War"), one was reminded that
geography, as "the structuring of knowledge relating to space", is a form of strategic knowledge, a discourse of
power/knowledge (Lacoste 1976 [1982]: 6-7; Ô Tuathail and Agnew 1992; Ô Tuathail 1996: 58, 160-168). As a critical
poststructuralist attitude, critical geopolitics is itself a strategy that looks carefully at "the particular historicity and spatiality
of the deployment of geopolitics as an indeterminate but nevertheless congealed form of power/knowledge. ... [It is a}
geneaological approach to the problematic of the writing of global space by intellectuals of statecraft" (Ô Tuathail 1996:
143). It critically scrutinizes the "strategic surveyor's perspective of the foreign policy 'experts'" (Ô Tuathail 1996: 69).
Conversely, the language of policymaking does not simply reflect "real" policy issues and problems; rather, it actively
produces the issues with which policymakers deal and the specific problems that they confront. Geopolitics is seen as a
discursive practice that tells how the world is thought, described, spatialized and written, as well as how these narratives
work as political discourses (re)producing "reality". Critical geopolitics is therefore interested in addressing the hidden
problems that are influenced by geo-politics (i.e. the relationship of power, space and politics), and which lie behind the
scripting of global space: it seeks to destabilize the fixed presence, to question, and to be a question that critically assesses
the bonding of "geo" and "politics" (Ô Tuathail 1996: 66-67; Agnew 2005: 160-161).
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The increasing interest in exploring space must be coupled with an analysis of its negative effects.
C. Peoples. 09 Securing Outer Space: Haunted Dreams, Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Wearset Ltd. Pg 91-107
Where the Marcusian perspective arguably becomes more problematic, and certainly more provocative, is in its assertion
that a stated desire to domi¬nate, such as that recurrent espoused within recent US space policy, are only rhe most obvious
outward manifestation of an intrinsic connection between technology and domination; his contention that there is a
barbarism latent in all technological 'progress'. Proponents of the military use of space as an aspect of current US policy are
quick to point out that by space dominance they mean ensuring that the US preserves its access to space in all instances, not
that the US should exercise complete control. Certainly, we might also want to refute the claim that technological
innovation, in space as in any other realm, necessarily leads to domination. Here it is worth noting that Marcuse himself
both dismissed the possibility that we might return to some kind of pre-technological culture and even at his most
pessimistic still held out hope for what he termed as .'the chance of the alternatives''.
It [pre-technological culture} is an outdated and surpassed culture, and only dreams and childlike regressions can recapture
it. But this culture is, in some of its decisive elements, also a post-technological one. Its most advanced images and
positions seem to survive their absorption into administered comforts and stimuli; they continue to haunt the con-sciousness
with the possibility of their rebirth in the consummation of technical progress. So, in short, there might still be a chance that
technological development could encompass more emancipatory social ends - a view extendable once again, presumably, to
space technologies. Space has consistently been the realm of dreams, of the fantastical, of (hu)man's striving to explore the
unknown (Benjamin 2004) and imagination must certainly be required to think of alternative, less bellicose uses of space.
As Wendy Brown notes in a different context, however, 'the figure of dreamwork taken up for political analysis ... promises
to puncture the conceit of our innocence and virtue: dreams often tell us things we would rather not know about ourselves'
(2006: 690). Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than in the case of von Braun and his Rocket Team and their influence
upon the US space programme, where the 'dream' metaphor is employed recurrently both by participants and in subsequent
historical nar¬ratives. The conditions of the advancement of their 'dream' of space explo¬ration are, as was shown,
somewhat opaque; even if the connections to forced libour and concentration camps are difficult to prove or disprove with
final¬ity, the vagaries of the past continue to exert a haunting quality to, as Marcuse put it, 'the accomplishments of man the space flights; the rockets and missiles'. As in Goya's painting, the sleep of reason produces monsters. In this sense, it is
perhaps worthwhile tarrying with the negative potentiali¬ties of the military use of space, even if these potentialities are
still only in their infancy and dreams of 'space control' seem as fantastical as Utopian visions for future spaceexploration
and colonization (Radford 2006). Marcuse's approach is suggestive of a move from, to paraphrase one of his own works,
technology to hauntology:12 current developments in space technology in the US in particular are haunted most
immediately by the prospects for greater destructive capacity that they portend, but also by alternative visions for the use of
space that they preclude. Marcuse argues that 'Naming the "things that are absent" is break¬ing the spell of the things that
are' (1962: 68), and at the current moment there is a vitaLneed to point out not only the negative consequences of the
weaponization of space, but also to understand the tendency to conceive of space within a militarized framework in the first
place (think of the multiple visions of conflict in space that saturate the science fiction genre), and the rival ways of
thinking about space that risk being marginalized as a result (for example, those with an emphasis on exploration or space,
on outer space as a weapons free 'sanctuary', or less anthropocentric understandings of the cosmos). In short, a critical
approach to the military use of space must tread a careful path between despondency and determinism in the face of the
development of space technology, and the Utopian impulse so frequently associated with outer sp3ce. Without the former,
the latter risks becoming blind idealism; without the latter, assessments of the negative potentialities of space technology
risk becoming complicit in the promotion of these largely still nascent capacities. As Joel Whitebook puts it in a different
context: The following question can still be raised: What is the fate of the transgressive-utopian impulse, given this new
sobriety? For better or worse, that impulse will exist as long as people dream'; but 'Any process of enlightenment worth its
name must engage the nocturnal' (Whitebook 1996: 301). In the case of the militarization of space this might be extended to
all aspects of the nocturnal: the dark side of the history of space exploration; space nightmares as well as space dreams.
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Strategic use of space sets up the US for complete domination. The discursive background of security
infuses the aff project
MacDonald 7 (Fraser MacDonald* School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne,
“Anti-Astropolitik −− outer space and the orbit of geography,” Progress in Human Geography 31(5) (2007) pp. 592–615, P.
Sage//DN)
Dolman slips from presenting what would be merely a ‘logical’ outworking of Astropolitik to advocating that the United States adopt
it as their space strategy. Along the way, he acknowledges the full anti-democratic potential of such concentrated power, detaching the
state from its citizenry: the United States can adopt any policy it wishes and the attitudes and reactions of the domestic public and of
other states can do little to challenge it. So powerful is the United States that should it accept the harsh Realpolitik doctrine in space
that the military services appear to be proposing, and given a proper explanation for employing it, there may in fact be little if any
opposition to a fait accompli of total US domination in space. (Dolman, 2002: 156) Although Dolman claims that ‘no attempt will be
made to create a convincing argument that the United States has a right to domin- ation in space’, in almost the next sentence he goes
on to argue ‘that, in this case, might does make right’, ‘the persuasiveness of the case’ being ‘based on the self-interest of the state and
stability of the system’ (2002: 156; my emphasis). Truly, this is Astropolitik: a veneration of the ineluctable logic of power and the
permanent rightness of those who wield it. If it sounds chillingly familiar, Dolman hopes to reassure us with his belief that ‘the US
form of liberal democracy ... is admirable and socially encompassing’ (p. 156) and it is ‘the most benign state that has ever at- tempted
hegemony over the greater part of the world’ (p. 158). His sunny view that the United States is ‘willing to extend legal and political
equality to all’ sits awkwardly with the current suspension of the rule of law in Guantanamo Bay as well as in various other ‘spaces of
exception’ (see Gregory, 2004; Agamben, 2005). Dolman’s astropolitical project is by no means exceptional. The journal
Astropolitics, of which he is a founding editor, contains numerous papers expressing similar views. It is easy, I think, for critical
geographers to feel so secure in the intellectual and political purchase of Ó Tuathailian critiques (Ó Tuathail, 1996), that we become
oblivious to the undead nature of classical geopolitics. It is comforting to think that most geography undergraduates encountering
geopolitics, in the UK at least, will in all likelihood do so through the portal of critical perspectives, perhaps through the excellent
work of Joanne Sharp or Klaus Dodds (Dodds, 2005; Sharp, 2005). But the legacies of Mackinder and Mahan live on, and radical
critique is as urgent as ever. While this is not the place for a thoroughgoing reappraisal of astropolitics in the manner of Gearòid Ó
Tuathail, a few salient points from his critique can be brought out. (1) Astrography and astropolitics, like geo- graphy and geopolitics,
constitute ‘a political domination and cultural imagining of space’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996: 28). While com- mentators like Colin Gray have
posited an ‘inescapable geography’ (eg, ‘of course, physical geography is politically neutral’), a critical agenda conceives of
geography not as a fixed substratum but as a highly social form of knowledge (Gray, 1999: 173; Ó Tuathail, 1999: 109). For
geography, read ‘astrography’. We must be alert to the ‘declarative’ (‘this is how the Outer Earth is’) and ‘imperative’ (‘this is what
we must do’) modes of narration that astropolitics has borrowed from its terrestrial antecedent (Ó Tuathail, 1999: 107). The models of
Mackinder and Mahan that are so often applied to the space environ- ment are not unchanging laws; on the con- trary they are
themselves highly political attempts to create and sustain particular strategic outcomes in specific historical circumstances. (2)
Rather than actively supporting the dominant structures and mechanisms of power, a critical astropolitics must place the primacy of
such forces always already in question. Critical astropolitics aims to scrutinize the power politics of the expert/ think-tank/tactician as
part of a wider project of deepening public debate and strengthening democratic accountability (Ó Tuathail, 1999: 108). (3)
Mackinder’s ‘end of geography’ thesis held that the era of terrestrial exploration and discovery was over, leaving only the task of
consolidating the world order to fit British interests (Ó Tuathail, 1996: 27). Dolman’s vision of space strategy bears striking
similarities. Like Ó Tuathail’s critique of Mackinder’s imperial hubris, Astropolitik could be reasonably described as ‘triumphalism
blind to its own precarious- ness’ (Ó Tuathail, 1996: 28). Dolman, for instance, makes little effort to conceal his tumescent patriotism,
observing that ‘the United States is awash with power after its impressive victories in the 1991 Gulf War and 1999 Kosovo campaign,
and stands at the forefront of history cap- able of presiding over the birth of a bold New World Order’. One might argue, however, that
Mackinder – as the theorist of imperial decline – may in this respect be an appropriate mentor (Ó Tuathail, 1999: 112). It is important,
I think, to demystify Astropolitik: there is nothing ‘inevitable’ about US dominance in space, even if the USA were to pursue this imperial logic. (4) Again like Mackinder, Astropolitik mobilizes an unquestioned ethnocentrism. Implicit in this ideology is the notion
that America must beat China into space because ‘they’ are not like ‘us’. ‘The most ruthlessly suitable’ candidates for space
dominance, we are told – ‘the most capably endowed’ – are like those who populated America and Australia (Dolman, 2002: 27). (5)
A critical astropolitics must challenge the ‘mythic’ properties of Astropolitik and disrupt its reverie for the ‘timeless insights’ of the
so-called geopolitical masters. For Ó Tuathail, ‘geopolitics is mythic because it promises uncanny clarity ... in a complex world’
and is ‘fetishistically concerned with .... prophecy’ (Ó Tuathail, 1999: 113). Ó Tuathail’s critical project, by con- trast, seeks to
recover the political and historical contexts through which the knowledge of Mackinder and Mahan has become formalized.
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Space weapons preclude the peaceful use of space that they claim will never happen – their sanitized
‘virtual frontline’ detaches us from the military’s destruction
Bormann '9 – dept. of politics @ Northeastern; previously held a position @ Watson Institute for Int'l Studies @ Brown (Natalie,
2009, "Securing Outer Space," ed. by Natalie Bormann & Michael Sheehan, p. 76-89, RG)
As the contributors in this volume highlight, there is no denying US attempts to codify a strategy of conducting warfare 'in, from and
through' space. With a new National Space Policy at the ready and plans for space-based missile defence components firmly in place,
efforts to understand the recent push for weaponising space seem ever more pressing. Yet, despite the proliferating theoretical and
empirical discourses on outer space, most existing theories tend to neglect the concept of spaciality as a category for analysing US
practices. In trying to eradicate this shortcoming, this chapter directly links recent US policies to some of the recurring spatial
representations of, and narrations about, outer space as a 'final frontier'. It is suggested hete that the imagination of outer space as a
'place' of permanent crisis, a 'battlefield', tells us something about that which informs the preferences underlying US policies. In so
doing, this chapter turns to Paul Virilio's theorising oh the military organisation of the category of space. According to Virilio, and
here with an eye on what informs the current space 'vision', we must direct our attention to the development of new military
technologies as it is these that produce our modes of representation, and that ultimately underpin our relation to, and invention of,
space and habitat. For Virilio, hence, any representation of spaciality, such as exposed in the legendary image of another 'Pearl
Harbor' in space, is necessarily given a priori to it; what we 'see' in outer space is not spatially organised in and of itself, rather, the
'seeing' is made possible through the effects of technology in its production of space (or, one reality of it) and its subsequent
authorisation of spatially contingent action (the defence of 'our space').2 I argue that such connection between technology and space is
tantamount for explaining the modalities and limits of, and possibilities for, space weapons in that any spatial production of outer
space always-already comprises an exploration of the logic of military technology. In Virilio's view, the invention of military
technology occurs simultaneously with the invention of a space to be defended and secured, invaded and colonised, weaponised
and commercialised. In other words, in order to grasp the modes of representation that underpin outer space weaponisation we must
turn to the technologies that provide the condition for visualising the need to weaponise, colonise, secure, and so forth. The work of
Virilio can thus open some valuable insights, I believe, for understanding the weaponisation of outer space by drawing upon the,
mostly overlooked, relationship and interaction of technology, spatiality and outer space as military space. By so doing, a Virilian
reading offers not only a stringent critique of the ways in which current space policies are rendered meaningful but it also provides us
with a tool for unpacking the very spatial (reconstructions of outer space that are presented to us as seamless and common-sensical.
Why should this matter? In this chapter I want to point towards two significant arguments in support for a renewed interest in
questioning and criticising modes of spatiality - and that which informs them. The first argument is concerned with the logic of
spatiality and the practices it claims to render meaningful. The second one has to do with the new military technologies in their role of
conducting space warfare and the modes of automated fighting and killing that they appear to evoke. To begin with the first point, it
seems clear to me that only by unbundling the processes which lead to the creation of seeing and inventing outer space as a sphere of
permanent crisis and its 'in-built' logic of the need to weaponise that sphere can we bring back the, hitherto, marginalised possibility of
an alternative process of organising outer space (e.g. peacefully). In other words, it must be understood that it is the invention of
space as a place of crisis and combat which precludes the peaceful use of space.3 Second, the interrelation of technology and space
composes some pressing questions regarding the new modes of destruction and warfighting that it gives possibility to.4 The projection
of outer space as a battlefield ('earth-bound' albeit in cosmos) is constitutive of certain 'qualities'. Space-based weapons that are
designed to target threats in space as much as on Earth lead first and foremost to a loss of certain known geo-strategic reference
points: the possibility of a space-based laser that shoots down targets 'anywhere' is such that every place on Earth and in space can
be considered a virtual frontline. There is a duality of proximity at work that is puzzling: on the one hand, the placement of weapon
systems close to their target is no longer needed. On the other hand, and while the possibility of fighting against thteats and engaging
in conflicts is therefore brought 'close to us', the battlefield on which the fighting takes place remains nonetheless 'distant from us';
virtual and non-visible in, from and through outer space. Furthermore, and closely related, it is not only the necessity of
geographical proximity of combat that is dwindling, so is the proximity of violence and destruction. While the targeting and killing
becomes possible at alt times and anywhere, the virtual shooting down of enemy missiles and the use of space-based lasers against
hostile attack from space removes us — ourselves - from the battlefield, the bodily violence and the experience, pain, and memory
thereof. Space technology promises to offer an automated, clean and sanitised mode of destruction and killing.5,6 It is a process
that Virilio (1999) sums up in his notion of an 'aesthetics of disappearance' by which the author means to suggest the following: in the
same way in which technology leads to a destruction of physicality and matter (and all the way to its disappearance), weapon
technology leads to a disappearance of our modes of relating and referring to that space.7
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The representational practices of space preclude a peaceful relationship – space is already militarized, all
further development can exist only against this backdrop
Bormann '9 – dept. of politics @ Northeastern; previously held a position @ Watson Institute for Int'l Studies @ Brown (Natalie,
2009, "Securing Outer Space," ed. by Natalie Bormann & Michael Sheehan, p. 76-89, RG)
I began this chaptet by implicitly suggesting that the 'problem' of outet space lies in the fatt that -unlike the 'blue sky above us' or the
'Azure Coast' in the Virilio quote at the outset - we cannot 'see' outer space; unlike the tanks, guns, and soldiers, on ground and air, we
cannot 'see' the satellites, anti-satellite weapons and space-based lasers. Both the place of outer space and its reference points for
space-based weapons are presented to us through that which we can know about them - a particular reality, a certain landscape, and as
organised in a meaningful and common-sensical way. This is not to suggest, however, that what we 'see' (again, 'the blue sky') is not
equally dependent on that which we can know about it. According to Virilio, there is 'little' physicality in our geographical vision;
most of what we 'see' is achieved through certain modes of representation, technology, narrating, and so forth. In this sense, this
chapter was interesred in that which we cannot look at on, and from, Earth and in the distance - yet, which is always-already 'Earthbound' and locally embedded. It was interested in the landscapes and geogtaphies of outet space which we cannot 'see' and visualise yet, which are presented to us and narrated as spatially contingent. And it was concerned with the military technologies in outer space
which are 'Earth-bound, locally embedded, and close to us' - yet, which provide for the possibility of a mode of war fighting and
destruction 'from the distance', clean and sanitised, instant and with no time left for reflection.
On an empirical note then, and with regards to the effects of a certain imagination of outer space, consider the following: on 12
August 2003, 174 nations voted 'yes' on a UN resolution to prevent an arms race in outer space - only four countries abstained, one of
which was the US. Today, the US spends $36 billion a year for activities in outer space (over 70 per cent of all global expenditure).
Washington runs a tab for military activities in outer space that has reached a soaring $20 billion a year (Henry L. Stimson Center
2005). Part of this goes directly to the 'high energy-laser' fund of the current Bush administration's research and development plans
that will turn outer space into a space from which to shoot down ballistic missiles. Central to this chapter was the claim that any
inquiry into these figures and the steps towards weaponising outer space must necessarily begin with the question of their condition of
possibility. By this I meant to suggest that the precondition for problematising outer space weaponisation is to break with the
'common sense' of spatial representation that informs it. This break, or 'rupture' in the Bourdieuan sense (Bourdieu 1992), had the
purpose of uncovering the ways in which technological inventions create a loss of physical space and its geographical reference points
before giving possibility to che framing of outer space by virtue of a new spatial imagery. These imageries are characterised by the
creation of a place of permanent crisis and war and along frontiers and boundaries fabricated by space-based lasers, kinetic-kill
vehicles or anti-satellite weaponry. To sum up using Virilio's words, new technologies will lead to a 'doing away' of matter, whereby
the acceleration through technology goes hand in hand with an increasing loss of territory and a creation of space informed by the
limits and possibilities of technical reach. The question as to why we must cate - now - is implicit in the title of this chapter: 'the lost
dimension' is a phrase borrowed from Virilio who suggests by it the end of politics in a world of increased speed, technology and
virtuality. For Virilio, and I concur, this mode has always been most evident in the realm of military technology in which complexity
of weapon systems reduce matter, re-create a spatial reality with ever shorter response times, with ever closer proximities and with a
clean and sanitised mode of destruction, which, no doubt, affects the way we (will) judge upon and react to military threats. Virilio
takes this vision all the way, which ensues in his exploration of the 'dwindling of space', the 'exhaustion of the physical', and the
processes that undermine the significance of place. Here, Virilio warns us that this process is only dwarfed by even further inventions
of even further technologisation. I agree; the opportunities for revealing and breaking with the logic of a (new) spatiality of outer
space, disconnecting it from the technological that informs it, and juxtaposing it with equally possible alternative ftamings of space
are dwindling. The perpetuation of outer space as a sphere of permanent war and its claims to weaponisation will soon make no
intervention possible.
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Even nominally peaceful space development is influenced by security objectives.
Michael Sheehan, Sheehan is the President and co-founder of Lexington Security Group, terrorism analyst for
NBC News, fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security, 2009, Securing Outer Space, Edited by Natalie
Bormann and Michael Sheehan, “Profaning the path to the sacred:The militarisation of the European space programme”
A significant development that occurred for ESA in the early 1970s was the adoption of the development of'applications'
satellite technology. In the 1960s ESRO had only been concerned with scientific research, but ESA, from its inception was
also committed to the development of satellite technology to serve social and political goals, and which might be profit-making
exercises. This was significant, because it meant that ESA became increasingly involved in the development and exploitation of
space technologies with obvious military potential, such as launchers and communications, navigation, meteorological and earthobservation satellites. Although this had the potential to produce a conflict of interest with the 'peaceful' objectives enshrined in the
ESA convention, the fact that space had not been 'securitised' as an issue area for European politicians, meant that the developments
proceeded uncontroversially. The European Union and space policy The forces that were to change this perception built up
gradually during the final two decades of the twentieth century, spanning the end of the Cold War. They 1 were both
empirical and ideational, reflecting not only the emerging identification of a particular telos for the European Union, but also the
evolution of the conceptualisation of security itself. During the Cold War period ESA was an entity that was clearly distinct
from both NATO and the EU, though its membership overlapped with both. As an institution it clearly lacked the
political strength characteristic of NATO and the EU, and retained a purely instrumental role for European governments.
Although it was effectively the lead European organisation in the field of space exploration and research, neither NATO
nor (especially) the EU conceded that ESA had any kind of policy monopoly in this area. Both NATO and the EU had in
practice acquired competences and responsibilities in the space field. NATO had developed a series of communication
satellites, while the EU policed a number of areas which had implications for space policy and were therefore covered by
various articles in the Rome Treaty. Increasingly the EU took the view that its own interest in and competence regarding
space would inevitably increase in the future as space technology became more and more important in the various areas
in which the EU exercised responsibility. This was all the more true given that the EU was itself steadily increasing the
number of areas in which it did claim responsibility (Layton 1976: 33). During the 1980s there were important
developments in both the EC and the WEU. The Western European Union, a precursor of NATO, had withered into
virtual inactivity by the 1980s, but in 1984 it was reactivated by the member states. The French President Mitterand
played an important role, arguing that the European states need a security organisation that could contribute in areas
where NATO was not significantly engaged. While there was validity in this argument, and it convinced the member
states to move things forward, it was also true that France had an ulterior motive. Suspicious of American hegemony within
NATO and determined to develop the EU as a counterbalance to American power, France saw many advantages in developing the
military capabilities and operational competence of WEU, and in the longer-term, bringing it within the family of organizations that
made up the European integration project. By 1987 the revival of the organisation had considerable momentum and the WEU
ministerial council felt confident enough to formally adopt the 'Platform on European Security Interests'. This document,
the so-called 'Hague Platform' states firmly that 'we are convinced that the construction of an integrated Europe will
remain incomplete as long as it does not include security and defence' (WEU 2008: 4). In the same year the EU's 1987
Single European Act added research and development and environmental policy to the Community's competences. It was
clear that this remit would necessarily include the space field and would involve the EU in remote sensing technology
(Madders 1997: 570). The European Commission was quick to develop a perspective that integrated the implications of
these emerging parallel competences in the military and space fields and carried out a review exercise which looked at
existing European capabilities in the space domain. The review took note of Europe's obvious lack of a proper framework
for cooperative space activities in the defence area (Madders 1997: 571). When the WEU was reactivated, it was on the basis of
new competences and tasks with which the enlarged membership was comfortable. These were codified in 1992 in the areas of peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention and arms control verification, the so-called 'Petersberg Tasks'. When the WEU was
essentially incorporated into the EU in 1999 these responsibilities were taken over by the EU, forming part of its Common
Foteign and Security Policy.
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The language of space policy makes it impossible to separate legitimate objectives from securitizing ones.
Michael Sheehan, Sheehan is the President and co-founder of Lexington Security Group, terrorism analyst for NBC News, fellow at
New York University's Center on Law and Security, 2009, Securing Outer Space, Edited by Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan,
“Profaning the path to the sacred:The militarisation of the European space programme”
The linguistic strategy pursued in the late 1980s and 1990s therefore was, to speak always of 'security' rather than
defence and to promote initial military cooperation activities that clearly fell within the politically acceptable 'soft'
categories of peacekeeping and arms control. As this pattern became established as routine, the term 'security' was
increasingly used as a synonym for 'defence', so that when defence was finally referred to without camouflage, the public
and parliamentary audiences had become sensitised to it and were no longer instinctively opposed to its adoption. To some
extent ESA had always been tacitly willing to engage in such activities, notwithstanding its convention. It spinoff commercial launcher arm Arianespace had launched a number of military satellites, most notably for France
and the French Helios military satellite underwent part of its test programme at the ESA facility at ESTEC. In
this sense its absolute prohibition on military-related activities was always something of a diplomatic fiction.
Nevectheless, the fig-leaf was important, and the self-perception of ESA by its staff was as an overtly and solely civilian
organisation. By the turn of the century however, the leadership of the EAS was working to alter this situation.
ESA Director-General Antonio Rodota commissioned a report on the evolution of the European Space Agency,
which was published in 2000. The report of the so-called 'three wise men', Towards a Space Agency for the
European Union, argued not only that the agency should become the EU's space arm, but also that it should
extend its remit into the military field (Biidt et al. 2000). It recommended the use of ESA capabilities even for
those aspects of European space policy that related to military and security objectives. Because these objectives
related to the Petersberg Tasks, it was argued that the Convention of the ESA would not be an obstacle to such a
policy evolution (Bildt et al. 2000: 5). The EU and ESA responded to this by establishing a Joint Task Force,
whose first report in 2001 recommended that the ESA should become the executive agency for EU space policy
and also that ESA's remit should be broadened to cover programmes relevant to CFSP and ESDP. In 2003, the
Director-General published a forward planning document, Agenda 2007. The Agenda argued that the
environment in which ESA was located was rapidly evolving, creating new opportunities and responsibilities. It
noted that the EU was acquiring new competences in the defence field, and that other space agencies, notably
those of Russia and Japan were moving from purely civilian competence, to a joint civilian and military role
(ESA Strategy Department 2003: 5-6). European governments were working to create greater security for their citizens in
the environmental, economic and social realms, as well as in terms of policing and defence against external threats.
Because space capabilities were clearly highly relevant to addressing these needs 'ESA must change, rather than wait
for its environment to force change upon it or, worse, disregard it on the grounds that it is not the instrument
that is needed' (ESA Strategy Department 2003: 10). The danger identified, therefore, was that in the new global
environment, ESA might come to be seen as irrelevant. As NATO had done before it, ESA saw a need to reinvent itself and acquire new responsibilities, if it was to survive and prosper. ESA therefore had to equip itself
and position itself so that it could fulfil the requirements not only of its existing member states and those of the
EU, but also of the defence sector (ESA Strategy Department 2003: 12). Disturbingly, there was no real debate on
whether it was better to maintain ESA's existing ethos and role and leave military activities to another organisation. The
assumption was that ESA must be the lead actor for space, even if that meant reinventing itself in a way that would have
horrified its founders. For ESA in this regard, the crucial move was to position itself within the broader European
project, to become effectively the space agency of the EU. As long as it was outside the EU 'family' it would lack
political clout and would have difficulty in participating in the construction of EU policy, particularly in relation
to defence and securiry issues. In order to address this issue the Agenda called for ESA to accelerate its dialogue
with the EU, but also to establish 'a relationship of trust' with European defence institutions. One of the
immediate practical effects of this was that ESA introduced a requirement for security clearance for its staff who
would in future be dealing with sensitive information in their dealings with defence agencies. As the Agenda
noted, this represented a major 'change of culture' for ESA (ESA Strategy Department 2003: 21-22), and it
[continued…no text removed]
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[continued…no text removed]
signalled the end of Amaldi's hope that the organisation would remain free of the military and of official secrets
acts (Krige 1992: 4). In the same year ESA published a report commissioned from the Institute for International
Affairs in Rome on Space and Security in Europe. The report addressed the same themes as Agenda 2007, and
made similar detailed recommendations for policy change. The purpose once again was to head off potential
institutional threats to ESA. If a security issue was paramount in the thinking of the ESA leadership, it was job
security, rather than national security. The report declared that instead of possibly setting up a second European
space agency for security and defence, there is the potentially attractive option of the European Space Agency
(ESA) taking full advantage of the dual-use nature of space through a cooperative atrangement with the EU.
(ESA/IAI 2003: 8) The 2003 report also noted the changing international environment. It drew particular
attention to the new military goals the EU had set itself at the 1999 Helsinki Summit. The 'Headline Goals'
provided a reference point to which the European military space project could orient itself. In response to tfiis
new environment ESA committed itself to: officially re-evaluate the legal meaning of its statute, concluding that
the Convention does indeed not restrict ESA's capacity to launch and implement space programmes for defence
and security purposes or dual purposes or for national or international public bodies in charge of security and
defence. (ESA/IAI 2003: 37) The early failure by the European space organisations to define exactly what they meant by
'peaceful purposes' now came back to haunt it. Since they hadn't done so, the ESA leadership decided by 2003 that
'peaceful' and . 'warlike' were virtually synonyms, and that peaceful could embrace the full range of traditional
military tasks.
Even peaceful exploration can’t be detached from the military institution
Bormann '9 – dept. of politics @ Northeastern; previously held a position @ Watson Institute for Int'l Studies @ Brown (Natalie,
2009, "Securing Outer Space," ed. by Natalie Bormann & Michael Sheehan, p. 76-89, RG)
Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover', the President's Commission (2004) it was concluded that 'fundamental changes must take
place in how the nation approaches space exploration and manages the vision for success'. While this, not surprisingly, stimulated the
debate over the future direction of US space exploration it led many critics to express concern over the implicitly aggressive and
ambitious endeavour to secure 'permanent access to and in Space'. The sense of military colonisation and occupation of outer space is
what has led to conclude that the notion of space exploration is indeed deeply infatuated with the one of space weaponisation. This
seems most apparent in the pursuit of space policies centred on the theme of 'space control* and that are aimed at the control and
policing of US 'areas' in outer space against the possible 'exploitation of Space and the denial of the use of Space by adversaries' (US
Deparment of Defense 2001). In this regard, let us not forget that the US military had laid eyes on the Moon — hand-in-hand with its
discovery — as a potential base for its military operations for quite some time (Moltz 2004). All in all, there is a clear sense that space
is increasingly imagined as a sphere or field that cannot be separated from notions of possible combat and military operations.
This is particularly so when one considers that space 'services' for existing military operations on the ground have become ubiquitous,
and include satellite communications and satellite imaging of the Earth for government officials, intelligence analysts and military
commanders. As known to most of us, US troops abroad rely increasingly on outer space forces that provide weather, communications, intelligence, missile warning and navigation. During Operation Desert Storm, for instance, coalition forces relied on outer space
when warnings of SCUD missile attacks came from missile warning satellites (Moltz 2004). As such, outer space has already become
a militarised sphere that provided key support for the coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and which are described as, the most
'digitally intensive conflicts ever', with every military platform linked by satellite (Moltz 2004).
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The affirmative hides their drive for security behind the mask of cooperation—it’s only a political tool
Sheehan 7 (Michael Sheehan is Professor of International Relations at Swansea University. His publications include The International
Politics of Space (2007), International Security: An Analytical Survey (2005) and National and International Security (2000). His
current research focuses on European space policy, and on the relationship between liberalism, democracy and war. "The international
politics of space"
http://books.google.com/books?id=5LUR6CiBwusC&pg=PA55&dq="outer+space"+exploration+David+Campbell+and+Der+Derian
&lr=&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false, jt)
The drama of the space race between the superpowers in the 1950s and 1960s, Together with the overwhelming use of space for
military purposes, easily creates an impression of space as a realm of conflict and danger. However, the reality of the space age has
been that space activities have been characterised by an enormous amount of international cooperation. This can be seen in the
programmes of individual states, in various multilateral international programmes, in the dramatic cooperation of the western
European countries, and in the work of international organisations, particularly those that operate under the structure of the United
Nations. The United States recognised this even during the Star Wars tension during the mid-1980s, the Office of Technology
Assessment noting that, '[s]pace is by nature and treaty an international realm about which cooperation between nations on some level
is essential, if only to avoid potential conflict over its resources'.1 However, it was the Soviet Union that first seriously exploited this
feature for political purposes. For the Soviet Union under Khruschcv, the space programme had been a weapon of the Cold War
competition between the superpowers, but once the USSR had lost the race to the Moon, his successors turned the programme into an
instrument for the promotion of detente and international cooperation. As with the earlier phase, symbolism was all-important, and
propaganda was used to ensure that the message the USSR was attempting to convey was clearly understood. Thus, although it took a
rather more benign form, propaganda continued to be at the heart of the space programme as the Soviet Union once again sought to
exploit it for political purposes and the advantages it could yield in foreign policy.
Two clear themes are notable in the post-1969 Soviet programme. One was international cooperation, but the second was the steady
increase in the exploitation of space for military purposes, most notably for reconnaissance and early warning. These two themes are
reflected in the tone and content of Soviet space-related propaganda in this period. On the one hand, Soviet space achievements were
eulogised as reflecting humanistic principles. On the other hand, in order to deflect attention away from the military aspects of the
Soviet programme, Soviet propaganda continuously argued that the United States was seeking to 'militarise' space.
Within this overall pattern, there was a shift in the sub-theme present under Khruschev. Khruschev had sought to identify the
successes of the programme with himself. Under his successors, the Soviet propaganda machine consistently sought to identify Soviet
achievements with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and with the Soviet Government as a whole, emphasising that both, but
particularly the Party, were the source of the Soviet successes. In a state that was an uneasy combination of many nationalities besides
the dominant Russians, space achievements were used to solidify Russian support for the Communist Party, and to encourage an
incipient Soviet nationalism, by evoking the pride of the population in a successful and international prestigious endeavour. Soviet
spokesmen confidently asserted that 'the Communist Party and the Soviet government created the necessary economic, social,
scientific and technical conditions for the development of cosmonautics, and as a result of this the world's first socialist state opened
the road to the stars for mankind'.2
The space programme continued to benefit the Soviet Union's image as a technologically dynamic industrial superpower, and a leader
in the most advanced fields of science and technology. In addition, the international missions that were to become a feature of the
1970s and 1980s presented a positive image of the USSR. The inclusion of foreign cosmonauts in Soviet manned space missions
presented the USSR as a country open to cooperation, with nothing to hide in its space programme, and happy to share the prestige of
space exploration and its tangible benefits with other countries. The political importance attached to this cooperation was stressed by
President Brezhnev in a speech to the 26th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1981, when he insisted that 'the cosmonauts of
the fraternal countries are working not only for science and for the national economy, they are also carrying out a political mission
of immense importance*.1
The Soviet Union continued to use the successes of the space programme for political advantage in a number of ways. One such was
the use of cosmonauts as ambassadors-at-large, using their fame and recognisability to promote a positive image of the USSR, and to
give encouragement and public support to communist governments and parties around the world. Their fame was deliberately linked
with the particular political ideas and policy lines being advocated by Moscow and, more broadly, with historic communist traditions.
The Soviet Union, like the United States, used its remote sensing satellites to build cooperative links with other countries. From 1966
onwards the USSR began to share imagery from its meteorological satellites through the World Meteorological Organisation. Imagery
obtained from Salyut missions was also made available to developing countries, some of which were Soviet allies, and some that were
not, for example Cuba, Vietnam, Morocco and Angola."1
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Cooperation is a guise for security—its only for interests of US dominance
Wang 9 (SHENG-CHIH WANG works in the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Free University of Berlin, Germany 2009
“Realism and Classical Geopolitics – Neo-Classical Astropolitics” Geopolitics, The Making of New ‘Space’: Cases of Transatlantic
Astropolitics 14:433–461, 2009, JT)
Future Transatlantic Outer Space Cooperation
In light of historical context, there is strong temptation for Europe and the US to cooperate in outer space utilisation, but there are also
equivalent individual incentives to compete or act unilaterally. By observing transatlantic relations at a different altitude, we can find
some additional lights that illuminate the valid explanation of their interaction patterns. That is, analysing European and US practices
in outer space application programmes lets us stand on a giant’s shoulder, and gain a perspective on transatlantic politics that is
difficult to achieve from ground level.
The doctrine of ‘leadership’ is inherently ingrained in the core of US outer space policy. For Europe, developing a broad outer space
capability was both a prerequisite to ‘equal partner’ in designing, producing, and managing outer space infrastructures with the US,
and a backbone of European political, economic, and cultural autonomy vis-à-vis the US.70
Finally, with its ascending outer space capability, Europe successfully reduced European dependence on the US and countered the US
‘leadership’ doctrine with one of ‘autonomy.’71 Europe gradually becomes an equal partner with the US in transatlantic astropolitics.
An equal partner indicates symmetric technological capability, interdependent contributions to critical path technology and
infrastructure components, participation in systems and technical management, and shared programme leadership. By the late 1980s,
European capability in ELVs, telecommunication, Earth remote sensing, and outer space science was not only comparable to that of
the US, but commercially more successful. The US has to face the prospects of both cooperation and competition in its relations with
Europe.72
Outer space is coming down to Earth with human capability to utilise it. Increasing neo-classical astropolitical concerns are integrated
into states’ policy agendas and technology development. From research findings of these case studies, the freedom of action and the
seizure of pivotal position/market of outer space ensure the fulfilment of European and US geopolitical interests. Pragmatic and
flexible balance of geopolitical interests serves as the major dynamics of transatlantic astropolitics. To make a bold prediction, the
future transatlantic cooperation in outer space application programmes will remain structure-determined, utility-based, and will
vary according to the degree of coincidence of European and US geopolitical interests.
Cooperation theory is wrong- superpowers will just exploit smaller countries for their innovations
Huntley 2009 (Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate
School 2009 “Securing Outer Space”)
Canada's participation in the shuttle program gave it a role in the core US space plans of the period. When shuttle flights
commenced in the early 1980s, che Canadian flag on the Canadarm provided a visibility pteviously lacking for Canada's
space program despite its several space "firsts." In addi¬tion, the national manipulator arm effort facilitated Canadian
astronauts entering the shuttle program, the first of whom flew in October 1984 on the shuttle Challenger.Cooperation on
the shuttle project also marked the maturation of Canada's strategy to become a niche technology provider. For smaller
states, participa¬tion in US and EU programs, such as the shuttle or the International Space Station (ISS), are prime
opportunities to develop specific roles that entail significant technology and information flows to and from larger space
powers. Developing niche specializations, if possible, enables smaller states to take part in advanced space achievements.
Realizing it could not compete with the United States and the major European states across the entire spectrum of space
activities, Canada's niche provider role offered opportunities to become a valued contributor to the larger states' efforts.A
niche strategy involves a number of risks. Rapid or unanticipated changes in technology may render one's specialty
obsolece. Rivals may take over che niche. Larger states may deliberately undermine smaller states' niche strategies to
eliminate competition, or do so inadvertently out of igno¬rance and inattention - exemplifying how larger states often
simply do not take smallet states' interests into account. Nevertheless, Canada saw active but carefully calibrated space
participation as offering the chance to leverage its limited technological and economic assets into considetable direct social
benefits and wider national gains. The opportunities seemed to outweigh the risk's. Insofar as the value of Canada's exports
in space technologies has now become greater than government budgets each year for supporting space activities, the
strategy has paid off (Canadian Space Agency 2002).
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Cooperation theory is flawed- superpowers will only exploit weaker states for their science.
Huntley 2009 (Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate
School 2009 “Securing Outer Space”)
US-Canadian space cooperation reached an even deeper level with NASA's 1984 initiation of(the space station program.
Canada's eventual development of the two manipulator units for the International Space Station was the first time the
United States allowed Canada a role in the "critical pathway" — activities or actions that absolutely must be accomplished
for the program to succeed. NASA had never allowed any other state to have such a vital role, sometimes expending
considerable resources to avoid it. A series of coterminous ESA missions also contributed to the further growth of Canadian
space science, further validating its niche strategy. Despite such ongoing space cooperation, Canada also pursued national
cap-abilities in more commercial areas. The country's geographic size and sparse population made'control over some
communication satellites a national prior¬ity. Wich 1972's launching of the first in the Anik satellite series, Canada created
a purely national Comsat system, Telesat Canada, independent of the then US-dominated Intelsat. Comsat independence
bolstered Canadian national autonomy beyond space activities. Continuing efforts in this vein led to the Radarsat-1, a
remote-sensing satellite capable of producing military-quality, all-weather images across the globe. Radarsat-1 was
launched from the space shuttle in 1995. Canada's intentions to make high quality Radarsat imagery commercially
available, however, led the United States to decide that it would not launch or provide critical components for the successor
Radarsat-2 (Bates 2002). Fortunately for Canada, European satellite builders and the Ariane space launchers were available
to circumvent this obstacle (Canadian Space Agency 1999).The conflict over Radarsat illustrates how the United States and
Canada increasingly operate under divergent approaches to space activity. Concern for security drives US thinking as much
as ever, while Canada is increasingly reliant on a peaceful space environment for its own purposes. Exemplifying this
conflict, the United States in 1999 withdrew its exemption for Canada (and other US allies) to the restrictions of the US
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The move imposed significant new limitations on US—Canada space
and defense technology exchanges. Canada's implemen¬tation of parallel export controls under its Controlled Goods
Program (CGP) restored some access but in turn impinged on technology cooperation with non-US partners. Canadian
space industries' success at working around these restrictions has come at a considerable cost in money and time (Choi and
Nicelescu 2006: 29-34).Because Canadian space capabilities have become relatively more balanced and alternative
partnering opportunities exist, US efforts to dominate Canadian space policies are far less viable. Nevertheless, due to the
particular intimacy of US—Canada defense relations, US restrictions on dissemination of certain space technologies remain
meaningful, whilethe huge size of combined US civil and military space budget boosts US corporations as commercial
rivals.
Cooperation is wrong- all space programs are based on a desire to maintain total space dominance
Huntley 2009 (Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate
School 2009 “Securing Outer Space” )
"Joint Vision 2010" was superceded by "Joint Vision 2020" in 2000. This updated blueprint for the US Defense Department
retains the central US military planning objective of "full-spectrum dominance," meaning "the ability of U.S. forces,
operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations"
(Garamone 2000).This vision elaboration, in turn, provides the "framing" within which current US military planning and
policy-making on expanding military uses of space is now being undertaken.4 The particular framing flowing from this
planning is an ever-increasing imperative to sustain US dominance in space. This framing provides the basis for grave
interpretation of otherwise modest events, such as, for example, Saddam Hussein's attempt to jam US GPS satellite signals
at the outset of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In the words of General Lance Lord, commander of US Space
Command, this action denoted: "The war in space began during Operation Iraqi Freedom."5
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Space cooperation is just a shield for the creation of sides in the battle for space dominance
Huntley 2009 (Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate
School 2009 “Securing Outer Space” )
To many US analysts, the Canadian position — seeking deep collaboration with the United States on civil space projects by
opposing its military space planning - appears puzzling, if not contradictory. But Canada has followed a course on space
activities generally consistent with its intetests and capabilities. This orientation is both internally consistent and typical of
the aims, if not the achievements, of most smallet-sized states. On space-related issues, Canada shares with many other
states the viewpoint of the less empowered; friendliness with the United States is not the sole determinant of the strategies
smaller states choose to pursue. The majority of states cannot be independent space-faring powers, and whether they are
allies or adversaries of the United States, they share a qualitatively different viewpoint on space development given by
these limitations.The distinctive viewpoint of smaller states derives from the basic asymme-tries of capabilities both
generally and specifically with respect to space. Great powers tend to reckon their positions in relation to other great
powers, and tend to see those other powers as rivals, if not adversaries. Hence they tend to consider interactions with other
states to be competitive, if not conflictual, and they focus on developing indigenous resources to enhance their positions in
these interactions. They tend to regard smaller powers as potential proxies and/or sources of assistance, to the extent they
pay attention to them at all.Smaller states look at the world differently. When reckoning their positions, they tend to focus
not on peer smaller powers, but also on the great powers, who they tend to see not just as allies or adversaries, but as "deaf
giants" who could impinge their interests out of ignotance or apathy. Put simply, the mice want to avoid getting underfoot
of the elephants.Hence, for smaller states, the key to interactions with other states is to develop relationships. Whether
specific and direct (such as a bilateral collabo-ration with a greater power) or general and multilateral (such as negotiation
of a global regime), the development of structured relationships provides assurances to smaller states that their interests are
acknowledged and will continue to be recognized over time.Thus, smaller states cannot help but focus directly on the
activities of the great powers, and seek to influence them in any ways they are able. The few states with significant spacefaring capabilities can pursue their interests independently. Smaller states, lacking independent capabilities, find that the
most effective means available to them are collaborations, either through alliances or regimes.
This fundamental difference in modes of pursuing interests is even starker when considered in the context of the distinction
between military and non-military space interests (the latter including commercial development, astronomy, exploration
and other uses). Their distinct modes of orientation cleave the ways great and smaller powers view the military and nonmilitary space dimensions.For great powers, military space is a realm of competition, defined by capabilities; they are
natural masters of this realm, which fits their predisposition to act autonomously. Smaller powers, disempowered in
military space, regard it as a realm of lawlessness and potential conflict posing nothing but impediments to progress. The
autonomy natural to military space considerations is in tension with this predisposition. Pursuit of regime development,
such as a PAROS treaty, is the fully sincere response.Smaller powers prioritize civil space, a realm where potential
collaborations and niche roles offer opportunities to serve their interests. This viewpoint fits naturally smaller states'
predisposition to pursue space activities through relationships. Conversely, great powers tend to subsume civil space to the
thinking flowing from military space. The collaboration required for civil space development is in tension with their
predisposition to autonomy. Security concerns take priority, with civilian capabilities becoming national "assets." The
prioritization of US export controls under ITAR is an example of this attitude.
The differing perspectives between great and smaller powers with regard to the military and civil sectors of space
development are depicted in Figure 9.3.
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The aff’s rhetoric of international cooperation is a front to ensure that no state can dominate space
Hickman et al 10 ( John Hickman, associate professor in Government and International Studies, 11-11-10, “Resurrecting the
Space Age: A State-Centered Commentary on the Outer Space Regime,” Comparative Strategy, 21:1, pg. 1-20)
Thus, the rhetoric of harmony and cooperation that attends most descriptions of humanity’s entry into outer space simply
belies the historical record. Despite an ongoing effort to make the cosmos an international commons (the so–called
‘province of mankind’), expansion into near–Earth space came not as the accommodating effort of many nations joined as
one, but rather as an integral component of an overall strategy applied by wary superpowers attempting to ensure their
political survival. The technique chosen was to establish an international regime ensuring that no state could achieve an
unanticipated advantage in space—for if any one state could dominate space, the face of international politics might be
changed forever. The diplomatic technique is classically geopolitical. The best analogy is Halford Mackinder’s discussion
of the vital importance of not allowing any one state to control the Eastern European approaches to the heartland of Eurasia,
for if any state could, the rest of the world would be doomed to eventual political subordinance [3]. Regimes are an
important and evolving component of the post World War II international environment, yet outside of political science they
appear poorly understood. Robert Krasner, who has done more to develop the notion and explain the relevance of regimes
to the academic community, describes them as: “Principles, norms, rules, and decision–making procedures around which
actor expectations converge in a given issue area” [4]. The four characteristics are arrayed in a strict top–down hierarchy.
“Principles are beliefs of fact, causation, and rectitude. Norms are standards of behavior dened in terms of rights and
obligations. Rules are speciŽ c prescriptions or proscriptions for action. Decision–making procedures are prevailing practices
for making and implementing collective choice”
Transatlantic cooperation arises solely from a shared fear of the developing world.
Meghana V. Nayak, Department of Political Science, Pace University, and Christopher Malone, Chief Advisory Officer at The
Relational Capital Group. 2009, “American Orientalism and American Exceptionalism: A Critical Rethinking of US Hegemony,”
(International Studies Review 11, 253-276)
Do Europe and the United States still need or even want to be a part of the same collective security agreement, given
European resentment of its heavy reliance on the United States during the intervention in Kosovo, divisiveness as to how to
address terrorism after 9/11, Europe’s resistance to the US desire to provide military aid to Turkey on the eve of the
invasion of Iraq, and European criticism over the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Croci and Verdun 2006)? Or, are the
fears that “developing” countries are sponsoring Islamic fundamentalism, proliferating nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons for their security, or offering fierce economic competition substantial enough to warrant continued yet
apprehensive transatlantic cooperation? While Europeans are said to view international law as a primary tool of diplomacy,
the United States has defended its sovereign right to put forth a national security strategy without consulting with others.
The 2005 EU Counterterrorism Strategy focused on political responses inclusive of prevention, understanding, and justice;
the White House 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism emphasized defeat of the enemy and an offensive
militaristic approach. Some scholars even make distinctions between “old terrorism” in Europe, or political violence
exercising some measure of restraint with clear political goals, versus the “new” terrorism the United States primarily faces
by unseen enemies who are decentralized and without clear political goals (Stevenson 2003). Interestingly, Judt (2005:11)
discusses Europe’s direct experience of the “worst”—civil war, genocide, anarchy, whereas the United States supposedly
had “no direct experience of the worst of the twentieth century-and is thus regrettably immune to its lessons.” George W.
Bush noted soon after 9/11: On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country.
Americans have known wars—but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in
1941. Americans have known the casualties of war—but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans
have known surprise attacks—but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day—
and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. (Bush 2001) These contemporary tensions
and questions should be understood in the context of American Exceptionalism, which reveals a long-standing ambivalence
by the United States about Europe. Orientalism does not make these distinctions between Western countries, and we
implore critical IR to think through the implications of the aforementioned questions. We argue that the tension within the
so-called Atlantic Alliance is not simply about changes rendered by globalization or by the Bush Doctrine, or even a
potential rethinking about transatlantic values, as mainstream scholars might maintain. Rather, it is indicative of how and
why Western powers differ in the way they perform sovereignty. A critical analysis of the clashes would bring to light how
European power is not necessarily “better” than or more inclusive than American hegemony but is perhaps taking
advantage of the backlash against American Exceptionalism in its most recent form. This brings us to the next point.
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State link
The relegation of politics to the terrain of state necessitates securitized responses – all violence can be
justified at the level of the state
Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Assistant-Secretary-General at the United Nations, Master of Science in Foreign Service
from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Professor in Department of Politics at Northeastern University, 20 09,
“Securing Outer Space”
To understand what it means to "see like a state" is not only to understand the world in terms of realpolitik and the
traditional realist tenet of interests defined in terms of power, but to comprehend the power of the symbolic order that this
form of social order deploys. In other words the symbolic order around state sovereignty constrains our ability to conceive
of alternative configurations of political space in modernity since, as Rob Walker explains,, "states have managed to more
or less monopolize our understanding of what political life is and where it occurs" (1990: 6). In terms of security, this
monopolization manifests itself, as Walker suggests, in that "the security of states dominates our understanding of what
security can be and who it can be for" (Walker 1990: 6). What this standpoint effectively forecloses is the capacity of civil
society to contest or to question the weapons of war that secure the existence of the state and its territorial integrity. As
Bigo suggests,- .„ even if all these concepts were arms in symbolic and political struggles between different groups, the
concepts of sovereignty, security and borders always structure our thought as if there existed a "body" — an "envelope," or
"container" - differentiating one polity from another. (Bigo 2002: 67)1 It is precisely this type of understanding that is
deployed in understanding the vulnerabilities to space-based assets, and the need to defend those assets, in terms of a "space
Pearl Harbor" as outlined above. Although understanding space-based assets and their defense in terms of the state-ascontainer metaphor is difficult, "Pearl Harbor" serves to deploy such an understanding as an extension of the U.S. national
intetests. After all, being on Oahu, Hawaii, before its admission as the fiftieth state of the union, "Pearl Harbor" is not an
attack on the territorial integrity of the U.S. mainland, yet it is, for all intents and purposes, an attack not only on U.S. interests, but on the extremities of the forward defenses of the state - i.e. an extension of the state as such. It is through this
imaginary - the one that sees space as "an ultimate high ground" — that one can understand space as a continuum, as a
transfer of the same logic into just another "medium" beyond "air, land and sea" as described in the Rumsfeld Commission
quote at the outset of this chapter
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As long as security acts remain enacted for the ‘preservation of the State’, the state is allowed to use its
morphing doctrine of reason to override liberalism.
(Mark Neocleous, 08, “Critique of Security”, Brunel University in the Department of Government)
The doctrine of reason of state holds that besides moral reason there is another reason independent of traditional (that is,
Christian) values and according to which power should be wielded, not according to the dictates of good conscience and
morality, but according to whatever is needed to maintain the state. The underlying logic here is order and security rather
than ‘the good’, and the underlying basis of the exercise of power is necessity, The doctrine is thus founded on principles
and assumptions seemingly antithetical to the liberal idea of liberty- in either the moral or the legal sense. Courses of action
that would be condemned as immoral if conducted by individuals could be sanctioned when undertaken by the sovereign
power. ‘When I talked of murdering or keeping the Pisans imprisones, I didn’t perhaps talk as a Christian: I talked
according to the reason and practice of states’ Hence for Machiavelli, Romulus deserved to be excused for the death of his
brother and his companion because ’what he did was done for the common good'? The doctrine of reason of state thus treats
the sovereign as autonomous from morality; the state can engage in whatever actions it thinks right — ’contrary to truth,
contrary to charity contrary to humanity contrary to religion'” — so long as they are necessary and performed for the public
good. But this is to also suggest that the state might act beyond law and the legal limits on state power so long as it does so
for 'the common good', the ’good of the people' or the 'preservation of the state'. ln being able to legitimate state power in
all its guises the doctrine of reason of state was of enormous importance, becoming a weapon brandished in power games
between princes and then states, eventually becoming the key ideological mechanism of international confrontation as the
doctrine gradually morphed into ’interest of state', ’security of state' and, finally ’national security’.“ The doctrine identifies
security — simultaneously of the people and the state (since these are always ideologically conflated) — as the definitive
aspect of state power. Security becomes the overriding political interest, the principle above all other principles, and
underpins interventions across the social realm in the name of reason of state. As such, the doctrine would therefore appear
to be antithetical to liberalism if liberalism is identified as a doctrine which aims to tip the balance of power towards a
principled defence of liberty rather than a demand for security at whatever cost. The doctrine would also appear to be
antithetical to an argument which purports to root sovereignty in the people rather than the state, as Locke’s philosophy is
often said to do. But in fact Locke’s argument is not an account of sovereignty at all. ‘Sovereignty’, in Locke’s work, is
subsumed in typical liberal fashion under an alternative concept, prerogative, as exercised by the ’supreme power’,“ albeit
’incroach’d upon . . . by positive Laws'. In this context prerogative becomes a liberal synonym for reason of state, justified
by the security function that resides ultimately with the state. Under- pinning Locke’s account of prerogative, then, is
nothing less than a liberal argument for reason of state, and Locke adopts a range of strategies from the reason of state
tradition, albeit without the claims about the irrelevance of good conscience, (It might be relevant to note that at the time of
writing parts of the Two Treatises Locke was taking notes from Gabriel Naudé’s defence of reason of state in
Considerations Politiques sur les Coups d’Estut, 1667,26 and that between 1681 and 1683 had shown a real interest in
political conspiracies?) And out of this we can begin to trace what turns out to be nothing less than a liberal prioritizing of
security.
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Economic development in space obligates a broad security apparatus – the military must expand to police
the market
Raymond Duvall, Prrofessor of political science @ University of Minnesota, and Dr. Jonathan Havercroft, professor of political
science @ Oklahoma University, October 2006, “Taking Sovereignty Out of This World: Space Weapons and Empire of the Future”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=2185920&jid=RIS&volumeId=34&issueId=04&aid=2185916 ACC
7/21/11
The doctrine of space control has emerged in the U.S. military out of the belief that assets in space represent a potential
target for enemies of the U.S. 56 There are two kinds of vulnerable U.S. assets: private-commercial; and military. One
concern is that rivals may attack commercial satellites, thereby disrupting the flow of information and potentially
inflicting significant harm on global markets. Militarily, a second concern is that, through its increasing reliance on
satellites for its Earth-based military operations, the U.S. has created an “asymmetrical vulnerability”. An adversary
(including a non-state, “terrorist” organization) could effectively immobilize U.S. forces by disabling the military satellites
that provide communication, command, and control capabilities. As noted above, U.S. military planners are already
warning about a possible “Space Pearl Harbor”. Consequently, the doctrine of space control is designed to protect
commercial and military satellites from potential attacks, and ultimately to prevent rivals from having access to space. 57
As of the year 2000 there were over 500 satellites in orbit owned by 46 countries, worth in excess of $250 billion. With
the rise of the information economy, satellites are playing an increasing role in international trade and finance. As such,
U.S. military planners are concerned about commercial satellites. One rationalization for the weaponization of space is
that these commercial assets represent a vulnerability to economic sabotage and terrorism. As Lambeth has argued, The
most compelling reason for moving forward for dispatch toward acquiring at least the serious elements of space control
capability is that the United States is now unprecedentedly invested and dependent upon on-orbit capabilities, both
military and commercial. Since these equities can only be expected to grow in sunk cost, it is fair to presume that they will
eventually be challenged by potential opponents. 58 Notice how this description of space control discusses space in terms
of a set of capital assets that should be protected from external threats. While scholars have for a long time debated
whether one, if not the, primary objective of U.S. military endeavors is to protect the interests of business, when it comes
to questions of space control it is one of only two things in space to protect. There are no human populations in space—
with the exception of the two or three occupants on the International Space Station—that could be killed by conflict in
space, so the thing that is being secured through the project of space control is technology—either commercial satellites or
military assets. In Volume One of Capital, Marx chided classical political economists for their inability to explain how
workers became separated from the means of production n. Whereas political economists such as Adam Smith argued that
a previous accumulation of capital was necessary for a division of labor, Marx argued that this doctrine was an absurd
doctrine. Division of labor existed in pre-capitalist societies where workers were not alienated from their labor. Instead,
Marx argued that the actual historical process of primitive accumulation of capital was carried out through brute force.
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous
population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a
preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist
production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation. 59 While not a perfect analogy,
because of the lack of labour occurring in orbital space, the doctrine of space control is part and parcel of an ongoing
process of such primitive accumulation. One of the purposes of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty was to keep outer space a
commons where all states, regardless of technical ability or economic or military power, could participate in the potential
benefits space has to offer. In the years since this treaty was signed, the primary economic use of space has been for
commercial communications satellites. This industry has expanded dramatically in the last two decades. Total revenues
for commercial space-related industries in 1980 were 2.1 billion dollars; by 2003 this figure had expanded to $91 billion
and it was expected to increase at least as rapidly into the foreseeable future. 60 On the economic front, space control is
about determining who has access to this new economy. Positions in orbit for satellites are a new form of “real estate,”
and by controlling access to outer space the U.S. would be forcibly appropriating the orbits around Earth, thereby placing
the U.S. in a position to determine which governments and corporations could use space. In effect, orbital slots around
earth would be turned into private property. This process of primitive accumulation is of importance to our concerns in
two ways. First, the doctrine of space control represents the extension of U.S. sovereignty into outer space. In addition to
being a clear violation of international law, it reinforces the constitutive effect identified in the previous section on missile
[continued…no text removed]
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[continued…no text removed]
defense, namely to re-inscribe the “hard shell” borders of the U.S., which are now extended to include the “territory” of
outer space. This simultaneously constitutes the exclusive sovereignty of the U.S., while displacing the sovereignty of
other states. 12 Second, space control bears significantly on the production of political subjectivities. The original Star
Trek series would begin with the voice of Captain Kirk describing space as the “final frontier”. While presenting the
exploration of space as a largely peaceful enterprise, the TV show was also drawing upon its viewers’ “memories” of the
“western frontier” of 19 th century U.S. expansion. At least since the writings of Frederick Turner, there has been the
notion that the frontier represents the well-spring of U.S. ingenuity, freedom, and creativity. According to Turner, because
as they expanded westward settlers in the U.S. had to continually adapt to a new environment, they became increasingly
“American”. The theme of the frontier as essential for American identity has had a significant discursive role in U.S.
imperialist expansion. 61 Although Turner concluded that the American frontier had closed by the late 1890s, he argued
that the U.S. could extend it frontier into new countries, such as Latin America. Theodore Roosevelt, influenced by the
Turner thesis, concluded that in order to maintain the exceptional American identity new frontiers had to be opened
overseas. The notion of frontiers, then, has been integral to the U.S. imperialist project since its outset. The doctrine of
space control, seen in this light, is simply an extension of the imperial logic. By expanding into and taking control of the
“final frontier” the U.S. is continuing to renew an exceptional—an exclusive—identity by adapting itself to the harsh
realities of a new environment. So, the doctrine of space control can be read as extending U.S. sovereignty into orbit.
While a clear violation of international law, this de facto expansion of U.S. sovereignty will have two effects. First, it
enables a process of primitive accumulation, whereby orbital spaces around earth are removed from the commons initially
established by the Outer Space Treaty, and places them under the control of the U.S. for use and perhaps even ownership
by businesses sympathetic to U.S. interests. The U.S. becomes even more than it is now the state for global capitalism,
the global capitalist state. Second, this doctrine of space control is part of the ongoing re-production of American subjects
as “Americans”. Embedded within space control is the notion that space is a new frontier. Following the Turner thesis
and Roosevelt’s doctrine of imperialist expansion, there has long been a drive for Americans to seek out new frontiers as a
way of renewing the American identity and promoting American values of individuality, innovation, and exceptionalism.
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Surveillance link
US surveillance technology is the new panopticon- ultimate biopower
Dickens and Omrod ’07 (Peter Dickens, Fellow of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK, and James S. Omrod, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology,
University of Essex, UK, 8/2007, Sage Journals Online, http://soc.sagepub.com/content/41/4/609)
There are two mechanisms through which the majority of the world’s population are kept in a state of reverence towards the cosmos.
Both go towards constructing it as a subject, a powerful agent in its own right, and one dominating Earthly affairs. This is a scenario
with a long history stretching back to early Greece and into Parsons’ ‘cosmological societies’ (Parsons, 1966; see also Assmann,
2002), and witnessed in E.B. Tylor’s animistic tribal religions. The first is a sense of fear related to the kinds of military and
surveillance applications mentioned above. The second is a feeling of inadequacy in the face of contemporary cosmological theory.
There is a direct parallel between Bentham’s panopticon and this new orbital or ‘planetary’ panopticon (Whitaker, 2000). Both involve
a watchstation up on high that watches deviant populations, and in neither case do the monitored have any knowledge of whether or
not they are being watched. Foucault (1977) argued that this results in the watched regulating their own behaviour and conforming to
the required social order. There are signs that the orbital panopticon is having a similar effect on people’s subjectivity and relationship
with the universe. The ‘eye in the sky’ reinforces the idea that the heavens are distinct from Earthly affairs as far as monitored
populations are concerned; a remystification of, and alienation from, the universe, which reduces people to passive conformists. Those
able to utilize satellite technology have symbolically replaced God in the Heavens: the American military, for example, gaining a
‘God’s eye view’ over the planet (Weiner, 2004). Public knowledge that wars from space can be conducted instantaneously, without
the possibility of forewarning or resistance, furthers this fear that parallels pre-modern anxiety in the face of angry and punishing gods
in the sky. US plans to construct ‘rods from God’, tungsten rods suspended from a satellite that can be dropped on targets on Earth
with the impact of a nuclear explosion, play on this kind of sentiment.
Satellite technology seeks to impose order through constant surveillance.
Nardon, Laurence, French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), Paris, 2007, Astropolitics, 5:1, 29 – 62, 'Cold War Space
Policy and Observation Satellites'
A characteristic of contemporary society is that the focus of interest has switched from the King as source of power—with the rest of
society remaining an obscure mass—to a system where different techniques seek to watch the latter, putting them in full light. This
feature is reminiscent of satellite observation, a hidden technology that monitors human activities. A further element of Foucault’s
work also provides a link to post 1945 observation techniques. In his book, Discipline and Punish, the Birth of the Prison, Michel
Foucault describes the reformatory prison as a disciplining institution that is characteristic of contemporary power. In the second half
of the 18th Century, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) devised a new model of jailhouses.6 Bentham was the founder
of Utilitarian philosophy. He believed that the ultimate moral principle is to create means of progress for the human condition.7 His
jailhouse model, called the Panopticon, would be such that convicts sent there would acquire social discipline and be redeemed. The
building has a very precise plan. The cells holding the prisoners are set in a ring around a central tower, in which the sentinel is sitting.
Each cell has a window looking inside the ring. The sentinel can look into each cell whenever he wants to. The prisoners cannot hide
from him and have no way of knowing when they are being watched. They know they cannot misbehave without behind found out
and punished. Very quickly, they will interiorize the discipline enforced by the prison system and stop misbehaving of their own
accord. When let out of prison, they will be responsible citizens. According to Foucault, the Panopticon prison is symbolic of the
contemporary power exerted on members of society. Constant surveillance brings self-discipline to the prisoners. A Panopticon in
Space Can the Panopticon scheme be adapted to the post-1960s era, when observation satellites were first deployed for purposes of
intelligence? The defining elements are the same indeed. Observation satellites provide an all-powerful means of surveillance.
Everybody can be watched by a single power, via deployment of technical devices. The fact that the watchers (the satellites) now
circle the inmates (people on Earth), in a role reversal of the Bentham plan, does not alter the governing principles of the Panopticon.
In order to complete the parallel between the Bentham jailhouse and observation satellite systems, the possibility of a reformatory
motive for the latter must be explored. Were the space observation systems deployed by the U.S. after 1960 given the purpose of
disciplining other countries of the world? Was that their political raison d’eˆtre? Although military space systems were classified after
1962, the U.S. government made sure other countries’ leadership knew about their new intelligence-gathering tool. The Soviet Union
was well aware of the new technology, since it was already working on its own version. Under the Kennedy Presidency, official tours
of Western capitals were organized to brief political leaders, military, foreign affairs, and intelligence authorities about space
imagery.8 In the ensuing years, it may therefore have been possible to exert influence based on space-based intelligence on the Soviet
Union as well as allied countries. Careful analysis of government archives, ranging from 1946 to the 1960s sheds light on the political
intent behind American space observation.
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The use of space for surveillance technology places a disciplinary gaze on us from which we can’t escape
– this militarizes everyday life
Fraser MacDonald, Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Melbourne, 2007 “Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit
of geography” Progress in Human Geography 35(1) p. 592-615 http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.full.pdf+html ACC 7/19/11
The geopolitical effects of reconnaissance from space platforms are by no means con- fi ned to particular episodes of
military confl ict. Like the high-altitude spy plane, its Cold War precursor, satellite surveillance also gives strategic and
diplomatic powers. Unlike aerial photography, however, satellite imagery is ubiquitous and high-resolution, and offers t h
e p o t e n t i a l f o r r e a l - t ime s u r v e i l l a n c e . The emerging field of surveillance studies, strongly informed
by critical geographical thought, has opened to scrutiny the politics and spaces of electronic observation (see, for instance,
the new journal Surveillance and Society). The writings of Foucault, particularly those on panopticism, are an obvious
influence on this new work (Foucault, 1977; Wood, 2003), but they have seldom been applied to the realm of outer space.
As Foucault pointed out, the power of Jeremy Bentham’s panopt i con pr i son des i gn i s ena c ted through the
prisoner–subjects internalizing the disciplinary gaze: the presence of the gaoler was immaterial, as the burden of watching
was left to the watched. Similarly, the power of panopt i c orbi t a l survei l l ance l ies in i t s normalizing
geopolitical effects. If the geopolitics of surveillance is particularly evident at the level of the state, it applies also to the
organization of the daily activities of its citizens (Molz, 2006). GPS technology is perhaps the most evident incursion of
space-enabled military surveillance systems into everyday life, becoming an indispensable means of monitoring the
location of people and things. For instance, the manufacturer Pro Tech, riding the wave of public concern about
paedophilia in Britain, has developed systems currently being trialled by the UK Home Offi ce to track the movements of
registered sex offenders (see also Monmonier, 2002: 134). Somewhat predictably, given the apparent crisis in the
spatialities of childhood (Jones et al., 2003), children are to be the next subjects of satellite surveillance. In December
2005, the company mTrack launched i-Kids, a mobile phone/GPS unit that allows parents to track their offspring by PC or
on a WAPe n a b l e d mo b i l e p h o n e . Th o s e wi t h p e t s rather than children might consider the $460
RoamEO GPS system that attaches to your dog’s collar, should walkies ever get out of hand. It will surprise no one that
the same technology gets used for less savoury purposes: a Los Angeles stalker was jailed for 16 months for attaching a
GPS device to his ex-girlfriend’s car (Teather, 2004). What is more startling, perhaps, is that one does not need to be a
GPS user to be subject to the surveillant possibilities of this technology. Anyone who leaves their mobile phone
unattended for five minutes can be tracked, not just by the security services, but by any individual who has momentary
access to enable the phone as a tracking device. For the purposes of a newspaper story, the Guardian journalist Ben
Goldacre ‘stalked’ his girlfriend by registering her phone on one of many websites for the commercial tracking of
employees and stock (Goldacre, 2006). The exercise revealed how easily everyday technologies like the mobile phone can
be reconf i gured for very di f ferent purposes . Even this modest labour in tracking a mobile phone will become a thing
of the past. Phones will be more specifi cally confi gured as a tracking device: Nokia is due to release a GPS phone in
2007, while the Finnish company Benefon has already launched its Twig Discovery, a phone that has a ‘fi nder’ capability
that locates and tracks other contacts in your address book. Should the user come within range of another contact, the
phone will send a message asking whether you are willing to reveal your location to this contact. If both parties are
agreeable, the phones wi l l guide thei r user s to ea ch other. In this way, the gadgetry of space-enabled espionage is
being woven into interpersonal as well as interstate and citizen–state relations. If the movements of a car can be tracked by
a jealous boyfriend, they can also be tracked by the state for the purposes of taxation: this is surely the future of road tolls
in the UK. A British insurance company is already using s a tel l i te technology to cut the premiums for young drivers
if they stay off the roads between 11pm and 6am, when most accidents occur. Information about the time, duration and
route of every single journey made by the driver is recorded and sent back to the company (Bachelor, 2006). The success
of geotechnologies will lie in these ordinary reconfi gurations of life such as tracking parcels, locating stolen cars,
transport guidance or assisting the navigation of the visually impaired. Some might argue, however, that their impact will
be more subtle still. For instance, Nigel Thrift locates the power of new forms of pos i t ioning in precogni t ive
sociality and ‘prerefl exive practice’, that is to say in ‘various kinds of culturally inculcated corporeal automatisms’
(Thrift, 2004b: 175). In other words, these sociotechnical changes may become so incorporated into our unconscious that
we simply cease to think about our position. Getting lost may become diffi cult (Thrift, 2004b: 188). Perhaps we are not at
that stage yet. But one can easily envisage GPS technolog ies enhanc ing exi s t ing inequalities in the very near future,
such as the device that will warn the cautious urban walker that they are entering a ‘bad neighbourhood’. In keeping with
the logic of the panopticon, this is less ‘Big Brother’ than an army of little brothers: the social life of the new space age is
already beginning to look quite different. And it is to this incipient militarization of everyday life that the emerging
literature on ‘military geographies’ (Woodward, 2004; 2005) must surely turn its attention.
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Satellite technology seeks to impose order through constant surveillance.
Nardon, Laurence, French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), Paris, 2007, Astropolitics, 5:1, 29 – 62, 'Cold War Space
Policy and Observation Satellites'
A characteristic of contemporary society is that the focus of interest has switched from the King as source of power—with
the rest of society remaining an obscure mass—to a system where different techniques seek to watch the latter, putting them
in full light. This feature is reminiscent of satellite observation, a hidden technology that monitors human activities. A
further element of Foucault’s work also provides a link to post 1945 observation techniques. In his book, Discipline and
Punish, the Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault describes the reformatory prison as a disciplining institution that is
characteristic of contemporary power. In the second half of the 18th Century, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–
1832) devised a new model of jailhouses.6 Bentham was the founder of Utilitarian philosophy. He believed that the
ultimate moral principle is to create means of progress for the human condition.7 His jailhouse model, called the
Panopticon, would be such that convicts sent there would acquire social discipline and be redeemed. The building has a
very precise plan. The cells holding the prisoners are set in a ring around a central tower, in which the sentinel is sitting.
Each cell has a window looking inside the ring. The sentinel can look into each cell whenever he wants to. The prisoners
cannot hide from him and have no way of knowing when they are being watched. They know they cannot misbehave
without behind found out and punished. Very quickly, they will interiorize the discipline enforced by the prison system and
stop misbehaving of their own accord. When let out of prison, they will be responsible citizens. According to Foucault, the
Panopticon prison is symbolic of the contemporary power exerted on members of society. Constant surveillance brings selfdiscipline to the prisoners. A Panopticon in Space Can the Panopticon scheme be adapted to the post-1960s era, when
observation satellites were first deployed for purposes of intelligence? The defining elements are the same indeed.
Observation satellites provide an all-powerful means of surveillance. Everybody can be watched by a single power, via
deployment of technical devices. The fact that the watchers (the satellites) now circle the inmates (people on Earth), in a
role reversal of the Bentham plan, does not alter the governing principles of the Panopticon. In order to complete the
parallel between the Bentham jailhouse and observation satellite systems, the possibility of a reformatory motive for the
latter must be explored. Were the space observation systems deployed by the U.S. after 1960 given the purpose of
disciplining other countries of the world? Was that their political raison d’eˆtre? Although military space systems were
classified after 1962, the U.S. government made sure other countries’ leadership knew about their new intelligencegathering tool. The Soviet Union was well aware of the new technology, since it was already working on its own version.
Under the Kennedy Presidency, official tours of Western capitals were organized to brief political leaders, military, foreign
affairs, and intelligence authorities about space imagery.8 In the ensuing years, it may therefore have been possible to exert
influence based on space-based intelligence on the Soviet Union as well as allied countries. Careful analysis of government
archives, ranging from 1946 to the 1960s sheds light on the political intent behind American space observation.
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Remote sensing results in disengagement from reality and filters knowledge through an “expert”
discourse.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
With respect to issues of objectivity, one striking aspect of remote sensing of the environment is indeed its very remoteness.
In a sense, satellite-generated photographs of the earth represent the ultimate subject/object dichotomy. Space technology
offers the tantalizing prospect of being able to leave the earth in order to get a better view-the ultimate Archimedean
vantage point. Rather than being embedded participants in the reality depicted, Earth system scientists become disengaged
observers of that reality.23 Thus, according to the celebratory discourse, remote sensing is "building a valid picture of the
earth" for the first time.24 Presumably this picture is "valid" because it is drawn from huge quantities of objective, remotely
acquired information. It is a picture that privileges knowledge derived from abstract science over knowledge derived from
lived experience. The main elements of a spaceborne remote sensing system are "spacecraft, instruments, modeling/systems
engineering, and data processing,"25 elements that give primacy to an expert structure comprised primarily of white men in
affluent societies. To the question, "Who shall be designated as reliable environmental narrators?" Earth system science
answers, "Scientists with professional credentials in physics, chemistry, and computer sciences-particularly those whose
work is most distant from the everyday lived experience of poor people and most women." Whenever quantifiability
monopolizes the mantle of legitimacy, qualititative values are given short shrift, so that even if satellite data are
supplemented with "ground truth," the privileging of abstract decontextualized data is likely to devalue other approaches to
knowledge.26 In particular, as a male-dominated activity, it may reinforce the division of labor that Joni Seager suggests
permeates environmental politics: Women care about the environment and men think about it. 27A strong feminist position
need not valorize caring as the only viable activity, but can rather insist that environmental preservation requires both men
and women to become caring and thinking. The science and technology of satellite monitoring of the global environment
also fail the neutrality test from another perspective, when developing countries are taken into account. Not only is the
"remoteness" of remotely sensed data emblematic of a masculinist bias, it also exemplifies the schism between the rich and
the poor. The multicolor renditions of satellite images, which can only be deciphered by experts with access to specialized
equipment, illustrate the cultural and socioeconomic gap between the scientists who produce them and the lived experience
of most of the world's people. The fact that satellite data must be converted to visual images, a task that requires highly
sophisticated imaging technologies, also illustrates the difference in how experience of the world is gained by scientists in
contrast to most people. Given the historical record, it is not at all certain that those images and data will serve the interests
of those whose material survival is continually in jeopardy. Consider the controversy over measurements of greenhouse
emissions, information that would appear to be derivable through objective means. During negotiations for an international
climate change convention leading up to the Earth Summit in 1992, the World Resources Institute (WRI), a U.S.-based
environmental nongovernmental organization, published its country-by-country estimates of greenhouse gas emissions.
Without any attempt to frame its data in terms of emissions per capita, WRI concluded that India, China, and Brazil are
among the top five countries responsible for global warming.28 In a rare instance of a challenge to Western science
emanating from a developing country, two scientists from the Center for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi
argued that both the WRI figures and conclusions were wrong. Starting with the premise that "there is no reason to believe
that any human being in any part of the world is more or less important than another," they ask: "Can we really equate the
carbon dioxide contributions of gas-guzzling automobiles in Europe and North America (or, for that matter, anywhere in
the Third World) with the methane emissions of water buffalo and rice fields of subsistence farmers in West Bengal or
Thailand?"29 The WRI-CSE controversy was not merely scientific; it reflected deep dissension over moral and political
responsibility. As subsequent commentators noted, the WRI study implicitly "recycled an old scare tactic: What if the poor
rise to the average level of per capita greenhouse gas emissions as the rich?"30 Without explicitly focusing on this issue,
the CSE report attempted to shift the blame for global warming from population to consumption. While developing
countries rarely contest the neutrality of Western science, we can expect such controversies to become more common if
research agendas and environmental data continue to be dominated by industrialized countries.
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Space tourism link
The pursuit of space exploration and development, such as space tourism, is inherently tied to power.
This alters predominant self identification in which the individual relates to the self in a form of selfworshiping narcissicism.
Peter Dickens and James S. Ormrod, Univerity of Essex, 2007, “Outer Space and Internal Nature: Towards a Sociology of the
Universe” Sociology 2007 41: 609 (British Sociological Association)
How does this discussion of contemporary subjectivity in a globalized society relate to our main theme, that of an emergent cosmic
society? What forms of subjectivity are now developing in relation to a society that is socializing, privatizing and humanizing the
cosmos? Again, we find a shift, one both There are strong indications that these pro-space activists are amongst those most affected by
late modern narcissism. Early on in life, these activists come to project infantile unconscious phantasies (those relating to omnipotence
and fusion with the infant’s ‘universe’) into conscious fantasies2 about exploring and developing space, which increasingly seem a
possibility and which now achieve legitimacy largely through the ideology of the libertarian right. Those who have grown up in the
‘post-Sputnik’ era and were exposed at an early date to science fiction are particularly likely to engage in fantasies or daydreams about
travelling in space, owning it, occupying it, consuming it and bringing it under personal control. Advocates talk about fantasies of
bouncing up and down on the moon or playing golf on it, of mining asteroids or setting up their own colonies. These fantasies serve to
protect the unconscious phantasy that they are still in the stage of infantile narcissism. Of course not all of those people growing up in
late modern societies come to fantasize about space at such an early age like this, and are less single minded in their attempts to
control and consume the universe, but we argue that this is nonetheless the way in which some dominant sectors of Western society
relate to the universe. It is not only pro-space activists, but many well-to-do businesspeople and celebrities who are lining up to take
advantage of new commercial opportunities to explore space as tourists. The promise of power over the whole universe is therefore
the latest stage in the escalation of the narcissistic personality. A new kind of ‘universal man’ is in the making. Space travel and
possible occupation of other planets further inflates people’s sense of omnipotence. Fromm (1976) discusses how in Western societies
people experience the world (or indeed the universe) through the ‘having’ mode, whereby individuals cannot simply appreciate the
things around them, but must own and consume them. For the narcissistic pro-space activist, this sentiment means that they feel a
desperate need to bring the distant objects of outer space under their control: Some people will look up at the full moon and they’ll
think about the beauty of it and the romance and history and whatever. I’ll think of some of those too but the primary thing on my
mind is gee I wonder what it looks like up there in that particular area, gee I’d love to see that myself. I don’t want to look at it up
there, I want to walk on it. (25-year-old engineering graduate interviewed at ProSpace March Storm 2004) Omnipotent daydreaming
of this kind is also closely linked to the idea of regaining a sense of wholeness and integration once experienced with the mother (or
‘monad’) in the stage of primary narcissism, counterposed to a society that is fragmenting and alienating. Experiencing weightlessness
and seeing the Earth from space are other common fantasies. Both represent power, the ability to ‘break the bonds of gravity’,
consuming the image of the Earth (Ingold, 1993; Szersynski and Urry, 2006) or ‘possessing’ it through gazing at it (Berger, 1972).
They also represent a return to unity. Weightlessness represents the freedom from restraint experienced in pre-oedipal childhood, and
perhaps even a return to the womb (Bainbridge, 1976: 255). Seeing the Earth from space is an experience in which the observer
witnesses a world without borders. This experience has been dubbed ‘the overview effect’ based on the reported life-changing
experiences of astronauts (see White, 1987). Humans’ sense of power in the universe means our experience of the cosmos and our
selves is fundamentally changing: It really presents a different perspective on your life when you can think that you can actually throw
yourself into another activity and transform it, and when we have a day when we look out in the sky and we see lights on the moon,
something like that or you think that I know a friend who’s on the other side of the Sun right now. You know, it just changes the
nature of looking at the sky too. (46-year-old space scientist interviewed at ProSpace March Storm 2004) In the future, this form of
subjectivity may well characterize more and more of Western society. A widespread cosmic narcissism of this kind might appear to
have an almost spiritual nature, but the cosmic spirituality we are witnessing here is not about becoming immortal in the purity of the
heavens. Rather, it is spirituality taking the form of self-worship; further aggrandizing the atomized, self-seeking, 21st-century
individual (see Heelas, 1996). Indeed, the pro-space activists we interviewed are usually opposed to those who would keep outer space
uncontaminated, a couple suggesting we need to confront the pre-Copernican idea of a corrupt Earth and ideal ‘Heaven’.
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Colonization link
The aff’s utopian vision of colonization betrays a flawed dream of perfection, translating the worst forms
of violence into space
Jim Pass, founder of the subdiscipline of astrosociology, and Albert Harrison, professor emeritus in the department of
psychology at UC Davis, September 2007, AIAA “Shifting from Airports to Spaceports: An Astrosociological Model of Social
Change toward Spacefaring societies”,
http://www.astrosociology.com/library/pdf/contributions/space%202007%20articles/airports%20to%20spaceports.pdf / KX
Utopias and idea types represent entirely different concepts. The first describes a desired “perfect” society. The latter
describes a description of a “typical” social organization of a specific type of social structure. It may focus on an entire
social system, as in the present case, or it may describe a part of a social system such as a bureaucracy or other social
structure. A. Utopian Limitations Much of the writing about societies in space has a utopian flavor. That is, visionaries
assure us that we will leave our problems behind as we re-establish ourselves in space. Rapidly advancing technologies will
keep us healthy, productive, and in good spirits and new social orders will eliminate poverty, discrimination, and war. As
“the final frontier,” space has been likened to the American west in the 19th century, a vast untapped reservoir of resources
which offers salvation for hoards of emigrants from crowded, poverty-stricken, stagnant parts of the world. However,
unlike the American west (which now includes some of America’s most populous states), the final frontier is endless and
will never close. Robert Zubrin, for example, has developed exciting lists of economic, social, and personal advantages to
emigration to the high frontier. Utopian views of communities in space include huge, uncluttered spacecraft; spacious
orbiting platforms, architecturally stunning lunar bases with panoramic views. The luxurious space colonies envisioned by
Gerard K. O’Neill certainly have a utopian flavor, and utopian overtones are inescapable in Marshall Savage’s Millennial
Project which promises, through the shrewd use of resources, novel technology and ingenious social arrangements to help
us “colonize the galaxy in eight easy steps” within the next thousand years. Other writers have identified themes of
salvation in the conquest of space. The best and brightest Americans – the astronauts – soar to the heavens where they seek
perfection and redemption among the stars. Apart from when these are pressed upon us by the reality of upcoming
missions, rarely, if ever do we find realistic discussions of the challenges and difficulties associated with life in space that
are unavoidably characterized by a high reliance on high technology and therefore susceptible to equipment malfunctions
and crop failures. Today’s real space stations look like dragonflies rather than pinnacles or aesthetic achievement. Their
interiors are cramped, rather than spacious, cluttered rather than highly organized, dirty rather than clean, and crews survive
because of improvisation as well as plan. Ambient noise levels approximate those one would expect in riding in an oldfashioned rear-engine VW bug, there is little or no privacy; and the air contains food particles and flecks of spittle, and is
pungent with the aroma of unwashed bodies. Whether in upstate New York, the heart of Utah, or the entirety of Soviet
Russia, utopian societies have never quite lived up to expectations and there is no reason to expect something different in
space. Today, space is the province of a small, highly selected, and superbly trained group of consummate professionals.
These high achievers are among society’s best. If space industrialization and tourism continue, however, there will be
relentless pressure to “lower the bar” so that more and more people qualify to live and work in space. Additionally, in the
interests of economy, rather than undergoing years of preparation, laborers, technologists and tourists will have only
minimal training before launch. The powerful legal and public relations apparatus that enables NASA to protect the mythic
image of “the right stuff” will not extend to workers and tourists. Like societies on the Earth, societies in space will have a
seamy side or develop an underlife: that is, become riddled with problems that societies can suppress but not eliminate.
These social problems include substance abuse, illicit sex, black market trading, theft, violence, racism, as well as full
panoply of crimes and misdemeanors.
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The US would go to space in order to colonize it – the plan moves us into the Final Frontier
David Grondin Ph.D., Political Science (International Relations and American Studies), Université du Québec à Montréal,
Montréal, 2008 M.A., International Relations, University of Toronto, Toronto, 2001 B.A., American History, Université du Québec à
Montréal, Montréal, 2000, 2009, Securing Outer Space: International Relations Theory and the Politics of Space, 7. The (power)
politics of space: the US astropolitical discourse on global dominance in the War on Terror, Chapter seven
Space is conceived as being "more than a place. It is a set of opportunities, a new dimension of warfare, a final frontier. ...
By 2025 it is very likely that Space will be to the air as air is to cavalry today" (US Air Force 2025, quoted in Huntley
2005: 75). In the United States Space Command Vision for 2020, two objectives associated with Space dominance and
weaponization are clearly stared: "US Space Command — dominating the Space dimension of military operations to
protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of
conflict" (USSPACE-COM 1998: 3). Then with the Space Commission Report, the US are warned of a "Space Pearl
Harbor" (2001: xiii) and the recommendations are formulated in such a way that the US should embark on a Space
weaponization course should national security require it. Finally, the new NSP now really sets out enforcing how Space is a
vital interest for the United States and how national security Space is high among the nation's priorities (NSP 2006). This
line of argument is usually linked to technological capacities. By * asserting that other countries operate in Space, that
conflicts are "natural" between humans - which brings the obvious "so why would it be different in Space" - technologies of
power take the lead and one is left with devising what Space control strategy will be best and what one wants "to control,
for how long, and foi^what purposes?" (Lambakis 2001: 281). In a context where one portrays the situation as one where
US aerospace industry is "held back" by^the rest of the world only for fear of potential conflicts that will evolve into Space
warfighting because of a renewed arms race (Lambakis 2001: 282), the claim to let technology drive the policy and the
political is not disinterested - albeit ill-advised - and definitely not a sure bet. For Space warriors such as Dolman and
Lambakis, Space weaponization then appears to be not so much related to the security issue, but more so to the
maintenance of a strong defence and aerospace industry. The technological takes over as the political is eclipsed by the
military professionals. For Space warriors, with 9/11 and the War on Terror, a "Space Pearl Harbor" is always possible and
a logic of security - coupled with (military) technology — drives their analysis. In Lambakis' words: We should never take
anything having to do with Space (especially access to Space or freedom to operate in Space) for granted, and we should
never unnecessarily limit our options. Dominance provides our leadership and our commanders' options in life or death
situations. To not use the best and the latest in weaponry because our enemy does not have it or because it will not allow a
fair fight is foolish. Where we are not militarily dominant and take our security for granted, there we are at risk of a future
"September 11". (Lambakis 2003: 82) Fortunately, there is still debate going on because the policy-makers have not taken
yet all the decisions and deployed all means to ensure the realization of Space weaponization (Waldrop 2005: 39), though
the future is not so bright. If it were left to military leaders and professionals of Space, and it is not as Roger Handberg
reminds us (2004: 78-88), Space weaponization would occur logically, if not naturally. When one assesses where the
political leaders stand regarding this issue, what one can find out by consulting the NSS, the NMS and the NSP, one rapidly
realizes that the political seems to go in the same direction as the military, even though the step towards Space
weaponization is not as clearly acknowledged or enunciated as what one finds in the doctrinal documents of the US Air
Force and Navy. It does however highlight that it supports such a path if it is to be essential to US national security and
homeland security.
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The exploration and development of space is tied to the development of technology, which leads to the
instrumentalization and extension of war in outer space.
C. Peoples. 09 Securing Outer Space: Haunted Dreams, Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Wearset Ltd. Pg 91-107
It might be wondered, however, as to why particularly we should revisit Crit¬ical Theory in light of the resurgent debate on
the militarizarion/weaponization of space. Certainly the rhetoric surrounding both the military and non-military use of
space in the case of the United States, which has tended to stimulate the greatest debate in this regard, is pervaded by the
language of domination underpinned by an assumption of technological supremacy. Indeed, pace Agamben, some have
gone so far as to atgue that current research into space weapons that could 'target anyone, anywhere, at anytime* potrends
the reduc¬tion of all life to 'bare life'.1 Whether or nor this assumption is backed up either by actual technological advances
or funding is less easy to verify.6 But recent policy discourse surrounding US space technology is certainly replete with
aspirations of 'dominance', and related concepts such as 'space control' and 'space superiority'. Representative of this is the
US National Space Policy, released in August, 2006 which states that:
The United States considers space capabilities - including the ground and space segments and supporting links - vital to its
national interests. Consistent with this policy, the United States will: preserve irs rights, capabilities, and freedom of action
in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabiliries intended to do so; take those
actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of
space capabilities hostile to US national interests. (US 2006) This follows on the back of a persistent fascination with space
as 'the ultimate highground' for both civil and military purposes (Wolfowitz 2002), the des¬ignation of space as within Joint
Vision 2020's mandate of 'full spectrum dominance',7 the elevation of the concept of 'Space Control' ('the ability to assure
access to space, freedom of operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space, if
required'8) within US air and space doctrine, as well as references by American military officials to the 'importance of
dominating space in peace and war'. (France 2000).
The role of space surveillance and communications technologies during the Gulf War df 199*T, the US-led strike on
Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 lend substance to this stated centrality of space dominance to US military
capacity. In addition the latent 'dual-use' potentialities of missile defence technologies - whether in terms of using deployed
Ground-Based or Sea-Based Missile Defense as a rudimentary form of anti-satellite or ASAT weapon (as was effectively
illustrated by the US Jn its strike against an American spy-satellite in February 2008) or the offensive potential of
ostensibly defensive technologies in development such as the 'NFIRE' and Space-Based Laser (SBL) - have raised further
questions about the potential use of space as a theatre of war.jn its own right as well as a 'force multiplier' for conventional
terrestrial conflicts (DeBlois et al. 2008).
Much of this current debate invites parallels with the period of the space weapons fantasies of the 1950s and 1960s and
Marcuie's ensuing analysis. Certainly there are echoes of von Braun's proposed orbital bombing plat¬forms in recent
discussions of 'Long-Rod Penetrarors' - satellites used to deliver projectile weapons from orbit (DeBlois et al. 2008: 70).
Indeed,
Neufeld argues that von Braun is a 'forgotten forerunner to space power theory', most notably being the first person to use
the term 'space superior¬ity', the antecedent ro today's concepts of space control and dominance, in print (Neufeld 2006:
52). Likewise, Marcuse's war-gamers at RAND have their contempotary equivalent in simulations of space conflict in the
'2010 and 2020 time frame' that invariably end up in escalated, even nuclear, con¬flict where players recommend space
weaponimion in the interim as a panacea (DeBlois et al. 2008: 66). It would be tempting to read American space policy in
this regard in terms of Marcuse's asserrion that:
Technological rationality reveals its political character as it becomes the great vehicle of better domination, creating a truly
totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the
defense of this universe?
To do so would of course be taking Marcuse's use of the term 'universe' too lit-erally; even the 'discursive universe'
surrounding American policy on space is not entirely closed, as objections to the bellicose nature of the current US stance
attest to.10 At the same time, Marcuse's foreboding reading of the nature of technological development in One-Dimensional
Man and elsewhere might at the very least provide a cautionary reminder of the latent negative consequences of increasing
technological sophistication, most obviously in weapons of war. As in Coker's reading of Adotno cited earlier, Douglas
Kellner argues that '[Marcuse] feared that more sophisticated technologies would "instrumentalize" war and produce ever
more brutal forms of destruction — a vision amply con¬firmed in the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars'.11 We could,
arguably, easily extend this analysis to contemporary US space policy as illustrated above.
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Mars link
Mainstream images of Mars invoke a rhetoric of manifest destiny that serves to legitimate the US
nationalistic and imperial project
Sage 8 (Daniel Sage, Institute of Geography and Earth Science, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK, “Framing Space: A Popular
Geopolitics of American Manifest Destiny in Outer Space,” Geopolitics, 13:27–53, 2008//DN)
CONCLUDING COMMENTS: AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL ART
AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN SPACE EXPLORATION
In January 2004, George W. Bush rehabilitated the US space programme, reeling after the loss of Columbia on 1 February
2003, in a speech entitled ‘New Vision for Space Exploration’. Once more political rhetoric gestured towards a conflation
between frontier exploration and universal destiny, or, as Bush put it, “Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same
reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so
improves our lives and lifts our national spirit.”86 Since this speech, US space policy has been re-structured around an
ambitious, future programme of human exploration of the Moon and Mars that echoes the forecasts by Bonestell and von
Braun in the pages of Collier’s magazine. While many scientists have expressed concern that this focus on human
exploration will endanger NASA’s capability to pursue scien- tific research in outer space, it has enabled NASA to once
again re-configure itself as central to popular nation-building narratives of American mission, exceptionalism and futurity.
According to the current NASA administrator Michael Griffin, for example: “I believe America should look to its future –
and consider what that future will look like if we choose not be a spacefar- ing nation.”87 Bush and Griffin’s words echo
Werner von Braun’s bombastic rhetoric in Collier’s magazine in 1952: “Whoever gains that ultimate position gains control,
total control over the earth, for purposes of tyranny or for the service of freedom.”88 Bush and Griffin’s comments reiterate the image of the American national spirit being lifted to discover a higher place for America from which to survey
and command universal space and eternal time; this innately evokes the Olympian gaze and the narrative of American
mission and exceptionalism that is implicit in the American landscape sublime. And, perhaps not surprisingly, to envision
this sense of destiny, NASA has once again turned to astronomical artists and Bonestellian visions of the Moon and Mars.
See, for example, Jack Olson’s (year unknown) conception of a future Mars exploration (Figure 8) used on the NASA
website to promote NASA’s ‘New Vision’.89
The Bonestellian shape of NASA’s ‘New Vision’, organised around romantic and idealised visions of frontier-spaces to
stage a nationalistic sense of American global mission, testifies to the enduring historical inter- play between the American
landscape sublime and American geopolitics. Perhaps the most important question that remains to be asked is: in a world
where Americans find themselves increasingly subjected by the media to the immanent anxiety of an increasingly
unpredictable future – from scripts of the Middle East as a geopolitical quagmire, to threats to economic sover- eignty from
Europe and China, and the uncertainty of climate change – how is it that these mythical, heroic, visions endure as a crucial
touchstone in the legitimisation of the US state’s territorial aggrandisement and destiny?
The outcome plan is just an extension of spatial control for US security
Heriberto 4 (Carou Heriberto Cairo is a professor of political science at the Universidad Complutense Political Geography 23 (2004)
1009–1036“The Field of Mars: heterotopias of territory and war”)
But the new Field of Mars is only one of the spatial dimensions of war's explanandum. For war (and peace) are territorial. They do
not only occur in specific spaces, but they also are the outcome of specific geostratagies, and are made intelligible through particular
territorial discourses. This diversity of relations between space and war has to do with the different faces of warfare, which Shapiro
summarizes: [T]he warfare of the modern state reveals two different faces. Its most prominent face is [strategic], ... warfare as an
instrument of stale policy, and as such, the physiognomy of warfare represent itself as expressive of a deeper logistical truth: the need
for the stale to approach a dangerously disordered world with force ... features of war [are linked] with enduring projects of the stale:
maintaining security, clearing spaces for effective and vital functioning, meeting obligations to friends, and so on ... The
other face of warfare is ontological it is focused more on the affirmation of identity than the instrumental effects of the use of deadly
force (Shapiro, 1996: 457).
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The celebratory discourse of satellite technology seeks global security and excludes critical thought.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Why Earth Observing Satellites Now? Although satellite technology is not new-the first environmental satellites were
launched in the 1970s-a number of factors taken together have catapulted remote sensing to the forefront of global
environmental research in the 1990s. First, the dramatically heightened awareness of environmental problems in general,
and "global" problems in particular, has contributed to an increased willingness on the part of national governments to fund
satellite observation. Second, recent advances in electronics, telecommunications, and monitoring technologies have greatly
enhanced the quality and quantity of data that can be gathered from space. Third, the end of the Cold War stimulated two
related phenomena in the late 1980s: a proliferation of international cooperative endeavors in the name of "global security"
like the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), both
of which rely upon satellite monitoring, and a general conversion of national space technology from military to civilian
applications. The United States, primarily through NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program, has rapidly become the
undisputed leader in global environmental research.' Yet, while it may be preferable to have Titan rockets launching
cameras to photograph clouds rather than to have them launching nuclear warheads or antiballistic defenses, the "peaceful"
application of satellite technology to environmental research is not necessarily an innocuous undertaking.10 It is worth
considering the key catalyst of the remote sensing project: the climate change debates of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In
preparation for the 1992 Earth Summit and following on the heels of two world climate conferences in the mid-1980s, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) re- leased its report on the potential effects of greenhouse gases on the
global climate system in 1990. That report, representing the work of hundreds of scientists from dozens of countries,
concluded that the "unprecedented experiment" that humanity has been conducting on the earth's atmosphere for the last
two hundred years will probably produce the most drastic climatic changes since the end of the last ice age. The
environmental effects of these changes are expected to include rises in sea level, severe droughts in some regions and
flooding in others, and worsening waves of species extinction. Predictions of greenhouse warming are not new; they have
been around since the end of the last century, when a Swedish chemist speculated that industrialization and its consequent
fossil fuel emissions would eventually warm the planet." What is new, however, is the ability to model this vague
prediction using computers in order to achieve an international scientific consensus. Thus, in 1990 the IPCC predicted that
the average global temperature will increase between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees centigrade by 2050, a change greater than any
since the end of the last ice age.12 Of course, if these predictions were taken seriously, then the only prudent policy would
be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most importantly those of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion. Scientists at
the Second World Climate Conference in Rio de Janeiro recommended reductions of 20 percent, but that was only out of
political expediency; they actually agreed that a 50 percent reduction was needed to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Since the industrialized countries are the main source of the problem and have access to greater technological resources,
fairness would require them to bear the brunt of the reductions. In particular, the United States, with 5 percent of the world's
population emitting about one quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases, would have to change its patterns of energy
consumption the most. The most recent IPCC report, released in 1996 and concluding that human-induced climate change
is already happening, has significantly increased the pressure for an international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.13 While most other industrialized countries were willing to freeze carbon dioxide emissions at Rio, with some
pledging as much as 20 percent reductions, the Bush administration felt that the scientific uncertainties were too great to
warrant significant policy changes. Thus, the largest environmental research project in history, with remote sensing as its
backbone, was undertaken in order to "develop more reliable scientific predictions upon which sound policies and
responses to global change can be based."14 Approximately thirty billion dollars will be spent in the United States over the
next twenty years to hammer out the uncertainties. Thousands of scientists around the world will spend billions more on
global change research, making this loosely coordinated effort likely to become the largest research project in history by
2000. The 1991 budget for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was almost one billion dollars; the 1996
budget was double that amount. With eleven U.S. agencies sharing the pie, two-thirds of the total budget goes to NASA for
its EOS satellites, which will transmit data for fifteen years beginning in 1998. NASA will also build the EOS Data
Information System (EOSDIS), the largest data handling system ever built.15 To put the USGCRP budget in perspective,
consider the total budget for the Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS), operated by the United Nations
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Environment Programme, during its first decade of existence: $15 million. What do we expect to gain from space-based
observation that justifies placing the earth's climate systems at risk of unprecedented change as we await greater scientific
certainty? The aim of "Earth system science," built upon satellite data, is "to build a comprehensive predictive model of the
earth's physical, chemical, and biological processes."''16 No doubt, remote sensing and computerized data processing
techniques will generate hitherto unknown quantities of information and "hitherto unknown power for the scientist," as
David Rhind has pointed out.17 In the absence of the Cold War threat, satellite monitoring accompanied by computerbased analytic techniques, will, according to Peter Thatcher, "prevent new, ecological and economic 'falling dominoes' and
enhance global security."18 The "global view" afforded from the vantage point of space is certainly conducive to notions of
"global security," but what might that mean in an unequal world? Not only will remote sensing benefit poor countries, we
are told, but it will simultaneously serve both U.S. interests and global welfare. But there is good reason to be wary of a
celebratory discourse that stifles critical thinking about the nature of these technologies. Must we not be skeptical of a
technology that promises so much? If celebratory discourses serve a masking function, then what might be said of the
shadow side of remote sensing?
Satellite technology provides a new arena for the world’s elite to dominate the poor.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Just as the assumptions about the nature of science implicit in satellite monitoring are rooted in Baconian thinking, the
assumptions about technology are rooted in the modernization paradigm. Even when information is made available at no
cost to developing countries, which is by no means always the case, remote sensing is still a technology that is likely to
benefit industrialized countries the most. Research agendas are largely set in the West, the space and computer technology
are owned by the North, and the results are published in English. When satellite data reveals mineral deposits in Third
World countries, U.S. and European multinational corporations quickly arrive on the scene to "develop" the resources.52
Even Third World participation in remote sensing at a rudimentary level requires computer skills and technology that most
developing countries lack. Full participation requires access to space technology. A few developing countries, like India,
Brazil, and Indonesia, have become space powers, although not necessarily in the best interests of the majority of their
citizens since the elites generally seek to replicate the development path of the North. Like so many technological projects
in the past, global environmental monitoring by satellite runs the risk of providing a new arena for the world's elite to
dominate the poor. The remote sensing project seems to reinforce the drive to modernization that is itself the cause of
global environmental change.
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Satellite and locating devices militarize citizens’ way of being and define society through constant
mobilization.
Kaplan 06 (Caren Kaplan, Professor in Women and Gender Studies at UC Davis, “Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of
U.S. Consumer Identity”, 2006, 706-709)
And, of course, it is only more integrated into the warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq as another round of "democratization" is
pursued by means of war in the Middle East and South Asia. 62 If contemporary subjects of technoscience and its militaryindustrial-media-entertainment networks are constituted as targets, it is imperative that we understand this as a form of
mobilization. Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose have argued that the subject of consumption is "mobilized" through the links
between "human passions, hopes, and anxieties" and the "specific features of goods." 63 I have tried to show how
"precision" has entered the emotional [End Page 707] field of subjectivity as the military-industrial complex has grown to
encompass more fully the culture industries of media and entertainment. Thinking of consumer subjects as "mobilized"
helps us in two regards. First, it allows us to move beyond the model of consumers as feminized, passive targets of
unscrupulous advertisers in order to see the ways in which people participate in their construction by "volunteering," if you
will, to engage in the products generated by technoscience. Secondly, it allows us to understand how citizens and
consumers come together as militarized subjects through target marketing that seeks to identify their tastes, desires, and
interests. The ambiguity of subject formation generates the complexities of political and cultural life in an affluent nation.
Regardless of whether or not we serve in the military or have the means to afford the latest electronics, residents of the
United States are mobilized into militarized ways of being. The aftermath of the first Persian Gulf war, then, has witnessed
not only another war in the same region but also a proliferation of GPS-enhanced consumer goods and civilian applications
of the technology. This period has also seen a veritable explosion of data-mining and marketing based on geodemographics.
64Most recently, the method of identifying consumers by zip code has been challenged by more multileveled crossreferencing. For example, the "old" ACORN Market Segmentation System divided the country into more than 250,000
blocks of neighborhoods. Each block was analyzed and sorted by some forty-nine characteristics, including household
income, occupation, age, education, age of the housing stock, and other characteristics of neighborhood purchasing power.
Blocks were then recombined under forty-four market segments including, for example, "trendsetting, suburban
neighborhoods," "older, depressed rural towns," and "Hispanic and multi-racial neighborhoods." 65 Throughout the 1990s
there was mounting evidence of the growing importance of targeting consumers on the basis of "demography and habits
rather than on the basis of geographical proximity"; as the maxim from 1980s advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi had it,
there are greater differences between midtown Manhattan and the Bronx than between midtown Manhattan and the seventh
arrondissement in Paris. 66 At the turn of the century, then, it is possible to propose that the citizen/consumer subject in the
United States is not so much identifiable in relation to intrinsic territories but mobilized as clusters of identities in and
through consumption in the context of militarization. 67 Militarization in the expanded sense in which I have been using it
in this essay can be seen as a set of practices at work in sites of war, as well as those of consuming, schooling, worship, and
homemaking. Yet, the deterritorializing tendencies of contemporary [End Page 708] geodemographics are tempered by the
will to locate that subjects of consumption generate and require for identification. GIS- and GPS-linked technologies offer
to tell citizen/consumers their precise location, positioning them geographically for any number of reasons. This recourse to
terra firma can be seen as a recuperation of geography in the face of digitalized dispersal, but it can also be seen as an
articulation of the world that GIS has wrought. The deep meaning of database culture in the age of the Internet is that the
less we appear to need geographical information, the more it becomes clear how anchored contemporary power is to
geography. That is, the anxiety over security, the call to militarize the borders of the nation, to further police the ports, to
conduct satellite surveillance on individuals in their homes and places of work, shows us that the military-industrial-mediaentertainment network reworks what geography means in terms of the nation-state under the sign of globalization and in the
service of mobilization.
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Their framing of asteroids as a natural inevitable enemy turns everything into a possible threat and
strengthens the space defense industry – natural technological progression will solve the impact of
asteroids for future generations
Mellor 7 – Lecturer in Science Communication in the Humanities Department at Imperial College London (Felicity, “Colliding
Worlds: Asteroid Research and Legitimization of War in Space”, Sagepub, Social Studies of Science, 499(37), RG)
The asteroid impact threat was thus articulated within a narrative context that was closely aligned to science fiction and was
shared by both civilian scientists and defence experts. As Veronica Hollinger (2000: 216–17) has noted, traditional science
fiction is driven by an Aristotelian plot characterized by ‘a valorisation of the logic of cause and effect’. Impact narratives
conformed to this traditional narrative logic: asteroids and scientists act by causing a series of events to unfold, from the
approach of an asteroid and recognition of the threat through attempts at technological mitigation to resolution in salvation.
These narratives configured asteroids as acting agents in human affairs and brought to asteroid science a structure in which
human agents (and their technological proxies) solve the problem posed in the narrative and in so doing achieve closure.
Allusions to impact narratives implied a direction and human-centredness to events that, once the narratives had been
evoked, could not easily be suppressed. Despite their attempts to distance themselves from the weapons scientists, the
civilian scientists experienced a ‘narrative imperative’ that drew them towards the same technologized ends as those
promoting SDI. A sense of narrative agency was evoked even in texts that were not primarily narratival. Crucially, asteroids
were no longer seen as signifiers of the mathematically exacting Newtonian system, the distant objects moving through
empty backdrop of space. Rather, they were configured as proximate beasts, acting subjects that could turn against
humanity at any moment. Thus in their many popular books on the subject, the scientists described asteroids as belonging
to a ‘menagerie’ or a ‘cosmic zoo’ (Steel, 2000a: 120); they were ‘menacing’ (Kring, 2000: 171) and had ‘teeth’ (Clube &
Napier, 1990: 154); they were ‘global killers’ (Lewis, 1997: 209) that could unleash ‘ferocious assaults’ (Steel, 1995: 247)
on the Earth; they were the ‘enemy’ (Steel, 2000a: 153). Likewise, in their paper in Nature, Chapman & Morrison (1994:
33) stated that Earth ‘resides in a swarm of asteroids’. The construction of asteroids as the enemy was accompanied by a
range of other militaristic metaphors. In the popular books, asteroids became ‘missiles’, ‘pieces of ordnance’ or ‘stealth
weapons’ (Lewis, 1997: 37), which bombard the Earth with a ‘death-dealing fusillade’ (Clube & Napier, 1990: 7). In a
technical paper, too, they were construed as ‘astral assailant[s]’ (Simonenko et al., 1994: 929). Where the military and the
politicians talked of rogue states, 27 the scientists talked of ‘rogue asteroids’ (Steel, 1995; Ailor, 2004: 3). This analogy
was further reinforced by the construction of scenarios in which a small impact might be mistaken for the detonation of a
nuclear warhead. One technical paper speculated on what would have happened during the first Gulf War if an atmospheric
explosion that had been caused by a meteor burning up over the Pacific had actually occurred over Baghdad or Israel
(Tagliaferri et al., 1994). The authors suggested that such an event would have been mistaken for a missile detonation by
the opposing state. In such scenarios, the actions of interplanetary bodies were not just compared with those of rogue states
but came to be identified with them. With the swarming asteroids filling space, space itself was also resignified. What had
been an abstract mathematical space became a narrative place, the location where particular and contingent events occurred.
Although the scientists continued to appeal to the predictability of celestial dynamics – it was this that would enable a
survey of near-Earth objects to identify any that might pose a threat – they also noted that chaotic processes disturbed
the orbits of comets and also, to a lesser degree, asteroids (for example, Yeomans & Chodas, 1994; Milani et al., 2000). The
inherent unpredictability of the orbits was enhanced by the current state of scientific uncertainty. These chaotic and
uncertain processes were projected onto space itself, construed as a place of random violence. In the popular books, the
Solar System became a ‘dangerous cosmic neighbourhood’ (Sumners & Allen, 2000b: 3), ‘a capricious, violent place’
(Verschuur, 1996: 217), a place of ‘mindless violence’ (Verschuur, 1996: 18) and ‘wanton destruction’ (Levy, 1998: 13).
Even in a peer-reviewed paper, Chapman (2004: 1) described space as a ‘cosmic shooting gallery’. Despite the agency
attributed to the asteroids themselves, in the narratives of technological salvation it was the human agents, acting through
new technologies, who moved the narratives forward. Narrative progression was thus generated through an assumption of
technological progress. Through technology, humans intervene in space and become agents of cosmic events. The
scientists’ promotion of the impact threat shared this assumption of technological progress. Like the US Air Force study,
their technical papers on mitigation systems considered speculative technologies such as solar sails and mass drivers as well
as more established explosive technologies (for example, Ahrens & Harris, 1992; Melosh & Nemchinov, 1993; Ivashkin &
Smirnov, 1995; Gritzner & Kahle, 2004). Even those scientists who warned that it was too early to draw up detailed
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blueprints of interception technologies accepted the narratival implication that there was a problem that needed addressing,
that the problem could be addressed by human action, and that this action would involve a technological solution.
Technology, in this picture, was configured as inherently progressive. As Morrison & Teller (1994: 1137) put it: ‘The
development of technology in the past few centuries has been towards increasing understanding and control of natural
forces in an effort to improve human life.’ Those scientists who argued against the immediate development of mitigation
technology shared with its proponents a belief in the inexorable progress of technology. Future generations, they argued,
would be better equipped than we are at the moment to meet the technological challenge of an impacting asteroid (for
example, Ahrens & Harris, 1992). In contrast to traditional astronomical systems, which passively watched the skies,
asteroid detection systems were to be surveillance systems that actively hunted the skies for objects of human import.
The Spaceguard Survey was predicated on a will to action in a way in which the earlier Spacewatch Survey was not.
Similarly, when it fired its impactor at Comet Tempel 1, NASA’s Deep Impact mission took a far more active intervention
in space than did earlier generations of probes. This was not far from Edward Teller’s call for ‘experimentation’ with nearEarth objects to test defence technologies (Tedeschi & Teller, 1994; Teller, 1995), an idea dismissed at the time as extreme
by some civilian scientists (Chapman, 1998). Likewise, one of the recommendations of the 2004 Planetary Defense
Conference was that deflection techniques should be demonstrated on an actual asteroid (Ailor, 2004: 5). 28 The
technologization of space promoted in both the fictional works and the scientists’ technical proposals, also formed an
integral part of the imagery and rhetoric that surrounded SDI, as its detractors highlighted when they re-named the
project Star Wars. SDI was always premised on a vision of space as a technologized theatre of war. In the hands of a
technoenthusiast such as Edward Teller, SDI was configured as a space-based technological extravaganza with few limits.
29 In SDI, as in asteroid research and science fiction, space became a dynamic arena through which our technologies would
move, in which our weapons would be placed, and across which our wars were to be waged. 30 As discussed in the
introduction to this paper, narrative is an inherently teleological form. In conventional narratives, the action is moved
towards closure by the heroes of the story. In the impact narratives, the heroes are technological heroes set the task of
saving the world. By drawing on these narratives and following the call for human agency inherent in the narrative
structure, the scientists implicitly accepted this role as a necessary one. Having shifted apocalypse from the realm of
nuclear politics to that of natural science, the impact-threat scientists were able to position themselves as heroes whose
combined far-sightedness and technological know-how would save us all. Emphasizing the role of the unacknowledged
hero in a foreword to a volume of conference proceedings, astronomer Tom Gehrels (2002: xiii) claimed: ‘There is a beauty
also in hazards, because we are taking care of them. We are working to safeguard our planet, even if the world does not
seem to want to be saved.’ In a paper in another volume of conference proceedings, astrophysicist Eugene Levy was even
more explicit about the scientists’ expanded role: In the arms race, the motivating dynamic was a political one. A dynamic
in which scientists and engineers provided the technical tools, but, as a group, brought no special and unique wisdom to the
table in making judgements about what to do. In the present case, the dynamic is different. The adversary is not another
nation; the calculus is not one of political fears, anxieties, and motivations, for which we scientists have no special
expertise. Rather the ‘adversary’ is the physical world. In assessing this adversary, we scientists have special and unique
expertise. (Levy, 1994: 7; italics in original) Eclipsing the political dimension of the impact threat with their appeals to the
natural, the scientists appropriated for themselves a heroic role. This technological hero was a moral hero – he would warn
us of the danger and save us despite ourselves. Thus the scientists frequently quoted Representative George Brown’s
opening statement to a Congressional hearing when he warned that if we were to do nothing about the impact threat, it
would be ‘the greatest abdication in all of human history not to use our gift of rational intellect and conscience to shepherd
our own survival and that of all life on Earth’. 31 Through such claims, the issue of planetary defence became a moral
frame through which other threats of more human origin could also be addressed. Increased knowledge and
surveillance of asteroids, the scientists insisted, would help stop mistakes by the military decision-makers by preventing the
misidentification of asteroid airbursts as enemy nuclear warheads (Chapman & Morrison, 1994: 39). At the same time,
destroying asteroids would provide us with a way of using up those unwanted bombs. As John Lewis (1997: 215) put it:
‘The net result of the asteroid deflection is really a twofold benefit to Earth: a devastating impact would be avoided and
there would be one less nuclear warhead on Earth.’ Similarly, Duncan Steel saw the use of SDI technologies in asteroid
missions such as Clementine II as ‘a prime example of beating swords into ploughshares’ (quoted in Matthews, 1997).
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Construction of celestial threats ultimately results in militarization.
Felicity Mellor, Professor of Science Communication at the Imperial College, PhD in theoretical physics from Newcastle
University 7-2009 “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”, p. 499-502
Since the late 1980s, a small group of astronomers and planetary scientists has repeatedly warned of the threat of an
asteroid impacting with Earth and causing global destruction. They foretell a large impact causing global fires, the failure of
the world’s agriculture and the end of human civilization. But, these scientists assure us, we live at a unique moment in
history when we have the technological means to avert disaster. They call for support for dedicated astronomical surveys of
near-Earth objects to provide early warning of an impactor and they have regularly met with defence scientists to discuss
new technologies to deflect any incoming asteroids. The scientists who have promoted the asteroid impact threat have done
so by invoking narratives of technological salvation – stories which, like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), promise
security through a superweapon in space. The asteroid impact threat can therefore be located within the broader cultural
history of fantasies about security and power, which, Bruce Franklin (1988) has argued, is inextricably linked to the
century-old idea that a new superweapon could deliver world peace. Howard McCurdy (1997 78–82), in his study of the
ways in which the US space programme was shaped by popular culture, has suggested that the promotion of the impact
threat can be seen as the completion of Cold War fantasies, which had used a politics of fear to justify space exploration.
McCurdy highlights the alignment between the promotion of the impact threat and works of fiction. In this paper, I consider
the reconceptualization of asteroid science that this alignment entailed. It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a
complete history of the science of planetary impacts. My focus is on how a group of scientists moved from seeing impacts
as significant events in Earth history to seeing them as threatening events in the human future – a move from historical to
futurological narratives. Nor is there space to give a full account of the empirical developments that were used to support
the construal of asteroids as a threat. Rather, I wish to make the case that these empirical developments were given meaning
within a specific narrative context which drew civilian astronomers into contact with defence scientists, especially those
working on SDI. A number of studies (for example, McDougall, 1985; Forman, 1987; Kevles, 1990; DeVorkin, 1992;
Leslie, 1993; Dennis, 1994) have revealed the ways in which US research programmes and nominally-civilian scientific
institutions originated in military programmes.
The aff creates fear of militarized asteroids to justify continued development of space based weapons
Mellor, 07 (Felicity Mellor, lecturer in Science Communication at Imperial College in London and her research interests include the
popularization of physics, the representation of science in the media, and the role of narrative within science, “Colliding Worlds :
Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”)
The asteroid impact threat offered a scientifically validated enemy onto which could be projected the fears on which a
militaristic culture depends. Far from providing a replacement outlet for weapons technologies, the promotion of the
asteroid impact threat helped make the idea of war in space more acceptable and helped justify the continued development
of spacebased weaponry. Arguably, with the Clementine and Deep Impact missions, the asteroid impact threat even
facilitated the testing of SDI-style systems. The asteroid impact threat legitimized a way of talking, and thinking, that was
founded on fear of the unknown and the assumption that advanced technology could usher in a safer era. In so doing, it
resonated with the politics of fear and the technologies of permanent war that are now at the centre of US defence policy.
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Their invocation of the asteroid threat bolsters the case for militarized life on earth – don’t trust their
securitized tactics
Mellor, 07 (Felicity Mellor, lecturer in Science Communication at Imperial College in London and her research interests include the
popularization of physics, the representation of science in the media, and the role of narrative within science, “Colliding Worlds :
Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”)
Like the civilian scientists, the US defence scientists interested in the impact threat also worked in a community influenced
by science fiction. Indeed, in some sectors of the military planning community, including those in which the promoters of
SDI moved, explicit links with science fiction authors were cultivated regularly. As Chris Hables Gray (1994) has noted,
‘militaristic science fiction and military policy coexist in the same discourse system to a surprising degree’ (see also
Franklin, 1988; James,1994: 200). The Air Force Academy held annual ‘Nexus’ conferences on science fiction and military
policy, and other conferences, such as the ‘Futurist’ conferences, also brought together military policy-makers andscience
fiction authors. At one typical conference held in 1985 at Ohio Air Force base, the authors present included prominent
proponents of SDI such as Jerry Pournelle (Seed, 1999: 192). Pournelle was director of ‘organizational support’ for the
Heritage Foundation’s High Frontier project, which campaigned for SDI, and he was chair of a panel that in 1984 had
published the pro-SDI tract, Mutually Assured Survival (Gray, 1994). He was also, for many years, the editor of the annual
anthology series ‘There Will Be War!’, which mixed pro-war science fiction stories with pro-SDInon-fiction to claim that
war was inevitable. The scientists promoting and working on SDI weapons were avid consumers of science fiction and
some had direct links to science fiction authors. Rod Hyde, one of the Lawrence Livermore scientists who studied the
impact threat, belonged to the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy, an organization founded by Pournelle
(Broad, 1985: 141). Another Lawrence Livermore scientist included references to works by Pournelle, Niven and other
science fiction authors in his doctoral thesis on 514 Social Studies of Science 37/4he X-ray laser. In an interview with
journalist William Broad, he explained that he turned to such authors for ideas about his own work. ‘Writers of science
fiction are supposed to look into the future. So I started looking to see what they had in mind for the X-ray lasers’ (Broad,
1985: 120). Such links were part of a broader futures planning culture within the military that relied heavily on fictional
constructs. Gray (1994) argues that standard military practices, such as war-gaming and scenario construction, are works of
military fiction and that this fiction-making is both directly and indirectly influenced by the ideas of pro-war science fiction
authors. The 1996 US Air Force study into the asteroid impact threat is an example of such fiction-making. The study was
part of a futures planning exercise that considered several possible ‘alternate futures’ for the year 2025, drawing on a
‘concepts database’ that included such science-fictional ideas as ‘force shields’ and ‘gravity manipulation’. The authors of
the study noted the science fiction provenance of these ideas, at one point referring directly to Star Trek, but they took the
ideas seriously nonetheless. They noted, with some understatement, that gravity manipulation was an ‘undeveloped
technology’, but made no such comment about other speculative technologies such as solar sails, mass drivers or biological
‘eaters’, which were supposed to munch their way through the threatening comet or asteroid (Urias, 1996: 41–54). The
Narrative Imperative The asteroid impact threat was thus articulated within a narrative contextthat was closely aligned to
science fiction and was shared by both civilianscientists and defence experts. As Veronica Hollinger (2000: 216–17)
hasnoted, traditional science fiction is driven by an Aristotelian plot characterized by ‘a valorisation of the logic of cause
and effect’. Impact narratives conformed to this traditional narrative logic: asteroids and scientists act by causing a series of
events to unfold, from the approach of an asteroid and recognition of the threat through attempts at technological mitigation
to resolution in salvation. These narratives configured asteroids as acting agents in human affairs and brought to asteroid
science a structure in which human agents (and their technological proxies) solve the problem posed in the narrative and in
so doing achieve closure. Allusions to impact narratives implied a direction and human-centredness to events that, once the
narratives had been evoked, could not easily be suppressed. Despite their attempts to distance themselves from the weapons
scientists, the civilian scientists experienced a ‘narrative imperative’ that drew them towards the same technologized ends
as those promoting SDI.
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Narratives of space threats result in weaponization
Felicity Mellor, Professor of Science Communication at the Imperial College, PhD in theoretical physics from Newcastle
University 7-2009 “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”, p. 499-502
For military/civilian collaborations to be sustained, civilian scientists need to share with their counterparts in the defence sector
an understanding of the overall trajectory of their research. For shared technologies to be developed, they need first to be
imagined. Military/civilian interactions are therefore predicated on, and mediated through, a shared technoscientific imaginary.
Despite expressing concerns about the motives and methods of the weapons scientists, the civilian scientists who promoted the
asteroid impact threat drew on narratives that configured a human role in space in a similar way to SDI. These narratives helped
make asteroids conceivable as a threat, yet they also served to make acceptable, and even necessary, the idea of space-based
weaponry. Despite their disagreements, at the level of their shared narratives the discourses of the civilian and defence scientists
were mutually supportive. Several studies of the role of narrative in the production of scientific knowledge have identified it as a
means of generating coherence in science that both enables and constrains further research (Haraway, 1989; O’Hara, 1992;
Rouse, 1996; Brown, 1998). Richard Harvey Brown is the most explicit about what constitutes a narrative, defining it as ‘an
accounting of events or actions temporally that explains them causally or motivationally’ (Brown, 1998: 98). Brown’s definition
of narrative fits with that of narrative theorists such as Mieke Bal (1997) who have stressed that narrative entails not a random
unfolding of events but a sequenced ordering involving a transition from one state to another brought about or experienced by
actors. One implication of this is the fundamental role of causality and agency. Another is that a narrative beginning always
anticipates an ending – a resolution or closure to the events that have been set in motion. Historian Hayden White (1981: 23) has
argued that the tendency to present history as narrative ‘arises out of a desire to have real events display the coherence, integrity,
fullness, and closure of an image or life that is and can only be imaginary’. He finds that narrative closure involves a passage
from one moral order to another. ‘Where, in any account of reality, narrativity is present, we can be sure that morality or a
moralizing impulse is present too’ (White, 1981: 22). In this sense, narrative is inherently teleological and ideological. The
inexorable movement of a narrative towards a predetermined end ensures that its many assumptions go unchallenged. An
analytical approach to the interaction between military and civilian science that recognizes the ideological function of narrative
can help sidestep some of the difficulties associated with the distortionist thesis often attributed to Paul Forman’s (1987)
landmark paper on the military basis of US post-war physics. Forman has been criticized for implying that without military
patronage, physics would have followed an ideal direction unaffected by outside interests (for example, Kevles, 1990). By
looking at what sorts of narratives scientists draw on, we can avoid Forman’s supposed idealism. The question is not so much
whether science has been distorted, but through which of many possible stories a research programme has been articulated. To
ask which stories have been invoked is to ask which ideologies have implicitly been accepted. And to ask that is to allow that, on
ideological grounds, some stories are preferable to others. Because narratives are shared within a research community, they are
not always explicitly articulated in texts. Technical papers are most likely to hide the fundamental assumptions that underpin a
research area. However, literature addressed to wider audiences is often more explicit. Grey literature, such as policy reports or
review papers, and popularizations written by scientists are therefore useful sources for identifying the narrative context in which
a science is framed, traces of which may also be found in technical papers. While always remembering that such accounts are
written with particular persuasive or marketing goals in mind, these texts nonetheless reveal what, to the scientist-author, is both
thinkable and compelling. In what follows, I draw on this full range of texts, from technical papers to popularizations, to show
that the scientists promoting the impact threat have repeatedly turned to narratives of technological salvation that imagined the
ultimate superweapon – a space-based planetary defence system that would protect the Earth from the cosmic enemy. I begin
with a brief overview of earlier conceptions of asteroids before outlining the events through which asteroids were promoted as a
threat and examining the narrative context in which this occurred. I finish by arguing that the narration of the impact threat
entailed a reconceptualization of asteroids, space and astronomy and invoked a ‘narrative imperative’ that helped legitimize the
militarization of space.
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A Security mindset characterizes cosmic threats as “proximate beasts”
Felicity Mellor, Professor of Science Communication at the Imperial College, PhD in theoretical physics from Newcastle
University, 7-2009 “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”, p. 499-502
The asteroid impact threat was thus articulated within a narrative context that was closely aligned to science fiction and was
shared by both civilian scientists and defence experts. As Veronica Hollinger (2000: 216–17) has noted, traditional science
fiction is driven by an Aristotelian plot characterized by ‘a valorisation of the logic of cause and effect’. Impact narratives
conformed to this traditional narrative logic: asteroids and scientists act by causing a series of events to unfold, from the
approach of an asteroid and recognition of the threat through attempts at technological mitigation to resolution in salvation.
These narratives configured asteroids as acting agents in human affairs and brought to asteroid science a structure in which
human agents (and their technological proxies) solve the problem posed in the narrative and in so doing achieve closure.
Allusions to impact narratives implied a direction and human-centredness to events that, once the narratives had been
evoked, could not easily be suppressed. Despite their attempts to distance themselves from the weapons scientists, the
civilian scientists experienced a ‘narrative imperative’ that drew them towards the same technologized ends as those
promoting SDI. A sense of narrative agency was evoked even in texts that were not primarily narratival. Crucially, asteroids
were no longer seen as signifiers of the mathematically exacting Newtonian system, distant objects moving through the
empty backdrop of space. Rather, they were configured as proximate beasts, acting subjects that could turn against
humanity at any moment. Thus in their many popular books on the subject, the scientists described asteroids as belonging
to a ‘menagerie’ or a ‘cosmic zoo’ (Steel, 2000a: 120); they were ‘menacing’ (Kring, 2000: 171) and had ‘teeth’ (Clube &
Napier, 1990: 154); they were ‘global killers’ (Lewis, 1997: 209) that could unleash ‘ferocious assaults’ (Steel, 1995: 247)
on the Earth; they were the ‘enemy’ (Steel, 2000a: 153). Likewise, in their paper in Nature, Chapman & Morrison (1994:
33) stated that Earth ‘resides in a swarm of asteroids’. The construction of asteroids as the enemy was accompanied by a
range of other militaristic metaphors. In the popular books, asteroids became ‘mis- siles’, ‘pieces of ordnance’ or ‘stealth
weapons’ (Lewis, 1997: 37), which bombard the Earth with a ‘death-dealing fusillade’ (Clube & Napier, 1990: 7). In a
technical paper, too, they were construed as ‘astral assailant[s]’ (Simonenko et al., 1994: 929). Where the military and the
politicians talked of rogue states,27 the scientists talked of ‘rogue asteroids’ (Steel, 1995; Ailor, 2004: 3). This analogy was
further reinforced by the construction of scenarios in which a small impact might be mistaken for the detonation of a
nuclear warhead. One technical paper speculated on what would have happened during the first Gulf War if an atmospheric
explosion that had been caused by a meteor burning up over the Pacific had actually occurred over Baghdad or Israel
(Tagliaferri et al., 1994). The authors suggested that such an event would have been mistaken for a missile detonation by
the opposing state. In such scenarios, the actions of interplanetary bodies were not just compared with those of rogue states
but came to be identified with them. With the swarming asteroids filling space, space itself was also resignified. What had
been an abstract mathematical space became a narrative place, the location where particular and contingent events occurred.
Although the scientists continued to appeal to the predictability of celestial dynamics – it was this that would enable a
survey of near-Earth objects to identify any that might pose a threat – they also noted that chaotic processes disturbed the
orbits of comets and also, to a lesser degree, asteroids (for example, Yeomans & Chodas, 1994; Milani et al., 2000). The
inherent unpredictability of the orbits was enhanced by the current state of scientific uncertainty. These chaotic and
uncertain processes were projected onto space itself, construed as a place of random violence. In the popular books, the
Solar System became a ‘dangerous cosmic neighbour- hood’ (Sumners & Allen, 2000b: 3), ‘a capricious, violent place’
(Verschuur, 1996: 217), a place of ‘mindless violence’ (Verschuur, 1996: 18) and ‘wan- ton destruction’ (Levy, 1998: 13).
Even in a peer-reviewed paper, Chapman (2004: 1) described space as a ‘cosmic shooting gallery’. Despite the agency
attributed to the asteroids themselves, in the narratives of technological salvation it was the human agents, acting through
new technologies, who moved the narratives forward. Narrative progression was thus generated through an assumption of
technological progress. Through technology, humans intervene in space and become agents of cosmic events. The
scientists’ promotion of the impact threat shared this assumption of technological progress. Like the US Air Force study,
their technical papers on mitigation systems considered speculative technologies such as solar sails and mass drivers as well
as more established explosive technologies (for example, Ahrens & Harris, 1992; Melosh & Nemchinov, 1993; Ivashkin &
Smirnov, 1995; Gritzner & Kahle, 2004). Even those scientists who warned that it was too early to draw up detailed
blueprints of interception technologies accepted the narratival implication that there was a problem that needed addressing,
that the problem could be addressed by human action, and that this action would involve a technological solution.
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Asteroid narratives lock into place a militant securitization
Felicity Mellor, Professor of Science Communication at the Imperial College, PhD in theoretical physics from Newcastle
University, 7-2009 “Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space”, p. 499-502
The asteroid impact threat offered a scientifically validated enemy onto which could be projected the fears on which a
militaristic culture depends. Far from providing a replacement outlet for weapons technologies, the promotion of the
asteroid impact threat helped make the idea of war in space more acceptable and helped justify the continued development
of spacebased weaponry. Arguably, with the Clementine and Deep Impact missions, the asteroid impact threat even
facilitated the testing of SDI-style systems. The asteroid impact threat legitimized a way of talking, and thinking, that was
founded on fear of the unknown and the assumption that advanced technology could usher in a safer era. In so doing, it
resonated with the politics of fear and the technologies of permanent war that are now at the centre of US defence policy.
In this post-Cold War period, scholars of the relation between military and civilian science need to examine carefully
claims about ‘ploughshare’ or ‘conversion’ technologies. New technologies arise not just out of funding and policy
decisions, but also out of the social imaginaries in which new weapons can be imagined and construed as necessary.
Concepts such as ‘dual use’ or ‘cover’ also need to be assessed critically.35 One way of characterizing the Clementine
missions would be as dual-use technologies whose scientific aims served as cover for the testing of SDI technologies. Yet
this fails to reveal the ways in which these missions were just one concrete output of a more fundamental conceptual
alliance between weapons designers and astronomers. In this paper, I have attempted to show that by also considering the
narrative context in which such initiatives are located, it is possible to throw some light on the cultural web that binds
civilian science to military programmes. But the focus on narrative also begs a question: Which stories would we prefer to
frame our science? Should science be driven by fear or by curiosity? Should it be aimed at creating technologies of war or
cultures of compassion? These are normative questions, but they are also precisely the questions that make the military
influence on science such an important issue. Narratives are inherently ideological and a refusal to see them as such does no
more to enhance the scholar’s objectivity than it does the scientist’s. The stories told by the asteroid scientists led them into
collaborations with weapons scientists and helped fuel a discourse of fear that served a particular ideological purpose. This
should be both recognized and challenged, not for the sake of regaining some impossible ideal of an undistorted science but
because there are other stories, based on different ideological assumptions, that we could tell in order to guide science
towards more peaceful ends.
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Natural disasters cannot be averted- promising to produces securitization, not success
Buzzan et al, 1998 (Barry Buzzan, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of
Economics and honorary professor at the University of Copenhagen and Jilin University, Ole Waever, a professor of International
Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen Jaap de Wilde, Professor of International Relations and
World Politics at the University of Groningen., 1998 “Security: A New Framework for Analysis” p. 79-80)
In principle, three relationships of threat define the possible universe of environmental security. 1. Threats to human
civilization from the natural environment that are not caused by human activity. Earthquake and volcanic events count
(although even there are debates about human agency, but the most incontrovertible examples are fears of large meteorite
strikes and concerns about a natural swing back into a cycle of extensive glaciation. 2. Threats from human activity to the
natural systems or structures of the planet when the changes made do seem to pose existential threats to (parts of)
civilization. Obvious examples here are, at the global level, greenhouse gas emissions, and the effects of CFCs and other
industrial emissions on the ozone layer. At the regional and local levels, this relates to environmental exploitation (by
extraction, dumping or accidental destruction) beyond the carrying capacity of smaller ecosystems, which upsets the
economic base and the social fabric of the states involved. 3. Threats from human activity to the natural system of
structures of the planet when the changes made do not seem to pose existential threats to civilization. An example of this
might be the depletion of various mineral resources, which may be inconvenient but which can almost certainly be handled
by advanced in technology (i.e.,., the shift from copper to silicon in the electronics industry and potentially a shift from
metal to ceramics in some engineering applications.) The last of these relationships registers little in the discourse of
environmental security, with the notable exception of concerns over the extinction of various animals (especially birds and
large mammals.) The first does register but only at the margins. It could grow if the scientific agenda provides more
compelling reasons to worry about it or if those securitizing actors that have an interest in it (e.g., the space defense lobby)
become more influential. The second relationship is the main reason to talk about environmental security: It represents a
circular relationship of threat between civilization and the environment in which the process of civilization involves a
manipulation of the rest of nature that in several respects has achieved self-defeating proportions. From a global
perspective, this circular relationship is mainly the result of two developments: the explosive growth of both the world
population and economic activity in the second half of the twentieth century. During the last 2,000 years, world population
increased form an estimated hundred million to about 5 billion. In the 10,000 years before that, world population frew from
a mere 4 million to a hundred million (Ponting 1991:90, 92, 241: porter and Brown 1991: 4 Between 1960 and 1990, the
estimated gross world product almost quadrupled, from about $6 trillion to almost $20 trillion. (Porter and Brown 1991: 5).
Ideas from integrating environmental concerns into economic accounting are fairly new (van Dierren 1987) but are being
pushed by the rise in pollution statistics in the late twentieth century. Crucial for understanding environmental security is
the idea that is it within human power to turn the tide. The problem is one of humankind’s struggle not with nature but the
dynamics of its own cultures- a civilization issue that expresses itself mainly in economic and demographic dimensions and
that potentially affects the degrees of order in the international system and its subsystem.
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They construct a form of space that detaches us from warfare – this skews the aims of war, causing
further destruction
Bormann '9 – dept. of politics @ Northeastern; previously held a position @ Watson Institute for Int'l Studies @ Brown (Natalie,
2009, "Securing Outer Space," ed. by Natalie Bormann & Michael Sheehan, p. 76-89, RG)
'[War] now takes place in "aero-electro-magnecic space". It is equivalent to the birth of a new type of flotilla, a home fleet, of a new
type of naval power, but in orbital space' (Virilio 2000b). What should be clear by now is that material space is pre-constructed.
According to Virilio, it is the technical that precedes the spatial. The possibility of new military technology underpins the ways we
invent and organise our environment, geographies and landscapes. And it is the effects of technology which produces outer space as a
place and authorises contingent action in support of weaponisation. This is not to suggest that technologies have an existence of and
on their own and independent of social practice; of course, technology cannot be studied in isolation (see Boutdieu 1992).
The new technologies that allow us to penetrate outer space are producing new domains of experience and new modes of
representations and perception. Now, that technology is deeply infatuated with current policies in outer space comes to no surprise,
and we find ourselves amidst visions of 'hyper-spectral imagery', 'advanced electro-optical warning sensors' and 'space-based radars
and lasers'. While I am interested in these technologies of, and soon in, space I am even more interested in the ways in which they
augment spatiality and accelerate claims to, and over, spatial authority. Thus, how do these technologies relate to space? Virilio is
clear on this: to begin with, and to strip these technologies of their obfuscation, they shrink the planet (and space ourwith the planet,
the exoatmospheric); and they do so in two. ways. First, Virilio insists that technologies lead to a doing away of spatial distance and
the geo-strategic reference points that go with it. As the
Rumsfeld Commission put it quite aptly, 'Space enters homes, businesses, schools, hospitals and government offices' (US Space
Commission 2001). To rake this notion further and to include the idea of a space-based laser as an example, from any given spot in
outer space we will be able to strike and destroy each other at any given point and at any given time. Space stops to matter. The
author contends that technologies therefore lead space to suffer from 'torsion and distortion, in which the most elementary reference
points disappear one by one' (Virilio 1991: 30). The foreseeable deployment of a space-based laser, or, of a kinetic energy interceptor
missile (designed to 'hit and kill' an incoming hostile missile) are testament to this sense of distortions insofar as space-based weapons
would overcome the 'location problem' and the need of proximity close to target. As a recent study put it aptly, 'interceptors fired from
orbiting satellites could in principle defend the United States against ICBMs launched from anywhere on Earth [...}. Theit coverage
would not be consttaint by geography'. The Transformation Study Report of 27 April 2001, reflects similar sentiments, claiming that
'Space capabilities are inherently global, unaffected by territorial boundaries or jurisdi-rectional limitations' [emphasis added]. It
follows from here that, second, technologies 'reduce-distance-reduce-reaction-time' — or, as Virilio puts it much more eloquently: not
only does technology decerritorialise space it also de-personalises it (and us in our relation to space). No doubt, outer space plays a
key role in the 'real-time' enhancement of military operations on a global scale. Satellites are not only used to spot targets as they
emerge and transmit data but they also allow us to offset weapons that meet these targets anywhere and at any time — instantly. The
swiftness blurs if not erases the assumed (and familiar) distinction between offence and defence, which affects our views on spatiality
insofar as the image of the battlefield can now become ubiquitous: 'Every place becomes the front line' (Virilio 1991: 132). Virilio
further clarifies this for us; whereas in the past there was a sense that the 'front' is where the tanks are, now, he suggests, we assume
that 'where we find the satellites there is the fourth front' (Virilio 2002: 3). This is furthered and amplified by the US Air Force vision
that calls for 'prompt global strike space systems with the capability to directly apply force from or through Space against terrestrial
targets' (US Air Force Space Command 2003). And fast forward to the present, the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2006 is clear in its
visualisation for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance in which it seeks to establish what it aptly terms an 'unblinking eye'
over the 'battlespace' that suggests the instant, constant and 'persistent surveillance' of US space in outer space (Quadrennial Defense
Review 2006: 55). For Virilio, this process of de-materialisation of space in outer space along these lines can turn into a de-realisation
of the objectives of fighting and destruction, and as suggested by the problematic of proximity chat this chapter addresses. There is no
time left for reflecting on, and responding to, warfare and its mode of targeting, hitting, destruction and killing and, subsequently,
no time to invent space differently. The author expresses this as the 'dematerialization of armaments, de-personalisation of
command, de-realisation of the aims of war' (Virilio 2000: 87).
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Attempts to exert influence through space technology doomed to failure – create flawed power relations.
Nardon, Laurence, French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), Paris, 2007, Astropolitics, 5:1, 29 – 62, 'Cold War Space
Policy and Observation Satellites'
Supposing influence was indeed a political goal of space observation, the next question is whether this space Panopticon
really worked. Did the U.S. successfully influence policy choices in the Soviet Union and allied countries through the
demonstration of powerful intelligence gathering means? The last sections of this article will look at the relationship with
the Soviet Union and allied countries. Relations with the Soviets, who possessed observation systems of their own, are
analyzed in the fields of nuclear posture and arms control dialogue. A number of case studies of allied countries’ reactions
to U.S. possible influence were chosen: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) taken as a group of countries,
Israel before and during the Kippur War, France during the Chad crises in the 1980s, and the United Kingdom (U.K.)
during the Falkland war. Study of these cases shows that a U.S. policy of influence based on wide-ranging space
observation worked to a very limited degree and that many other factors came into play. In the contemporary society,
described by Foucault, social networks of power never perform ideally either. Counter-powers strive to escape the
discipline. There is always a struggle going on, and the balance of power is constantly evolving. The fact that power
relations are never static is an important tenet of Foucault’s power theory. This is why strategy, seen as an evolutionary
process, is the best tool to explain power relations within a society as well as between international actors. Indeed, in the
last writings of his life,9 Foucault showed an interest for international relations and the particularities of the exercise of
power. When a leading country tries to impose order among allied countries, such as the Soviet Union in its dealings with
Warsaw Pact countries, one can see a struggle for freedom on the part of the smaller countries, counterbalanced by efforts
to dominate on the part of the larger power. This is typically a ‘‘power relation.’’ ‘‘Confrontation strategy’’ is rather a fight
between two established powers of equal force and legitimacy. It designates for instance the relationship between the U.S.
and U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. It is sometimes difficult to tell one from the other. Liberation movements fighting
against colonial powers in the 1950s and 1960s were called either terrorist movements or legitimate adversaries. Foucault
therefore proposes the terms ‘‘domination phenomenon’’, to encompass the two notions of ‘‘power relation’’ (between
unequal actors) and ‘‘confrontation strategy’’ (between actors of comparable strength). Thomas Schelling proposes
‘‘compellence’’ and ‘‘deterrence’’ for the same types of action.11 Deterrence and compellence only work if the expectation
of a sanction is closely associated with them. A sanction can be the denunciation of a breach of a treaty, other diplomatic
moves, or threatening troop movements. Compellence and deterrence were enacted quite differently in the relations with
the Soviet Union on the one hand, and allied countries on the other. Political pressure was openly exerted on the Soviet
Union, which happened to possess the same kind of satellite observation devices. The ‘‘confrontation strategy’’ between
the two superpowers existed on the technological=informational level as well as on the political level. Influence sought in
the dealings with allied countries was of course less aggressive. But the links established between allied countries and the
U.S. also played in the information area. Allied countries did not have observation satellite systems and could not verify the
veracity of information given to them. They relied on the U.S. for such precious intelligence. This dependence created
distrusts and struggles characteristic of a ‘‘power relation.’’ Regarding satellite observation, the U.S. and the Soviet Union
both enjoyed a situation of monopoly within their respective alliances. This technological duopoly lasted until the mid1980s, when Europe launched the Spot satellite. The period of time chosen for the study of a U.S. space Panopticon is that
of the ` U.S. observation monopoly vis-a-vis its allies from the 1950s to the mid-1980s.
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Technological discourse of space relies on constructed gender binaries and masculine superiority
Griffin ‘09, Penny Griffin, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Securing Outer Space, Ed. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan. p. 68-69, AL
The gendered assumptions that underlie this rhetoric are tacit but striking, and depend on two distinct, heteronormative,
tropes of masculinization and feminization. First, the US's ability to control 'space capabilities' depends upon assumptions
of dominance and inherent superiority that revolve around the (gendeted) signifier of the US's role as 'classic' or 'active
warfighter': assumptions including the need for speed and watchfulness ('real time space surveillance'), agility and technical
superiority ('timely and responsive spacelift'), 'enhanced protection' (of 'military and commercial systems'), robustness and
efficient repelling capabilities ('robust negation systems'), 'precision force' and 'enhanced "sensor-to-shooter"' capabilities.
Just as Presidents Kennedy and Johnson summoned the spectre of an active, robust, potent American with the 'Pilgrim and
pioneer spirit of initiative and independence' (Kennedy, quoted in Dean 2001: 180), so George W. Bush calls to those able
to show 'daring, discipline, ingenuity, and unity in the pursuit of great goals', the 'risk takers' and 'visionaries' of whom
America is so 'proud' (Bush 2004). Second, in establishing its (heterosexually masculine) credentials, the US's technostrategic discourse reconfigures all other space-able nations as subordinate, constructing a binary, heterosexual relationship
of masculine hegemony/feminine subordination. Tellingly, US Space Command cites the forging of 'global partnerships' as
essential to protecting US national interests and investments, where such partnerships are at the behest of the US, with
those that partner the US 'warfighter' little more than passive conduits for US 'opportunity' and 'commerce' ('Joint Vision
2020'). This 'warfighting' discourse is not, of course, the only construction of outer space to possess discursive currency in
the US. 'Space exploration', as Crawford argues, 'is inherently exciting, and as such is an obvious vehicle for inspiring the
public in general, and young people in particular' (2005: 258). Viewed predominantly as a natural extension to the so-called
evolution of military and commercial 'arts' in the Western hemisphere, human, technological expansion into outer space is
justified in terms of scientific, commercial and military global entrepreneurship. Conquering the final frontier of outer
space is increasingly seen as crucial to a state's pre-eminence in the global economy (cf. 'Joint Vision 2020'). International
alliances in the post-Fordist economy 'have already consolidated the decision for future space exploration and colonization'
(Casper and Moore 1995: 315). In a particularly dramatic turn of phrase, Seguin argues that '[m}ankind {sic] now stands at
the threshold of long-duration space habitation and interplanetary travel' (2005: 980). Similarly, Manzey describes human
missions to Mars less as contingent future events, but as the inevitable consequences of technological progress (Manzey
2004: 781-790). Space, once defined as a power-laden site of Cold War military conflict, has also become a site of
international political and economic cooperation. Often conceptualized in expansionist terms, as that which will make out
world bigger, with space 'discovery' expanding human knowledge, space is also conceived of as that which will make the
world smaller, in neo-liberal globalization terms, 'by reconfiguring capitalism and nationalism' (Casper and Moore 1995:
315). The US' 'warfighting' discourse is also at odds with much so-called 'space law', in particular the Outer Space Treaty
(1967), which defines space as the 'province of all mankind' and asks that states act 'with due regard to the corre-sponding
interests of States Parties to the Treaty* (Brearly 2005: 16—17). Within the US itself, congressionally-led efforts to discuss
and minimize the threats posed by human-made debris caught in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), of which there is somewhere in
the region of 2,300 metric tons (ibid.: 9), appear ill-matched with clear efforts by US government to increase the
weaponization of space. The US cooperates, to a limited extent, in perpetuating a sustainable space environment for its
satellite-based systems, to which space debris undoubtedly poses a threat, because this is of direct individual benefit to US
commercial interests. The US tefuses, however, to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), prohibiting all use of
nuclear explosions in space, since this constitutes a restriction of its ability to develop and test 'new' weapons. US critics of
the CTBT contend that ratifying the treaty would 'undercut confidence in the US deterrent', and thus increase 'the incentive
for rogue states to obtain nuclear weapons' (Medalia 2006: 13).
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Space tech furthers elitism, undermining all others
Dickens and Omrod ’07 (Peter Dickens, Fellow of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK, and James S. Omrod, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology,
University of Essex, UK, 8/2007, Sage Journals Online, http://soc.sagepub.com/content/41/4/609)
Evidence for the relationship the public has with contemporary cosmology is again provided by the Mass Observation
project. The general effect of the continued privileging of ‘scientific’ knowledge of the universe, and yet its increasing
abstraction and mysticism, is confusion and alienation of people from the universe and our accumulated knowledge about
it. This is particularly marked in those without a great deal of social or cultural capital, thus further undermining them. A lot
of MO data comes from one of the demographics this most applies to: older women employed in or retired from routine
work. The first comment they make is that although they are aware that great studies into the nature of the universe are
being undertaken, the results are not made available to them, but remain the thing of a scientific and cultural elite:
Undoubtedly there must have been much research and much learned over the years, but it doesn’t reach me. Also it seems a
political activity by the few, rather than something in which the whole world can share.
Science technology informs narcissistic desires for domination
Dickens and Omrod ’07 (Peter Dickens, Fellow of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK, and James S. Omrod, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology,
University of Essex, UK, 8/2007, Sage Journals Online, http://soc.sagepub.com/content/41/4/609)
A widespread cosmic narcissism of this kind might appear to have an almost spiritual nature, but the cosmic spirituality we
are witnessing here is not about becoming immortal in the purity of the heavens. Rather, it is spirituality taking the form of
self-worship; further aggrandizing the atomized, self-seeking, 21st-century individual (see Heelas, 1996). Indeed, the prospace activists we interviewed are usually opposed to those who would keep outer space uncontaminated, a couple
suggesting we need to confront the pre-Copernican idea of a corrupt Earth and ideal ‘Heaven’. For these cosmic narcissists,
the universe is very much experienced as an object; something to be conquered, controlled and consumed as a reflection of
the powers of the self. This vision is no different to the Baconian assumptions about the relationship between man and
nature on Earth. This kind of thinking has its roots in Anaxagoras’ theory of a material and infinite universe, and was
extended by theorists from Copernicus, through Kepler and Galileo to Newton. The idea that the universe orients around
the self was quashed by Copernicus as he showed the Earth was not at the centre of the universe and that therefore neither
were we (Freud, 1973: 326). However, science has offered us the promise that we can still understand and control it. Robert
Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, trumpets Kepler’s role in developing the omniscient fantasy of science (it was Kepler
who first calculated the elliptical orbits of the planets around the Sun):
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Science link
Space technology is based on flawed assumptions of the objectivity of science and humans’ ability to
control their environment.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,1997, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Feminist Perspectives on Science and Technology Critical approaches to science and technology, including feminist
critiques, begin with the premise that these bastions of neutrality are not neutral, but rather originate from, express, and
reinforce certain sets of power relations. A critical approach to remote sensing reveals some of the unquestioned
assumptions that undergird the celebratory discourse surrounding earth remote sensing, giving preference to those voices
that are least likely to be heard. Because programs like EOS and EOSDIS, relying as they do upon aerospace and
electronics technologies, are primarily the domain of white men in the wealthiest countries, that means looking at the matter
from the perspectives of women and the disempowered. From those perspectives, six assumptions embedded in most
discussions of satellite monitoring may be uncovered. First, the scientists are assumed to be the neutral architects of this
global view, despite the fact that they are drawn from a rather narrow segment of the global population. Second, science,
taken as a source of neutral information, is taken as a basis for rational policy making. Third, science is believed to generate
the kind of certainty needed to guide action. Fourth, the same scientific and technological paradigms that have caused
environmental problems on a global scale are thought to be capable of solving them. Fifth, a "global view" is assumed to be
necessary, both scientifically and politically. Sixth, once scientists have an understanding of the "earth system,"
policymakers will have the capacity to "manage" the planet. All of these assumptions are rooted in a paradigm of rationality
and control that has characterized patriarchal modernity.
Science relies on hierarchical dichotomies that create domination and otherization.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,1997, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
The Neutrality of Science Taking these assumptions in order, consider the purported neutrality of science and scientists.
Since the publication of Thomas Kuhn's work in the 1960s, a great deal of research in the history of science and the
sociology of knowledge has undercut this assumption, demonstrating that science, like all social institutions, is suffused
with power dynamics and irrationalities.19 Feminist theorists have highlighted the dimension of gender, elucidating how
scientific practice has evolved under the formative influence of a particular ideal of masculinity based upon objectification
and control. Feminists relate the fixation on scientific objectivity, which depends upon a rigid dichotomy between subject
and object, to other parallel hierarchical dichotomies of modernity: human/animal, mind/body, masculine/feminine,
reason/emotion, and elite/mass. Feminists also find in these hierarchical dichotomies of modernity the link between the
oppression of women and the degradation of nature, pointing to the Baconian legacy that summons the scientist "to bind
Nature to your service and make her your slave."20 Women, who have been traditionally defined as objects of control, have
good reason to question the subject/object dichotomy. Evelyn Fox Keller, one of the pioneers of feminist philosophy of
science, argues that the static objectivity of science that renders Nature into alien Other is rooted in the distinctive
subjectivity of masculine psychological development with its preoccupation with autonomy.21 Keller's conception of
dynamic objec- tivity offers an alternative stance, one that draws upon the ebb and flow (rather than a rigid dichotomy)
between subject and object. While dynamic objectivity, which "actively draws on the commonality between mind and
nature as a re- source for understanding," is rooted in a feminist psychoanalytic perspective, it is similar to Sylvester's
postmodern feminist notion of "empathic cooperation."22 I return to these ideas toward the end of this article in order to
draw out the possibilities of Earth remote sensing informed by feminist insights.
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Science is a flawed decision making framework - interpreted through preexisting discourses, ignores
human agency.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Science and Rational Policy Turning to the second assumption, let us consider whether science really does tend to generate
rational policy. The belief that it does is a fundamental tenet of "the rationality project," a term Deborah Stone uses to
describe the attempt to reduce politics and policy to rational analytic frameworks. This quintessentially masculinist
orientation to social life, which interprets all social action through the lens of rational self-interest, "misses the point of
politics" since "paradox is an essential feature of political life."31 The dichotomy between reason and emotion implicit in
the rational policy model is one of the dichotomies characteristic of patriarchal modernity.32 The stated purpose of the
global change research, with its heavy reliance on EOS data, is to generate the scientific knowledge that will enable
policymakers to make rational decisions; science is assumed to lead to rational action. Scientists and policymakers alike
envision a linear process that proceeds from recognizing potential problems in the earth's ecosystem, to under- standing the
implications, to evaluating potential remedies, to implementing remedies and monitoring them.33 Yet so much of the
research program is devoted to pure science, with human activities included seemingly as an afterthought, that the next
generation's policymakers will likely be more confused than today's. Research on policy options received only thirty-five
million dollars of a total 1995 USGCRP budget of 1.8 billion dollars, which represented a doubling of the 1994 figure.34
Predictably, to the extent that social scientists have been involved in the research, their analyses tend to be economistic
rather than based upon human needs or cultural analyses. The dearth of attention paid to human factors reflects a notion of
neutrality embedded in modernity's hierarchy of the sciences, a hierarchy that elevates the sciences most remote from
everyday experience, especially physics, to the apex of knowledge systems. The earth-system-science view of global
change highlights atmospheric physics, geophysics, and chemistry, thus rendering human beings virtually invisible. But if
the IPCC scientists are correct in surmising that global environmental change is imminent, then the agents of that change
are almost exclusively human beings. From the perspective of the social sciences, global environmental change is a process
where people are both the cause of change and the object of change-some much more so than others. It is a result of certain
social choices and commitments, whether conscious or not, and will only be ameliorated by alternative choices and
commitments.35 But from the perspective of remote sensing, human agency vanishes and global change is reduced to
physical processes. Since the "valid picture" transmitted from space omits the main element of the picture, it is a dubious
impetus for "rational policy." If history serves as a guide, the mammoth scientific undertaking embodied in the USGCRP is
unlikely to become a principal catalyst for policy change- even when the results are in after two decades. The nearest
approximation to a historical precedent is the ten-year, half-billion dollar interagency program in- tended to guide U.S.
policy on acid rain, the National Acid Precipitation Assess- ment Program (NAPAP). Although NAPAP was applauded for
its scientific achievements, in the end it was virtually irrelevant to the acid rain controls adopted in the 1990 Clean Air Act.
Very little of the NAPAP research was policy-relevant, the reports were not timely, and they were "largely unintelligible to
Congress."36 Given current trends in global change research, the USGCRP seems poised to follow in NAPAP's footsteps,
although at perhaps sixty times the cost. Contrary to the rational policy model, environmental policy is not steered by
science. In 1991, EPA administrator William K. Reilly commissioned an independent study to examine how his agency
employed scientific data in its decision- making process. The report concluded that, to a great extent, EPA decisions are
based upon extrascientific factors.37 Although environmental policy making is a more contentious process in the U.S. than
it is in many other places, there is no strong evidence that science serves as the primary guide to policy elsewhere.38
Science does not provide the objective facts from which policy decisions are rationally deduced. Rather, scientific
information tends to be framed and interpreted according to preexisting discourses. As I have argued elsewhere, this was
the case even for the global ozone negotiations, where a comprehensive international assessment representing a scientific
consensus was available to all parties.39 Often as not, the same scientific information can be used to bolster an array of
policy positions. If "irrationalities" tend to supplant scientific knowledge in the policy process for other environmental
issues, how much stronger will this tendency be for an issue like greenhouse warming, which goes to the heart of industrial
civilization's dreams and aspirations?
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Science seeks security, leading to flawed methodology.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Yet the assumption that science generates certainty is wrong not just because of the political purposes that scientific
information serves, but because it is based upon a popular but mistaken understanding of the nature of science. The
conventional view, which abounds in the literature on global change and satellite monitoring, is that science enthusiastically
embraces and pursues uncertainties. But this is not how science operates. Rather, as Brian Wynne argues, science proceeds
by selectively ignoring significant uncertainties.4' As philosophers and historians of science since Kuhn have recognized,
this state of affairs is normal, not pathological. Science could not function if it pursued all uncertainties persistently; thus, it
"gives prominence to a restricted agenda of defined uncertainties, leaving invisible a range of other uncertainties, especially
about new situations."42 As Wynne argues, this fact-that ignorance is endemic to science is only a problem when it is
disregarded, causing the scope and power of scientific knowledge to become exaggerated and the social commitments built
upon that knowledge to grow dangerously inflated. The danger arises because as our technological systems grow larger,
more elaborate, and more tightly interlocked, we can tolerate less uncertainty; difficulties in one part of the system can
precipitate disaster in another. These issues raise a fundamental question that needs to be asked of the USGCRP and related
scientific endeavors: If ignorance is endemic to scientific knowledge, what burden of proof can science be expected to
sustain? Programs like the USGCRP seek, in effect, to bring climate change and other global environmental problems
under the rubric of the risk assessment model by supplying the information from which risks will be calculated and policy
determined.43 That model incorporates the probabilistic dimension of environmental risks into the rational policy model.44
It entails a particular reading of nature as a mechanical system with deterministic (albeit interactive) processes, which
ecofeminists have pointed out is specifically the view of nature associated with patriarchical modernity. Yet of all
"systems," the earth's climate system is among the least amenable to risk assessment. As the chaos theorists have
demonstrated, it epitomizes the dynamics of a stochastic, as opposed to deterministic, system.45 Paradoxically,
incorporating more detailed information into models of stochastic systems may generate more uncertainties in the
conclusions.46 Thus, the earth system science that sustains the remote sensing project seems especially unlikely to generate
scientific certainty. Perhaps the quest for scientific certainty, which will be extremely elusive in the case of climate change,
may not be as helpful in generating policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as efforts to reorder economic and
technological priorities.47 Quite possibly, thirty billion dollars spent on researching alternatives to fossil fuel consumption
could provide more environmental benefits than a program that seeks scientific certainty. Some preliminary studies along
these lines suggest that conservation measures alone would result in economic savings while significantly reducing
greenhouse gas emissions.48
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NASA embraces the interrogatory model of science as power - results in the colonization and destruction
of nature.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Technology as Cause, Technology as Solution This brings us to the fourth assumption underlying the remote sensing
project: that a science and technology based upon the same assumptions that have been instrumental in causing global
environmental problems will be instrumental in solving those problems. Uncovering this assumption highlights
environmentalism's more general ambiguous relationship with science and technology. On the one hand, the Baconian
legacy of knowledge as power and technology as domination seems to be responsible for the worst cases of environmental
degradation. The "interrogatory" method of science,49 along with its technological feats, has either colonized or destroyed
nature on a planetary scale. On the other hand, scientists often bring cases of environmental destruction to light and serve as
defenders of nature. Moreover, if certain technologies are the problem, then alternative or "appropriate" technologies might
provide the solutions. Rather than succumbing to the temptation to reject science and technology altogether as enemies of
the earth, perhaps we should examine the assumptions embedded in remote sensing programs to see whether they tend to
reflect the first or second view of science and technology. Such an examination, however, suggests that earth remote
sensing, at least in the mainstream, is most likely to fit the interrogatory model of science as power. The ultimate goal of
the undertaking is to predict, which, as Francis Bacon recognized over four hundred years ago, is exactly how knowledge
becomes power. Earth system science aims to uncover nature's secrets in order to enable policymakers to "manage the
earth." The celebratory discourse surrounding the undertaking reflects just such an uncritical acceptance of this ambition.
Thus, we are told, with no apparent sense of irony, that: New space-based monitoring technologies backed by powerful
information systems will make possible quantum leaps in the ability to observe and understand Earth. ... It is obvious that
the key to the secrets of the earth system lies in advanced organization, big science, big technology and, of course, big
money.50 NASA, the principal recipient of this big money, waxes eloquent on the cover of its colorful Earth System
Science literature, quoting Goethe: "Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in
it."51 There is surely an element of salesmanship here, as NASA seeks to justify its budgetary requests in an era of fiscal
conservatism, but in this case the salesmen seem to have swallowed their own snake oil. Rather than standing back from
modernity's dream of power through knowledge, NASA embraces it wholeheartedly in its grand vision of a comprehensive
understanding of the earth as a system. How the power and magic will be manifested remains to be seen, but there is good
reason to wonder whether the remote sensing project will be environmentally benign.
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Framing/representations link
Space reps inform and shape policy
Heriberto 4 (Carou Heriberto Cairo is a professor of political science at the Universidad Complutense Political Geography 23 (2004)
1009–1036“The Field of Mars: heterotopias of territory and war”)
Our way of ‘‘visualizing global space’’ (Agnew, 2003: 15) is central to the understanding of war. The way we order things
in planetary space is constitutive of what we see and what we conceal: ‘‘proletarian internationalism’’, ‘‘national
liberation’’, ‘‘territorial integrity’’ are all dimensions of geopolitical discourses that inform the actions of combatants who
try to make them intelligible to a wider audience. War, in this sense, is not a matter of rational interest, ‘‘[p]eople go to war
because of how they see, perceive, picture, imagine, and speak of others: that is, how they construct the difference of others
as well as the sameness of themselves through representations’’ (Der Derian, 2002a).
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Gender link
Sending humans into space relies on heteronormative underpinnings that secure space for conquest by
heterosexual males
Griffin ‘09, Penny Griffin, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Securing Outer Space, Ed. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan. p. 72-73, AL
Bodies, including those early travellers that ventured West, or the astronauts selected for spaceflight, cannot be signified, as
Butler argues, 'without the mark of gender' (1990: 28). Heralded as the 'popular hero' of the Cold War (American) cultural
imaginary, the figure of the astronaut as space pioneer is embedded within a broader political framework of space travel,
wherein 'women' are seen as essentially different to men both physiologically and in terms of being taken seriously within a
masculine environment, one in which the true 'visionary' and 'entrepreneur' leading the quest into outer space has, in the
US, always been coded male. Thus NASA not only physically and empirically regulates which bodies can and cannot
succeed in outer space (from its refusal to consider women candidates in the 1950s and 1960s, to ongoing controversies
surrounding the possibility of menstruation, sexual intercourse and pregnancy in mixed-crew space travel); it also
constitutes the discursive regulations through which persons are made 'regular'. Gender, as Butler argues, thus becomes the
'norm' that operates within social practices (2004: 41), 'the implicit standard of normalization' that reproduces what is
perceived to be normal behaviout in/concerning outer space. ' The operations of gender as a norm, and normalizing
principle, in discourses of outer space need not be explicit. The reproduction of heteronormative gender idenrity(ies)
instead implicitly governs the 'social intelligibility of action', to borrow Butler's terminology, in outer space; that is, it
governs the means by which the politics of outer space makes sense. Heteronormative, heterosexist gender configurations
reside, for example, in discussions of the viability of outer space exploration and human spaceflight, where human
involvement in space is articulated as inherently exciting, dangerous and challenging, both technically and psychologically
(see, e.g. Manzey 2004; Mendell 2005; Seguin 2005). Outer space exploration and colonization is heavily naturalized in US
discourse as an inevitability of human activity, rather than a simple^iossibility. What can and cannot be done in and/or to
space are defined according to those physical, hormonal and performative forms (reproduced and normalized according to
heteronormative, heterosexual, discursive parameters. If, for example, humans are to colonize space, as much scientific
writing would have us believe, it is essential that they perform reproductively: human sexuality in space is thus framed and
reified such that it pertains only to heterosexual intercourse, and women appear only in reference to their 'sexual nature and
procrearive function* (Casper and Moore 1995: 319)- In January 2006, for example, NewScientist.com revealed that of
itSrtop ten most accessed space stories of 2005, the most popular was the aptly named report, 'Out-of-This-World Sex
Could Jeopardise Missions' (McKee 2005). Thirteen years after a married couple were first sent on a space shuttle mission,
prompting at the time a flurry of public curiosity and controversy concerning.'celestial intimacy' (Casper and Moore 1995:
312), the New Scientist's article opens with the line, 'sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail
missions to Mats and should thetefore be studied by -NASA'. NASA has already long been studying the prospect of sex (as
sexual intercourse) in outer space. As the New Scientist's article goes on to make clear, however, 'the question of sexuality'
and 'sexual issues' in spaceflight and future outer space exploration is essentially, for NASA at least, a question of
heterosexuality. Humans, suggests Ctawford, 'bring speed, agility, versatility and intelligence to exploration in a way that
robots cannot', justifying to many the employment of astronauts as 'field scientists' on other planets (Crawford 2005: 252).
The consistent discursive articulation of outer space as a frontier, a 'threshold' for human intervention requiring the utmost
in human performance, depends on a regulatory framework wherein 'humanity' is able consistently and without obstacle
(material, psychological or otherwise) to seize the challenge of exploiting and controlling its natural environment and
resources. Rarely conceived of purely in technological, aphysical terms, Space is a politics (in US discourse) entirely
constituted in reference to the corporeal attributes of the (neo-Uberally) human. Within the hetetonormative, heterosexual,
regulatory framework of US outer space discourse, the ideal, space-able, individual is constructed and reproduced within an
unspoken but unequivocal heteronormative framework of reproductive sexuality, as a model that others should
approximate: a person, evolved of heterosexual binaries, who is reactive but calm, reproductive but sexually restrained,
agile but not hyperactive, versatile but not sexually ambiguous, rational but not mechanical, adventurous but competent
(see, e.g. Seguin 2005). Located within a 'masculine context', such a framework has only solidified the sense of male bodies
existing as the norm against which female bodies are evaluated, and male physiology the standard by which female bodies
are judged (Casper and Moore 1995: 316-319). This regulatory masculinism has undoubtedly resulted in the overwhelming
dominance of male astronauts in space. Although the first American female went into space in 1983, in 2001 of an active
astronaut corps of 158, only thirty-five were women (NASA 2001), and of the 2004 class of astronauts, only two of eleven
were female (NASA 2004).
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The affirmative’s discourse relies on heteronormative notions of masculine domination that justify
ruthless colonialism and suppression of femininity
Griffin ‘09, Penny Griffin, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Securing Outer Space, Ed. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan. p. 70-71, AL
Much commercial gain already depends on the exploitation of outer space, but there is undoubtedly more to be made of
space's 'resources': 'asteroidal' mining, for example; the extraction of lunar soil oxygen'; the mining of very rare 'Helium-3*
from lunar soil as fuel for nuclear fusion reactors; or space, and parricularly the Moon, as a 'tourist venue', offering all kinds
of new 'sporting opportunities' (Morabito 2005: 5-7). But the lines distinguishing the various components of the outer space
'whole' are vague, and are particularly obscured by the tacit but pervasive heteronormativity that makes of space (to borrow
the language of the then USSPACECOM) a 'medium' to be exploited; the passive receptacle of US terrestrial 'force'. As
Goh states, outer space 'is an arena of growing economic and technological importance. It is also a developing theatre of
military defence and warfare' (2004: 259). US outer space discourse is driven by the belief that outer space exists to be
conquered (and that it rarely fights back), that those at the cutting edge of its exploitation are the 'visionaries' and
'entrepreneurs' that will pave the way to tourists, explorers, TV crews and to, as Morabito claims, 'dubious characters' such
as, perhaps, 'bounty hunters' (2004: 10).
Much US outer space discourse presents a vision of the human colonization of outer space as both natural and essential to
humanity, a 'psychological and cultural requirement' that is not merely a 'Western predisposition', but 'a human one'
(Crawford 2005: 260). Regulating such discourse, however, is the normative assumption that space is a 'masculine'
environment, a territory best suited to the performance of colonial conquest, and an arena for warfare and the display of
military and technological prowess. Herein, 'man', not woman, is the human model by which to gauge those adventurous
enough to engage in the 'space medium' (see, e.g. Casper and Moore 1995). 'Sex' is only explicitly articulated in US space
discourse to signal the category of 'woman', and the physical and. psychological constraints that woman's 'body' brings to
spaceflight and exploration. NASA, for example, in identifying 'gender-related' differences affecting the efficacy and
effects of spaceflight and travel, focus exclusively on the physiological differences between men and women (bone density,
blood flow, hormonal and metabolic differences, etc.). As Casper and Moore argue, NASA's heterosexist framings of these
issues high-light.sex in space as a social and scientific problem (1995: 313). Female bodies are thus 'constructed against a
backdrop in which male bodies are accepted as the norm, an inscription process shaped by the masculine context of space
travel' (ibid.: 316). By identifying only 'woman' with 'sex', and the 'ostensibly sexualized' features' of women s bodies
(Butler 1990: 26), a certain, heterosexist, order and identity is effectively instituted in US outer space discourse.
Fundamentally, the hierarchies of power, identity and cultural and sexual assumption that infuse outer space politics are no
different to those that structure terrestrial politics. As Morabito, rather worryingly claims, 'why expect men on the Moon to
behave much better than on Earth?' (2004: 10). Such a.statement, and the belief that the human colonization of outer space
is natural, essential to, and even inevitable for, humanity, are founded on a conceptualization of 'universal' human society
dependent on the kind of 'modern, knowledge-based economy' that the US has sought to establish through technological,
military and commercial expansion. Although the 'we' in much US space discourse is intended universally, it is in effect a
highly singular and culturally specific construction of identity, one deeply embedded in the liberal belief that humanity
needs 'a sense of freedom' and 'choice' (Seguin 2005: 981); that it was 'our' grandparents who thought exploring Africa was
an adventure (Mendell 2005: 10), and not Africans themselves; that the 'scientific revolution' sprang from the 'unusual
pragmatic and classless entrepreneurship of US society' that 'promoted commercialization and innovative marketing of new
technology' (ibid.). 'Something about space travel excites the human imagination in ways that transcend mundane political
objectives* (Mendell 2005: 7). Contrary to this, and however apparently exciting outer space is envisioned (as an
essentially little known and unexplored frontier of human endeavour), there is actually very little about US outer space
discoutse that suggests humanity has transcended the gendered politics of planet Earth. To understand the reproduction of
heterosexualized gender identities as a factor in US policy-making, demands, as Dean suggests, not only a 'shift of
emphasis toward the construction of particular kinds of elite masculinities', but also 'consideration of the historical milieu
that produced such men' (Dean 2001: 4).
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Gender link (satellites)
The underlying assumptions of satellite technology are rooted in an androcentric paradigm of rationality
and control.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Drawing upon feminist approaches that analyze the modern conception of scientific objectivity as a masculine construct
and that understand technologies as "valenced" rather than as neutral tools,7 this article uncovers and critically assesses six
fundamental assumptions embedded in the discourse surrounding EOS: 1) the neutrality of science; 2) science as a
foundation for rational policy; 3) science as a source of certainty; 4) technology as cause and solution of environmental
problems; 5) the globalist impulse; and 6) the perceived needs for planetary management. Each of these assumptions, I
argue, is rooted in a paradigm of rationality and control, which is characteristic of androcentric modernity. After making
this argument, I ask whether EOS can be redeemed from a feminist perspective and explore the possibility of a postmodern
feminist "homesteading," to use a term suggested by the work of Christine Sylvester, of satellite-based Earth observation.8
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Capitalism link – development
Space dominance is a way to secure the flow of capitalism
Raymond Duvall, Prrofessor of political science @ University of Minnesota, and Dr. Jonathan Havercroft, professor of political
science @ Oklahoma University, October 2006, “Taking Sovereignty Out of This World: Space Weapons and Empire of the Future”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=2185920&jid=RIS&volumeId=34&issueId=04&aid=2185916 ACC
7/21/11
The second type of militarization—space control—is both a form of “privatizing” the commons of orbital space and a form
of military exclusion, an extra-territorial complement to the effort to create an exclusive territorial “hard shell” for just one
state (and perhaps its “friends”) through missile defense. In the first respect, it can be understood as a type of “primitive
accumulation”, 48 whereby the commons of orbital space is effectively colonized and “made safe” for the capitalist
interests that flow through it—primarily information services at this point in time. Here, the project of space control is
constitutive of the U.S. as expressly capitalist state—sovereign subject of a particular global socio-economic order. In the
second respect, that moment of constitution is conjoined with the constitution of an exclusive—a singular—sovereignty in
regard to the workings of that socio-economic order through the global commons of orbital space.
The aff portrays space as resource for terrestrial goals instead of an environment necessitating protection
Peoples 11 (Lecturer in International Relations School of Sociology Politics and International Studies at Bristol University, 5-24-11,
“The Securitization of Outer Space: Challenges for Arms Control,” Contemporary Security Policy, 32:1, pg. 76-98)
From a Controlling the Means of Violence perspective, however, it may be that a thicker understanding of space security –
contributing to a transformatory politics with regard to outer space – is required. Some have, for instance, suggested a
consequentialist approach to securitization that distinguishes between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ forms of securitization (and
desecuritization). In parallel with debates on the merits and disadvantages of environmental security more generally, on this
understanding securitization might be viewed as positive where it mobilizes more fundamental attempts to understand and
control the means of violence in and from space based on greater awareness of space as an environment. In this light, it
could be argued that a less anthropocentric (or, certainly, less state-centric) form of securitization, aimed at preserving
space as an environment in its own right rather than simply a resource to be used for terrestrial goals, might be productively
employed. In spite of his stated preference for treating use of space as a fundamentally political task, Moltz elsewhere
seems to encourage this kind of positive securitization and sees it as an historical driver of previous international
cooperation: ‘In space, interdependence was not a lofty, ideologically motivated goal but a practical concern brought on by
environmental factors such as orbits, debris and mutual vulnerability.’ Where securitizing moves highlight the inherent
fragility of space-based assets within this environment they might be regarded as a potential supplement to controlling the
means of violence in and from space, and to promotinga culture of peace based on space environmentalism rather than
space militarism
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Capitalism link – development
Space-based developments expand possibilities for capitalism – we must be alert to this
Fraser MacDonald, Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Melbourne, 2007 “Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit
of geography” Progress in Human Geography 35(1) p. 592-615 http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.full.pdf+html ACC 7/19/11
Many of these space-enabled developments have, unaccountably, been neglected by the mainstream of geography. For
instance, Barney Warf makes the comment that ‘to date, satellites remain a black hole in the geographical literature on
communications’ (Warf, 2006: 2). Yet these technologies underwrite an array of potentially new subjectivities, modes of
thinking and ways of being whose amorphous shape has recently been given outline by Thrift in a series of original and
perceptive essays (Thrift, 2004a; 2004b; 2005a). He draws our attention to assemblages of software, hardware, new forms
of address and locatability, new kinds of background calculation and processing, that constitute more active and recursive
everyday environments. The background ‘hum’ of computation that makes western life possible, he argues, has been for
the most part inaudible to social researchers. Of particular interest to Thrift is the tendency towards ‘making different
parts of the world locatable and transposable within a global architecture of address’ (Thrift, 2004a: 588), which is, of
course, the ultimate achievement of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), of which GPS is the current market
leader. On the back of the absolute space of GPS – and its ancillary cartographic achievements (Pickles, 2004) – have
emerged other (relational) spatial imaginaries and new perceptual capacities, whereby the ability to determine one’s
location and that of other people and things is increasingly a matter of human precognition (Thrift, 2005a: 472).
Dissolving any neat distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘technology’, this new faculty of technointelligence can support quite
different modes of sensory experience. Thrift offers the term ‘a-whereness’ to describe these new spatial modalities that
are formed when what used to be called ‘technology’ has moved ‘so decisively into the interstices of the active
percipience of everyday life’ (Thrift, 2005a: 472; see also Massey and Thrift, 2003: 291). For all its clunky punnage, ‘awhereness’ nevertheless gives a name to a set of highly contingent forms of subjectivity that are worth anticipating, even
if, by Thrift’s own admission, they remain necessarily speculative. Reading this body of work can induce a certain vertigo,
confronting potentially precipitous shifts in human sociality. The same sensation is also induced by engagement with Paul
Virilio (2005). But, unlike Virilio, Thrift casts off any sense of foreboding (Thrift, 2005b) and instead embraces the
construction of ‘new qualities’ (‘conventions, techniques, forms, genres, concepts and even … senses’), which in turn open
up new ethicopolitical possibilities (Thrift, 2004a: 583). It is important not to jettison this openness lightly. Even so, I
remain circumspect about the social relations that underwrite these emergent qualities, and I am puzzled by Thrift’s
disregard of the (geo)political contexts within which these new technologies have come to prominence. A critical
geography should, I think, be alert to the ways in which state and corporate power are immanent within these
technologies, actively strategizing new possibilities for capital accumulation and military neoliberalism. To the extent that
we can sensibly talk about ‘a-whereness’ it is surely a function of a new turn in capitalism, which has arguably expanded
beyond the frame (but not the reach) of Marx and Engels when they wrote that: the need for a constantly expanding
market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, set t le
everywhere, es t abl i sh connections everywhere. (Marx and Engels, 1998: 39)
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Capitalism link – satellites
Satellites are weapons by which capitalist hegemons exert biopolitical and military control
Dickens and Omrod ’07 (Peter Dickens, Fellow of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK, and James S. Omrod, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology,
University of Essex, UK, 8/2007, Sage Journals Online, http://soc.sagepub.com/content/41/4/609, AL)
While pro-space activists and others are daydreaming about fantastical and yet seemingly benign things to do in outer
space, socially and militarily dominant institutions are actively rationalizing, humanizing and commodifying outer space for
real, material, ends. The cosmos is being used as a way of extending economic empires on Earth and monitoring those
individuals who are excluded from this mission. On a day-to-day level, communications satellites are being used to
promote predominantly ‘Western’ cultures and ways of life. They also enable the vast capital flows so crucial to the global
capitalist economy. Since the 1950s, outer space has been envisaged as ‘the new high ground’ for the worldwide exercise of
military power. The ‘weaponization of space’ has been proceeding rapidly as part of the so-called ‘War on Terror’
(Langley, 2004). The American military, heavily lobbied by corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing,
is now making new ‘Star Wars’ systems. These have been under development for over 30 years but are now being adapted
to root out and destroy ‘terrorists’, if necessary with the aid of ‘smart’ nuclear weapons. American government spending on
the Missile Defence Program jumped by 22 percent in 2004, reaching the huge sum of $8.3 billion (Langley, 2004). The
unreal and almost certainly unobtainable objective is to create a new kind of ‘pure war’ in which terrorists are surgically
pinpointed and killed while local civilians remain uninjured (Virilio, 1998; Virilio and Lotringer, 1998). Meanwhile, and
paralleling the weaponization of space, surveillance satellites have also been much enhanced. Although originally
developed for military purposes, they are now increasingly deployed to monitor nonmilitary populations, creating a global,
orbital panopticon. Workers in British warehouses are even being tagged and monitored by satellite to ensure maximum
productivity (Hencke, 2005). For those elites in positions of power over the universe, as for pro-space activists, the universe
is experienced as an object to be placed in the service of human wants and desires. However, for those with less privileged
access to the heavens, the universe is far from being such an object – their relationship with it is more fearful and alienated
than ever before.
Surveillance is the key mode of ordering capitalism
David Wood, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology @ Queens University, and Dr. William Webster, Senior
Lecturer in Public Management, 2010 “The Normality of living in surveillance societies” In: van de Hof, S. and Groothuis, M.
Innovating Government: Normative, Policy and Technology Dimensions of Modern Government. Springer, pp.129-140
The emergence of surveillance as a key feature of modern society is clearly intertwined with military activity, the
domestication of security and the development of a global surveillance industry. It is often argued that modes of production
and consumption have their own accompanying modes of ordering (see for example; Law 1992) and in recent years that
surveillance has become the key mode of ordering in modern capitalism (Lyon 1994, 2001, 2007). This has been the result
of certain socio-technical developments, and in particular, developments in telecommunications and computing which have
been utilized to realize new products and services. New technologies support the new mode by collecting and sorting data
on people, things and events, in order to produce categories of risk and profitability, which will enable foresight and the
anticipation of future risks and profits. Although many of these developments have initially taken place in military arenas
the globalization of surveillance is accompanied by the domestication of security as surveillance practices and behaviors
transfer from military to normal life. As the ‘risk-surveillance society’ (Coaffee et al. 2009) has become the ‘ideal-type’
state of the 21st century, so its aims—anticipated and pre-managed risk, safety, control, security—are increasingly
permeating policy and practice at every level. The relationship between globalization and militarism has not gone unnoticed
and a number of authors have commented on the militaristic nature of contemporary capitalism and the significance of the
military for the growing security industry and the growing desire for a ‘secure’ society (see for example; Coaffee et al.
2009; Hardt and Negri 2000; Klein 2008). The global surveillance economy has its roots in the post-Cold War period. In
this era there was a diversification of production in the military security sector whereby large companies that had previously
been military contractors adapted their products and services for civilian markets (Coaffee et al. 2009). For example, the
Automatic Number Plate Recognition system installed in London in the early 1990s relied on technologies tested during the
invasion of Iraq in 1991. This transfer of military terminology, practices and technologies, from the military arena to
domestic public policy and services, has been led by a number of US and European companies and has resulted in the
[continued…no text removed]
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[continued…no text removed]
emergence of a large and lucrative surveillance economy. The new surveillance economy has profited from the renewed
hostilities that have gradually come to fill the perceived military vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Along
with the creation of new civilian markets for military surveillance equipment, the language of combat has also become part
of the lexicon of politics and public policy: the ‘war on drugs,’ the ‘war on crime,’ and as Ericson (2006) puts it, a ‘war on
everything.’ The ‘war’ on 9 The Normality of Living in Surveillance Societies 153terror(ism) and the invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan signal a marked development in the use of surveillance technologies and a significant surge of military
technosurveillance development. The new ‘war’ does not involve the massive, lumbering, traditional ‘baroque arsenal’
(Kaldor 1981) but is a series of asymmetric conflicts seen as being fought much more through information and intelligence
than through the threat of total violence and annihilation (Metz 2000; Graham 2004). In a similar vein, policing has evolved
and is now information-led and targeted. The new forms of war and crime are also international, transnational and
intranational, they do not match the old national order, and therefore can be seen to call into question the capacity of both
existing global institutions, such as the United Nations or Interpol, and individual nation-states to deal with these issues
(Loader and Walker 2007). The new forms of international security cooperation and the setting of surveillance standards
are embedded in a new surveillance economy being shaped and led by the US (Hardt and Negri 2000) and Europe. Much of
this activity is secretive and there is a dense network of cooperating agencies and practices. The extent and nature of this
network is highlighted by the CHALLENGE programme 2 which demonstrates the degree to which European political
elites closely allied to the security industry are taking a leadership role in the development and deployment of surveillance
practices and systems. Although, there seems to be a degree of transAtlantic cooperation Europe is quite capable of
developing its own systems and practices, as demonstrated by the Galileo satellite project, which will create a direct rival
for the US Global Positioning System (Lembke 2002; MacDonald 2007). The European Union has also created its own
‘Fortress Europe’ Schengen immigration controls (Bigo and Guild 2005) and has frequently gone beyond the standards
required by international agreements on surveillance and security. The latter point can be demonstrated by the development
of the new EU biometric passport (Bunyan 2005). 3 The emergence of new modes of surveillant organization and the
expansion of military technologies into civilian markets has led to a redefinition of the concept of security. Security is no
longer a national issue—national security—it is also, at the same time, an international issue and a domestic or civil issue.
For example, it is clearly the case that many forms of surveillance, especially those associated with crime control and
policing, can be seen as a domestication of military security rationality alongside the use, in many cases, of military
technologies—what Murakami Wood refers to as ‘security coming home’ (Murakami Wood et al. 2006). The
domestication of surveillance technology occurs not just in the arena of urban security and surveillance but also in practices
of government. There has been a migration of technologies from military settings to civil settings driven by the expansion
of e-government services and the need for more effective and 2 CHALLENGE, EU framework program 6-funded research
network on liberty and security: \http://www.libertysecurity.org/[. 3 See also Chaps. 13, 14 and 23 of this book. 154 D. M.
Wood and C. W. R. Websterefficient public services. The use of new ICTs has led to the emergence of large state
databases, designed for processing public service information, and the emergence of new transactional electronic public
services, using a range of electronic service delivery mechanisms, including the Internet (Bellamy and Taylor 1998). These
developments utilize the networked computing infrastructure which was initially a product of US Cold War military
research and development and an attempt to create a ‘closed world’ over which the US military could exercise control
(Edwards 1996).
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Alienation links
The aff’s objectification of space grants elites omnipotence and control over others
Dickens and Omrod ’07 (Peter Dickens, Fellow of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge, UK
and Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK, and James S. Omrod, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology,
University of Essex, UK, 8/2007, Sage Journals Online, http://soc.sagepub.com/content/41/4/609)
This article has explored some of the past relationships between humanity’s internal nature and the universe. We have also
suggested some of the more troubling ways in which these relationships are developing in contemporary society. One
development is the trend toward a cosmic narcissism in the ways in which elites and the affluent middle classes relate to the
universe as an object for maintaining imperial dominance and sustaining personal fantasies about omnipotence respectively.
However, narcissistic relationships with external nature are intrinsically unsatisfying. Objectifying nature and the cosmos
does not actually empower the self, but rather enslaves it. Even the wealthy and the technocratic new middle class who
relate to the universe in this way become subjected to the objects of their own narcissistic desire. The other development is
a return to a fearful and alienated relationship with the universe, again experienced as a frightening subject controlling
Earthly affairs from on high. It is a 21st-century version of the Platonic and Mediaeval universes in which humans are made
into repressed objects and thereby brought to heel. This is a relationship experienced by those not in control of the universe:
those on the margins of Western society. Commodification, militarization and surveillance by the socially powerful are
again making the universe into an entity dominating human society, as are contemporary cosmological theories divorced
from most people’s understanding. Once more, socially and politically powerful people (some even claiming to be on a
mission from God) are attempting to make the cosmos into a means by which they can control society on Earth. The
combination of these two trends is a ‘Wizard of Oz’ effect, in which power is maintained by those with mechanical control
of the universe, but hidden by a mask of mysticism that keeps the public in a position of fear and subservience. Society’s
relations with the cosmos are now at a tipping point. The cosmos could be explored and used for primarily humanitarian
ends and needs. Satellites could continue to be increasingly used to promote environmental sustainability and social justice.
They can for example be, and indeed are being, used to track the movements of needy refugees and monitor environmental
degradation with a view to its regulation (United Nations, 2003). But if this model of human interaction is to win out over
the use of the universe to serve dominant military, political and economic ends then new visionaries of a human
relationship with the universe are needed. In philosophical opposition to the majority of pro-space activists (though they
rarely clash in reality) are a growing number of social movement organizations and networks established to contest human
activity in space, including the military use of space, commercialization of space, the use of nuclear power in space and
creation of space . Groups like the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and the Institute for
Cooperation in Space are at the centre of this movement. The activities and arguments of these groups, to which we are by
and large sympathetic, demonstrate the ways in which our understanding and use of outer space are contested in pivotal
times.
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Foreign policy link
All American foreign policy is part of a system that perpetuates a universalizing neoliberal world order.
Meghana V. Nayak, Department of Political Science, Pace University, and Christopher Malone, Chief Advisory Officer at The
Relational Capital Group. 2009, “American Orientalism and American Exceptionalism: A Critical Rethinking of US Hegemony,”
(International Studies Review 11, 253-276)
Though it would take four decades before the twentieth century would officially be called “the American Century,” the
likes of Roosevelt and Beveridge had already concluded that at its dawn. It was Life Magazine’s editor Henry Luce who
coined the phrase “American Century” in an essay which appeared on February 17, 1941, 10 months before the United
States entered World War II. Luce predicted that not only the United States would enter World War II, but also that it
would win it. He then urged a course of action once the war was completed successfully: “We must undertake to be the
Good Samaritan of the entire World. It is the Manifest Duty of this country to undertake to feed all the people of the
world…” (Luce 2004). After the United States sent its military to subdue the chaos, Luce believed the country was destined
to send its humanitarian army to give the rest of the world its ideals—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, a
love of liberty, and so on. It has become the mainstay in the playbook of American military strategy since: Shock and Awe
followed by what are perceived by American leaders as the armies of humanitarian compassion. But also important to note
here is that the American Century was about liberal internationalism, whether in the guise of the Wilsonian discourse on
“exporting” democracy or the postwar new global order hammered out through the creation of the United Nations and at the
Bretton Woods Conference. The United States helped to created international institutions that would “civilize” international
politics but that it would ignore at its whim, despite criticisms by Europeans invested in multilateralism. During and after
the Cold War, both the United States and Europe voiced normative commitments to a neoliberal world order, but the United
States distinguished itself by strengthening the role of the military (Manners 2002).
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Environment link
Environmental issues become securitizing when extreme measures are taken to conserve it- when the
environment becomes an apriori issues to any others
Buzzan et al, 1998 (Barry Buzzan, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of
Economics and honorary professor at the University of Copenhagen and Jilin University, Ole Waever, a professor of International
Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen Jaap de Wilde, Professor of International Relations and
World Politics at the University of Groningen., 1998 “Security: A New Framework for Analysis” p.38)
Nor do system-level referent objects always lose out. Thus far they have done so in the military and political sectors, where
the security of humankind has generally had less appeal than that of the state. But the story is different in other sectors. The
environment is becoming an interesting case, because groups are using a securitizing logic that exactly follows the format
prescribed in the previous section: the environment has to survive: therefore, this issue should take priority over all others,
because if the environment is degraded to the point of no return all other issues will lose their meaning. If the normal
system (politics according to the rules as they exist) is not able to handle the situation, we (Greenpeace and especially the
more extremist Eco terrorists) will have to take extraordinary measures to save the environment. Sustainability might be the
environmentalist’s equivalent of the state’s sovereignty and the nation’s identity: it is the essential constitutive principle
that has to be protected. If the is idea catches on the environment itself may be on the way to becoming a referent object- an
object by reference to which security action can be taken in a socially significant way. We discuss this more fully in
Chapter 4. Once this door is opened, one can see other plausible candidates for security referent objects at the system level.
Humankind as a whole achieved some status as a referent object in relation to nuclear weapons and could do so againperhaps more successfully- in relation to environmental disasters, such as new ice ages or collisions between the earth and
one or more of the many large rocks that occupy near-earth space. The level of human civilization could also become the
referent object in relations to environmental threats.
Construction of environmental threats produces securitizing measures but no real change- no solvency
Buzzan et al, 1998 (Barry Buzzan, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of
Economics and honorary professor at the University of Copenhagen and Jilin University, Ole Waever, a professor of International
Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen Jaap de Wilde, Professor of International Relations and
World Politics at the University of Groningen., 1998 “Security: A New Framework for Analysis” p.73-74 )
It should be emphasized that the political agenda does not only address the more sensational, emotion manifestations of
environmental issues but has also become a part of ordinary politics. Political parties, departments, and many firms must
formulate environmental polities as a part of their ordinary activities, regardless of whether they believe in them. This
situation constitutes politicization rather than securitization. As long as environmental concerns fall outside established
economic and political practices and routines, their advocates tend to- and probably must- overemphasize the
overwhelming importance of those values and issues. Many securitizing moves can be found in the reports that bridge both
agenda, ranging from the Club of Rome reports to the work of the Brudtland Commission. These reports present Silent
Spring-type lessons (de Wilde 1994: Carson 1962): It is not the actual disasters but their predictions that lead to
securitization. Concepts such as resource scarcity and sustainability have successfully mobilized public concern. when
picked up by governments and firms, however, these concerns are often merely politicized: they constituted a subagenda
within the larger political context. The environmental sector displays more clearly than any other the propensity for
dramatic securitizing moves but with comparatively little successful securitization effects (i.e. those that lead to
extraordinary measures). this finding points to the unsettled standing of the environmental discourse as such within public
debate.
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Environment link
The blending of environmental and national impacts supports a securitized logic of geopolitics, upholding
the US as the only true global savior
Gearóid Ó Tuathail, Professor of Government and International Affairs and Director of the Masters of Public and International Affairs program – Virginia Tech,
Sept 1996. “AT THE END OF GEOPOLITICS?.” http://www.nvc.vt.edu/toalg/Website/Publish/papers/End.htm
Even within the much remarked upon emergence of "environmental security" and the sacred visions of green governmentalists
like Al Gore, geography is post-territorial in-flowmations of ozone gases, acid rain, industrial pollution, topsoil erosion, smog
emissions, rainforest depletions and toxic spills. Yet, the discourse of unveiled and primordial geographical regions persists
also. In the place of Mackinder's natural seats of power, Gore presents the "great genetic treasure map" of the globe, twelve
areas around the globe that "hold the greatest concentration of germplasm important to modern agriculture and world food
production." Robert Kaplan's unsentimental journey to the "ends of the earth" where cartographic geographies are unravelling
and fading has him disclosing a "real world" of themeless violence and chaos, a world where "[w]e are not in control." The
specter of a second Cold War -- "a protracted struggle between ourselves and the demons of crime, population pressure,
environmental degradation, disease and cultural conflict" -- haunt his thoughts. This equivocal environmentalization of
strategic discourse (and visa versa) -- and the environmental strategic think tanks like the World Watch Institute which promote
it -- deserve problematization as clusters of postmodern geopolitics, in this case congealments of geographical knowledge and
green governmentality designed to re-charge the American polity with a circumscribed global environmental mission to save
planet earth from destruction.
The institutionalization of environmental fears expands securitization into the social realm, constructing
whole populations as threats to be eliminated while ignoring degradation’s true cause
Barry Buzan et al, prof – Int’l Studes, University of Westminster, 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. (Ole Waever, senior research fellow,
COPRI, and Jaap de Wilde, lecturer – IR, University of Twente)
At first sight, there seems to be more room for natural hazards of the first type of threat: Nature threatens civilization, and this
is securitized. Many societies are structurally exposed to recurring extreme natural events, such as earthquakes, volcanoes,
cyclones, floods, droughts, and epidemics. They are vulnerable these events, and much of heir history is about this continuous
struggle with nature. The risks involved are often explicitly securitized and institutionalized. In the Netherlands, for example,
protection against the sea and flooding rivers is a high-ranking national interest; the same goes for protection against
earthquakes in Japan.
As soon as some form of securitization or politization occurs, however—that is, when some measure of human responsibilities
replaces the role of fate of God—even this group of conflicts tends to develop a social character (the second type of threat).
Following the river floods in the low countries in 1995, the debate in the Netherlands was about political responsibility for he
dikes: Who was to blame, and what should be done? I Japan, following the Kobe earthquake in early 1995, designers of
seismological early warning systems and of construction techniques, as well as governmental civil emergency plans, were
under fire. Where the means to handle threats are thought to exist, the security logic works less against nature than against the
failure of the human systems seen as responsible. Moreover, with links suspected between human activities and “natural”
catastrophes, the distinction between natural and manmade hazards is becoming blurred. Therefore, except for cases in which
people undergo natural hazards without any question, the logic that environment security is about “threats without enemies”
(Prins 1993) is often misleading.
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Global warming link
Attempting to halt global warming produces securitization- countries compete against each other to
reduce, or avoid reducing their emissions
Buzzan et al, 1998 (Barry Buzzan, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of
Economics and honorary professor at the University of Copenhagen and Jilin University, Ole Waever, a professor of International
Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen Jaap de Wilde, Professor of International Relations and
World Politics at the University of Groningen., 1998 “Security: A New Framework for Analysis” p.86)
The third sequence of questions is decisive, because it is here that a political constellation of mutual security concerns is
formed. Who feels threatened? Who must those parties cooperate with if action is to be effective? Effects and causes are
significant conditions in disposing who will become involved with whom and how, but they do not fully determine our
outcomes. Securitization always involves political choice: thus, actors might choose to ignore major causes for political or
pragmatic reasons and therefore may form a security constellation that is different from what one would expect based on
one’s knowledge of effects and causes. Occasionally , pragmatism may prescribe global action, but even then it is necessary
to subdivide global issues according to the context of their causes and effects. Dealing with the causes of, for instance,
global warming require a global contest. The fossil CO2 emissions that contribute to the greenhouse effect occur worldwide
are therefore a global problem, even though important regional differences should be realized. Meeting the causes of global
warming points to the urgency of a global regime, which was recognized at UNCED where the climate treaty that became
effective in March 1994 was signed. It is telling, however tat at the follow-up conference in Berlin (28 March-7 April
1995), saving the intentions declared at UNCED was the optimum goal. Further decision making and regime formation
were postponed to the third Climate Summit, to be held in Tokyo in 1997. This postponement is in part a result of the fact
that those who have to pay the price for prevention are different from those who pay the price of failure.
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Territory link
Territorial doctrines necessitate securitizing ourselves against any imaginable threat.
Cairo 04 (Heriberto Cairo, Department of Political Science and Administration III Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, 2004,
“The Field of Mars: heterotopias of territory and war”, 1017-1018)
Determined modes of discourse construct symbolic orders in which war and peace are significant; in other words, certain
political discourses make war and peace understandable (Giddens, 1987). These symbolic orders include territorial
ideologies and strategies, two viewpoints on the same reality (Korinman & Ronai, 1978), which are expressed and shaped
by particular discursive modes. Territorial doctrines associated with the emergence and development of the nationstate are
currently amongst the most powerful instruments for the ‘‘rationalization’’ of war. This paper does not deal with
nationalism; suffice it to recall that nationalism aims to grant a group identity whilst erasing other sorts of identity amongst
people who live in a perfectly delimited space, through the proposition of a common past and a common future too. That
group of people constitutes a nation, which, according to Benedict Anderson, ‘‘is an imagined political community’’
(Anderson, 1991: 6), an abstract being which becomes concrete through the territory to which it links its past and future,
and which is therefore central to national identity. Consequently, ‘‘for those who control the state or aim to do so, territorial
claims really involve their will (will of power) to give its ‘historic’ territory back to the nation, which forms the basis of the
symbolical representation that it gives to itself’’ (Korinman, 1990: v). Thus, territorial wars are the meaningful and visceral
manifestation of national identity that help to define, consolidate and secure ‘‘us’’ from the threat of ‘‘them’’, at the same
time securing habitable space for an imagined community. The opposite process also occurs, that is, although war causes
interruptions in the ordinary flows between spatial structures, it has a decisive influence in the formation of group identity
by magnifying internal similarities and exacerbating the insecurity of a group who stand in opposition to a world outside
their own perceived borders. In short, these are two sides of the same coin.
Territory, mapping and colonial nation building results in physical and epistemic violence of identity
politics.
Cairo 04 (Heriberto Cairo, Department of Political Science and Administration III Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, 2004,
“The Field of Mars: heterotopias of territory and war”, 1019-1020)
Territory becomes the central element of power behavior, resulting in ideologies that espouse territorial dominance,
projected both inwards and outwards. But it is also necessary to approach the differences between inside and outside from
other points of view; it is important to see that some may aim at peacemaking and organization of the space beyond their
boundaries; that is, they may attempt to expand their territory, justifying their behavior through ideological discourses such
as the ‘‘living space’’ of German Geopolitik or also to develop global strategies of dominance based on similar
conceptions, such as the American ‘‘manifest destiny.’’ Territory also plays a fundamental role in identity politics, and
particularly in the violence resulting from it. Krishna shows how ‘‘[t]he effort to produce Sri Lanka from a space called
Ceylon concisely showcases the physical and epistemic violence that accompanies post-colonial nation building.’’ Civil
war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority results, basically, from a desire of the Sinhalese to regard ‘‘the
new nation as a space that properly belongs to itself’’ (Krishna, 1999: 56–57). Territory, thus, is a marker of identity, as are
language, religion, ethnicity or social customs, but territory in postmodern times and particularly in postcolonial states is a
very powerful tool, ‘‘without analogue,’’ in the construction of identity. Mehta gives us a plausible explanation: Clearly in
the post-nationalist era, states feel the imperative to claim to be able to preserve and defend a distinctive way of life. But
simultaneously, they are aware that such claims to distinctiveness are themselves weakened in this era. Ethnicity, religion,
and language, the very attributes that nations in the stage of their formation so often tout, cease to be the markers of
distinctiveness. States cannot protect or police the borders of their languages, and still less the religious commitments and
interethnic links that their citizens increasingly cultivate . But they can try to protect their territorial borders. In an odd sort
of way territory becomes the last resort of political autonomy and sovereignty (Mehta, 1999: 151). Returning to Borges, his
‘‘Map of Empire’’ shows, according to Grison (1998), the ‘‘illusion of space.’’ It is a hyper-realist writing, ‘‘empty of any
interpretation of the real.’’ Therefore it is a non-sense. The map, stresses Grison, is ‘‘intrinsically useless, inconsistent and
worthless’’ because it has the dimensions of the real space but it lacks any use for the real people. Maps are not
interchangeable with territory, and territory is only one attribute of sovereignty that loses its original meaning if the other
elements of the equation are transformed. Nonetheless the territory (or, more precisely, the map, the form of the territory) of
the states has become synonymous with sovereignty; it has even displaced the latter in the legitimating discourse of war, as
this paper proceeds to demonstrate.
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***HARDLINE LINKS
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Strategic use of space is controlled by the military yielding space warfare
Fraser MacDonald, Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Melbourne, 2007 “Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit
of geography” Progress in Human Geography 35(1) p. 592-615 http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.full.pdf+html ACC 7/19/11
The historic relationship between knowing a space and exerting political and strategic dominion over it is entirely familiar
to g e o g r a p h e r s . J u s t a s t h e g e o g r a p h i c a l knowledge of Empire enabled its military subjugation,
colonization, and ultimately its ecological despoliation, this same pattern is being repeated in the twenty-first-century
‘frontier’. 4 It is also worth remembering that the geographies of imperialism are made not given. In what follows, I want
to examine how the geographies of outer space are being produced in and through contemporary social life on Earth. Such
an account inevitably throws up some concerns about the politics and socialities of the new space age. Against thi s ba c
k g round, I set my a r gument on a trajectory which is intermittently guided by two key writers on technology with
very different sensibilities. It is my intention to hold a line between the dark anticipations of Paul Virilio and the
resplendent optimism of Nigel Thrift. This discursive fl ight may well veer off course; such are the contingencies of
navigating space. III Militarization, surveillance and the politics of ‘a-whereness’ The most striking aspect of the sociality
of outer space is the extent to which it is, and always has been, thoroughly militarized. The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty
banned nuclear weapons in space, on the moon or on other celestial bodies, and contained a directive to use outer space
‘for peaceful purposes’. But its attempt to prohibit the ‘weaponizing’ of space was always interpreted in the loosest
possible manner. The signatories to the OST in Washington, London and Moscow were in no doubt that space exploration
was primarily about military strategy; that the ability to send a rocket into space was conspicuous evidence of the ability
to dispatch a nuclear device to the other side of the world. This association remains strong, as the concern over Iran’s
space programme (with its Shahab family of medium range missiles and satellite launch vehicles) makes clear. Several
commentators in strategic affairs have noted the expanding geography of war from the two dimensions of land and sea to
the air warfare of the twentieth century and more recently to the new strategic challenges of outer space and cyberspace
(see, for instance, Gray, 2005: 154). These latter dimensions are not separate from the battle-‘field’ but rather they fully
support the traditional military objectives of killing people and destroying infrastructure. Space itself may hold few human
targets but the capture or disruption of satellites could have far-reaching consequences for life on the ground. Strictly
speaking, we have not yet seen warfare in space, or even from space, but the advent of such a confl ict does appear closer.
In post-Cold-War unipolar times the strategic rationale for the United States to maint a in the prohibi t ion a g a ins t
weaponizing space is diminishing (Lambakis, 2003), even if the rest of the world wishes it otherwise. In 2000, a UN
General Assembly resolution on the ‘Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space’ was adopted by a majority of 163–0
with 3 abstentions: the United States, Israel a n d t h e F e d e r a t e d S t a t e s o f Mi c r o n e s i a (United Nations,
2000). Less than two months later, a US Government committee chaired by Donald Rumsfeld 5 issued a report warning
that the ‘relative dependence of the US on space makes its space systems potentially attractive targets’; the United States
thus faced the danger, it argued, of a ‘Space Pearl Ha rbor ’ (Rums feld, 2001 : vi i i ) . As spa ce warfare was,
according to the report, a ‘virtual certainty’, the United States must ‘ensure continuing superiority’ (Rumsfeld, 2001: viii).
This argument was qualifi ed by obligatory gestures towards ‘the peaceful use of outer space’ but the report left little
doubt about the direction of American space policy. Any diffi cult questions about the further militarization (and e v e n w
e a p o n i z a t i o n ) o f s p a c e c o u l d b e easily avoided under the guise of developing ‘dual-use’
(military/civilian) technology and emphasizing the role of military applications in ‘peacekeeping’ operations. Through
such rhetoric, NATO’s satellite-guided bombing of a Serbian TV station on 23 April 1999 could h a v e b e e n r e a d i
l y a c c ommo d a t e d u n d e r the OST injunction to use outer space for ‘peaceful purposes’ (Cervino et al., 2003).
Since that time new theatres of operation have been opened up in Af ghani s t an and Iraq, for further trials of spaceenabled warfare that aimed to provide aerial omniscience for the precision delivery of ‘shock and awe’. Wh a t B e n j
ami n L amb e t h h a s c a l l e d t h e ‘accomplishment’ of air and space power has since been called into question by
the all too apparent limitations of satellite intelligence in the tasks of identifying Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction or in
stemming the growing number of Allied dead and wounded from modestly armed urban insurgents (Lambeth, 1999;
Graham, 2004; Gregory, 2004: 205). For all its limitations, even this imagery has been shielded from independent scrutiny
by the military monopolization of commercial satellite outputs (Livingstone and Robinson, 2003). Yet, far from
undermining Allied con- fi dence in satellite imagery or in a ‘cosmic’ view of war (Kaplan, 2006), it is precisely these
abstract photocartographies of violence – detached from their visceral and bloodied ‘accomplishments’ – that have
licensed, say, the destruction of Fallujah (Gregory, 2004: 162; Graham, 2005b). There remains, of course, a great deal
more that can be said about the politics of these aerial perspectives than can be discussed here (see, for instance, Gregory,
2004; Kaplan, 2006).
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Discourses of weaponization are a geopolitical ideology that ignore basic principles of power and reconstitute global political order in an unprecedented form of empire that transforms notions of
sovereignty.
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, Uni¬versity of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 42-44//DN)
Such statements of official policy for the United States to develop singular military capacity in space are now far from
unusual. More than political rhetoric is involved, however, as substantial resources are being invested in research and
development, indicating clearly that Earth's orbital space is currently an object of military-security planning.2 The United
States' strategic imaginary in the early twenty-first century expressly includes securiti-zation.of, through, and from orbital
space under such rubrics as missile defense, space control, and force application from space. Space weapons, then, are no
longer just a fantasy, an unrealizable fiction. They are rapidly becoming a very real possibility, actively sought in strategic
policy.
This policy commitment, unlike those of previous eras, regards control of Earth's orbital space as strategically crucial.
While it is surely true that efforts to bring grand strategic visions into being often fall short, or even founder, it is also the
case that pursuit of them has the potential to have very significant consequences for the structure and stability of the
international system. The question that arises is: what are likely effects on the future international system of the active
pursuit, and perhaps the actualization, of this current policy of attempted control over orbital space by the United States?
In addressing that question in this chapter, we approach the policy as expressive of a geopolitical strategic vision, and,
accordingly, turn initially to the analytical tools of geopolitical theory. The now largely neglected discourse of geopolitics which had its heyday during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century — attempted to ask a similar question to ours
about the impact that new technologies, particularly steamships, railways, and airplanes, would have on the course of world
politics (see for example Mahan 1890; Mackinder 1912). Recently some international relations schol¬ars have attempted to
revive principles of geopolitical theory and apply them to the terrain of space (both Earth's orbital space and the area
beyond Earth's gravity well). Out of these "astropolitical" theories two distinct models of the future of the international
system have emerged, one reflecting realist tenets and the other more liberal-republican in its inflection. The first,
developed most fully by Everett Dolman, sees astropolitik (a realpolirik version of astro-polirics) as the ability of great
powers to dominate the Earth through the competitive mastery of space. The second, articulated powerfully by Daniel
Deudney, argues that the expansion of global politics into orbital space has the potential to foster a republican form of
international government on Earth. After reviewing these liberal-republican and realist strands of astropol¬itics, we turn to
insights in critical geopolitics, inspired by critical social theory more generally, to challenge some of their core
assumptions, especially assumptions that permit an effective ignoring of implications of basic principles of power and
control recognized in the epigraph from Dolman with which this chapter began. We then extend the opening provided by
the turn to critical theory to consider constitutive effects of the operation of power, and especially to theorize how U.S.
hegemony in space weaponization would re-constitute global political order. For this, we move to an engagement with
contemporary critical theories of sovereignty to highlight consequences of contemporary U.S. astropolitical strategy in
constituting a historically unprecedented form of empire, which would have profound impact on the structure and
functioning of international relations. We argue that U.S. geopolitical strategy of attempting control of orbital space has the
strong potential to transform the constitution of sovereignty of modern territorial states. In place of an anarchic system of
sovereign territorial states - capable either of great power competition or federation through collaboration - we
see the
likely development of a historically unprecedented form of empire, administratively deterritorialized, but centralized in
locus of aurhority.
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Space militarization wages a psychological war turning civilians into soldiers- refusal is key
Orr ’04, Jackie Orr, Department of Sociology, Syracuse University, 2004, “The Militarization of Inner Space”, Critical Sociology,
Volume 30, issue 2, p.454-456, AL
And we – we civilian-soldiers – where do we stand? In what space really do we wage our scrambled warfare, our civilian participation
in the militarized state of the nation? Are we all soldiers now in the battle for Full Spectrum Dominance of the globe? South Asia.
Eurasia. East Asia. Central Asia. What boot camp has prepared us for the rigors of a perpetually ambiguous, infinitely expanding
battlefield? Across what geography is the ‘war against terrorism’ really mapped? Land. Sea. Air. Space. In how many dimensions
must today’s civilian-soldier really move? The Bush administration’s first National Security Strategy document, published in
September 2002, offers the inquiring civilian-soldier some indication of the full scope of the battle plans. Twelve months after
launching its boundless war against terrorism, the administration introduced its new doctrine of preemptive strikes, unilaterally
pursued, against perceived threats. National security now depends, the civilian-soldier learns, on “identifying and destroying the threat
before it reaches our borders. . . [W]e will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting
preemptively.” 6 Released just as the Bush administration stepped up its rhetorical and operational preparations for a military invasion
and occupation of Iraq, the document leads even mainstream media commentators to note, with measured alarm, its imperial posture.
An editorial published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution a week after the document is made public describes it as a “plan for
permanent U.S. military and economic domination of every region on the globe.” The editorial warns: “This war [against Iraq], should
it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and
authority as planetary policemen.” 7 If the militarization of outer space is an essential component of Full Spectrum Dominance, and if
the so-called ‘war against terrorism’ must be 6 situated within broader U.S. ambitions for global empire, 8 it is perhaps useful for
today’s civilian-soldier to wonder just how wide and deep is a “full spectrum” of dominance? What borders must be crossed to fully
dominate such an infinity of space? Perhaps the domination of outer space in the interests of militarized technologies and intelligence
requires the militarization of a somewhat more covert spatial territory – a territory more spectral, less smoothly operationalized but no
less necessary to global dominion. What happens in that elusive terrain of ‘inner space’ as outer space becomes an overt field for fully
militarized command posts? Is the ‘inner’ psychic terrain of today’s U.S. civilian-soldier another battlefield on the way to full
spectrum dominance of the globe? What kind of militarized infrastructure is needed ‘inside’ the soldierly civilian called upon to
support the establishment of military superiority across the spectrum of spaces ‘outside’? To what extent might Full Spectrum
Dominance depend intimately on commanding ‘space power’ in both outer and inner space? The psychology of the civilian-soldier,
the networks of everyday emotional and perceptual relations, constitute an ‘inner space’ that is today, I suggest, one volatile site of
attempted military occupation. But the occupying forces I’m concerned with here are not those of an invasive, enemy ‘other.’ Rather,
a partial and urgent history of attempts by the U.S. government, media, military, and academy to enlist the psychological life of U.S.
citizens as a military asset – this is the embodied story that occupies me here. The militarization of inner space, a complex,
discontinuous story that nowhere crystallizes into the clear knot of conspiracy but which leaves its uneven traces throughout the
scattered archives of the 20 th century United States, is now as it has been before a major concern of those most responsible for the
business of war. Militarization, defined by historian Michael Geyer as “the contradictory and tense social process in which civil
society organizes itself for the production of violence,” constitutes at its core a border-crossing between military and civilian
institutions, activities and aims (1989: 79). The militarization of inner space can be conceived, then, as the psychological organization
of civil society for the production of violence, an important feature of a broader – tense and contradictory – social process. It is not my
intention to reify ‘psychology’ or psychological processes as if they could be separated from social, historical, or economic contexts.
Quite the contrary. By naming the constructed ‘inner space’ of psychological activities as increasingly militarized – with the events of
September 11 serving as an accelerator and intensifier of processes that are by no means new – my hope is to deepen a critical
sociological commitment to contesting the ‘space’ of psychology as the radically social matter of political struggle, as one radically
material weapon of war. Or its refusal. While I refer to this psychological space as ‘inner,’ it of course is not irreducibly individual,
and is never confined to a neat interiority. Inner space both produces and is produced by deeply social ways of seeing, profoundly
cultural technologies of perception. And though I want to reject any notion of a homogeneous collective psyche, I do want to conjure
the dense sociality and historicity of psychology spaces. Psychological life occupies a difficult borderland, a ‘between-space’ where
the question and human confusions of what is ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ are repetitiously experienced, and consciously and unconsciously
lived. Indeed, the space of psychology is the very site where everyday sensations of what’s ‘inside’ and what’s ‘outside,’ what’s
‘them’ and what’s ‘us,’ what feels safe and what seems fatally frightening are culturally (re)produced or resisted; it is an intensely
border-conscious space. The politics of borders – how they’re made and unmade, what they come to mean – is one shifting center of
the politics of nationalism, of language, of memory, of race, gender, class, of terror. What has come in the modern West to be called
the ‘psychological’ plays a dramatic, power-charged role within each of these entangled political fields. The militarization of
psychological space can be imagined then as a strategic set of psychological border operations aimed at the organization of civil
society for the production of violence.
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The aff perpetuates the very harms they attempt to solve – representing space as a place of combat
rationalizes the need to defend it in the first place, constructing the threat thaty they attempt to counter
Bormann '9 – dept. of politics @ Northeastern; previously held a position @ Watson Institute for Int'l Studies @ Brown (Natalie,
2009, "Securing Outer Space," ed. by Natalie Bormann & Michael Sheehan, p. 76-89, RG)
In an attempt to close the circle to the start of this chapter and draw the line back to the notion of an imagination of outer space as a
battlefield - yet devoid of matter - consider rhe following: creating, fabricating, moulding and representing a field of combat in
outer space, ubiquitous and instant in its ability to project modes of destruction and killing, in fact determines, reproduces and
locks in the very existence and rationale of the need to defend space against an other, colonise space before a competitor can do
so, and divide space into 'ours' and 'theirs'. Put differently, the invention of outer space as a battlefield with the above 'qualities'
assumes a notion of vulnerability and thteat to that space - at any time and from anywhere - before it in fact becomes one. Thus, outer
space as a sphere of permanent crisis in effect constitutes and constructs the very reality that it purports to counter. I am referring here to Carol Cohn's (1987) argument that military projects pre-empt threats and threatening intentions. In the context of past
US/Soviet rivalry she contends that, if one asks what the Soviets 'can' do, one quickly comes to assume that 'that is what they intend to
do'. In other words, strategic planning and the logic of worst-case-scenarios commit us to assume something will happen. Foucault's
notion of' technologies of normalization' springs to mind by way of summary, and by which the author depicts technology as an
essential component in the systematic creation, classification and control of space, habitat and its claim to contingent action drawn
from that control over that space.
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Dolman’s arguments are examples of imperialism and states of exception – criticizing these assumptions
is necessary for democratic accountability
Fraser MacDonald, Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Melbourne, 2007 “Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit
of geography” Progress in Human Geography 35(1) p. 592-615 http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.full.pdf+html ACC 7/19/11
Two things should now be clear. First, outer space is no longer remote from our everyday lives; it is already profoundly
implicated in the ordinary workings of economy and society. Second, the import of space to civilian, commercial and, in
particular, military objectives, means there is a great deal at stake in terms of the access to and control over Earth’s orbit.
One cannot overstate this last point. The next few years may prove decisive in terms of establishing a regime of space
control that will have profound implications for terrestrial geopolitics. It is in this context that I want to briefly introduce the
emerging field of astropolitics, defined as ‘the study of the relationship between outer space terrain and technology and the
development of political and military policy and strategy’ (Dolman, 2002: 15). It is, in both theory and practice, a
geopolitics of outer space. Everett Dolman is one of the pioneers of the field. An ex-CIA intelligence analyst who teaches at
the US Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Fraser MacDonald: Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit of
geography 607 Studies , he publishes in journals that are perhaps unfamiliar to critical geographers, like the modestly titled
Small Wars and Insurgencies. As what follows is uniformly critical of Dolman’s work, I should say that his Astropolitik:
classical geopolitics in the space age (Dolman, 2002) is unquestionably a significant book: it has defined a now
vibrant field of research and debate. Astropolitik draws together a vast literature on space exploration and space policy, and
presents a lucid and accessible introduction to thinking strategically about space. (In the previous section I drew heavily on
Dolman’s description of the astropolitical environment.) My critique is not founded on scientific or technical grounds but
on Dolman’s construction of a formal geopolitics designed to advance and legitimate the unilateral military conquest of
space by the United States. While Dolman has many admirers among neoconservative colleagues in Washington thinktanks, critical engagements (eg, Moore, 2003; Caracciolo, 2004) have been relatively thin on the ground. Dolman’s work is
interesting for our purposes here precisely because he draw’s on geography’s back catalogue of strategic thinkers, most
prominently Halford Mackinder, whose ideas gained particular prominence in America in the wake of the Russian Sputnik
(Hooson, 2004: 377). But Dolman is not just refashioning classical geopolitics in the new garb of ‘astropolitics’; he goes
further and proposes an ‘Astropolitik’ – ‘a simple but effective blueprint for space control’ (p. 9) – modelled on Karl
Hausofer’s Geopolitik as much as Realpolitik. Showing some discomfort with the impeccably fascist pedigree of this
theory, Dolman cautions against the ‘misuse’ of Astropolitik and argues that the term ‘is chosen as a constant reminder of
that past, and as a grim warning for the future’ (Dolman, 2002: 3). At the same time, however, his book is basically a
manual for achieving space dominance. Projecting Mackinder’s famous thesis on the geographical pivot of history
(Mackinder, 1904) onto outer space, Dolman argues that: ‘who controls the Lower Earth Orbit controls near-Earth space.
Who controls near-Earth space dominates Terra [Earth]. Who dominates Terra determines the destiny of humankind.’
Dolman sees the quest for space as already having followed classically Mackinderian principles (Dolman, 2002: 87). Like
Mackinder before him, Dolman is writing in the service of his empire. ‘Astropolitik like Realpolitik’ he writes, ‘is
hardnosed and pragmatic, it is not pretty or uplifting or a joyous sermon for the masses. But neither is it evil. Its
benevolence or malevolence become apparent only as it is applied, and by whom’ (Dolman, 2002: 4). Further inspiration
is drawn from Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose classic volume The influence of seapower upon history, has been widely
cited by space strategists (Mahan, 1890; Gray, 1996; see also Russell, 2006). Mahan’s discussion of the strategic value of
coasts, harbours, well-worn sea paths and chokepoints has its parallel in outer space (see France, 2000). The implication of
Mahan’s work, Dolman concludes, is that ‘the United States must be ready and prepared, in Mahanian scrutiny, to commit
to the defense and maintenance of these assets, or relinquish them to a state willing and able to do so’ (Dolman, 2002: 37).
The primary problem for those advancing Astropolitik is that space is not a lawless frontier. In fact the legal character of
space has long been enshrined in the principles of the OST and this has, to some extent, prevented it from being subject to
unbridled interstate competition. ‘While it is morally desirable to explore space in common with all peoples’, writes
Dolman without conviction, ‘even the thought of doing so makes weary those who have the means’ (Dolman, 2002: 135).
Thus, the veneer of transcendent humanism with regard to space gives way to brazen self-interest. Accordingly, Dolman
describes the res communis consensus7 of the OST as ‘a tragedy’ that has removed any legal incentive for the exploitation
of space (p. 137). Only a res nullius8 legal order could construct space as ‘proper objects for which states may compete’ (p.
138). Under the paradigm of res nullius and Astropolitik, the moon and other celestial bodies would become potential new
territory for states. Here Dolman again parallels Karl Hausofer’s Geopolitik. Just as Hausofer desired a break from the
[continued…no text removed]
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[continued…no text removed]
Versailles Treaty (Ó Tuathail, 1996: 45), Dolman wants to see the USA withdraw from the OST, making full speed ahead
for the moon (see also Hickman and Dolman, 2002). Non-spacefaring developing countries need not worry about losing
out, says Dolman, as they ‘would own no less of the Moon than they do now’ (2002: 140). To his credit, Dolman does give
some attention to the divisive social consequences of this concentrated power. Drawing on earlier currents of environmental
determinism and on the terrestrial model of Antarctic exploration, he ponders the characteristics of those who will be first
to colonize space. They will be ‘highly educated, rigorously trained and psychologically screened for mental toughness and
decision-making skills, and very physically fit’; ‘the best and brightest of our pilots, technicians and scientists’; ‘rational,
given to scientific analysis and explanation, and obsessed with their professions’ (p. 26). In other words, ‘they are a
superior subset of the larger group from which they spring’ (p. 27). As if this picture is not vivid enough, Dolman goes on
to say that colonizers of space ‘will be the most capably endowed (or at least the most ruthlessly suitable, as the populating
of America and Australia … so aptly illustrate[s])’ (p. 27; my emphasis). ‘Duty and sacrifice will be the highest moral
ideals’ (p. 27). Society, he continues, must be prepared ‘to make heroes’ of those who undertake the risk of exploration (p.
146). At the same time, ‘the astropolitical society must be prepared to forego expenditures on social programs … to channel
funds into the national space program. It must be embued with the national spirit’ (p. 146). Dolman slips from presenting
what would be merely a ‘logical’ outworking of Astropolitik to advocating that the United States adopt it as their space
strategy. Along the way, he acknowledges the full anti-democratic potential of such concentrated power, detaching the state
from its citizenry: the United States can adopt any policy it wishes and the attitudes and reactions of the domestic public
and of other states can do little to challenge it. So powerful is the United States that should it accept the harsh Realpolitik
doctrine in space that the military services appear to be proposing, and given a proper explanation for employing it,
there may in fact be little if any opposition to a fait accompli of total US domination in space. (Dolman, 2002: 156)
Although Dolman claims that ‘no attempt will be made to create a convincing argument that the United States has a right to
domination in space’, in almost the next sentence he goes on to argue ‘that, in this case, might does make right’, ‘the
persuasiveness of the case’ being ‘based on the self-interest of the state and stability of the system’ (2002: 156; my
emphasis). Truly, this is Astropolitik: a veneration of the ineluctable logic of power and the permanent rightness of those
who wield it. If it sounds chillingly familiar, Dolman hopes to reassure us with his belief that ‘the US form of liberal
democracy … is admirable and socially encompassing’ (p. 156) and it is ‘the most benign state that has ever
attempted hegemony over the greater part of the world’ (p. 158). His sunny view that the United States is ‘willing to extend
legal and political equality to all’ sits awkwardly with the current suspension of the rule of law in Guantanamo Bay as well
as in various other ‘spaces of exception’ (see Gregory, 2004; Agamben, 2005). Dolman’s astropolitical project is by
no means exceptional. The journal Astropolitics, of which he is a founding editor, contains numerous papers expressing
similar views. It is easy, I think, for critical geographers to feel so secure in the intellectual and political purchase of Ó
Tuathailian critiques (Ó Tuathail, 1996), that we become oblivious to the undead nature of classical geopolitics. It is
comforting to think that most geography undergraduates encountering geopolitics, in the UK at least, will in all likelihood
do so through the portal of critical perspectives, perhaps through the excellent work of Joanne Sharp or Klaus
Dodds (Dodds, 2005; Sharp, 2005). But the legacies of Mackinder and Mahan live on, and radical critique is as urgent as
ever. While this is not the place for a thoroughgoing reappraisal of astropolitics in the manner of Gearòid Ó Tuathail, a few
salient points from his critique can be brought out.
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Militarization link – A2: Dolman
Dolman’s argument actually necessitates the conflict which militarization is meant to resolve
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, University of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 50-52//DN)
In the broad intellectual tradition of geopolitics, advocates of a critical perspective - particularly Simon Dalby, John
Agnew, and Gearoid O TuathaiJ -have challenged mainstream geopolitical theory for assuming and validating power
relations implicit in the production of geopolitical knowledge, and fot a tendency to be a reifying and totalizing discourse
that erases difference and political contestation from processes of representing space (Agnew 2003, 2005; Dalby 1991;
Dalby and 6 Tuathail 1998; 6 Tuathail.1996).
O Tuathail has criticized earlier forms of geopolitics for their ocular-centrism and what he terms the "geopolitical gaze."
Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, he reads geopolitical discourse as power/knowledge, such that knowledge of
spaces produces subjects empowered for expansive control. Geopolitical representations — what 6 Tuathail terms geopower — are in a mutually supportive relation with the imperial institutions in which they are produced (6 Tuathail 1996:
6-20). Empires cannot function without clear representations that explore, chart, and bring under control cartographic
spaces. The spatial imaginary of the "geopolitical gaze," then, is immanent to empire. In a related vein, Simon Dalby, too,
has studied the role that geographical representations play. He has examined official policy documents and academic
analyses of U.S. strategic thinking in both Cold War strategies and the Bush doctrine to determine how geographical
representations of the earth shape U.S. imperial strategy (Dalby 2007). Additionally, John Agnew's work examines how a
particular geopolitical imagining - a global order constituted by sovereign states - "arose from European-American
experience but was then projected on to the rest of the world and in to the future in the theory and practice of world
politics" (Agnew 2003: 2).
Such scholarly work of critical geopolitics makes two crucial contribu¬tions. First it draws on the interpretive strategies of
various theorists - from Foucault to Derrida and others - to critique the assumptions of mainstream geopolitical analysis.
Second it moves toward a reformulation of geopolitics in a form that is more conscious of how power operates in the theory
and practice of world politics. In the first two parts of this chapter we have drawn on the first of those contributions for our
critical reading of realist and liberal-republican astropolitics, albeit without our making explicit reference to specific social
theorists. Thus, just as Mackinder's geopolitics re-presented how the world operated in a way that could be understood and
controlled by British imperialists, it can be argued, following Agnew's, 0 Tuathail's and Dalby's lead, that the kinds of
representations of space proffered by Dolman (as orbits, regions, and launching points of strategic value) make the exercise
of conttol over space intelligible from an American imperialist perspective. The "astropolitical gaze" and its cartographic
representations are mutually productive with the current U.S. policy of attempting to secure control over orbital space. As
we saw, realist astropolitics celebrates the ways in which extending U.S. military hegemony into space could amplify
America's imperial power. Yet, Dolman's realist astropolitik leaves under-theorized the normative implication of spacebased imperialism. Instead, Dolman merely asserts that America would be a benevolent emperor without explaining what
checks on U.S. power might exist to prevent it from using the "ultimate high ground" to dominate all the residents of the
Earth. Conversely, Deudney focuses on the potential for inter-state collaboration to produce a federal-republican global
political order. However, Deudney leaves under-theorized the very real possibility that a unilateral entry into space by the
U.S. could create an entirely new mode of protection and security.
While our approach to critical astropolitics shares the political commit¬ments and many of the theoretical foundations of
critical geopolitical scholar¬ship, our interest is more in the study of the constitutive as opposed to the representational
consequences of astropolitics. Accordingly, in the remainder of this chapter we draw on the second contribution of critical
geopolitics - the reformulation of geopolitical theory through concepts of critical theoretical analysis — to address the
normative and theoretical absences we have identified in the realist and liberal astropolitical writings of Dolman and
Deudney. First we will draw on the critical theories of sovereignty offered in writings of Foucault, Agamben, and Hardt and
Negri to theorize the form that the missing mode of protection/security from Deudney's "historical security mate¬rialist"
analysis - empire - would take, Second, we conclude by arguing that such a mode of protection/security would lack any
effective counterbalances to its ability to project force, and as such it is unlikely that it would be the benevolent imperial
power that Dolman claims it would be.
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Militarization links – imperialism
Space weapons constitute the state as sole provider of security – they obligate imperial domination
Raymond Duvall, Prrofessor of political science @ University of Minnesota, and Dr. Jonathan Havercroft, professor of political
science @ Oklahoma University, October 2006, “Taking Sovereignty Out of This World: Space Weapons and Empire of the Future”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=2185920&jid=RIS&volumeId=34&issueId=04&aid=2185916 ACC
7/21/11
This scenario is fascinating for the political logic at work within it—space weapons are required to launch an attack at an
otherwise inaccessible target. The three reasons that the target might be inaccessible all have to do with potential gaps in
imperial power. Either the defenses of the target country have not been suppressed, or other states have not consented to
let the forces fly through their airspace, or other coalition members—presumably in NATO or the UN—have not consented
to the action. The first “justification” for the use 14 of the weapon involves clear erasure of the sovereignty of the targeted
state, as it eliminates any pretense of that country’s defensibility. The second and third “justifications” diminish, by
circumvention, the sovereignty of other states. All three buttress the exclusive capacity of the U.S. to act unilaterally in
deciding the exception globally. In all three cases, the only practical use for this weapon is in an imperial project! The
chief advantage of space weapons is their ability on very short notice to attack a target that is out of reach of conventional
forces. What places these targets “out of reach” is the sovereignty of other states as exercised through those states’
abilities to defend their territory, control their airspace, and/or participate (jointly) in authorized decision of the (global)
exception. The constitutive effect of these weapons, then, is to strip states of their sovereignty—they are constituted as
subjects lacking authorization of decision, and lacking boundary effectively demarcating inside from outside. What
modern sovereignty does (as identified in section I. above) is taken from them. Furthermore, given the potential targets
that these weapons could destroy, and how they are used, space-based systems are most useful against small groups and
individuals. While the purpose of the use of space-based weapons in the above example was to prevent genocide, the
means by which this attack was carried out was essentially assassination—the assassination of those driving the vehicle to
carry out the ethnic cleansing. Space-based weapons, then, are most useful at targeting individuals and groups on short
notice in order to achieve a political objective.
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Militarization ‘inevitability’ link
The description of space militarization as inevitable creates self-fulfilling prophecies – discussion and
reimagining of astropolitics solves
Chris Hables Gray, interdisciplinary studies at Union Institute and University, Nov. 1994, “"There Will Be War!": Future War
Fantasies and Militaristic Science Fiction in the 1980s”, Science Fiction Studies Vol. 21 Part 3 pg. 329 / KX
Envoi. As this article has tried to demonstrate, there is an intimate intertwining of metaphors and careers among the futurewar sf writers and the postmodern US military, and the motivation for this is partly ideological. There is a significant
subculture around military futurology which cannot see any clear line between sf and real war. Such blurring does not make
for sound military policy and it no doubt contributes to the incredible public misconceptions about international conflicts
(Gray 1994). Star Wars, for example, long discredited on scientific grounds, limps along with a new name into the 21st
century on a reduced budget of mere tens of billions of dollars a year because the inevitability of war is still beyond
challenge in the decisive discourses. And as long as inevitable war remains an unexamined assumption there will always be
some truth to it. For if people are sure that "There will be War!" then there will be, for history has shown that he who
prepares for war, finds one. But like any good story, the inevitability of war is really just an elaborate construction of
images, characters, plot (history), and facts (created by non-human nature and/or by human technoscience). To be sure, the
story has many authors and even more readers but there is always the opportunity to change the ending. Simply to discuss
this pattern is to begin to challenge it, but the real change comes from imagination most of all. As much great anti-war sf
has demonstrated, new endings to old tales can be found by reworking old tropes (such as enemy) or through redefining key
metaphors and themes. Recognizing ideologies, and the limits of thinking only in terms of ideology, is crucial for this.
Ideologies predetermine endings, imagination generates new ones.31 Perhaps technoscientific imagination is now the
crucial military factor, perhaps not. But cultural imagination is certainly a necessity for peace. If we can't even imagine a
peaceful world, how will we make one?
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Militarization ‘inevitability’ link
Proponents of space militarization rely on faulty realist assumptions that kill solvency and cause the
formation of an empire
Raymond Duvall, professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, and Jonathan Havercroft, Assistant Professor of
Political Science at the University of Oklahoma, 2009, “Securing Outer Space”, pg. 44-46 KX
On the basis of these principles, Dolman develops an "Astropolitik policy for the United States" (Dolman 1999: 156),
which calls on the U.S. government to control Earth Space. In the current historical-political juncture, no state controls this
region. However, rather than leave it as a neutral zone or global commons, Dolman calls for the U.S. to seize control of this
geo-strategically vital asset. According to Dolmans reasoning, the neutrality of Earth Space is as much a threat to U.S.
security as the neutrality of Melos was to Athenian hegemony. To leave space a neutral sanctuary could be interpreted as a
sign of weakness that potential rivals might exploit. As such, it is better for the U.S. to occupy Earth Space now. Dolman's
astropolitik policy has three steps. The first involves the U.S. withdrawing from the current space regime on the grounds
that its prohibitions on commercial and military exploitation of outer space prevent the full exploitation of space resources.
In place of the global commons approach that informs that regime, Dolman calls for the establishment of "a principle of
free-market sovereignty in space" (Dolman 2002a: 157), whereby states could establish territorial claims over areas they
wish to exploit for commercial purposes. This space rush should be coupled with "propaganda touting the prospects of a
new golden age of space exploration" (Dolman 2002a: 157). Step two calls for the U.S. to seize control of low-Earth orbit,
where "space-based laser or kinetic energy weapons could prevent any other state from deploying assets there, and could
most effectively engage and destroy terrestrial enemy ASAT facilities" (Dolman 2002a: 157). Other states would be
permitted "to enter space freely for the purpose of engaging in commerce" (Dolman 2002a: 157). The final step would be
the establishment of "a national space coordination agency ... to define, separate and coordinate the efforts of commercial,
civilian and military space projects" (Dolman 2002a: 157). Within Dolman's theory of astropolitik is a will-to-space-basedhegemony fuelled by a series of assumptions, of which we would point to three as especially important. First, it rests on a
strong preference for competition over collaboration in both the economic and military spheres. Dolman, like a good realist,
is suspicious of the possibilities for sustained political and economic cooperation, and assumes instead that competition for
power is the law of international political-economic life. He believes, though, that through a fully implemented
astropolitical policy "states will employ competition productively, harnessing natural incentives for self-interested gain to a
mutually beneficial future, a competition based on the fair and legal commercial exploitation of space" (Dolman 2002a: 4).
Thus, underpinning his preference for competition is both a liberal assumption that competitive markets are efficient at
producing mutual gain through innovative technologies, and the realist assumption that inter-state competition for power is
inescapable in world politics. As we will note more fully below, this conjunction of liberal and realist assumptions is a
hallmark of the logic of empire as distinct from the logic of a system of sovereign states.
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Space leadership link
All space development is preparation for future wars, making conflict inevitable
Huntley 2009 (Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate
School 2009 “Securing Outer Space” )
General Lance Lord, then-commander of US Space Command, subsequently stated the point more bluntly: "The term
'space superiority' has to roll off our tongues just like air superiority. We would never try to engage an enemy without first
establishing air superiority. And it's no different for space" (Moore 2005: 6-8)."Vision for 2020" articulates how the
militarization of space will necessarily entail the weaponization of space. Of its four "operational concepts" mapping
requisite capabilities, the "Control of Space" includes space protection and negation functions, the latter of which might
necessitate space-based weapons. The "Global Engagement" concept is more explicit, connecting space forces directly to
tetrestrial combat, especially missile defense:USSPACECOM will have a greatly expanded role as an active warfighter in
the years ahead as the combatant command responsible for National Missile Defense (NMD) and space force application.
Global Engagement combines global surveillance with the potential for a space-based global precision strike capability ...
NMD will evolve into a mix of ground and space sensors and weapons. Existing land, sea, and air missions will be Space
Command's "Vision for 2020" was followed in early 2001 by the more infamous and more inflammatory report of the
Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, chaired by soon-to-be US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The report reflects the consistent assumption that space is a natural medium of
international con¬flict, no different from land, sea and air, and that the eventual extension of warfare into this medium is a
"virtual certainty:"[Wle know from history that every medium - air, land and sea — has seen conflict. Reality indicates that
space will be no different. Given this virtual certainty, the U.S. must develop the means both to deter and to defend against
hostile acts in and from space. This will requite superior space capabilities.(Rumsfeld Commission, 2001, Executive
Summary: 10) Infamously warning of an impending "space Pearl Harbor," the report rec-ommends a US space-based
"military capability" to both defend space "assets" and to maintain strategic dominance on Earth. The report regards
ground-based missile defense as merely the first step to deploying space-based weaponry, on which subject the
commissioners' conclusion is clear: *The Commissioners believe the U.S. Government should vigorously pursue the
capabilities called fot in the National Space Policy to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in
space to deter threats to and, if necessary, defend against attacks on U.S. interests.(Rumsfeld Commission, 2001, Executive
Summary: 12 The full-scale effort to prepare for space warfare anticipated in the report does not entail simply the
weaponization of space. To prepare for these eventualities, the report recommends that the president declare space a
national security priority and that a Space Advisory Group report directly to the President. The report anticipates that soon a
"Space Corps" within the Air Force - and eventually a "military department for space" - will be necessary to implement the
vision (Rumsfeld Commis¬sion, 2001, Executive Summary: 33)- Shortly after becoming Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld
moved to implement some of these recommendations, placing a four-star Air Force general in charge of space operations
and undertaking other Pentagon reorganization intended to facilitate space weapons program development (Dao 2001).The
Rumsfeld space commission report repeatedly emphasizes the US goal of preserving" the "peaceful uses of sp?ce." But the
tepott explicitly portrays expectations of the weaponization of space as consistent with US obligations under the UN
Charter and the Outer Space Tteaty:
Bush proves exploration and the aerospace industry are rooted in developing space weapons
Raymond Duvall, Prrofessor of political science @ University of Minnesota, and Dr. Jonathan Havercroft, professor of political
science at Oklahoma University, October 2006, “Taking Sovereignty Out of This World: Space Weapons and Empire of the Future”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=2185920&jid=RIS&volumeId=34&issueId=04&aid=2185916 ACC
7/21/11
There are major obstacles to the realization of these weapons systems. The most significant obstacle is cost. The
demonstrator model alone for a space-based laser will cost between $3.5 and $4 billion, 38 with the costs for deploying a
constellation of 24 space-based lasers estimated to be around $50 billion. 39 A second major obstacle is that the designs
for the space-based weapons exceed the size and weight limitations of current launch vehicle technology. An attempt to
develop new launch technology capable of overcoming this obstacle is one of the central objectives of President Bush’s
recently announced manned mission to Mars, as this program will inject new funds into launch-vehicle technology
research. 40 Additionally, there is the strategic problem. If the military can find a less expensive way of destroying a
target it is not likely to use expensive space-based weapons systems such as the ones discussed here.
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Hegemony link
Space based hegemony leads to an apartheid empire that is tyrannical in nature and makes realism
incoherent
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, Uni¬versity of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 45-47//DN)
Within Dolman's theory of astropolitik is a will-to-space-based-hegemony fuelled by a series of assumptions, of which we
would point to three as espe¬cially important. First, it rests on a strong preference for competition over collaboration in
both the economic and military spheres. Dolman, like a good realist, is suspicious of the possibilities for sustained political
and economic cooperation, and assumes instead that competition for power is the law of international political-economic
life. He believes, though, that through a fully implemented astropolitical policy "states will employ competition
pro¬ductively, harnessing natural incentives for self-interested gain to a mutually beneficial future, a competition based on
the fair and legal commercial exploitation of space" (Dolman 2002a: 4). Thus, underpinning his preference for competition
is both a liberal assumption that competitive markets are effi¬cient at producing mutual gain through innovative
technologies, and the realist assumption that intet-state competition for power is inescapable in world politics. As we will
note more fully below, this conjunction of liberal and realist assumptions is a hallmark of the logic of empire as distinct
from the logic of a system of sovereign states. The second and most explicit of Dolman's key assumptions is the belief that
the U.S. should pursue control of orbital space because its hegemony would be largely benign. The presumed benevolence
of the U.S. rests, for Dolman, on its responsiveness to its people. If any one state should dominate space it ought to be one
with a constitu¬tive political principle chat government should be responsible and responsive to its people, tolerant and
accepting of their views, and willing to extend legal and political equality to all. In othet words, the United States should
seize control of outer space and become the shepherd (or perhaps watchdog) for all who would venture there, for if any one
state must do so, it is the most likely to establish a benign hegemony. (Dolman 2002a: 157) However, even if the U.S.
government is popularly responsive in its foreign policy - a debatable proposition - the implication of Dolman's astropolitik
is that the U.S. would exercise benign control over orbital space, and, from that * position, potentially all territory on Earth
and hence all people, by being responsible to its 300 million citizens. As such, this benign hegemony would in effect be an
apartheid regime where 95 percent of the world would be excluded from participating in the decision-making of the
hegemonic power that controls conditions of their existence. This, too, is a hallmark of empire, not of a competitive system
of sovereign states. Third.^Dolman's astropolitik treats space as a resource to be masteted and exploited by humans, a Terra
Nulius, or empty territory, to be colonized and reinterpreted for the interests of the colonizer. This way of looking at space
is similar to the totalizing gaze of earlier geopolitical theorists who viewed the whole world as an object to be dominated
and controlled by European powers, who understood themselves to be beneficently, or, at worst, benignly, civilizjng in their
control of territories and populations (6 Tuathail 1996: 24-35). This assumption, like rhe first two, thus also implicates a
hallmark of rhe logic tif empire, namely what 6 Tuathail (1996) calls the 'geopolitical gaze' (about which we have more to
say below), which works comfortably in tandem with a self-understanding of benign hegemony. When these three
assumptions are examined in conjunction, Dolman's astropolitik reveals itself to be a blueprint for a U.S. empire that uses
the capacities of space-based weapons to exercise hegemony over the Earth and to grant access to the economic resources
of space only to U.S. (capitalist) interests and their allies. This version of astropolitics, which is precisely the strategic
vision underlying the policy pronouncements of the National Secur¬ity Space Management and Organization Commission
(Commission 2001) - and subsequently President George W. Bush - with which we began this chapter, is a kind of spatial,
or geopolitical, power within the context of U.S. imperial relations of planetary scope. Its ostensive realist foundations are
muted, except as a rather extreme form of offensive realism, because the vision is not one of great power competition
and strategic balancing, but rather one of imperial control through hegemony. As such, it brings into question the
constitution of sovereignty, since empire and sovereignty are fundamentally opposed constitutive principles of the structure
of the international system - the subjects of empire are not sovereign. Thus, if astropol¬itics is to be in the form of Dolman's
astropolitik (and current U.S. policy aspirations), the future of sovereignty is in question, despite his efforts to position the
theory as an expression of the realist assumption of great power competition. In later sections of this chapter, we
attempt to show what this bringing sovereignty into question is likely to mean, conceptually and in practice. Before turning
to that principal concern, however, we consider an alternative geopolitical theory of astropolitics.
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Hegemony link
The logic of Hegemonic preservation festishizes the US global role, necessitating a kill-to-save mentality
Noorani, 2005. Yaseen Noorani is a Lecturer in Arabic Literature, Islamic and Middle East Studies, University of Edinburgh.
“The Rhetoric of Security,” The New Centennial Review 5.1, 2005.
The U.S. rhetoric of security, however, lifts the paradox to a global level, and illustrates it more forcefully, by designating the global
order's moral ideal, its "way of life" that is under threat, as civil relations, freedom and peace, but then making the fulcrum of this way
of life an independent entity upon whose survival the world's way of life depends—the United States. Just as an aggressor puts himself
outside of normativity by initiating violence, so is the victim not bound by any norms in defending his life. As the location of the self
of the world order that must be preserved, the United States remains unobligated by the norms of this order as long as it is threatened
by terrorism. So long as it struggles for the life of the world order, therefore, the United States remains external to this order, just as
terrorism remains external to the world order so long as it threatens a universal state of war. Without the United States everyone is
dead. Why should this be? The reason is that the United States fully embodies the values underlying world peace—"freedom,
democracy, and free enterprise" (National Security 2002, i)—and is the key to their realization in the global domain. These values are
[End Page 30] universal, desired by all and the standard for all. "[T]he United States must defend liberty and justice because these
principles are right and true for all people everywhere" (National Security 2002, 3). The fact that the United States "possesses
unprecedented—and unequaled—strength and influence in the world" (1) cannot therefore be fortuitous. It cannot but derive from the
very founding of the United States in universal principles of peace and its absolute instantiation of these principles. This results in
"unparalleled responsibilities, obligations, and opportunity" (1). In other words, the United States as a nation stands, by virtue of its
internal constitution, at the forefront of world history in advancing human freedom. It is the subject of history. Its own principle of
organization is the ultimate desire of humanity, and the development of this principle is always at its highest stage in and through the
United States. For this reason, the values of the United States and its interests always coincide, and these in turn coincide with the
interests of world peace and progress. The requirements of American security reflect "the union of our values and our national
interests," and their effect is to "make the world not just safer but better" (1). The United States therefore is uniquely charged by
history to maintain and advance world peace and universal freedom. America is a nation with a mission, and that mission comes from
our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace—a peace founded upon
the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our
special calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom. (Bush 2004a) America can lead the cause of freedom because it is
the cause of freedom. "American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty" (Bush 2003b).
For this reason, it has no "ambitions," no private national interests or aspirations that would run contrary to the interests of the world
as a whole. It undertakes actions, like the invasion of Iraq, that further no motive but the cause of humanity as a whole. "We have no
ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of [End Page 31] that country to its own people" (Bush 2003a). In this
way, the United States is distinct from all other nations, even though all of humanity espouses the same values. Only the United States
can be depended upon for ensuring the endurance of these values because they are the sole basis of its existence. "Others might flag in
the face of the inevitable ebb and flow of the campaign against terrorism. But the American people will not" (NSCT 2003, 29). Any
threat to the existence of the United States is therefore a threat to the existence of the world order, which is to say, the values that
make this order possible. It is not merely that the United States, as the most powerful nation of the free world, is the most capable of
defending it. It is rather that the United States is the supreme agency advancing the underlying principle of the free order. The United
States is the world order's fulcrum, and therefore the key to its existence and perpetuation. Without the United States, freedom, peace,
civil relations among nations, and the possibility of civil society are all under threat of extinction. This is why the most abominable
terrorists and tyrants single out the United States for their schemes and attacks. They know that the United States is the guardian of
liberal values. In the rhetoric of security, therefore, the survival of the United States, its sheer existence, becomes the content of liberal
values. In other words, what does it mean to espouse liberal values in the context of the present state of world affairs? It means to
desire fervently and promote energetically the survival of the United States of America. When the world order struggles to preserve its
"self," the self that it seeks to preserve, the primary location of its being, is the United States. Conferring this status upon the United
States allows the rhetoric of security to insist upon a threat to the existence of the world order as a whole while confining the nonnormative status that arises from this threat to the United States alone. The United States—as the self under threat—remains external
to the normative relations by which the rest of the world continues to be bound. The United States is both a specific national existence
struggling for its life and normativity itself, which makes it coextensive with the world order as a whole. For this reason, any
challenge to U.S. world dominance would be a challenge to world peace and is thus impermissible. We read in The National Security
Strategy that the United States [End Page 32] will "promote a balance of power that favors freedom" (National Security 2002, 1). And
later, we find out what is meant by such a balance of power.
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Hegemony link
Hegemony elevates security to a transcendental ideal—it creates a moral framework for violence that
requires the elimination of all that is different or unpredictable.
Der Derian 2003 [James Der Derian, Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Decoding
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, boundary, 2 30.3, 19-27]
From President Bush's opening lines of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS), the gap
between rhetoric and reality takes on Browningesque proportions: "‘Our Nation's cause has always been larger than our
Nation's defense. We fight, as we always fight, for a just peace—a peace that favors liberty. We will defend the peace
against the threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great
powers. And we will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent'" (1). Regardless of
authorial (or good) intentions, the NSS reads more like late—very late—nineteenth-century poetry than a strategic doctrine
for the twenty-first century. The rhetoric of the White House favors and clearly intends to mobilize the moral clarity,
nostalgic sentimentality, and uncontested dominance reminiscent of the last great empires against the ambiguities,
complexities, and messiness of the current world disorder. However, the gulf between the nation's stated cause ("to help
make the world not just safer but better" [1]) and defensive needs (to fight "a war against terrorists of global reach" [5]) is
so vast that one detects what Nietzsche referred to as the "breath of empty space," that void between the world as it is and
as we would wish it to be, which produces all kinds of metaphysical concoctions. In short shrift (thirty pages), the White
House articulation of U.S. global objectives to the Congress elevates strategic discourse from a traditional, temporal
calculation of means and ends, to the theological realm of monotheistic faith and monolithic truth. Relying more on
aspiration than analysis, revelation than reason, the NSS is not grand but grandiose strategy. In pursuit of an impossible
state of national security against terrorist evil, soldiers will need to be sacrificed, civil liberties curtailed, civilians
collaterally damaged, regimes destroyed. But a nation's imperial overreach should exceed its fiduciary grasp: what's a fullspectrum dominance of the battle space for? Were this not an official White House doctrine, the contradictions of the NSS
could be interpreted only as poetic irony. How else to comprehend the opening paragraph, which begins with "The United
States possesses unprecedented—and unequaled—strength and influence in the world" and ends with "The great strength of
this nation must be used to promote a balance of power that favors freedom" (1)? Perhaps the cabalistic Straussians that
make up the defense intellectual brain trust of the Bush administration (among them, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and
William Kristol) have come up with a nuanced, indeed, anti-Machiavellian reading of Machiavelli that escapes the
uninitiated. But so fixed is the NSS on the creation of a world in America's image that concepts such as balance of power
and imminent threat, once rooted in historical, juridical, as well as reciprocal traditions, become free-floating signifiers.
Few Europeans, "old" or "new," would recognize the balance of power principle deployed by the NSS to justify preemptive,
unilateral, military action against not actual but "emerging" imminent threats (15). Defined by the eighteenth-century jurist
Emerich de Vattel as a state of affairs in which no one preponderant power can lay down the law to others, the classical
sense of balance of power is effectively inverted in principle by the NSS document and in practice by the go-it-alone
statecraft of the United States. Balance of power is global suzerainty, and war is peace.
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The Aff’s Hegemonic discourse of “Global Instability” versus a stable US validate the Hierarchy of
Dominant US Identity, returning to the geographies of exclusion.
Daavid Campbell et. al. 7, Prof. of Geography @ Durham, ‘7 [Political Geography 26, “Performing security: The imaginative
geographies of current US strategy,” 414-415]
The concept of integration, invoked in different ways and in different measures by both Kagan and Barnett, is similarly at the heart of
the current administration’s foreign and domestic policies. The former Director of Policy at the US State Department, Richard Haass,
articulated the central tenets of the concept when he wondered:
Is there a successor idea to containment? I think there is. It is the idea of integration. The goal of US foreign policy should be to
persuade the other major powers to sign on to certain key ideas as to how the world should operate: opposition to terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction, support for free trade, democracy, markets. Integration is about locking them into these policies and
then building institutions that lock them in even more (Haass in Lemann, 1 April 2002, emphasis added).
That the US is no longer prepared to tolerate regimes that do not mirror its own democratic values and practices, and that it will seek
to persuade such major powers to change their policies and behaviours to fit the American modus operandi, is not without historical
precedent (Ambrosius, 2006). Nor does the differently imagined geography of integration replace completely previous Manichean
conceptions of the world so familiar to Cold War politics. Rather, the proliferation of new terms of antipathy such as ‘axis of evil’,
‘rogue states’, and ‘terror cities’ demonstrate how integration goes hand in hand with e and is mutually constitutive of e new forms of
division. Barnett’s divide between the globalised world and the non-integrat- ing gap is reflected and complemented by Kagan’s
divide in ways of dealing with this state of affairs. Much of this imagined geography pivots on the idea of ‘the homeland’. Indeed, in
the imaginations of the security analysts we highlight here, there is a direct relationship and tension between securing the homeland’s
borders and challenging the sanctity of borders elsewhere (see Kaplan, 2003: 87).
Appreciating this dynamic requires us to trace some of the recent articulations of US strategy. Since September 11th 2001 the US
government and military have issued a number of documents outlining their security strategy. Each recites, reiterates and resignifies
both earlier strategic statements as well each other, creating a sense of boundedness and fixity which naturalizes a specific view of the
world. Initially there was The National Strategy for Homeland Security (Office of Homeland Security, 2002), and then the much
broader scope National Security Strategy (The White House, 2002b; see Der Derian, 2003). These were followed by the ‘‘National
Strategy for Combating Terrorism’’ and particular plans for Military Strategy, Defense Strategy and the ‘‘Strategy for Homeland
Defense and Civil Support’’ (Department of Defense, 2005a, 2005b; Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2004; The White House, 2002a). These are
seen as an interlocking whole, where ‘‘the National Military Strategy (NMS) supports the aims of the National Security Strat- egy
(NSS) and implements the National Defense Strategy (NDS)’’ (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2004: 1); and the ‘‘Strategy for Homeland
Defense and Civil Support’’ builds ‘‘upon the concept of an active, layered defense outlined in the National Defense Strategy’’
(Department of Defense, 2005b: iii; see also diagram on 6). The updated National Security Strategy (The White House, 2006) presents
a further re-elaboration and re-stating of these principles.
As with the understandings we highlighted previously, it should be noted that key elements of these strategies pre-date September 11.
Significant in this continuity is the link between the Bush administration’s strategic view and the 1992 ‘‘Defense Planning Guidance’’
(DPG). Writ- ten for the administration of George H. W. Bush by Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, the DPG was the first
neoconservative security manifesto for the post-Cold War; a blue print for a one-superpower world in which the US had to be
prepared to combat new regional threats and prevent the rise of a hegemonic competitor (Tyler, 8 March 1992; see Mann, 2004: 198ff,
212).
Initial versions of the DPG were deemed too controversial and were rewritten with input from then Defense Secretary Cheney and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell (Tyler, 24 May 1992). Nonetheless, Cheney’s version still declared that, ‘‘we must
maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role’’ (Cheney, 1993:
2).What we find in this is the kernel of the policies implemented in the administration of George W. Bush, reworked through the
Clinton period by such organizations as PNAC (dis- cussed above). The assemblage of individuals and organizations e both inside and
outside the formal state structures e running from the DPG, through PNAC to the plethora of Bush administration security texts cited
above (all of which draw upon well-established US security dispositions in the post-World War II era) demonstrates the performative
infrastructure through which certain ontological effects are established, and through which certain performances are made possible
and can be understood.
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US Leadership Ensures Destruction – We Only Believe it is Stabilizing Because We Refuse to Question it
Anthony Burke, Senior Lecturer @ School of Politics & IR @ Univ. of New South Wales, ‘7 [Beyond Security, Ethics and
Violence, p. 231-2]
Yet the first act in America's 'forward strategy of freedom' was to invade and attempt to subjugate Iraq, suggesting that, if
'peace' is its object, its means is war: the engine of history is violence, on an enormous and tragic scale, and violence is
ultimately its only meaning. This we can glimpse in 'Toward a Pacific Union', a deeply disingenuous chapter of Fukuyama's
The End of History and the Last Man. This text divides the earth between a 'post-historical' world of affluent developed
democracies where 'the old rules of power-politics have decreasing relevance', and a world still 'stuck in history' and 'riven
with a variety of religious, national and ideological conflicts'. The two worlds will maintain 'parallel but separate existences'
and interact only along axes of threat, disturbance and crucial strategic interest: oil, immigration, terrorism and the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Because 'the relationship between democracies and nondemocracies will still
be characterised by mutual distrust and fear', writes Fukuyama, the 'post-historical half must still make use of realist
methods when dealing with the part still in history ... force will still be the ultima ratio in their relations'. For all the book's
Kantian pretensions, Fukuyama naturalises war and coercion as the dominant mode of dealing with billions of people
defined only through their lack of 'development' and 'freedom'. Furthermore, in his advocacy of the 'traditional moralism of
American foreign policy' and his dismissal of the United Nations in favour of a NATO-style 'league of truly free states ...
capable of much more forceful action to protect its collective security against threats arising from the non-democratic part
of the world' we can see an early premonition of the historicist unilateralism of the Bush administration. 72 In this light, we
can see the invasion of Iraq as continuing a long process of 'world-historical' violence that stretches back to Columbus'
discovery of the Americas, and the subsequent politics of genocide, warfare and dispossession through which the modem
United States was created and then expanded - initially with the colonisation of the Philippines and coercive trade
relationships with China and Japan, and eventually to the self-declared role Luce had argued so forcefully for: guarantor of
global economic and strategic order after 1945. This role involved the hideous destruction of Vietnam and Cambodia,
'interventions' in Chile, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua and Afghanistan (or an ever more destructive 'strategic'
involvement in the Persian Gulf that saw the United States first building up Iraq as a formidable regional military power,
and then punishing its people with a 14-year sanctions regime that caused the deaths of at least 200,000 people), all of
which we are meant to accept as proof of America's benign intentions, of America putting its 'power at the service of
principle'. They are merely history working itself out, the 'design of nature' writing its bliss on the world.73 The bliss
'freedom' offers us, however, is the bliss of the graveyard, stretching endlessly into a world marked not by historical
perfection or democratic peace, but by the eternal recurrence of tragedy, as ends endlessly disappear in the means of
permanent war and permanent terror. This is how we must understand both the prolonged trauma visited on the people
of Iraq since 1990, and the inflammatory impact the US invasion will have on the new phenomenon of global antiWestern
terrorism. American exceptionalism has deluded US policymakers into believing that they are the only actors who write
history, who know where it is heading, and how it will play out, and that in its service it is they (and no-one else) who
assume an unlimited freedom to act. As a senior adviser to Bush told a journalist in 2002: 'We're an empire now, and when
we act, we create our own reality . . We're history's actors."
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Thayer’s argument is a scientific joke – his conclusions misrepresent the consensus, leaving his work
baseless in terms of evidence.
Busser 6 [Mark, Master’s Candidate Department of Political Science, York University, The Evolution of Security: Revisiting the
Human Nature Debate in International Relations, York Centre for International and Security Studies Working Paper Number 40,
August, http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/documents/WP40-Busser.pdf]
The political and philosophical debates that surround sociobiology in general are the least of the problems with Bradley
Thayer’s article. In fact, Thayer’s argument is exactly the sort of reading of sociobiology about which its critics like
Lewontin and Gould have been uncomfortably anticipating. Worse, Thayer’s exercise demonstrates a misreading of many
evolutionary arguments drawing conclusions with which the theorists he cites would likely distance themselves. His
argument about an egoistic human nature relies on a tiresomely common oversimplification of “a classic Darwinist
argument,” crudely linking natural selection to the assumption that selfishness encourages evolutionary fitness; Even
Thayer feels the need to qualify this argument in a footnote.49 Thayer’s citation of Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene theory to
provide “the second sufficient explanation for egoism” is also incredibly problematic.50 In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins
suggests that at the beginning of micro-organic life genes that promoted survival were key to making basic life-forms into
simple ‘survival machines.’ Rather than viewing genes as an organism’s tool for generating, Dawkins suggests that it is
wiser to look at the development of complex organisms as genes’ method of replicating themselves. The word selfish is
used as a shorthand to describe a more complex phenomenon: genes that give their organic vessel advantages in survival
and reproduction are successfully transmitted into future generations.51 However, an important part of Dawkins’ work is
that the ‘selfishness’ of genes translates into decidedly unselfish behaviours. Dawkins himself has had to distance himself
from groups who interpreted his focus on kin selection as a reification of ethnocentrism: The National Front was saying
something like this, “kin selection provides the basis for favoring your own race as distinct from other races, as a kind of
generalization of favoring your own close family as opposed to other individuals.” Kin selection doesn’t do that! Kin
selection favors nepotism towards your own immediate close family. It does not favor a generalization of nepotism towards
millions of other people who happen to be the same color as you.52 In light of a careful consideration of the intricacies of
Dawkin’s thinking, Thayer’s treatment of his theories seems remarkably crude and shallow. Broad conclusions seem to
materialize as if from thin air: “In general,” Thayer writes, “the selfishness of the gene increases its fitness, and so the
behaviour spreads.”53 This line, crucial to Thayer’s point, is such a brazen oversimplification and misinterpretation of
Dawkin’s work that Thayer’s arguments about a provable natural human egoism are rendered essentially baseless in terms
of scientific evidence.
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Realism Doesn’t necessitate Hegemony - It’s a Fiction used to Legitimize U.S. Empire
Liam Kennedy, American Studies @ Univ. College, Scott Lucas, American Studies @ Birmingham, ‘5 [American Quarterly
57.2, “Public Diplomacy and U.S. Foreing Policy,” p. muse]
The ongoing "war of ideas" advanced by the Bush administration is a war that American studies should not ignore, as "we" are already
caught up in it. It is a war that (ex)poses the question of American studies' relation to the state, a question that is now being taken up
by some interested and concerned scholars.78 Michael Bérubé, for example, in his examination of relations between American studies
and "the corporate multiversity," has challenged fellow academics to "undertake some hard thinking about [their] relation to the
nation-state."79 He characterizes CIA involvement in the cultural front of the cold war as "a halcyon time when American
intellectuals had a well-defined function for the state and for crucial segments of the private sector that identified freedom with free
markets." Today, he suggests, an internationalist American studies finds itself accommodated as a comfortable political class of
globalizing American capitalism and is intellectually hobbled by either its ignorance of or hostility to the state. Meanwhile, Paul Bové
has written a troubled reflection on the complicity of "'progressive' American Studies" with "the business of the state." Bové poses the
question "Can American studies be area studies?" in order to answer "no," because it does not "exist to provide authoritative
knowledge to the state" and because "American studies best serves the interests of the nation-state in terms of hegemony and culture
rather than policy." He uses this question to underline his view that American studies intellectuals misrecognize the workings of the
state: "American studies scholars have principally focused on matters of culture and history, the areas of 'civil society' or 'the public
sphere,' acting as if, in this way, they were accessing the U.S. state through its extensions . . . nor do they take the fact of the U.S. state
as itself an [End Page 327] agent that must be confronted, in itself, by means of detailed, concrete, material and theoretical analyses."
And yet, even as Bové advances this critique to suggest that American studies formulate a "realist model of power" that would make
it more relevant to the workings of state policy, he is unable to envisage such relevance.80 We believe Bové is right to argue that
American studies scholarship has not tended to recognize the specificity of the state in formations of "American" power and
knowledge, but we question his need to bracket off "the theory of the extended state" as the terrain of civil society and redundant
cultural theorizing. His realist model of state power is limiting, if not suggestive of a parochial vision. To some degree, Bové's pained
scepticism (like Bérubé's knowing jeremiad) is symptomatic of a very American American studies perception of the global
immanence of an empire that has no externality. Bové summons the unipolar spectre of the American imperium to ask: "If America
has had this structural intent to be identical to the world—for what else can it mean to be the world's only remaining superpower—
then where can American studies people stand to get a view of all this?"81 The spatial logic of Bové's question—that there is nowhere
for American studies scholars to stand given their epistemological blindness—verifies the unipolarity of U.S. global power. We
suggest, however, that the state's reterritorialization under conditions of imperial emergency opens up spaces of political cultural
inquiry in the opportunity and impetus to track the workings of empire internationally and transnationally. To be sure, the state, with
its resources and command of networks, may be dominant, but unipolarity is itself a dominant (realist) fiction of international
relations. What this fiction discounts is "the advent of heteropolarity, the emergence of actors that are different in kind (state,
corporate, group, individual) and connected nodally rather than contiguously."82 In the expanded, virtualized space of international
relations, the networks of American studies can and do function as a flexible economy of knowledge production—though there
remains the challenge of turning a preponderance of critical knowledge into political effect. The academic labor of tracking the
American empire opens American studies to new methodological considerations and extends its boundaries of cultural and political
inquiry. This reshaping of the field should not be conceived as yet another totalizing enterprise. Rather it should take account of the
"intellectual regionalism" that already exists and recognize the need to collaborate with related disciplines, which are likely
experiencing their own paradigm dramas in relation to the production of knowledge under conditions of empire.83 The moves to
"internationalize" American studies, already a distorted [End Page 328] mirror of neoliberal enlargement, all too readily seek to
expand the field rather than seek partnerships with other fields. They also tend to subordinate the study of diplomacy to an analysis of
culture in its postnational and transnational imaginings, glossing the workings of state power across national borders. Critical study of
American public diplomacy and broader strategies and effects of American political warfare offer a valuable focus on the workings
of empire in the matrices and interstices of American foreign policy, media, and commercial relations around the globe. Comparative
and cross-disciplinary study of the histories and geographies of American political warfare can offer a fresh way to "get a view" of pax
Americana, one that critically explores the relationship between "values and security." It might also have something to say about
how and why the American state, at home and abroad, (mis)represents the promise of "enduring freedom."
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Their Rhetoric of “Soft” Power is a Reality of the Worst Forms of Violent Foreign Policy – Their Truth is
Racism.
Amy Kaplan, Prof. of English @ Univ. of Pennslyvania, ‘3 [American Quarterly 56.1, “Violent Belongings and the Question of
Empire Today,” p. muse]
Another dominant narrative about empire today, told by liberal interventionists, is that of the "reluctant imperialist." 10 In
this version, the United States never sought an empire and may even be constitutionally unsuited to rule one, but it had the
burden thrust upon it by the fall of earlier empires and the failures of modern states, which abuse the human rights of their
own people and spawn terrorism. The United States is the only power in the world with the capacity and the moral authority
to act as military policeman and economic manager to bring order to the world. Benevolence and self-interest merge in this
narrative; backed by unparalleled force, the United States can save the people of the world from their own anarchy, their
descent into an [End Page 4] uncivilized state. As Robert Kaplan writes—not reluctantly at all—in "Supremacy by Stealth:
Ten Rules for Managing the World": "The purpose of power is not power itself; it is a fundamentally liberal purpose of
sustaining the key characteristics of an orderly world. Those characteristics include basic political stability, the idea of
liberty, pragmatically conceived; respect for property; economic freedom; and representative government, culturally
understood. At this moment in time it is American power, and American power only, that can serve as an organizing
principle for the worldwide expansion of liberal civil society." 11 This narrative does imagine limits to empire, yet
primarily in the selfish refusal of U.S. citizens to sacrifice and shoulder the burden for others, as though sacrifices have not
already been imposed on them by the state. The temporal dimension of this narrative entails the aborted effort of other
nations and peoples to enter modernity, and its view of the future projects the end of empire only when the world is
remade in our image. This is also a narrative about race. The images of an unruly world, of anarchy and chaos, of failed
modernity, recycle stereotypes of racial inferiority from earlier colonial discourses about races who are incapable of
governing themselves, Kipling's "lesser breeds without the law," or Roosevelt's "loosening ties of civilized society," in his
corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In his much-noted article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "The American
Empire," Michael Ignatieff appended the subtitle "The Burden" but insisted that "America's empire is not like empires of
times past, built on colonies, conquest and the white man's burden." 12 Denial and exceptionalism are apparently alive and
well. In American studies we need to go beyond simply exposing the racism of empire and examine the dynamics by which
Arabs and the religion of Islam are becoming racialized through the interplay of templates of U.S. racial codes and
colonial Orientalism. These narratives of the origins of the current empire—that is, the neoconservative and the liberal
interventionist—have much in common. They take American exceptionalism to new heights: its paradoxical claim to
uniqueness and universality at the same time. They share a teleological narrative of inevitability, that America is the
apotheosis of history, the embodiment of universal values of human rights, liberalism, and democracy, the "indispensable
nation," in Madeleine Albright's words. In this logic, the United States claims the authority to "make sovereign judgments
on what is right and what is wrong" for everyone [End Page 5] else and "to exempt itself with an absolutely clear
conscience from all the rules that it proclaims and applies to others." 13 Absolutely protective of its own sovereignty, it
upholds a doctrine of limited sovereignty for others and thus deems the entire world a potential site of intervention.
Universalism thus can be made manifest only through the threat and use of violence. If in these narratives imperial power
is deemed the solution to a broken world, then they preempt any counternarratives that claim U.S. imperial actions, past and
present, may have something to do with the world's problems. According to this logic, resistance to empire can never be
opposition to the imposition of foreign rule; rather, resistance means irrational opposition to modernity and universal
human values. Although these narratives of empire seem ahistorical at best, they are buttressed not only by nostalgia for
the British Empire but also by an effort to rewrite the history of U.S. imperialism by appropriating a progressive
historiography that has exposed empire as a dynamic engine of American history. As part of the "coming-out" narrative, the
message is: "Hey what's the big deal. We've always been interventionist and imperialist since the Barbary Coast and
Jefferson's 'empire for liberty.' Let's just be ourselves." A shocking example can be found in the reevaluation of the brutal
U.S. war against the Philippines in its struggle for independence a century ago. This is a chapter of history long ignored or
at best seen as a shameful aberration, one that American studies scholars here and in the Philippines have worked hard to
expose, which gained special resonance during the U.S. war in Vietnam. Yet proponents of empire from different political
perspectives are now pointing to the Philippine-American War as a model for the twenty-first century. As Max Boot
concludes in Savage Wars of Peace, "The Philippine War stands as a monument to the U.S. armed forces' ability to fight
and win a major counterinsurgency campaign—one that was bigger and uglier than any that America is likely to confront in
[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
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[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
the future." 14 Historians of the United States have much work to do here, not only in disinterring the buried history of
imperialism but also in debating its meaning and its lessons for the present, and in showing how U.S. interventions have
worked from the perspective of comparative imperialisms, in relation to other historical changes and movements across the
globe. The struggle over history also entails a struggle over language and culture. It is not enough to expose the lies when
Bush hijacks words [End Page 6] such as freedom, democracy, and liberty. It's imperative that we draw on our knowledge
of the powerful alternative meanings of these key words from both national and transnational sources. Today's reluctant
imperialists are making arguments about "soft power," the global circulation of American culture to promote its universal
values. As Ignatieff writes, "America fills the hearts and minds of an entire planet with its dreams and desires." 15 The
work of scholars in popular culture is more important than ever to show that the Americanization of global culture is not a
one-way street, but a process of transnational exchange, conflict, and transformation, which creates new cultural forms that
express dreams and desires not dictated by empire. In this fantasy of global desire for all things American, those whose
dreams are different are often labeled terrorists who must hate our way of life and thus hate humanity itself. As one of the
authors of the Patriot Act wrote, "when you adopt a way of terror you've excused yourself from the community of human
beings." 16 Although I would not minimize the violence caused by specific terrorist acts, I do want to point out the
violence of these definitions of who belongs to humanity. Often in our juridical system under the Patriot Act, the accusation
of terrorism alone, without due process and proof, is enough to exclude persons from the category of humanity. As scholars
of American studies, we should bring to the present crisis our knowledge from juridical, literary, and visual representations
about the way such exclusions from personhood and humanity have been made throughout history, from the treatment of
Indians and slaves to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
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Soft Power is the Most Supreme and Insidious Forms of Power - US constructs its Interest as Rational
and Coerces non-compliants.
Pinar Bilgin, Prof. of IR @ Bilkent, Berivan Elis, PhD Candidate in IR @ Ankara, ‘8 [Hard Power, Soft Power: Toward a More
Realistic Power Analysis, http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~pbilgin/Bilgin-Elis-IT-2008.pdf]
On another level, Nye’s (soft) power analysis is problematic insofar as his own agenda of ‘success in world politics’ is
concerned. This is not only because his analysis fosters the false impression that ‘soft power’ is a nice and cuddly
surrogate to ‘hard power’, but also because he underestimates the extent to which U.S. soft power is produced and
expressed through compulsion. After all, compulsory power is not limited to the use of material resources. Non-material
forms of power, such as ‘symbolic power’, may also be used for the purpose of coercing another. Barnett’s analysis of Arab
politics is highly illuminating in this regard; during the Arab Cold War ‘symbolic power’ was used by ‘radical’ Arab states
to bring into line their ‘conservative’ counterparts by touting the attractiveness of ‘Arab nationalism’ for Arab peoples
across the Middle East.51 By failing to inquire into how the production and expression of soft power can also cause harm,
Nye does disservice to both his power analysis and his agenda for U.S. ‘success’ in world politics. To recapitulate, in Part I
we pointed to the poverty of realist power analysis for taking agents as well as the stockpile of power as pre-given and
focusing on decision-making in cases of visible conflict. Following Lukes, we called for adopting Bachrach and Baratz’s
conception of two-dimensional power, which would allow looking at instances of decision-making and nondecisionmaking. Nye’s conception of soft power constitutes an improvement upon realist power analysis insofar as it raises the
analyst’s awareness of the ‘second face of power’. For, the very notion of ‘attraction’ suggests that there is a conflict of
interest that does not come to the surface. That is to say, B does not express its grievances and does what A wants it to do,
because it is attracted to A’s culture, political values and/or foreign policy. That said, Nye’s analysis rests on a conception
of power that is somehow less than three-dimensional. While Nye encourages the analyst to be curious about those
instances of power expression where there is no visible conflict and/or clash of interests, his failure to register how soft
power is ‘not-so-soft’ means that his (soft) power analysis does not fully capture the ‘third face of power’. Let us clarify.
Lukes understands the ‘third face of power’ as those instances when “A may exercise power over B by getting him to do
what he does not want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping, or determining his very
wants”.52 Post-colonial peoples’ post-WWII rush towards sovereign statehood may be viewed as an example of the ‘third
face of power’ whereby the international society shaped their wants while their actual circumstances called for other
forms of political community. That is to say, in Lukes’ framework, B does what A wants in apparent readiness contrary to
its own interests. Put differently, by exercising soft power, A prevents B from recognizing its own ‘real interests’. While
Nye’s attention to A’s ability to shape B’s wants seem to render his analysis three-dimensional, his lack of curiosity into
‘not-so-soft’ expressions of U.S. power renders his (soft) power analysis two-and-a-half dimensional. This is mostly
because Nye assumes that B’s ‘real interests’ are also served when it follows A’s lead. It is true that soft power does not
involve physical coercion, but as Lukes reminded us, it is the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent
people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way
that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or
because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial.53 Going back
to the example of North/South relations, power is involved not only when the South does not express its grievance because
of the absence of opportunities to do so, but also when it seemingly has no grievances as a consequence of the prevalent
system of ideas that depoliticizes its status within the international economic order.54 In a similar fashion, Nye is not
interested in inquiring into the sources of U.S. ‘attraction’, for he considers the U.S.’s ability to shape the wants of others as
befitting the latter’s ‘real interests’. Accordingly, he misses a ‘fundamental part of soft power’, what Bohas describes as
“the early shaping of taste, collective imaginary and ideals which constitutes a way of dominating other countries. This
includes the reinforcing effect of the social process in favor of American power through goods and values”.55 As such,
Nye’s analysis remains limited in regard to the third face of soft power, where the existing state of things is internalized by
the actors, and the U.S.’s expression of power seems benign and in accordance with the ‘real interests’ of others. In sum,
the limits of Nye’s approach, which could be characterized as ‘two-and-a-half dimensional power analysis’, does not allow
him to offer a theory of power that reflects upon its own moment(s) and site(s) of production and ‘not-so-soft’ expression.
This is not to underestimate what Nye’s (soft) power analysis delivers. Rather, our aim has been to push his analysis further
towards generating a more realistic framework where one’s scope of research is not limited to the acts or inacts of actors
but investigates how different actors’ needs and wants as well as their understanding of themselves and their ‘real interests’
are shaped by other actors or by the existing structures.
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Defenses of Hegemony are Based on Self-Contained Western Expertise - Power Projection is Fueled
Through the Death of Humanity
Roxanne Doty, Prof. of Political Science @ ASU [Woot], ’96 [Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Reprsentations in North-South
Relations, p. 23-5]
Two centuries later, the Enlightenment returns: but not at all as a way for the West to take cognizance of its present
possibilities and of the liberties to which it can have access, but as a way of interrogating it on its limits and on the powers
which it has abused. Michel Foucault: Georges Canguilhem: Philosopher Of Error Foucault refers here (1980: 54) to the
questioning, begun at the close of the colonial era, that challenged the entitlement of Western culture, Western science, and
Western rationality itself to claim universal validity. As Said (i) notes, however, there has been relatively little attention to
the imperial experience in challenging this priority of the West. Nowhere has this lack of critical attention been more
evident than in the discipline of international relations, which has systematically built a wall of silence around challenges
to Western expertise and knowledge, especially regarding the non-Western "other." International relations has claimed for
itself the exclusive representational authority to define and analyze the "essential" agents, structures, and processes of
global life and to relegate to the margins the nonessentials. This authority and the knowledge it facilitates has been based
upon the experiences and the power of the relatively small portion of the world referred to as the West and the even smaller
portion within that realm referred to as the major powers. In the process, international relations has taken as a given the
identity of the West and its subjects/agents, ignoring the historical experiences and encounters with "others" against
which the identities of these subjects/agents have been constituted. This study aims to be a corrective to this silence. As
such, it can be located within the general concern with interrogating the relationship between various claims drawing upon
Enlightenment and humanist values and the economic and political domination of European and American colonialism
(see Young 1990). It constitutes an effort to contribute to our understanding and questioning of how various forms of
Western power and knowledge have been mutually implicated in practices of domination and hegemony and how, in the
course of these practices, international identities have been constructed. Colonialism(s) represents this collusion between
power and knowledge and Enlightment and humanist values at its extreme. This is not to suggest that these values have
been used in a simplistically instrumental fashion to enable the expansion of Western power and control. What is important
is not so much the intentions and calculations of the individuals who bear some of the responsibility for the advance of
Western power. Rather, it is the taken-for-granted assumptions and the naturalized categories of knowledge embedded in
and produced within the context of the promotion of Western values that are of primary concern here. Humanist values can
be found in all of the discourses examined in this study. Sometimes they are quite explicitly expressed, while at other times
they are more implicit. What remains constant is their presence alongside practices that would seem to be in direct
contradiction to these values. As the Bible has often accompanied the flag and the rifle, Enlightenment values have often
accompanied practices of domination and exploitation. In the two encounters I examine in chapters 3 and 4, humanist
values explicitly animate and inform the narratives and debates-and domination and exploitation are obvious.
Understanding how this uneasy coexistence has been made possible and understanding its consequences require an analysis
of the representational practices and the accompanying forms of knowledge that have made specific historical happenings
possible. It should be clear from my discussion of discourse in chapter i that I am not implying a simple relationship of
causality between discursive practices and the various behaviors that have been part of colonialism. To reiterate, behavior
has no meaning at all outside of discourse. The issue then becomes not determining the cause(s) of behavior but rather
deconstructing the meanings that have been given to, and by virtue of being so given have made possible, the various
practices that have been present in imperial encounters. As Young (1990: 18) points out, the deconstruction of the center
and its relation to the margin examined by Derrida (1978) can operate geographically as well as conceptually. In the
encounters examined here, both conceptual and geographic centers and margins were mutually constructed, and humanist
values justified and made possible imperial practices of violence, domination, and exploitation.
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View the Impacts of Hegemony From the Outside In - Incredible Destruction, Instability, and Tyranny Their Impacts are Constructed by Our Refusal To See Beyond Insular American IR
Penny Von Eschen, Prof. of History @ Michigan, ‘5 [American Quarterly, “Enduring Public Diplomacy,” p. muse]
An account of U.S. public diplomacy and empire in Iraq can be constructed only through engaging fields outside the sphere
of American studies. Political scientist Mahmood Mamdani locates the roots of the current global crisis in [End Page 339]
U.S. cold war policies. Focusing on the proxy wars of the later cold war that led to CIA support of Osama Bin Laden and
drew Iraq and Saddam Hussein into the U.S. orbit as allies against the Iranians, Mamdani also reminds us of disrupted
democratic projects and of the arming and destabilization of Africa and the Middle East by the superpowers, reaching back
to the 1953 CIA-backed coup ousting Mussadeq in Iran and the tyrannical rule of Idi Amin in Uganda. For Mamdani, the
roots of contemporary terrorism must be located in politics, not the "culture" of Islam. Along with the work of Tariq Ali
and Rashid Khalidi, Mamdani's account of the post–1945 world takes us through those places where U.S. policy has
supported and armed military dictatorships, as in Pakistan and Iraq, or intervened clandestinely, from Iraq and throughout
the Middle East to Afghanistan and the Congo. For these scholars, these events belong at the center of twentieth-century
history, rather than on the periphery, with interventions and coups portrayed as unfortunate anomalies. These scholars
provide a critical history for what otherwise is posed as an "Islamic threat," placing the current prominence of Pakistan in
the context of its longtime support from the United States as a countervailing force against India.8 Stretching across
multiple regions, but just as crucial for reading U.S. military practices in Iraq, Yoko Fukumura and Martha Matsuoka's
"Redefining Security: Okinawa Women's Resistance to U.S. Militarism" reveals the human and environmental destruction
wrought by U.S. military bases in Asia through the living archive of activists who are demanding redress of the toxic
contamination and violence against women endemic to base communities.9 Attention to the development of exploitative
and violent sex industries allows us to place such recent horrors as the abuse, torture, and debasement at Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq in a history of military practices.10 Taken together, these works are exemplary, inviting us to revisit the imposition
of U.S. power in East and South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, regions where the instrumental role of U.S. power in the
creation of undemocratic military regimes has often been overlooked. That none of these works has been produced by
scholars who were trained in American studies is perhaps not accidental, but rather symptomatic of a field still shaped by
insularity despite increasing and trenchant critiques of this insularity by such American studies scholars as Amy Kaplan
and John Carlos Rowe.11 In recommending that American studies scholars collaborate with those in other fields and areas
of study and by articulating warnings about how easily attempts to "internationalize" can hurtle down the slippery slope of
neoliberal expansion, Kennedy and Lucas join such scholars in furthering the project of viewing U.S. hegemony from the
outside in. They [End Page 340] expose the insularity that has been an abiding feature of U.S. politics and public discourse.
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The discourse of competitiveness structures the aff world – it becomes the “life and death” biopolitical
struggle.
Schoenberger, Geography and Envt’l Eng @ Johns Hopkins, 98. [Erica, “Discourse and practice in human geography.” Progress
in Human Geography 22 (1) p. 2-5]
In what follows, I want to examine the meaning and use of the concept of `competi- tiveness'. The analysis claims, in
essence, that the term is not merely an `objective' description of a fact of economic life, but also part of a discursive strategy
that constructs a particular understanding of reality and elicits actions and reactions appropriate to that understanding. This
is followed by a discussion of why the discourse has the power that it does and how it may influence how we think about
and act in the world. I then work through some examples of how an unexamined acceptance of a discursive convention may
obscure as much as it reveals. II Competitiveness as an economic category and discursive strategy I'm going to make this as
simple as possible for myself by reducing the whole problem of discourse to one word: competitiveness. For economic
geographers in general and for me in particular, the categories of competition, competitive strategy and competitiveness
have a great deal of importance and might even be thought to pervade our work, even when they are not directly under
analysis. All sorts of industrial and spatial economic outcomes are implicitly or explicitly linked to some notion of
`competitiveness' (cf. Krugman, 1994). The rise and decline of particular industrial regions have something to do with the
competitiveness of the labour force (generally understood in terms of comparative costs and unionization), which (for
geographers if for no one else) has something to do with the competitiveness of the region in the first place, understood as
its particular mix of resources, infrastructure, location and cost profile. More than that, though, `competitiveness' seems to
me a term that has become truly hegemonic in the Gramscian sense. It is a culturally and socially sanctioned category that,
when invoked, can completely halt public discussion of public or private activities. There is virtually no counterargument
available to the simple claim that `doing X will make us uncompetitive,' whatever X and whomever `us' might be.2 In a
capitalist society, of course, it is more than reasonable to be concerned with competition and competitiveness. No matter
what your theoretical orientation, main- stream to Marxist, these must be seen as real forces shaping real outcomes in
society. They are not just intellectual constructs that lend a false sense of order to a messy world. On the other hand, we can
also analyse them as elements of a discursive strategy that shapes our understanding of the world and our possibilities for
action in it. In that case, it seems to me the first questions to ask are whose discursive strategy is it, what do they really
mean by it, where does its power come from, and what kinds of actions does it tend to open up or foreclose. 1 Whose
discourse? The discourse on competitiveness comes from two principal sources and in part its power is their power. In the
first instance, it is the discourse of the economics profession which doesn't really need to analyse what it is or what it means
socially. The market is the impartial and ultimate arbiter of right behaviour in the economy and competitiveness simply
describes the result of responding correctly to market signals. The blandness of this `objective' language conceals the
underlying harshness of the metaphor. For Adam Smith, the idea of competition plausibly evoked nothing more disturbing
than a horse race in which the losers are not summarily executed. Since then, the close identification of marginalist
economics with evolutionary theory has unavoidably imbued the concept with the sense of a life or death struggle (cf.
Niehans, 1990).3 In short, on competitiveness hangs life itself. As Krugman (1994: 31) defines it: `. . . when we say that a
corporation is uncompetitive, we mean that its market position is . . . unsustainable ± that unless it improves its
performance it will cease to exist.' As with evolutionary theory, our ability to strip the moral and ethical content from the
concepts of life and death is not so great as the self-image of modern science suggests. Com- petitiveness becomes
inescapably associated with ideas of fitness and unfitness, and these in turn with the unstated premise of merit, as in
`deserving to live' and `deserving to die'. Secondly, competitiveness is the discourse of the business community and
represents both an essential value and an essential validation. More generally, it serves as an all- purpose and unarguable
explanation for any behaviour: `We must do X in order to be competitive.' Again, the implied `or else' is death. As hinted,
though, the discourse of competitiveness has seeped out beyond these sources and is becoming socially pervasive.
University presidents, hospital admin- istrators and government bureaucrats also discourse quite fluently now about
compet- itiveness and its related accoutrements: customers, total quality, flexibility and so forth. It will be objected that
competitiveness is a deeply ingrained social category and value in the USA and elsewhere and there is no particular reason
to single out economists and business persons as culprits in its dissemination. That objection is true enough, and no doubt
contributes to the general power of the discourse since it resonates so well with this broader heritage. But `competitiveness'
in the sense of `deserving to live' is not what was commonly meant by this more diffuse social understanding. It is,
however, what is meant in economic analysis and business life, and it is increasingly what is meant in other institutional
and social settings as well.
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Pursuit of economic competitiveness betrays a fundamental commitment to the logic of security
Berger and Bristow 9 [Thomas, Professor, Department of International Relations, Boston University, and Gillian, Senior
Lecturer in Economic Geography at Cardiff, Competitiveness and the Benchmarking of Nations—A Critical Reflection International
Atlantic Economic Society 9 September 2009 Int Adv Econ Res (2009) 15:378–392]
As a consequence, there has been growing critique of the concept of national competitiveness and the rather flimsy
theoretical base on which it rests. Krugman (1997, 7) summarizes the confusion which surrounds the meaning of national
competitiveness with his assertion that it is largely defined in vague and approximate terms “as the combination of
favorable trade performance and something else”. This is referring to the fact that most definitions—just like the one by the
OECD (1992)—refer to the ability to sell concept. This is often accompanied with a call for a strategic management on the
national level, focusing on high-value added activities, exports or innovation, depending on the underlying concept. The
danger here is that such rhetoric is used to justify protectionism and trade wars. Krugman (1994, 1997) goes on to argue
that national competitiveness is either a new word for domestic productivity or meaningless political rhetoric. Whilst
nations may compete for investments if companies seek new business locations, this represents only a minor fraction of
economic activities for bigger economies. Furthermore, this is often connected with subsidies or tax reductions to attract
such investments. This strategic management for the attraction of investment and the fostering of exports is, according to
Krugman, little more than political rhetoric, designed to promote an image rather than secure clear and unambiguous
economic dividends,. Similarly, Cohen (1994, 196) describes the notion of national competitiveness in terms of
“Presidential metaphors, [trying] to encapsulate complicated matters for purposes of political mobilization”, perhaps
implying that national competitiveness might be better understood in the fields of political science and place marketing.
Indeed, growing interest in the notion of competitiveness as a hegemonic construct or discourse provides further strength to
the view that its value lies beyond that of an economic model or concept, but rests instead with its capacity to mobilize
interest-related action (Bristow 2005). As such, this paper focuses on the utility of national indices of competitiveness,
particularly for policymakers and key interest groups promoting it. In part, the growth in competitiveness indices and
benchmarking is a product of the growing audit culture which surrounds the neo-liberal approach to economic governance
in market economies. Public policy in developed countries experiencing the marketization of the state, is increasingly
driven by managerialism which emphasizes the improved performance and efficiency of the state. This managerialism is
founded upon economistic and rationalistic assumptions which include an emphasis upon measuring performance in the
context of a planning system driven by objectives and targets (Bristow 2005). This is closely intertwined with assumptions
about the increasingly global nature of economic activity. Thus, as the view that national economies are self-contained and
self-regulating systems has been replaced with the view that national economies are locked in unyielding international
competition, a new relationship between the economy, the state, and the society has emerged “in which their distinctive
identities as separate spheres of national life are increasingly blurred . . . The result is increasing pressure to make
relationships based on bureaucratic norms . . . meet the standards of efficiency that are believed to characterize the
impersonal forces of supply and demand” (Beeson and Firth 1998, 220). This in turn leads to an increasing requirement for
people, places and organizations to be accountable and for their performance and success to be measured and assessed.
However, benchmarking competitiveness may also be viewed as a technology of government and a mechanism by which
key international institutions in particular act to promote and disseminate its rationality. Cammack (2006, 120) describes
the “rapid spread of surveillance, benchmarking and peer review through coercive or cooperative supranational mechanisms
and close co-ordination between national competitive authorities” and explains how, according to the World Economic
Forum, its Global Competitiveness Report is intended “to help national economies improve their competitiveness”. The
first report, produced in 1979 then together with the IMD, covered only 16 European countries. The latest report covers 131
countries and introduces a new Global Competitiveness index with over 90 countries, showing how the system of mutual
learning and surveillance has been perfected and extended considerably in recent years. Whereas the old index had 35
variables and covered only three ‘key drivers of growth’ (macroeconomic environment, quality of public institutions and
technology’, the new index adds in a wider range of factors ‘seen as important determinants of competitiveness’, such as
the functioning of labor markets, the quality of a country’s infrastructure, the state of education and public health, and the
size of the market. Cammack (2006, 10) concludes “behind all the jiggery-pokery that this entails, the principal purpose of
the annual league tables is to support national reformers, aiding and abetting the social/socio-psychological process of
‘locking-in’” .
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Competitiveness is just a buzzword for security- all competition is pursued to maintain our hegemony
Kennan and Harvey, 1969 (Erlend A. Kennan and Edmund H. Harvey, reporter for the Harvard Crimson and Reader’s Digest
1969 “Mission to the Moon” (pages 194-196)
The statement must be made unequivocally, at the outset of this chapter, that it has been the Department of Defense, not
NASA, that has called the shots in America's space program. This is true despite the fact that NASA's astronauts have
dominated the public image of space projects. Not only is NASA's "open" program defense oriented, but there has always
been, concealed from public view, a vigorous Defense Department space program. Because this is so, the exhilarating hope
of John Kennedy and others that space exploration might prove an alternative to military competition is seriously
challenged. Also in doubt is the hope of Kennedy's Space Task Force (1960), headed by Jerome B. Wiesner, that "very
ambitious and long-range space projects...could be carried out in an atmosphere of cooperation as projects of all mankind
instead of in the present atmosphere of national competition. The space arena, it was hoped, could be another neutral
theater, such as Antarctica, set aside for cooperative, international exploration and study. Such high hopes fade slowly. As
late as September, 1966, then Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey, in a speech at San fernando Valley State College, court
reassert, with evident sincerity, the them of peace in space: "Space activities-even competition in space- can be a
substitution for aggression, a bridge for mutual understanding and the identification of common interests with other nations,
and a major tool of arms control and disarmament." Vice-President Humphrey seemed to have been as confused as the rest
of the American public about what was really going on in space. It is little wonder. The reflexive attempts of NASA, DOD,
and other military-oriented agencies to convince the world that such peaceful hopes, on one hand, are still strong- or, of
more "realistic" spokesmen, on the other hand, to claim that such peaceful "options" never were available, even from the
beginning-imply abject ignorance. Or is it a crass and cynical manipulation of the American people, who remain starry-eyes
about NASA and its exhilarating "peaceful" motives, while the space agency actually devotes much of its resources to the
attainment of military objectives? How, especially since NASA's charter specifically defines its role as "civilian" and
"peaceful" in nature, could this be so? Unfortunately, it is true simply because, as Richard S. Lewis said in November
1967, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "The motivation s of the spacefaring powers remain the same as in 1957.
They are primarily military and political; secondarily scientific and economic." Because the prime motive behind space
activities is an extension of the military power struggle born on land, and nurtured on the seas, even the most "peaceful" of
NASA's space ventures very often have a military tie. When they are not purely aggressive (as in the case of the
"doomsday" machine envisioned by Senator Stennis in the quotation at the head of this chapter) they are "defensive" or
"psychological." And all too often, NASA has openly violated its charter in direct support of the military.
Hegemony and Competition are bad- makes the United States a global bully with the sole right to develop
space weapons.
Kennan and Harvey, 1969 (Erlend A. Kennan and Edmund H. Harvey, reporter for the Harvard Crimson and Reader’s Digest
1969 “Mission to the Moon” (page 221)
Quoting President Kennedy, Schriever elaborates: "Space science, like nuclear science and all technology , has no
conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States
occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea or peace or a new terrifying
theatre of war." He then goes on in his own words: United States military capabilities in space must insure that no nation
achieves a position in space which threatens the security of the United States. It provides an essential guarantee that space
research will be carried on in an atmosphere of freedom and that the scientific knowledge which results can be used to
benefit all mankind. This is the promise and challenge posed to the military by the Space Age. Under the guise of
benefiting "all mankind," General Schriever is urging that the Defense Department of the United States of America achieve
military preeminence in space, so that one agency of one nation may hold a club ("protective umbrella") over the head of all
mankind. Is "club" too harsh an interpretation? We think not, for as Schriever says, close cooperation between the Air
Force and NASA, far from being inconsistent with the national policy that space be used for the peaceful purposes,
implements that policy by providing "the means for insuring that the policy is carried out." ("The best defense is a good
offense.") What is "offense" in space? Many things: orbiting nuclear bombs perfected to drop on target with pinpoint
accuracy, manned military space fortresses; legions of spies in the sky; someday, perhaps, fortresses on the Moon and
beyond- all the creations of the horror school of science fiction.
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The China problem is just a problem with a security – their exaggeration of China’s military capabilities
exacerbates the problems in the relationship
Zhang ’11 – associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Asia Pacific Studies at Lingnan University,
Hong Kong (Baohui, March/April 2011, "The Security Dilemma in the U.S.-China Military Space Relationship", JSTOR, RG)
The China problem they reference is a biproduct of the security dillema that they exacerbate China’s interpretation of the
revolution in military affairs and its quest for asymmetric warfare capabilities are important for understanding the 2007 ASAT test.
This article suggests that the Chinese military space program is also influenced by the security dilemma in international relations. Due
to the anarchic nature of the world order, “the search for security on the part of state A leads to insecurity for state B which therefore
takes steps to increase its security leading in its turn to increased insecurity for state A and so on.”
5 The military space relationship between China and the U.S. clearly embodies the tragedy of a security dilemma. In many ways, the
current Chinese thinking on space warfare reflects China’s response to the perceived U.S. threat to its national security. This response,
in turn, has triggered American suspicion about China’s military intentions in outer space. Thus, the security dilemma in the U.S.China space relationship has inevitably led to measures and countermeasures. As Joan Johnson-Freese, a scholar at the Naval War
College, observed after the January 2007 ASAT test, China and the U.S. “have been engaged in a dangerous spiral of action-reaction
space planning and/or activity.”
This article, citing firsthand Chinese military sources, identifies the major factors contributing to the security dilemma that is driving
China’s military space program. The first is China’s attempt to respond to perceived U.S. military strategies to dominate outer space.
Chinese strategists are keenly aware of the U.S. military’s plan to achieve so-called full-spectrum dominance, and the Chinese military
feels compelled to deny that dominance.
The second factor is China’s concern about U.S. missile defense, which could potentially weaken Chinese strategic nuclear deterrence.
Many PLA analysts believe that a multilayered ballistic missile defense system will inevitably compromise China’s offensive nuclear
forces. China’s response is to attempt to weaken the U.S. space-based sensor system that serves as the eyes and brains of missile
defense. Thus, U.S. missile defense has forced China to contemplate the integration of nuclear war and space warfare capabilities.
Because of the security dilemma, many experts in both China and the U.S. have expressed growing pessimism about the future of
arms control.
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Depictions of the Chinese threat are driven by a securitized mindset and used to justify military
expansion. No basis for these claims
Griffin ‘09, Penny Griffin, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Securing Outer Space, Ed. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan. p. 66-68, AL
The secrecy of the development of US military space technologies (including 'missile defence1 systems, military 'spy'
satellites and anti-satellite weapons) and the relative openness of 'civilian' projects (plans for 'manned' Moon and outer
space stations, for example) also, however, reflect the discursive construction of a US. discourse of neo-liberal
globalization that, economically, politically and psychologically, has depended on the establishment and continuance of
military hegemony to secure regional, economic interests. The functionally rational, neo-liberal market actor and the
essentially expansionist neo-liberal free market in US discourse enjoy a peculiarly close relationship with the US's
seemingly unquestionable1'right' to bear arms across, and beyond, the globe (as evidenced in the new US National Space
Policy). Thus while the US is a 'neo-liberal' power to the extent that it is committed to the expansion of the market, to
private capital, to flexible labour and to deregulated economies, the US 'state' is so heavily constituted by an historical
discourse of militarization that global economic, competition and military ambition are rarely distinct categories. As
commentators have noted, however, the explicit failure to mention China as 'the global peer competitor' that
USSPACECOM's 'Vision for 2020' draws attention to (in a section entitled 'Future Trends') is an attempt at discretion, not a
denial of China's growing economic pre-eminence (see Ricks 2000; Gagnon 2005). When Pentagon officials first sat down
in 2000 to plan their Joint Chiefs of Staff document, China was explicitly listed as a future adversary (Ricks 2000), but in
public, the US administration Is hesitant to refer explicitly to a Chinese 'threat', or situate China as an adversary, and the
wording of the document would seem to be directed at growing Chinese 'space power' (the term deployed by
USSPACECOM to refer to space policy to support land, sea and air operations). Throughout 'Vision for 2020', official US
discourse firmly allies economic 'competition' with future 'military conflict'. As the document reads, 'space forces will
emerge to protect military and commercial national interests and investment in the space medium due to their increasing
import¬ance' (US Space Command, 'Vision for 2020'). In suggesting a need for US 'full spectrum dominance', the
document refers to 'denying an adversary's [emphasis added] ability to fully leverage' space capabilities to 'collect, process,
and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information'. Launching its first space vehicle in 1964, and its first satellite in
1970, China, according to Filho, 'became the fifth space power in the world' (Filho 1997: 153), alongside the US, the
former Soviet Union, the European Space Agency (ESA) and, more recently, Japan (Iran, South Korea and India have also
begun to focus on increasing their space capabilities, although their efforts are considered to be, thus far, relatively limited).
China remains, however, the only one of these 'space able' nations to pose, in US discourse, a significant and sustained
threat to US hegemony. 'Looking at Asia as the most likely arena for future conflict, or at least competition' (Ricks 2000),
the US appears to be summoning a physical arsenal with which to contain the more ethereal rhreat of China's expanding
economic potential. Extending its military presence in the region, the US is currently engaged in lengthening and widening
runways for its bombers in Guam, where it is also adding new fighter squadrons, installing small, 'lily pad' bases throughout
the Asia-Pacific (for 'rapid interventionary capability'), and even transferring the US First Corps to Japan to more tighdy
integrate that nation 'in US global military planning' (Gagnon 2005: 1).
The US is, of course, heavily reliant on its satellite-based systems, and to this end works (to a certain extent) within a
regime framework of inter¬national space 'law' (Brearly 2005: 14). This is not to suggest that US discourse is not
constructed around the embedded belief that the US itself represents the global hegemon, and the only viable, indeed
legitimate, keeper of global 'order'. The US may be challenged 'regionally', but consid¬ers itself 'unlikely to be challenged
by a global peet competitor' (US Space Command, 'Vision for 2020'). From a position of discursive hegemony, consecutive
US administrations have formulated a politics of outer space that is in all but name a justification for unabashedly imperial
conquest. According to 'Joint Vision 2020', control of space assures the US 'access to space, freedom of operations within
the space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space, if required', with the US casting itself in 'a classic
warfighter role'.
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The US perceives China as a threat because of its lack of uniformity with Americans and the vacancy left
form the collapse of the Soviet Union
Pan 04 ( Chengxin Pan, Lecturer in International Relations and currently School Honours Coordinator. He was educated at Peking
University and the Australian National University, where he received a PhD degree in Political Science and International Relations.
He was a visiting scholar at the University of Melbourne and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a member
of the International Studies Association , the Chinese Studies Association of Australia (CSAA), and the editorial board of Series in
International Relations Classics, 2004, The “China Threat” in American Self Imagination: The Discursive Constuction of the Other as
Power Politics)
Yet, in a world of diversity, contingency, and unpredictability, which is irreducible to universal sameness or absolute
certainty, this kind of U.S. knowledge of others often proves frustratingly elu-sive. In this context, rather than questioning
the validity of their own universalist assumptions, the people of the United States believe that those who are different
should be held responsible for the lack of universal sameness. Indeed, because "we" are universal, those who refuse or who
are unable to become like "us" are no longer just "others," but are by definition the negation of univer- sality, or the other.
In this way, the other is always built into this universalized "American" self. Just as "Primitive ... is a category, not an
object, of Western thought,"36 so the threat of the other is not some kind of "external reality" discovered by U.S. strategic
ana- lysts, but a ready-made category of thought within this particular way of U.S. self-imagination. Consequently, there is
always a need for the United States to find a specific other to fill into the totalized category of otherness. Chengxin Pan
313 In the early days of American history, it was Europe, or the "Old World," that was invoked as its primary other,
threatening to cor- rupt the "New World."37 Shortly after World War II, in the eyes of U.S. strategists, the Soviet Union
emerged as a major deviance from, hence an archenemy of, their universal path toward progress via the free market and
liberal democracy. And after the demise of the Soviet Union, the vacancy of other was to be filled by China, the "best
candidate" the United States could find in the post-Cold War, unipolar world. Not until the September 1 1 attacks in New
York and Washington had China's candidature been suspended, to be replaced by international terrorism in general and
Saddam's Iraq in particular.38 at first glance, as the "China threat" literature has told us, China seems to fall perfectly into
the "threat" category, particularly given its growing power. However, China's power as such does not speak for itself in
terms of an emerging hreat. By any reasonable measure, China remains a largely poor country edged with only a sliver of
affluence along its coastal areas. Nor is China's sheer size a self-evident confirmation of the "China threat" thesis, as other
countries like India, Brazil, and Australia are almost as big as China. Instead, China as a "threat" has much to do with the
partic- ular mode of U.S. self-imagination. As Steve Chan notes: China is an object of attention not only because of its
huge size, ancient legacy, or current or projected relative national power. . . . The importance of China has to do with
perceptions, espe- ially those regarding the potential that Beijing will become an example, source, or model that
contradicts Western liberalism as the reigning paradigm. In an era of supposed universalizing cos- mopolitanism, China
demonstrates the potency and persistence of nationalism, and embodies an alternative to Western and especially U.S.
conceptions of democracy and capitalism. China is a reminder that history is not close to an end.39 Certainly, I do not
deny China's potential for strategic misbe- havior in the global context, nor do I claim the "essential peace- fulness" of
Chinese culture.40 Having said that, my main point here is that there is no such thing as "Chinese reality" that can automatically speak for itself, for example, as a "threat." Rather, the "China threat" is essentially a specifically social meaning
given to China by its U.S. observers, a meaning that cannot be discon- nected from the dominant U.S. self-construction.
Thus, to fully understand the U.S. "China threat" argument, it is essential to rec- ognize its autobiographical nature. 314
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Their Discourse Reduces China to Uncivilized Status - Limitless Violence Becomes Natural
Tan See Seng, Prof of Security Studies @ IDSS Singapore, ‘2 [July, “What Fear Hath Wrought: Missile Hysteria and The Writing of
America, IDSS Commentary No. 28, http://www.sipri.org/contents/library/0210.pdf]
Let us turn briefly to recent statements involving the "China threat." As per usual, without any thoughtful appraisal of the
millennia-long and rich histories of China(s), the specific struggles and tensions faced at different historical moments in
ongoing contestations of Chinese identity, or the relatively long Sino-American relationship marked by mutual benefit as
well as detriment, Republican Senator Jon Kyle, by no means a Sinologist and citing extensively from just one study on
China, 73 recently submitted this "definitive" assessment: [T]he former [Clinton] administration believed that China could
be reformed solely by the civilizing influence of the West. Unfortunately, this theory hasn't proven out - the embrace of
western capitalism has not been accompanied by respect for human rights, the rule of law, the embrace of democracy, or a
less belligerent attitude toward its neighbours... China is being led by a communist regime with a deplorable human rights
record and a history of irresponsible technology sales to rogue states. Furthermore, Beijing's threatening rhetoric aimed at
the United States and Taiwan, as well as its military modernization and buildup of forces opposite Taiwan, should lead us
to the conclusion that China potentially poses a growing threat to our national security... We should also be concerned with
China's desire to project power in other parts of the Far East. 74 In Kyle's discourse we encounter, first, the partisan
criticism levelled against the previous administration for its evidently erroneous belief that China could be "reformed" by
the "civilizing influence of the West." That this statement proceeds immediately from there to demonstrate why "this theory
hasn't proven out" is not to imply that the senator from Arizona therefore thinks that the entirety of the Clinton
Administration's purported logic is thereby flawed. Indeed, his discourse enacts precisely the same exclusionary practice,
present in the logic that he has just criticized, so as to position China as a "lesser subject," so to speak, relative to the US.
Again, Butler's thoughts are helpful here: "This exclusionary matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the
simultaneous production of a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet 'subjects,' but who form the constitutive
outside to the domain of the subject. ,75 I would suggest that Butler's "abject beings... who are not yet 'subjects" may
possibly be construed as what I have termed "lesser subjects." Hence, in much the same way that colonial or Orientalist
discourses produced subaltern subjects in order to be known, domesticated, disciplined, conquered, governed, and of course
civilized, 76 the figuration of "China" in Kyle's discourse, evoking a genre of Otherness most moderns prefer to think has
disappeared with the passing of colonialism, is that of an uncivilized barbaric nation and people. The previous
Democratic administration, according to Kyle, erred in believing that the Chinese can be reformed and civilized, but no
such hope - and it is, after all, a liberal hope - need be entertained by conservatives who know better than to even attempt
to civilize "the natives." This representation allows for the simultaneous production of the properly constituted subject,
"America," where human rights, the rule of law, democracy, and a track record of good neighbourliness are fully embraced
along with capitalism. Here we may note that although this inventory of criteria has long been associated with how
Americans perceive themselves - and, to be sure, how the world perceives America, positively as well as negatively - their
own national history, however, is littered with as many spectacular failures as there have been successes in these very areas.
Further, what is interesting to note, in terms of the redeployment - or, to paraphrase Foucault, a "re-incitement" - of
Orientalist tropes in security discourse, is the shift from the sorts of axiomatic and practical axes that structure interrelated
discourses on communism during and prior to the Cold War, to the axes that configure contemporary readings of
communism or, more precisely, the latest variant of "socialism with Chinese characteristics." As Campbell has pointed out,
one of the dimensions upon which pivoted the construction of Soviet communism as the West's Other was that of the
organizing of economic relations: notably, in its most simplistic terms, central planning and collectivisation on the part of
the communist bloc; and, laissez faire cum mixed economy and private ownership on the part of the Free World. 77 In the
case of Senator Kyle's narrative - which, in a key respect, reiterates and references norms and tropisms already present in
security discourses on China during the Clinton presidency - that particular axis has become irrelevant in the wake of
China's "embrace of western capitalism" and growing integration with the global economy. 78 For a replacement,
contemporary security discourse has mobilized other representational resources that, as we have seen, function within the
senator's discourse to domesticate and constitute China as a threat. And although China is described therein as "being led by
a communist regime," the choice of this particular adjective, deliberately circulated to invoke past articulations of fear, no
longer refers to the same thing, however. Hence, much as China has "embraced western capitalism," much as communism
in its economic sense is no longer adhered to throughout all of China, the discursive construction of Otherness, to the extent
that the figuration of communism is still being employed, now proceeds along the democratic/authoritarian axis, as well as
along other axes (elaborated upon earlier) around which rogue states are constituted.
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China Threat Discourse Presupposes Conflict In Order to Maintain US Identity - Limiting Options and
Creating Conflict
Christian Weber, PhD Candidate @ Johann Wolfgang Goeth-University, ‘8 [Journal of Historical Sociology 16.3, “Securitizing
China and Russia? Western relations with “rising powers” in the East,” http://www.soz.unifrankfurt.de/hellmann/projekt/Securitizing%20China%20and%20Russia_September_2008.pdf]
One clear example for the reproduction of the West through practices of securitization is the conceptualization of China’s
rise as a long term security threat. Since the mid-1990s, Western scholars and politicians try to evaluate the power potential
and the aims of the Chinese leadership in order to assess in a more informed fashion whether Western states should be
either concerned or dispassionate about China’s impressive economic growth rates and its increases in military spending.19
One striking feature of this literature is its normative Western outlook. Scholars, particularly in the U.S., presume that the
current “liberal international order” and the Western supremacy within this order must be preserved. A revision of the
existing rules on China’s terms is hardly ever considered as an acceptable option and is associated with warlike escalations
of previous power transitions. Thus, the literature on “China’s rise” starts from the presupposition that Western
predominance should be upheld and depicts a more powerful China as a challenger that should be either fully socialized
into the “liberal system” through a policy of engagement or restrained from subverting it through a containment strategy.20
Proponents of containment who regard a future antagonism between China and the West as almost inevitable made
themselves heard with explicit securitizing moves when conflicts between U.S. and Chinese foreign policy came up. For
example, a few months after the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1995-96 the journal Foreign Affairs appeared with a special section
on “The China threat”.21 In the lead article, Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro, two American journalists, made some
deterministic predictions suggesting that China “is bound to be no strategic friend of the United States, but a long-term
adversary” (p.22). In East Asia, they contended, military conflict between China and the U.S. over Taiwan or over
territorial claims in the South China Sea was always possible and becoming more and more likely as China’s military
strength continued to grow. Bernstein and Munro did not see this conflict confined only to China and the U.S. but instead
presented it as a veritable global security problem: Moreover, the Chinese-American rivalry of the future could fit into a
broader new global arrangement that will increasingly challenge Western, and especially American, global supremacy.
China’s close military cooperation with the former Soviet Union, particularly its purchase of advanced weapons in the
almost unrestricted Russian arms bazaar, its technological and political help to the Islamic countries of central Asia and
North Africa, and its looming dominance in East Asia put it at the center of an informal network of states, many of which
have goals and philosophies inimical to those of the United States, and many of which share China’s sense of grievance at
the long global domination of the West.22 This quote reads like a textbook version of a securitization move in which China
is stylized as the leader of an “informal” but nevertheless dangerous coalition of autocratic and Islamic enemies that prepare
for a struggle against Western dominance. It is hardly surprising that they cite Samuel Huntington’s thesis on the “clash of
civilizations” in the subsequent paragraph. Their vision shares quite a similarity with Huntington’s idea of a “ConfucianIslamic Connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power”.23 Interestingly, they would see
less need for concern if China would become a democracy. Then, its military strength would be less threatening than if it
remained a dictatorship. They don’t believe that to happen, however, since “that would be contrary to Chinese culture”.24
Bernstein and Munro’s essay was not the last one to portray China as the coming danger to for the West. In the context of
renewed tensions over Taiwan in 2000, the Washington Times journalist Bill Gertz made very similar claims in his book on
the “The China threat”. Gertz argued that China was the “most serious long-term national security challenge to the United
States”. It threatened Taiwan with a massive missile buildup, supported terrorist groups that threatened the U.S. and
enhanced military cooperation with Russia. These claims and allegations of anti-American intentions are only garnished
with quotes from Chinese senior generals and illustrated with incidents where China and the U.S. have come into
diplomatic conflict. The Clinton administration is accused of having sold out American interests in ignoring the most
serious security threat of the United States by naively trying to “engage” China via economic cooperation. As trade would
not ensure friendly relations, he argues, instead China must be contained through a recommitment to East Asian military
involvement and a U.S. military buildup.25 Although the western security agenda after 9/11 had clearly shifted towards
Islamic terrorism, in the second edition of his book Gertz sticks to his warning that the “danger from the nuclear-armed
communist dictatorship in China is growing”. From an IR theory perspective there seem to be two separate arguments
about the alleged dangers of China’s rise. The first is the liberal argument that there is a qualitative difference in the foreign
policy behaviour of democratic and autocratic regimes with the latter being more risk-acceptant and dangerous because
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their leaders are not as dependent on the consent of their respective population as the former.26 The second argument is a
realist one about power transitions. According to this perspective, a look at the historical record allows draw- ing the lesson
that the hegemony of a state does not last forever because over time the distribution of power will change to its detriment.
New rising powers, also frequently called revisionist powers, will not be prepared to satisfy themselves with the existing set
of rules that constituted the old hegemonic order and will instead seek to change the rules to their own favour.27 Since
there is no reliable mechanism in international society to manage this transition peacefully and because the dominant actors
will not give up their power position voluntarily, serious conflict over world hegemony and a radical revision of the old
rules seem inevitable. 28 Against this backdrop it should come as no surprise that realist scholars like John Mearsheimer
and Robert Kagan join the public dispute with the message that a more powerful China is a long term threat that must be
contained by the United States and its allies.29 In the public debate about China’s rise the liberal and the realist arguments
are combined to a distinctive narrative that can be summarized as follows.30 China poses a long term threat to the security
of the U.S. and the liberal Western order as a whole. As soon as the leading great power in the world is seriously challenged
by the “rise” of great powers that are equipped with the sufficient demographic and economic potential, the fight over
world hegemony cannot be prevented forever. Democracies and “totalitarian regimes” cannot coexist peacefully
indefinitely. This is a lesson that can be drawn from 19th and 20th century history. Sooner or later they will fight each other
until one or the other side prevails. Therefore, it would be detrimental to U.S. long term interests to engage China in a
policy of “appeasement” e.g. through trade partnership as the Clinton administration had practiced it. Instead it must
assume a firm posture and contain China through a “politics of strength” e.g. with a military build-up in East Asia and the
forging of alliances of democracies. It is up to the U.S. as the leader of the Western world to take the initiative and
demonstrate military strength. This narrative had a considerable impact in China itself where it was received under the
label of “Chinese threat theory”. Chinese scholars and officials reviewed U.S. and European articles that named China as a
security threat and took it as an illustration of the onesidedness with which China was treated by foreigners. In this way,
complaining about the Western “Chinese threat theory” at the same time fostered Chinese foreign policy identity: the
country would not turn to imperial expansion as Western great powers had done in the past but would instead go its own
way of “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development”. 31 This short reconstruction of the China threat narrative shall serve
only as a starting point illustrate how a securitization of China could look like. Of course it is only one specific part of an
overall discourse about how to understand and react to China’s growing importance in world politics that is taking place in
the academy as well as in policy circles and in the wider public. But at least one preliminary observation still seems worth
noting. China is not only seen as a threat in the United States as one might expect.32 For example, the Gaullist former
French prime minister Edouard Balladur recently called for a “union of the West” that could stop the alleged relative
decline of the Atlantic community vis-à-vis China’s economic growth.33 Opinion polls indicate that large parts of the
population not only in the United States but also Europe see the “growing power of China” as an economic and even as a
“military threat”.34 Of course this does not mean that they would support a policy of containment. People who are worried
about China’s growth may favor diplomatic negotiations as the more adequate measure. But nevertheless the description of
the problem has an impact on the range of options that are taken into consideration. When the German Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) in its recent Asia Strategy conceptualizes “Asia as a strategic challenge and opportunity for
Germany and Europe”, it pushes the range of alternatives in a certain direction.35 If even those who prefer a politization of
Sino-Western relations through multila- teral negotiations and economic cooperation build their arguments upon a
description of China’s rise as a “strategic challenge” the plausibility to treat it like a security issue increases.
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China Threat Discourse is Disguised as Objectivity – Creates a Dichotomy Between Self and Other.
Chengxin Pan, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, ‘4
[Alternatives 29, “The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics,” p.
ebsco]
At this point, at issue here is no longer whether the "China threat" argument is true or false, but is rather its reflection of a
shared positivist mentality among mainstream China experts that they know China better than do the Chinese themselves.^^
"We" alone can know for sure that they consider "us" their enemy and thus pose a menace to "us." Such an account of
China, in many ways, strongly seems to resemble Orientalists' problematic distinction between the West and the Orient.
Like orientalism, the U.S. construction of the Chinese "other" does not require that China acknowledge the validity of that
dichotomous construction. Indeed, as Edward Said point out, "It is enough for 'us' to set up these distinctions in our own
minds; [and] 'they' become 'they' accordingly. "64 It may be the case that there is nothing inherently wrong with perceiving
others through one's own subjective lens. Yet, what is problematic with mainstream U.S. China watchers is that they refuse
to acknowledge the legitimacy of the inherent fluidity of Chinese identity and subjectivity and try instead to fix its
ambiguity as absolute difference from "us," a kind of certainty that denotes nothing but otherness and threats. As a result, it
becomes difficult to find a legitimate space for alternative ways of understanding an inherently volatile, amorphous
China^^ or to recognize that China's future trajectory in global politics is contingent essentially on how "we" in the United
States and the West in general want to see it as well as on how the Chinese choose to shape it.^^ Indeed, discourses of "us"
and "them" are always closely linked to how "we" as "what we are" deal with "them" as "what they are" in the practical
realm. This is exactly how the discursive strategy of perceiving China as a threatening other should be understood, a point
addressed in the following section, which explores some of the practical dimension of this discursive strategy in the
containment perspectives and hegemonic ambitions of U.S. foreign policy.
Regardless of Policy - The Aff Constructions of China as threat Naturalize Otherization of China
Tan See Seng, Prof of Security Studies @ IDSS Singapore, ‘2 [July, “What Fear Hath Wrought: Missile Hysteria and The Writing of
America, IDSS Commentary No. 28, http://www.sipri.org/contents/library/0210.pdf]
To its credit, the Bush Administration has, for the most part, avoided any forthright labelling of China as a threat, much less
a clear and present danger. But the conditions of discursive possibility for such labelling are clear and present, so much so
that policy options of containment, confrontation, and engagement, in an important sense, do not constitute
fundamentally distinct ways of conceptualising China, but rather overlapping approaches to managing an already
presumed Other, both dangerous and threatening. As National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice has argued, "China is not
a 'status quo' power [because it] resents the role of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region"8° - an ideological reduction
that not only constitutes China as incorrigibly revisionist, but refuses the possibility that China may in fact accept (or, as a
retired Chinese diplomat recently put it, "tolerate"81) the international status quo owing to the benefits Beijing has accrued
and desires to continuing accruing, thanks largely to America's apparent stabilizing influence in the region. 82 Moreover, as
one analyst has averred, "Beijing has a history of testing US presidents early to see what they're made of."83 As in the
above illustrations concerning rogue states, exclusionary practices along various axiomatic and practical axes construct a
particular China that, in turn, legitimates the view of the Chinese and their missiles as threats. All the while, the
contemporaneous production and reproduction of a particular American identity proceeds apace by way of the reiteration
and reference of boundary producing performances that form the constitutive "outside" of danger, threat, and vulnerability.
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Their Discourse Construct China as an Object.
Chengxin Pan, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, ‘4
[Alternatives 29, “The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics,” p.
ebsco]
China and its relationship with the United States has long been a fascinating subject of study in the mainstream U.S.
international relations community. This is reflected, for example, in the current heated debates over whether China is
primarily a strategic threat to or a market bonanza for the United States and whether containment or engagement is the best
way to deal with it.* While U.S. China scholars argue fiercely over "what China precisely is," their debates have been
underpinned by some common ground, especially in terms of a positivist epistemology. Firstly, they believe that China is
ultimately a knowable object, whose reality can be, and ought to be, empirically revealed by scientific means. For example,
after expressing his dissatisfaction with often conflicting Western perceptions of China, David M. Lampton, former
president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, suggests that "it is time to step back and look at where China
is today, where it might be going, and what consequences that direction will hold for the rest of the world."2 Like many
other China scholars, Lampton views his object of study as essentially "something we can stand back from and observe
with clinical detachment."^ Secondly, associated with the first assumption, it is commonly believed that China scholars
merely serve as "disinterested observers" and that their studies of China are neutral, passive descriptions of reality. And
thirdly, in pondering whether China poses a threat or offers an opportunity to the United States, they rarely raise the
question of "what the United States is." That is, the meaning of the United States is believed to be certain and beyond
doubt.
China Threat Discourse is a Self Fullfilling Prophesy
Chengxin Pan, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, ‘4
[Alternatives 29, “The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics,” p.
ebsco]
More specifically, I want to argue that U.S. conceptions of China as a threatening other are always intrinsically linked to
how U.S. policymakers/mainstream China specialists see themselves (as representatives of the indispensable, securityconscious nation, for example). As such, they are not value-free, objective descriptions of an independent, preexisting
Chinese reality out there, but are better understood as a kind of normative, meaning-giving practice that often legitimates
power politics in U.S.-China relations and helps transform the "China threat" into social reality. In other words, it is selffulfilling in practice, and is always part of the "China threat" problem it purports merely to describe. In doing so, I seek to
bring to the fore two interconnected themes of self/other constructions and of theory as practice inherent in the "China
threat" literature—themes that have been overridden and rendered largely invisible by those common positivist
assumptions. These themes are of course nothing new nor peculiar to the "China threat" literature. They have been
identified elsewhere by critics of some conventional fields of study such as ethnography, anthropology, oriental studies,
political science, and international relations.* Yet, so far, the China field in the West in general and the U.S. "China threat"
literature in particular have shown remarkable resistance to systematic critical refiection on both their normative status as
discursive practice and their enormous practical implications for international politics.^ It is in this context that this article
seeks to make a contribution.
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The Aff’s Discourse Constructs A Benevolent US Opposed to The Dangerous Chinese Other - This is not
Neutral But an Active Ideological Construction
Chengxin Pan, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, ‘4
[Alternatives 29, “The "China Threat" in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics,” p.
ebsco]
Having examined how the "China threat" literature is enabled by and serves the purpose of a particular U.S. selfconstruction, I want to turn now to the issue of how this literature represents a discursive construction of other, instead of
an "objective" account of Chinese reality. This, I argue, has less to do with its portrayal of China as a threat per se than with
its essentialization and totalization of China as an externally knowable object, independent of historically contingent
contexts or dynamic international interactions. In this sense, the discursive construction of China as a threatening other
cannot be detached from (neo)realism, a positivist ahistorical framework of analysis within which global life is reduced to
endless interstate rivalry for power and survival. As many critical IR scholars have noted, (neo) realism is not a
transcendent description of global reality but is predicated on the modernist Western identity, which, in the quest for
scientific certainty, has come to define itself essentially as the sovereign territorial nation-state. This realist self-identity of
Western states leads to the constitution of anarchy as the sphere of insecurity, disorder, and war. In an anarchical system, as
(neo) realists argue, "the gain of one side is often considered to be the loss of the other,"''5 and "All other states are
potential threats."'•^ In order to survive in such a system, states inevitably pursue power or capability. In doing so, these
realist claims represent what R. B. J. Walker calls "a specific historical articulation of relations of universality/particularity
and self/Other."^^ The (neo) realist paradigm has dominated the U.S. IR discipline in general and the U.S. China studies
field in particular. As Kurt Campbell notes, after the end of the Cold War, a whole new crop of China experts "are much
more likely to have a background in strategic studies or international relations than China itself. ""^^ As a result, for those
experts to know China is nothing more or less than to undertake a geopolitical analysis of it, often by asking only a few
questions such as how China will "behave" in a strategic sense and how it may affect the regional or global balance of
power, with a particular emphasis on China's military power or capabilities. As Thomas J. Christensen notes, "Although
many have focused on intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent component of the [China threat] debate is the
assessment of China's overall future military power compared with that of the United States and other East Asian regional
powers."''^ Consequently, almost by default, China emerges as an absolute other and a threat thanks to this (neo) realist
prism. The (neo) realist emphasis on survival and security in international relations dovetails perfectly with the U.S. selfimagination, because for the United States to define itself as the indispensable nation in a world of anarchy is often to
demand absolute security. As James Chace and Caleb Carr note, "for over two centuries the aspiration toward an eventual
condition of absolute security has been viewed as central to an effective American foreign policy."50 And this selfidentification in turn leads to the definition of not only "tangible" foreign powers but global contingency and uncertainty
per se as threats. For example, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush repeatedly said that "the enemy [of America] is
unpredictability. The enemy is instability. "5' Similarly, arguing for the continuation of U.S. Cold War alliances, a highranking Pentagon official asked, "if we pull out, who knows what nervousness will result? "^2 Thus understood, by its very
uncertain character, China would now automatically constitute a threat to the United States. For example, Bernstein and
Munro believe that "China's political unpredictability, the always-present possibility that it will fall into a state of domestic
disunion and factional fighting," constitutes a source of danger.s^ In like manner, Richard Betts and Thomas Christensen
write: If the PLA [People's Liberation Army] remains second-rate, should the world breathe a sigh of relief? Not entirely. . .
. Drawing China into the web of global interdependence may do more to encourage peace than war, but it cannot guarantee
that the pursuit of heartfelt political interests will be blocked by a fear of economic consequences. . . . U.S. efforts to create
a stable balance across the Taiwan Strait might deter the use of force uner certain circumstances, but certainly not all.54
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Descriptions of Russian Danger are Constructed and Reproduce a Self/Other Distinction - Their Dream
of Total Security becomes total violence
Øyvind Jæger, @ Norweigian Institute of International Affairs and the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, 2k [Peace and
Conflict Studies 7.2, “Securitizing Russia: Discoursive Practice of the Baltic States,”
http://shss.nova.edu/pcs/journalsPDF/V7N2.pdf#page=18]
The Russian war on Chechnya is one event that was widely interpreted in the Baltic as a ominous sign of what Russia has in store for
the Baltic states (see Rebas 1996: 27; Nekrasas 1996: 58; Tarand 1996: 24; cf. Haab 1997). The constitutional ban in all three states on
any kind of association with post-Soviet political structures is indicative of a threat perception that confuses Soviet and post- Soviet,
conflating Russia with the USSR and casting everything Russian as a threat through what Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985)
call a discursive "chain of equivalence". In this the value of one side in a binary opposition is reiterated in other denotations of the
same binary opposition. Thus, the value "Russia" in a Russia/Europe-opposition is also denoted by "instability", "Asia", "invasion",
"chaos", "incitement of ethnic minorities", "unpredictability", "imperialism", "slander campaign", "migration", and so forth. The
opposite value of these markers ("stability", "Europe", "defence", "order", and so on) would then denote the Self and thus conjure up
an identity. When identity is precarious, this discursive practice intensifies by shifting onto a security mode, treating the oppositions as
if they were questions of political existence, sovereignty, and survival. Identity is (re)produced more effectively when the oppositions
are employed in a discourse of in-security and danger, that is, made into questions of national security and thus securitised in the
Wæverian sense. In the Baltic cases, especially the Lithuanian National Security Concept is knitting a chain of equivalence in a
ferocious discourse of danger. Not only does it establish "[t]hat the defence of Lithuania is total and unconditional," and that "[s]hould
there be no higher command, self-controlled combat actions of armed units and citizens shall be considered legal." (National Security
Concept, Lithuania, Ch. 7, Sc. 1, 2) It also posits that [t]he power of civic resistance is constituted of the Nation’s Will and selfdetermination to fight for own freedom, of everyone citizen’s resolution to resist to [an] assailant or invader by all possible ways,
despite citizen’s age and [or] profession, of taking part in Lithuania’s defence (National Security Concept, Lithuania, Ch. 7, Sc. 4).
When this is added to the identifying of the objects of national security as "human and citizen rights, fundamental freedoms and
personal security; state sovereignty; rights of the nation, prerequisites for a free development; the state independence; the
constitutional order; state territory and its integrity, and; cultural heritage," and the subjects as "the state, the armed forces and other
institutions thereof; the citizens and their associations, and; non governmental organisations,"(National Security Concept, Lithuania,
Ch. 2, Sc. 1, 2) one approaches a conception of security in which the distinction between state and nation has disappeared in allencompassing securitisation. Everyone is expected to defend everything with every possible means. And when the list of identified
threats to national security that follows range from "overt (military) aggression", via "personal insecurity", to "ignoring of national
values,"(National Security Concept, Lithuania, Ch. 10) the National Security Concept of Lithuania has become a totalising one taking
everything to be a question of national security. The chain of equivalence is established when the very introduction of the National
Security Concept is devoted to a denotation of Lithuania’s century-old sameness to "Europe" and resistance to "occupation and
subjugation" (see quotation below), whereby Russia is depicted and installed as the first link in the discursive chain that follows. In
much the same way the "enemy within" came about in Estonia and Latvia. As the independence-memory was ritualised and added to
the sense of insecurity – already fed by confusion in state administration, legislation and government policy grappling not only with
what to do but also how to do it given the inexperience of state institutions or their absence – unity behind the overarching objective of
independence receded for partial politics and the construction of the enemy within. This is what David Campbell (1992) points out
when he sees the practices of security as being about securing a precarious state identity. One way of going about it is to cast elements
on the state inside resisting the privileged identity as the subversive errand boys of the prime external enemy.
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Russia is wrongly perceived as a threat and securitized against
Charles Nathanson, visionary co-founder of San Diego Dialogue, Ph.D., 1988, “The social construction of the Soviet threat”
In this paper the reality of the Soviet threat to the United States is questioned. It is postulated that perception of it as such is due to the
adoption of a single schema or 'script' by which data is interpreted and ambiguity is eliminated. This script is used to eliminate any
alternative interpretation of Soviet behavior. The purpose of the paper is to show how this 'self- generating, self-confirming reality was
constructed and maintained.' Various aspects of U.S. foreign and domestic policy-making are examined with special emphasis on
George Kennan's 'Long Telegram' of 1946 which became the 'bible' of American policy-makers and keystone of the script. Post-war
U.S. anti-Soviet attitudes are seen not as a result of a change in Soviet behavior, but rather as due to a new method of interpreting it. 1.
Introduction For nearly four decades, the perception that a Soviet threat exists out there in the world has informed much of American
foreign and domestic political behavior. How to respond to the threat has been a subject of intense debate. The reality of the threat has
been taken for granted. This paper questions the reality.1 The argument does not depend primarily on a reexamination of Soviet
Old soviet tensions cause us to view Russia as a threat when they truly aren’t
Hugh Mehan, Professor of Sociology and Director of The Center for Research on Educational Equity, Access, and Teaching
Excellence (CREATE) at UCSD, 1990, “Nuclear Discourse in the 1980s: The Unravelling Conventions of the Cold War”
http://das.sagepub.com/content/1/2/133.short
The power and importance of discourse conventions in the cold war are revealed through their breach. The Reagan Administration
talked publicly about nuclear weapons as a way to win a nuclear war. This new mode of representing nuclear weapons breached the
deterrence convention, i.e. the purpose of nuclear weapons is to avoid war, not fight war. Humanists fearful of nuclear destruction,
moralists condemning the sinful nature of nuclear war, and peace activists demanding a freeze on the production of nuclear weapons
challenged this discourse move and struggled to reset the parameters of the nuclear conversation. To repair this breach, the Reagan
Administration advocated a strategic defense and considered abolishing nuclear weapons entirely. SDI countered the moral phrasings
of the bishops and silenced the peace movement, but only by further undermining cold war conventions. Reagan's abolitionist moves
breached the convention of relying on nuclear weapons to counter the threat of Soviet expansion. In this newly opened discourse
space, Gorbachev challenged the most basic convention of cold war discourse, the Soviet threat, by denying the US an enemy. It is
more difficult for the US to use the Soviet Union as a rationale for its policies when the Soviet threat is removed from US strategic
discourse. Our analysis suggests Gorbachev was led to an alternative security vision for the superpowers by the West's loss of
discursive control over nuclear weapons, which occurred when the Reagan Administration breached the conventions that tied cold war
discourse together.
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Fears of Accidental War are Not Material but a Product of Fear of Difference and Nuclear Hysteria.
Seng 2 [Tan See, Prof of Security Studies @ IDSS Singapore, July 2002, "What Fear Hath Wrought: Missile Hysteria and The
Writing of America, IDSS Commentary No. 28, http://www.sipri.org/contents/library/0210.pdf]
Few, to be sure, would doubt the sincerity of Secretary Rumsfeld when he averred last June: "I don't think vulnerability is a
(viable) policy."84 Clearly, Washington's preoccupation with missile defence has much to do with the Bush
Administration's concern over what it perceives as the strategic vulnerability of America to potential ballistic missile attack.
Nonetheless, as important as debates over whether or not the "missile threat" actually exists are to the study and practice of
international relations, what is equally if not more fundamental is the question of how discourses of danger figure in the
incessant writing of "America" - a particular and quite problematic identity that owes its materiality to textual inscriptions
of difference and Otherness. Missile hysteria in US national security discourse cannot be simplistically reduced to the level
of an ideological explanation - certainly not according to the classic formulation of Mannheim's. 85 Rather, what this paper
has demonstrated is the centrality of difference and deferral in discourse to the identity of America - a discourse of danger,
fear, and vulnerability posed by potential missile attacks against the US from "rogue states" and accidental or
unauthorized missile launches from a particular "China" or "Russia." The argument maintained here has been that a
particular representation of America does not exist apart from the very differences that allegedly threaten that
representation, just as the particular America of recent lore did not exist apart from Cold War-related discourses of danger.
If missile defence is (as Bauman, cited earlier, has put it) the "foolproof recipe" for exorcising the ghosts or demons of
missile hysteria, then Bush's national security advisors are the exorcists and shamans as well as the constructors of
national insecurity via missile hysteria. 86 However, the argument has not been that the Administration, the Rumsfeld
Commission, and other missile defence enthusiasts fabricated, ex nihilo, a ballistic missile threat against the US by means
of a singular, deliberate "act," which is what some constructivists in international relations, conspiracy theorists, and
partisan Democrats - an interesting if not motley collectivity - would have us believe. Nor has it been that language and
discourse is "everything" as linguistic idealists would have us imagine. Rather, through reiterative and coordinated practices
by which discourse produces the effects that it names, a certain normative representation of America "emerges" - wrought,
as it were, by fear and written into being by missile hysteria.
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The Construction of Accidents Ends Culpability For Nuclear Violence –It Prevents Responsibility For
Violence and ensures Self Fulfilling Prophesy.
Hanna M. Segal, MB ChB FRC – Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst – British Pyscho-Analytic Society, ’88 [Psychoanalysis
and the Nuclear Threat: Clinical and Theoretical Studies, p. 47]
The growth of technology is also used for a typically schizoid dehumanization and mechanization. There is a kind of
pervasive depersonalization and derealization. Pushing a button to annihilate parts of the world we have never seen is a
mechanized, split-off activity. Bracken (1984) contends that war is likely to happen as a result of our machines getting Out
of control. Everything is so automated that oversensitive machines could start an unstoppable nuclear exchange. The MIT
computer expert Joseph Weizen-baum (1976) comes to a similar conclusion: modern big computers are so complicated that
no expert can see through and control them. Yet the whole nuclear early warning system is based on these machines. Since
one effect of nuclear explosion is a disturbance in communication systems, it might not be within the power of governments
to stop a war even if they wished to. But the fact that we can even think that "machines will start the war, not us" shows the
extent of denial of our responsibility. We seem to live with a peculiar combination of helplessness and terror and
omnipotence-helplessness and omnipotence in a vicious circle; heightening one another. This helplessness, which lies at
the root of our apathy, is inevitable. We are faced with a horrifyingly threatening danger. But partly it is induced by us and
becomes a self--fulfilling prophesy. Confronted with the terror of the powers of destructiveness we divest ourselves of our
responsibilities by denial, projection, and fragmentation.
The responsibility is fragmented and projected further
and further away-into governments, army, scientists, and, finally, into machines beyond human control. We not only project
into our so--called enemies, we also divest ourselves of our responsibilities by projecting them onto governments. They,
in turn, can not bear such responsibility, and they project onto us, the people, public opinion, and so on, as well as
fragmenting their responsibility as previously described. When we project onto governments, we become truly helpless.
We are in their hands.
The Discourse of Accidents Undermines Individual Responsibility For Conflict
Chalupka, Prof., ’92 [Knowing Nukes, p. 14]
This absurd outcome may be most evident when we consider those major destabilizers in the nuclear world that come under
the classification of "accidents." The term "accident" is of obvious interest to nuclear criticism. In a discourse that
allocates responsibilities pervasively, "accident" is a free spot, without cause or conspiracy. In the case of nuclear
power, the notion of accident had already become visible in the late 1970s, after nuclear critics and Nuclear Regulatory
Commission officials sparred over the vocabulary appropriate to Three Mile Island. To officialdom, accident was obviously
an appropriate label for these events, since there was never any suggestion of malevolence or subversion. To critics, it was
just as obvious that when societies produce electricity by placing ornately complex plants around the landscape, radiation
releases are so inevitable that the word "accident" reveals an evasion of responsibility. In another case, compatriots
of the Iran Air 655 victims insisted that its destruction must have been intentional, simply because the powerful American
technology could not possibly have 'made a mistake" (or "had an accident") of such magnitude. Meanwhile, critics in the
United States- more familiar with technological failures-argued that placing a weapon such as the LJ.S.S. Vincennes in a
place such as the Persian (pull invited tragedy so openly as to defy the categories "mistake" and "accident." Noting the
radical reversibility of such analyses-the ease with they are inverted-we might begin to suspect that "accident" is a special
term in the debate over nukes. Indeed, "accident" has even served as a sign of stability, as in the oft-repeated analysis that
the paradoxes of deterrence arc so stable that the real danger of nuclear war comes from the chance of accident.
Socalled accidents may attain this special status because of the role the rhetoric of "accident" necessarily preserves for a
rhetoric of agency. To call something an "accident" is to claim (or hope) that there is no harbor for responsibility, even
though we continually use rhetorical devices that allocate causality when we talk about politics. This double character gives
the formulation "nuclear accident" an extraordinary powers Hypothetically, such an accident could destroy all life; if that
weren't enough, the formulation draws attention to the provisional, constituted character of American discourse about
agency and authority.
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Representations of Rationality – The Aff’s Descriptions and Responses to Prolif are Based in Imperial
Control - Prolif is Only Destabalizing When Viewed in a Colonial Lens.
Andreas Behnke, Prof. of Poli Sci @ Towson, 2k [January, International Journal of Peace Studies 5.1, “Inscriptions of the Imperial
Order,”http://www.gmu.edu/academic/ijps/vol5_1/behnke.htm]
While sticking to our critical hermeneutics, we might nonetheless flesh out the 'identification' of the South as a constitutive
Other. In November 1997, the RAND Corporation presented an 'authoritative study' on NATO's Mediterranean Initiative to
the Alliance's top political and military authorities. Its institutionalized intertextual relationship with NATO's discourse was
established through the Opening Speech by Secretary General Solana at the RAND conference at which the report was
submitted (Solana 1997c), and a summary by the NATO Office of Information and Press in NATO Review (de Santis,
1998:32). Among the many issues and topics of the report, three aspects will receive particular attention here. Firstly, the
report constitutes a paradigmatic case of 'securitization' by rendering a particular region 'accessible' to the strategic gaze of
a military alliance.10 Secondly, the RAND study's 'problematization' of the 'proliferation' of Weapons of Mass Destruction
(WMD) draws on and reproduces a specific mode of differentiation between the West and the South which is deeply
indebted to 'orientalist' clichés. Thirdly, the resulting mode of exchange (of information, trust, and knowledge) is implicitly
conceived as a hierarchical and monological one. Overall, the report emulates and reinforces NATO's imperial gesture in
the Mediterranean Initiative. Securitization, Proliferation, Information The starting point for the RAND report is the
growing importance of the Mediterranean region for NATO and Europe after the end of the cold war. Since the 'Eastern
Front' will most likely be stabilized and pacified through the enlargement process, the Alliance's primary concern in terms
of 'security problems' will have to be its Southern periphery -- the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Caucasus (RAND,
1998:xi). The site vacated by the East, in other words, is now occupied by 'the South'. In a second move, the RAND authors
qualify this apparent isomorphism between the East and the South, pointing to the different phenomena underlying the
'security problems' in these areas. Here, political, economic, and social instability are the main concerns of local
politicians, while migration, energy issues and cultural issues extend beyond individual countries (RAND, 1998:3-5). Yet
in a third and final rhetorical move, RAND's narrative renders these different and diverse problems relevant for the strategic
gaze of a military alliance.11 That is to say, NATO 'securitizes' the different social, political, economic, and cultural issues
by framing them within a discursive context of danger and threat, by processing them through a conceptual structure that
renders them relevant for the strategic and diplomatic practices of a security political agent like NATO. This is above all
accomplished by designating the social, political, economic and cultural issues as 'soft security' problems.12 "Indeed, the
expansion of the security agenda beyond narrowly defined defense questions has been a leading feature of the post-Cold
War scene everywhere, and the Mediterranean is an example of this trend" (RAND, 1998:3). And as the NATO summary
presentation elaborates, "the socio-economic developments referred to above may lead to the Alliance's definition of
security being subject to further refinement for some years to come" (de Santis, 1998:33). A closer look at the RAND study
actually reveals that the 'Mediterranean' as a region itself is constructed through this discursive securitization. The region is
identified by reference to such purported commonalities as lack of political legitimacy, relentless urbanization, and
religious radicalism. Moreover, the expanded reach of modern military and information systems links these issues into one
'gray area of problems' with the Mediterranean at its center. Read as straight-forward indicators of danger and taken out of
their respective socio-political and cultural context, these issues constitute defining markers of the 'Mediterranean' region as
a field of strategic knowledge. Securitization in the NATO/RAND discourse accomplishes two related objects. Firstly, it
alienates the identities of West and South only to mediate them in terms of danger and insecurity. It replaces the temporal
differentiation that was implied in the 'development/underdevelopment' discourse with a spatial, geostrategic constellation.
Consequently, it suggests 'arms control' and 'confidence building' measures as the appropriate means to mediate the divide.
Secondly, the NATO/RAND narrative makes the region cognitively accessible and geostrategically available for the
Alliance. Whatever goes on in the region is rendered a matter of concern for an alliance that can muster an unequaled
amount of strategic violence in order to inscribe its own design onto the map of global politics. The re-conceptualization of
security to encompass 'soft issues' does not mean that NATO cannot identify 'hard' security problems. Above all the
proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) features prominently with the NATO/RAND discourse (NATO
1991; NATO 1998d; Solana 1997b; Solana 1997c). David Mutimer (1997) has argued that the use of the metaphor
'proliferation' carries certain entailments. That is to say, it structures our understanding and handling of the problem. In
particular, he refers to the "image of a spread outward from a point or source", and the "technological bias" introduced in
the discourse (Mutimer 1997:201-2). As concerns the first point, 'proliferation' presupposes a center at which WMD are to
be held and controlled, and from which these weapons disseminate into the body of the international society. To the extent
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that this process gets out of the center's control, certain measures have to be taken to 'suffocate', limit, or curb the 'spread' of
these weapons. As concerns the second point, Mutimer (1997:203) points out the peculiar agency implied in the concept:
"Notice that the weapons themselves spread; they are not spread by an external agent of some form - say, a human being or
political institution". The fact that a large number of these weapons were actually 'spread' by Western states is
consequently hidden through this discursive structure. These points are also relevant for the Mediterranean Initiative. We
can add a third entailment to the list which appears through a critical reading of the NATO/RAND narrative. As the RAND
authors (1998:15) observe, "The mere existence of ballistic missile technology with ranges in excess of 1,000 km on world
markets and available to proliferators around the Mediterranean basin would not necessarily pose serious strategic
dilemmas for Europe." In fact, we might even agree with the neorealist proposition that 'more might be better', above all in
terms of nuclear weapons. This is certainly the preferred solution of John Mearsheimer (1990) for the stabilization of
European political order after the end of the cold war. After all, conventional wisdom has it that nuclear weapons and the
threat of mutually assured destruction preserved stability and peace during the Cold War. The RAND authors, however, fail
to grasp the irony in their identification of WMD proliferation, which ends up denying this central tenet of cold war
strategy. According to them, "the WMD and ballistic missile threat will acquire more serious dimensions where it is
coupled with a proliferator's revolutionary orientation. Today, this is the case with regard to Iran, Iraq, Libya, and arguably
Syria" (RAND, 1998:16). What preserved the peace during the cold war -- mutual deterrence -- is now re-written as a
strategic problem: As a result of proliferation trends, Europe will be increasingly exposed to the retaliatory consequences of
U.S. and European actions around the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin, including the Balkans. ... As a political
threat and a weapon of terror capable of influencing the NATO decisionmaking during a crisis, their significance [of
conventionally armed ballistic missiles] could be considerable (RAND, 1998:16). Two implications of these arguments
deserve elaboration. First, there is the reversal of the traditional relationship between WMD and rationality. For what makes
the presence of WMD in the South so worrisome is the absence of the requirements of reason and rationality. Within
NATO's discourse on the South, 'revolutionary orientation' accounts for the undesirability of distributing these weapons to
such unfit hands. In order to qualify for their possession, reason and rationality must be present -- as they are obviously
assumed to be in the West. The discourse of proliferation consequently produces a third entailment by constructing the
relationship between West and South in 'orientalist' terms. In this rendition, the South becomes the quintessential antithesis
of the West, the site of irrationality, passion, and terror (Said, 1995). Within this site, different rules apply, which are not
necessarily subject to Western ideals of enlightened reason. 'Proliferation' articulates a hierarchical structure in global
politics, with the West as the privileged site of from which to surveil, control, and engage the rest of the world. This
privilege is further dramatized in the above complaint about the possibility of retaliation. For the South to achieve the
possibility of influencing NATO decisionmaking is to violate the epistemic sovereignty of the West. 'U.S. and European
actions' and interventions have to be unrestrained in order to constitute proper crisis management. NATO demands a docile
subjectivity and accessible territory from the South, the latter's identity cannot be ascertained against the West. Its arms
have to be surrendered, its retaliatory capabilities to be revoked. 'Information' is the third mode besides 'Securitization' and
'Proliferation' within which we can discern the subjugation of the South to the strategic Western gaze. A central purpose of
the Mediterranean Initiative/Dialogue is to improve 'mutual understanding' and to 'dispel some of the misperceptions and
apprehensions that exist, on both sides of the Mediterranean' (Solana, 1997a:5). And both the RAND Corporation and
NATO put some emphasis on public information and perception. Yet the structure of this relationship proves to be
unbalanced and virtually unilateral. As mentioned above, for NATO, the prime task is above all the "further refinement of
its definition of security" (de Santis, 1998). The general identity of the South as a site of danger and insecurity is
consequently never in question. Western perceptions are never problematized. Knowledge of the South is, it appears, a
matter of matching more and better information with proper conceptual tools. On the other hand, (mis)perceptions take the
place of knowledge in the South. NATO is perceived widely as a Cold War institution searching for a new enemy. That is
why the best course to change the perception of NATO in these countries is to focus more on "soft" security, building
mutual understanding and confidence before engaging in "hard" military cooperation. Measures should be developed with
the aim of promoting transparency and defusing threat perceptions, and promoting a better understanding of NATO's
policies and objectives (de Santis, 1998:34). To interpret political misgivings about NATO and its post-cold war diplomacy
as 'misperceptions' which can be put straight by "educat[ing] opinion-makers in the dialogue-countries"(RAND, 1998:75)
tends to naturalize and objectify the Western rendition of NATO's identity. The possibility that from the perspective of
the 'Southern' countries NATO's political and strategic design might look quite different is lost in this narrative. NATO's
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identity is decontextualized and objectified, the productive role of different cultural and strategic settings in the
establishment of identities and formulation of interests denied. To maintain such a lofty position becomes more difficult if
we let the Mediterranean participants voice their concerns openly. Far from being 'misperceptions and misunderstandings',
these countries' less than enthusiastic attitudes towards NATO are based on, for instance, the establishment of powerful
Western military intervention capabilities off their beaches. Also, NATO's attempts to institutionalize a military
cooperation is interpreted as an attempt to gain a strategic foothold in the region in order to monitor the flow of missile
technology and the possession of WMD (Selim 1998:12-14). In other words, we encounter rather rational and reasonable
security political and strategic concerns. The fact that NATO is unwilling or unable to acknowledge their concerns once
again demonstrates the 'imperial' nature of the purported dialogue. Conclusion: The Imperial Encounter In her exploration
of Western representations of the South, Roxanne Doty (1996:3) describes the relationship between these two subjectivities
as an "imperial encounter" which is meant "to convey the idea of asymmetrical encounters in which one entity has been
able to construct 'realities' that were taken seriously and acted upon and the other entity has been denied equal degrees or
kinds of agency". Her focus is on an aspect of power which has received increasing treatment within critical International
Relations (IR) theory during the last years, that is, the power to define and articulate identities and to determine the
relations between them. As was argued above, the Western invention of the South during the cold war can be interpreted as
an imperial gesture. The South was rendered into a West-in-the-making, with its own distinguished historical, cultural, and
social features reduced to indicators of 'underdevelopment'. Ultimately, the narrative proclaimed, the South would become
part of the Western 'Empire', the latter would be able to expand into 'barbaric' areas of the world -- provided it could win the
war against Communism. The end of the cold war saw this 'expansionist' logic give way to a exclusive posture. The
relations between the West and the South are no longer mediated through time. Instead, a spatial differentiation now
structures the imperial encounter, the South is no longer to be 'developed' and 'Westernized'. It is to be surveilled, controlled
and disciplined, its 'spillage' of crisis and instability to be contained. NATO's Mediterranean Initiative is a cornerstone in
this new rendition. For while we so far cannot observe any direct military intervention by the Alliance in the Mediterranean
region, NATO's discourse on the South in general, and the Initiative in particular render it accessible and available for such
action. Strategic knowledge is produced as an expression of, and in anticipation of, strategic power. The 'self-determination'
of NATO as a continuously capable and competent military agent is effected through a discourse that inscribes a particular,
securitizing, strategic order upon the South, positing it as a site of danger, irrationality and insecurity against the West. In
this context it is interesting to observe the exclusion of states from the Mediterranean Initiative that are not considered to be
'moderate, Western-looking [and] constructivist' (RAND 1998:57). This differentiation between insiders and outsiders
appears to be based on the degree to which the respective countries are willing to subject themselves to the imperial
encounter with the West, and to open themselves to the strategic gaze and control of NATO. The imperial encounter is then
made possible and supported by what one may call the Emperor's two bodies. On one hand, the West appears as a cultural
identity among others, located in space (North of the Mediterranean) and time (in the post-cold war era). In this sense, the
West is the entity that needs to be protected from the dangers and threats which 'spill over' from the South through adequate
strategic means.On the other hand, the West is presented as a 'site of knowledge', as the source or author of the proper and
objective 'world-picture' that depicts the realities of post-cold war global politics. In this sense, the West becomes the
metaphysical grounds from which knowledge can be gathered and disseminated. And in its different versions -securitization, proliferation, and information -- this knowledge draws on and reproduces this metaphysics. There are
consequently reasons to be skeptical about NATO's ability to conduct a 'dialogue' with an other it is unwilling to listen to.
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The Construction of Nuclear Terror Ensures Radical US Interventionism, Everyone is a Target
Joseph Masco, Prof. of Anthro @ U-Chicago, ‘6 [The Nuclear Borderlands, p. 328-332]
The post-Cold War period ended after September 11, 2001, with the formal conversion of the United States to a
counterterrorism state. Americans who once thought the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed their
relationship to the bomb were, after the terrorist strikes on September 11, once again witness to an escalating discourse of
nuclear terror: the air¬waves were filled with stories of vulnerability, of unsecured ports through which a terrorist nuclear
device could be smuggled, of unprotected nuclear power plants open to suicide attacks by airplane, of radiological dirty
bombs, which might contaminate major U.S. cities, rendering them uninhabitable. A newly formed Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) soon launched the first civil defense campaign in more than a generation, seemingly designed
more to maintain nuclear fear than reduce it. The Ready.Gov campaign officially advised citizens to stockpile potassium
iodide pills to deal with potential radioactive poisoning, while doing their best to avoid contact with an exploding nuclear
device (see Figure 8.1). Meanwhile, a new Homeland Security Advisory System kept Americans at a state of "elevated" to
"high" risk of terrorist attack, institutionaliz¬ing a new kind of official terror, buttressed by frequent speculations from the
DHS and FBI about possibly imminent catastrophic attacks. By the fall of 2004, when asked in their first debate to identify
the single greatest threat to the national security of the United States, both presidential candidates agreed it was the atomic
bomb: Senator Kerry put it in the context of "nuclear proliferation," while President Bush stated the greatest danger to the
United States was nuclear weapons "in the hands of a terrorist enemy."1 In the new century, nuclear insecurity once again
formally linked the foreign and the domestic under the sign of apocalyptic nuclear risk, creating a political space in which
anything seemed possible. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, for example, made a case for war with Iraq simply
by stating that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."2 In doing so, she mobilized the threat of an
imaginary Iraqi nuclear arsenal to enable the most radical foreign policy decision in modern American history: a
"preventative" war, which involved invading another country to eliminate a nuclear threat before it actually existed.3 In a
few short years, nuclear fear writ large was politically mobilized into an enormously productive force in the United States,
enabling a reconfiguration of U.S. military affairs (embracing covert action on a global scale), a massive bureaucratic
reorganization of federal institutions (the Department of Homeland Security), a reconfiguration of civil liberties and
domestic policing laws (the U.S.A. Patriot Act), and an entirely new concept of war (preemption). All of these projects
were pursued in the name of a "war" on "terror," which was energized by an explicit nuclear discourse after the September
11 attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York. The post-Cold War period (1991-2001), thus', concluded with the official
transformation of the United States from a countercommunist to a counterterrorist state, a conversion that would not have been possible
in its speed, scale, or lack of debate without a discourse of nuclear terror. Given the scale of this transformation, it is difficult now to
remember a time, only a few years ago, when it was difficult to focus American public attention on the bomb. Looking back on when I
started researching this book in the mid-1990s, public reactions to nuclear weapons from the early post-Cold War moment now appear
quite strange. Outside of New Mexico, a description of this book project, for example, often produced puzzled looks from U.S. citizens,
and statements that suggested for many Americans the bomb had already become a thing of the past, of historical interest but not an
ongoing political concern. A common response was surprise that Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was "still" involved in
nuclear weapons work, and/or "shock" that the United States remained committed to the bomb after the demise of the Soviet Union. This
immediate psychological effort to declare the bomb history in the wake of the Cold War is as remarkable as the feverish nuclear
discourses following the decidedly non-nuclear September 11 attacks, and is part of the same structural logic: these psychosocial
strategies reveal the American cultural tradition of approaching the bomb either as a banal object, not worthy of attention,
or as a hysterical threat, requiring a total mobilization of the imagination. This banal/apocalyptic dual structure works to
deny the U.S. commitment to the bomb by either cloaking it in a normative everyday space or by displacing attention onto
solely external nuclear threats. In both instances, the internal politics and effects of the U.S. nuclear arsenal are erased, even
as the core relevance of U.S. nuclear weapons to everyday American life is powerfully revealed by a bomb that is either all
too absent or all too present.
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Airpower link
Airpower is defined through the governmental-military-industrial-complex.
Kaplan 06 (Caren Kaplan, Professor in Women and Gender Studies at UC Davis, “Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of
U.S. Consumer Identity”, 2006, 699-700)
GPS exemplifies the belief in precision as a required element in armaments, especially in bombardment, and the
militarization of space. According to military historians, the entire rationale for GPS development was linked to the
demands of precision in missile guidance. Standard histories point to the checkered experience of aerial bombing raids
during the world wars and after to demonstrate the importance of accurate targeting, especially for bombardments at night
or in poor weather conditions. However, Donald MacKenzie argues that the desire for bombing precision is neither natural
nor inevitable but the product of "a complex process of conflict and collaboration between a range of social actors including
ambitious, energetic technologists, laboratories and corporations, and political and military leaders and the organizations
they head." 25 MacKenzie's research demonstrates that a technologically determinist discourse of accuracy or precision
marks the attitudes of both the political Right and Left in debates about military technologies during the period between the
two world wars. How precision came to dominate discourses of military strategy in the period before World War II through
the Vietnam War and beyond to the first Persian Gulf war is a complicated tale of the competing claims on resources
between the branches of the U.S. armed forces as well as the growing power of what should really be termed the
governmental-military-industrial complex. 26 Above all, the mystique of precision became the underlying rationale for the
founding of an air force separate from the navy (which had its own flight craft and pilots) and for the organizing of U.S.
national defense and offensive warfare on the principles of airpower. The rise of airpower as a military strategy is linked to
the belief, passionately argued in the aftermath of WWI's previously unimaginable number of civilian as well as military
casualties, that precision bombing would be a more humane practice than previous strategies of ground wars. Intrinsic to
the argument for aerial bombardment are the key European Enlightenment precepts of distance, precision, and the truthvalue of sight. Each of these concepts itself requires an underlying belief in the mastery of technology and the superiority of
information systems that privilege vision. Nothing brought these disparate discourses and ideologies together more
effectively than the development of enhanced bombsights in WWII. The ability to target selected sites on the ground from a
machine traveling at rapid speeds through uncertain weather at heights great enough to remain safe from enemy detection
and attack was not easy to achieve. The U.S. military itself was divided on the subject of airpower and the necessity of a
separate air force branch. 27 Moreover, given the technological constraints, it was not clear that the moral high ground that
precision bombing seemed to offer was achievable. Navigational and computational errors, inaccurate intelligence, [End
Page 699] weather interference, and human and technological failures often sent bombs awry, killing innocent civilians
while destroying nonmilitary sites and structures. Nevertheless, the impression prevailed that U.S. precision bombing was
far superior to its obverse strategy: tactical or saturation bombing, a technique that focused on destroying the morale of the
civilian population in enemy territory through wide-scale devastation and terror. 28 Aerial bombardment during WWI had
consisted of dropping armaments by hand with "no bombing sights, no aiming points, and no true bombs." 29 As the world
geared up for the next war, entire industries were pressed into the quest for high-tech solutions to the perceived need for
precision—both to better the record of aerial bombardment and to protect the lives of the airmen. With the new bombsights
developed for WWII, popular belief held that a bombardier's precision was increased such that he could "drop a bomb into
a pickle barrel." 30 While this claim to precision was often contradicted by evidence, the bombardier became a heroic, even
iconic, figure in popular perception. 31 As Conrad Crane argues, accurate daylight bombing, with its precision mystique,
called upon "traditional," favored American characteristics such as marksmanship, fair play, and other "frontier"
stereotypes, adding to its strategic appeal to planners and the public alike. 32The precise aim of the bombardier (in truth,
more the result of skilled mathematical calculation and new technologies than the classic "line of sight" attributed to great
marksmen) became legendary. The development of the Norden and Sperry bombsights, along with the engineering of the
B-17 long-range airplane (known as the "Flying Fortress"), brought daylight precision bombing into the policy and strategy
of modern warfare as an integral component of airpower.
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Smart bomb link
GPS guided bombs both miss their targets, and render civilian deaths inconsequential.
Kaplan 06 (Caren Kaplan, Professor in Women and Gender Studies at UC Davis, “Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of
U.S. Consumer Identity”, 2006, 704-705)
The visual elements of the "smart" weapons entranced many Persian Gulf war spectators. An editorial published in the
Nation during the war in February 1991 relates the example of liberal viewers who enthused, "we hate the war . . . but we
are into the planes." 51 Or, as reporter Fred Kaplan recalled in the late 1990s, "seven years have passed since the last time
the United States bombed Iraq, but one gripping image lingers—video footage shot on Jan. 17, 1991, the first night of the
air war, of a laser-guided bomb plunking straight down the chimney of an Iraqi Air Force building and blowing the place
off the map." 52 These "gripping" images were produced by video cameras in the "smart" bombs that were designed to
record the strike. In the absence of other visual records, the "smart bomb" footage took on a privileged percentage of the
display of technological prowess for which the war is known. The "objective eye" of the smart bomb linked the values of
realism, action, and precision that many spectators came to regard as a guilty or not-so-guilty pleasure—watching the U.S.
blow stuff to bits in an urban or desert landscape that appeared to be devoid of human beings. The explosions were
represented as precise strikes "through windows" or "down chimneys" of selected targets. Thus, the guiltless pleasure of
viewership was as much due to the belief in the power of precision and the thrill of knowing that the armaments were
moving through space and time at enormous speeds to strike a target with exceptional accuracy. The overwhelming
impression conveyed by the military-industrial-media-entertainment network was that the United States and its allies were
undertaking precision attacks on military targets, thereby conducting war on a higher moral plane and avoiding unnecessary
"collateral damage" and, not incidentally, offering good visual entertainment. 53 However, as numerous commentators
have pointed out in the years since the war, although most of the bombs dropped in Iraq (approximately 90 percent) were
regular "gravity" or "dumb" bombs without laser or satellite guidance and while a high percentage of those bombs missed
their targets (some estimates go as high as 70 percent), what most Americans probably remember about the war is the
discourse of precision linked to the imagery produced by the so-called smart bombs. Yet, [End Page 704] the precisionguided bombs were also likely to miss their marks. Weather, human error, poor intelligence, and any number of other
problems plagued the laser- and GPS-guided missiles and bombs. And, despite the hype, more of the "smart" weapons in
the first Gulf war were guided by laser systems than by GPS (which has gained proportionate majority in precision-guided
weapons programs in subsequent wars). Significantly, the well-documented imprecision of the bombing campaign just
never gained any traction, since the evidence runs so counter to the discourse of precision and technological mastery that
dominated the airwaves during the conflict itself. The most notorious mishap occurred on February 13, 1991, when, based
on intelligence identifying the site as a military hard target, a guided missile hit the Ameriya civil-defense shelter at 4:30
a.m., killing between 200 and 300 civilians. In a 402-page published report, Middle East Watch chronicled "needless
deaths" during the war due to innumerable violations of the official U.S. military and allied policies, such as daytime bomb
and missile attacks on targets in populated areas, lack of warning, strafing attacks on civilian vehicles on highways, attacks
on Bedouin tents, and so on. The report concluded that approximately 3,000 civilian Iraqis died from direct attacks, while a
"substantially larger" number died or suffered greatly from malnutrition, disease, and lack of medical care caused by "a
combination of the U.N.-mandated embargo and the allies' destruction of Iraq's electrical system." 54 "Space power" and
the vast resources of the military-industrial-media-entertainment network generated discourses of precision that obscured
information about civilian deaths or rendered them inconsequential. The representation of the war was less embodied than
previous representations of wars, with U.S. military casualties going undercover or under the radar, as it were, as well. If
the "witnessing" of the war came from the missiles themselves, the point of view was singular, unidirectional, and heavily
censored in favor of orchestrated displays of precision. Thus, much of what took place on the ground during the war was
never a matter of public record in the globalized televisual experience of the "real." In effect, in the coverage of the Persian
Gulf war the U.S. public watched an extended commercial for GPS.
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***IMPACTS
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Impact – biopower
The call to securitize always implies an enemy: against the sacred population in need of salvation is
placed an unstable other who must be resisted at all costs. The only possible result is annihilation.
Campbell, 1998. David, professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle. Writing Security, 1998. (199 – 202)
Security and subjectivity are intrinsically linked, even in conventional understandings. Traditional discourses of international
relations maintain that alliance is one where security is a goal to be achieved by a number of instrumentalities deployed by the
state (defense and foreign policy, for example). But the linkage between the two can be understood in a different light, for just
as Foreign Policy works to constitute the identity in whose name it operates, security functions to instantiate the subjectivity it
purports to serve. Indeed, security (of which foreign policy/Foreign Policy is a part) is first and foremost a performative
discourse constitutive of political order: after all, "securing something requires its differentiation, classification and definition.
It has, in short, to be identified."21 An invitation to this line of thought can be found in the later work of Michel Foucault, in
which he explicitly addresses the issue of security and the state through the rubric of "governmental rationality."22 The
incitement to Foucault's thinking was his observation that from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth
century, political treatises that previously had been written as advice to the prince were now being presented as works on the
"art jf government." The concern of these treatises was not confined to the requirements of a specific sovereign, but with the
more general problematic of government: a problematic that included the government of souls and lives, of children, of
oneself, and finally, of the state by the sovereign. This problematic of governance emerges at the intersection of central and
centralizing power relationships (those located in principles of universality, law, citizenship, sovereignty), and individual and
individualizing power relationships (such as the pastoral relationships of the Christian church and the welfare state). 23
Accordingly, the state for Foucault is an ensemble of practices that are at one and the same time individualizing and totalizing:
I don't think that we should consider the "modern state" as an entity which was developed above individuals, ignoring what
they are and even their very existence, but on the contrary as a very sophisticated structure, in which individuals can be
integrated, under one condition: that this individuality would be shaped in a new form, and submitted to a set of very specific
patterns. In a way we can see the state as a modern matrix of individualization. 24 Foucault posited some direct and important
connections between the individualizing and totalizing power relationships in the conclusion to The History of Sexuality,
Volume I. There he argues that starting in the seventeenth century, power over life evolved in two complementary ways:
through disciplines that produced docile bodies, and through regulations and interventions directed at the social body. The
former centered on the body as a machine and sought to maximize its potential in economic processes, while the latter was concerned with the social body's capacity to give life and propagate. Together, these relations of power meant that "there was an
explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations, marking
the beginning of an era of 'bio-power.' " This era of bio-power saw the art of government develop an overtly constitutive
orientation through the deployment of technologies concerned with the ethical boundaries of identity as much (if not more
than) the territorial borders of the state. Foucault supported this argument by reference to the "theory of police." Developed in
the seventeenth century, the "theory of police" signified not an institution or mechanism internal to the state, but a governmental technology that helped specify the domain of the state. 26 In particular, Foucault noted that Delamare's Compendium
— an eighteenth-century French administrative work detailing the kingdom's police regulations — outlined twelve domains of
concern for the police: religion, morals, health, supplies, roads, town buildings, public safety, the liberal arts, trade, factories,
the supply of labor, and the poor. The logic behind this ambit claim of concern, which was repeated in all treatises on the
police, was that the police should be concerned with "everything pertaining to men's happiness," all social relations carried on
between men, and all "living."27 As another treatise of the period declared: "The police's true object is man." The theory of
police, as an instance of the rationality behind the art of government, had therefore the constitution, production, and
maintenance of identity as its major effect. Likewise, the conduct of war is linked to identity. As Foucault argues, "Wars are no
longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire
populations are mobilized for the purpose of slaughter in the name of life necessity." In other words, countries go to war, not
for the purpose of defending their rulers, but for the purpose of defending "the nation," ensuring the state's security, or
upholding the interests and values of the people. Moreover, in an era that has seen the development of a global system for the
fighting of a nuclear war (the infrastructure of which remains intact despite the "end of the cold war"), the paradox of risking
[CONTINUED NO TEXT REMOVED]
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[CONTINUED NO TEXT REMOVED]
individual death for the sake of collective life has been pushed to its logical extreme. Indeed, "the atomic situation is now at the
end of this process: the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of the power to guarantee an individual's
continued existence." The common effect of the theory of police and the waging of war in constituting the identity in whose
name they operate highlights the way in which foreign policy/Foreign Policy establishes the general preconditions for a
"coherent policy of order," particularly as it gives rise to a geography of evil. 30 Indeed, the preoccupation of the texts of
Foreign Policy with the prospects for order, and the concern of a range of cultural spokespersons in America with the dangers
to order, manifest how this problematic is articulated in a variety of sites distinctive of the United States. Most important,
though, it is at the intersection of the "microphysics" and "macrophysics" of power in the problematic of order that we can
locate the concept of security. Security in this formulation is neither just an essential precondition of power nor its goal;
security is a specific principle of political method and practice directed explicitly to "the ensemble of the population. This is not
to suggest that "the population" exists in a prediscursive domain; on the contrary, "one of the great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of 'population' as an economic and political problem."
Furthermore, Foucault argues that from the eighteenth century onward, security becomes the central dynamic in governmental
rationality, so that (as discussed in chapter 6) we live today, not in a narrowly defined and overtly repressive disciplinary
society, but in a "society of security," in which practices of national security and practices of social security structure intensive
and extensive power relations, and constitute the ethical boundaries and territorial borders of inside/ outside,
normal/pathological, civilized/barbaric, and so on. The theory of police and the shift from a sovereign's war to a population's
war thus not only changed the nature of "man" and war, it constituted the identity of "man" in the idea of the population, and
articulated the dangers that might pose a threat to security. The major implication of this argument is that the state is
understood as having no essence, no ontological status that exists prior to and is served by either police or war. Instead, "the
state" is "the mobile effect of a multiple regime of governmentality," of which the practices of police, —— and foreign
policy/Foreign Policy are all a part.
The Dream of Security Ensures Apocalypse From Now On – Constructions of Existential Risk ensures the
Enactment of Annihilation.
Pever Coviello, Prof. of English @ Bowdoin, 2k [Queer Frontiers, p. 39-40]
Perhaps. But to claim that American culture is at present decisively postnuclear is not to say that the world we inhabit is in
any way postapocalyptic. Apocalypse, as I began by saying, changed-it did not go away. And here I want to hazard my
second assertion: if, in the nuclear age of yesteryear, apocalypse signified an event threatening everyone and everything
with (in Jacques Den-ida's suitably menacing phrase) "remairiderless and a-symbolic destruction,," then in the postnuclear
world apocalypse is an affair whose parameters are definitively local. In shape and in substance, apocalypse is defined now
by the affliction it brings somewhere else, always to an "other" people whose very presence might then be written as a
kind of dangerous contagion, threatening the safety and prosperity of a cherished "general population." This fact seems
to me to stand behind Susan Sontag's incisive observation, from 1989, that, 'Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not
'Apocalypse Now' but 'Apocalypse from Now On."" The decisive point here in the perpetuation of the threat of
apocalypse (the point Sontag goes on, at length, to miss) is that apocalypse is ever present because, as an element in a vast
economy of power, it is ever useful. That is, through the perpetual threat of destruction-through the constant
reproduction of the figure of apocalypse-agencies of power ensure their authority to act on and through the bodies of a
particular population. No one turns this point more persuasively than Michel Foucault, who in the final chapter of his first
volume of The History of Sexuality addresses himself to the problem of a power that is less repressive than productive, less
life-threatening than, in his words, "life-administering." Power, he contends, "exerts a positive influence on life land,
endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations?' In his
brief comments on what he calls "the atomic situation;' however, Foucault insists as well that the productiveness of modern
power must not be mistaken for a uniform repudiation of violent or even lethal means. For as "managers of life and
survival, of bodies and the race," agencies of modern power presume to act 'on the behalf of the existence of everyone."
Whatsoever might be construed as a threat to life and survival in this way serves to authorize any expression of force, no
matter how invasive or, indeed, potentially annihilating. "If genocide is indeed the dream of modem power," Foucault
writes, "this is not because of a recent return to the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the
level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population." For a state that would arm itself not with
the power to kill its population, but with a more comprehensive power over the patterns and functioning of its collective
life, the threat of an apocalyptic demise, nuclear or otherwise, seems a civic initiative that can scarcely be done without.
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Impact – value to life
Nuclear security’s risk calculus relies on faulty universalizations that cannot account for any value to life
Bryan Hubbard, MA in Political Science @ ASU, ’97 [Rhetorical Analysisis of Two Contemporary Atomic Campaigns,
http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA327948]
The escalation of risk to life-threatening risk makes a particular value statement that suggests all people prioritize risks to
life over risks to quality of life. This practice repeats universalizing discourse of modernity despite other appeals toward
difference. The automatic escalation of risk discussion to life-threatening risk ignores a plethora of values short of life and
death and universalizes criteria for decision making. Experience shows social practices often occur for reasons outside
the evaluation of life-threatening risk based on individualized cultural perceptions, tastes and values. People disagree over
what they consider a risky activity because of differences in value systems and multiple decision-making heuristics not
considered by traditional risk communication which envisions one uniform rational-world paradigm. This difference
involves very specific value judgments. Different activities will receive different risk characterization despite their
statistical similarity. Ravetz (1980) suggests, "the variety in the public perceptions of acceptable risk partly reflects the
variety of life itself in its many dimensions of experience" (p. 47). This does not necessarily point to the failure of risk
communication to inform individuals of risk but indicates other criteria also inform decisions that traditional risk
communication ignores. To date, the bulk of academic literature on risk communication seems to have an invested interest
in the future of the nuclear industry and modernity. Largely based on social science, the literature has tried to quantify
public perception and acceptance of technological risk (Bassett, Jenkins-Smith, & Silva, 1996; Cohen 1995; Farr, 1992;
Fischoff, 1995; Garrick & Gekler, 1989; McBeth & Oakes, 1996; McCormick, 1981; McDaniels, Axelrod, & Slovic, 1995;
Sokolowska & Tyszka, 1995; Weinberg, 1991). The results are mixed. Waterstone (1992) reviews this line of study and
notes, it "has taken a mechanistic, deterministic view of events and behavior; has been scientific and technocratic; has
largely downplayed, if not ignored, the role of social and economic factors in affecting risk; and has represented an
ideology of the status quo" (p. 2). Risk communicators, who share a rational-world vision with these social scientists,
employ this line of research and disregard public failure to conform as examples of an ignorant irrational publics. This
perception decreases policy-makers faith in democratic decision making while creating resentment toward technocrats
from the general public who can read the insensitivity toward their concerns. The institutionalization of risk
communication as previously conceptualized sanctions nuclear communication as an exclusive technocratic discourse
which results in polarizing one-way communication.
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Impact – serial policy failure
Their reliance on security suffers from serial policy failure – and the attendant endless production of new
threats to be countered creates an endless politics of war
Dillon and Reed 09 (IR professor @ Lancaster University; Lecturer @ King’s College London, “The Liberal Way of Killing:
Killing to Make Live”)
There is, third, the additional critical attribute of contingency. It is this feature which does not merely add governing through
contingency to the political rationalities and governmental technologies of contemporary liberal rule. It lends its own distinctive
infection to them; one which has had a profound impact on the nature of liberal rule and war in relation, especially, to its current
hyperbolicization of security and its newly problematized and proliferating accounts of dangers, threats and enemies. For if the
biopolitical imperative is that of making life live, the martial expression of that imperative, the drive to liberal war, is preparedness to
make war on the enemies of life. The biopoltiical imperative to make life live finds its expression today, however in making life live
the emergency of its emergence; for that is what species life is now said to be. The liberal way of rule and war has thus become the
preparedness to make war on whatever threatens life’s capacity to live the emergency of its emergence. For allied to the radical
contingency of species existence is an account of species existence as a life of continuous complex adaptation and emergence. From
the perspective of security and war, in particular, such a pluripotent life, characterized by its continuously unfolding potential, is a life
that is continuously becoming-dangerous to itself, and to other life forms. Such danger is not merely actual; because life itself, here
has become not merely actual. The emphasis in the problematization of danger which accompanies such a politics of life itself
therefore also shifts dramatically from the actual to the virtual. Only this explains the astonishing degree to which the historically
secure lives of the Atlantic basin have come to construe themselves, politically, as radically endangered by as many unknown as there
are unknowable dangers; a point regularly and frankly admitted, officially, from terror to health mandarins, nationally and
internationally. Many have observed that the societies of the Atlantic basin are now increasingly ruled by fear; that there is a politics
of fear. But they interpret this politics of fear in political naïve ways, as the outcome of deliberate machination by political and
economic elites. They may well be correct to some degree. But what is perfectly evident, also, is that the elites themselves are
governed by the very grid of intelligibility furnished by the account of life as an emergency of emergence. It is not simply a matter,
therefore, of leaders playing on fears. The leadership itself is in the grip of a conjugation of government and rule whose very
generative principle of formation is permanent emergency. In other words, fear is no longer simply an affect open to regular
manipulation by leadership cadres. It is, but it is not only that, and not even most importantly that. More importantly (because this is
not a condition that can be resolved simply by ‘throwing the rascals out’) in the permanent emergency of emergence, fear becomes a
generative principle of formation for rule. The emergency of emergence therefore poses a found crisis in western understandings of
the political, and in the hopes and expectations invested in political as opposed to other forms of life. Given the wealth and given the
vast military preponderance in weapons of mass destruction and other forms of global deployed military capabilities of the societies of
the Atlantic basin, notably, of course, the United States, this poses a world crisis as well. In short, then, this complex adaptive
emergent life exists in the permanent state of emergence. Its politics of security and war, which is to say its very foundational politics
of rule as well, now revolve around this state of emergency. Here, that in virtue of which a ‘we’ comes to belong together, its very
generative principle of formation (our shorthand definition of politics), has become this emergency. What happens, we also therefore
ask of the biopoliticization of rule, when emergency becomes the generative principle of formation of community and rule? Our
answer has already been given. Politics becomes subject to the urgent and compelling political economy, the logistical and technical
dynamics, of war. No longer a ‘we’ in virtue of abiding by commonly agreed rules of government, it becomes a ‘we’ formed by
abiding by commonly agreed rules of government, it becomes a ‘we’ formed by the rule of the emergency itself; and that is where the
political crisis, the crisis of the political itself is that a ‘we’ can belong together not only in terms of agreeing to abide by the rule of its
generative principles of formation but also by the willingness to keep the nature of operation of those generative principles of
formation under common deliberative scrutiny. You cannot, however, debate emergency. You can only interrogate the futile
demand it makes on you, and all the episteme challenges it poses, acceding to those demands according both to how well you can
come to know them, and how well you have also adapted you affects to suffering them, or perish. The very exigencies of emergency
thus militate profoundly against the promise of ‘politics’ as it has been commonly understood in the western tradition; not simply as a
matter of rule, but as a matter of self-rule in which it was possible to debate the nature of the self in terms of the good for and of the
self. Note, also, how much the very idea of the self has disappeared from view in this conflation of life with species life. The only
intelligence, the only self-knowledge, the only culture which qualifies in the permanence of this emergency is the utilitarian and
instrumental technologies said to be necessary to endure it. We have been here before in the western tradition and we have
experienced the challenges of this condition as tyranny (Arendt 1968). The emergency of emergence, the generative principle of
formation, the referential matrix of contemporary biopolitics globally, is a newly formed, pervasive and insidiously complex, soft
totalitarian regime of power relations made all the more difficult to contest precisely because, governing through the contingent
emergency of emergence, it is a governing through the transactional freedoms of contingency.
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Impact – serial policy failure
Absent the negatives problemetization of security there will be a violent global governance and serial
policy failure.
Michael Dillon, Professor of Political Science at Lancaster and internationally renowed author and Julian Reid, lecturer on
international relations and progessor of political Science at King’s College in Longon, 2k (Alternatives, Volume 25, Issue 1: Global
Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency)
As a precursor to global governance, governmentality, according to Foucault's initial account, poses the question of order
not in terms of the origin of the law and the location of sovereignty, as do traditional accounts of power, but in terms
instead of the management of population. The management of population is further refined in terms of specific
problematics to which population management may be reduced. These typically include but are not necessarily exhausted
by the following topoi of governmental power: economy, health, welfare, poverty, security, sexuality, demographics,
resources, skills, culture, and so on. Now, where there is an operation of power there is knowledge, and where there is
knowledge there is an operation of power. Here discursive formations emerge and, as Foucault noted, in every society the
production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose
role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable
materiality.[ 34] More specifically, where there is a policy problematic there is expertise, and where there is expertise
there, too, a policy problematic will emerge. Such problematics are detailed and elaborated in terms of discrete forms of
knowledge as well as interlocking policy domains. Policy domains reify the problematization of life in certain ways by
turning these epistemically and politically contestable orderings of life into "problems" that require the continuous attention
of policy science and the continuous resolutions of policymakers. Policy "actors" develop and compete on the basis of the
expertise that grows up around such problems or clusters of problems and their client populations. Here, too, we may also
discover what might be called "epistemic entrepreneurs." Albeit the market for discourse is prescribed and policed in ways
that Foucault indicated, bidding to formulate novel problematizations they seek to "sell" these, or otherwise have them
officially adopted. In principle, there is no limit to the ways in which the management of population may be problematized.
All aspects of human conduct, any encounter with life, is problematizable. Any problematization is capable of becominga
policy problem. Governmentality thereby creates a market for policy, for science and for policy science, in which
problematizations go looking for policy sponsors while policy sponsors fiercely compete on behalf of their favored
problematizations. Reproblematization of problems is constrained by the institutional and ideological investments
surrounding accepted "problems," and by the sheer difficulty of challenging the inescapable ontological and
epistemological assumptions that go into their very formation. There is nothing so fiercely contested as an epistemological
or ontological assumption. And there is nothing so fiercely ridiculed as the suggestion that the real problem with
problematizations exists precisely at the level of such assumptions. Such "paralysis of analysis" is precisely what
policymakers seek to avoid since they are compelled constantly to respond to circumstances over which they ordinarily
have in fact both more and less control than they proclaim. What they do not have is precisely the control that they want.
Yet serial policy failure--the fate and the fuel of all policy--compels them into a continuous search for the new analysis that
will extract them from the aporias in which they constantly find themselves enmeshed.[ 35] Serial policy failure is no
simple shortcoming that science and policy--and policy science--will ultimately overcome. Serial policy failure is rooted in
the ontological and epistemological assumptions that fashion the ways in which global governance encounters and
problematizes life as a process of emergence through fitness landscapes that constantly adaptive and changing ensembles
have continuously to negotiate. As a particular kind of intervention into life, global governance promotes the very changes
and unintended outcomes that it then serially reproblematizes in terms of policy failure.
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Turns case
Securitization of space yields more insecurity
Dr. Simon Dalby, Profesor @ Carleton University, May 2008, “Geopolitics, the revolution in military affairs and the Bush doctrine”
International Politics (2009) 46, 234–252 http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ip/journal/v46/n2/full/ip200840a.html ACC 7/20/11
Navigation and coordination of forces, especially in deserts and on oceans is tremendously facilitated by reliable global
positioning systems and the growing use of space-based surveillance and communications. Targeting ‘smart bombs’
likewise. Satellite photography allows for frequent monitoring of targets and the potential to switch surveillance rapidly
without moving land-based forces. The ability of American commanders to control drones and unmanned vehicles
operating in Afghanistan and Iraq from bases in the United States both allows for ease of control and safety for operators
distant from combat zones. All this is made possible by space-based communication satellites. But this in turn makes
American forces, dependent on their superior coordination and their ability to react faster than opponents on the battlefield
because they can see what's going on better, vulnerable to the disruption of this infrastructure, in particular in space where
so many communications satellites and monitoring systems are now situated. Here too updated geopolitical thinking,
sometimes referred to as ‘Astropolitics’ has investigated the problems of controlling key parts of the ‘new high ground,’
and the chokepoints which are effectively key orbits in outer space (Dolman, 2002). But as the anti-satellite weapon test the
Chinese undertook in early 2007 suggests very clearly, this American infrastructure of communication is at least potentially
vulnerable to disruption by relatively cheap countermeasures. Dominating near earth orbit is a preoccupation of space war
thinkers; the assumption that it conveys considerable strategic advantage is a powerful one if one also assumes that state
rivalries for world power are such that other states have an active interest in challenging the American presence there, and
once established in space would actively seek to render satellites vulnerable. At least in a struggle with Al Qaeda or a
military campaign in Iran or Korea, these space systems are not yet in danger; but in a major war they clearly would be.
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Impact – Truth claims / epistemology
Security Discourse Assumes Threats As Natural – Their Harms and Solvency Claims are Products of a
Particular Ideology.
David Shim, Phd Candidate @ GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, ‘8 [Paper prepared for presentation at the 2008 ISA, Production,
Hegemonization and Contestation of Discursive Hegemony: The Case of the Six-Party Talks in Northeast Asia,
www.allacademic.com/meta/p253290_index.html]
The notion of discourse draws on the concept elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2001). 7 Discourses are
treated as productive (social, linguistic, non-linguistic) practices, which construct objects and subjects and define the very
conditions of meaningful statements and actions (Laffey/Weldes 2004: 28; Torfing 2005b: 161). Discourse enables one to
know and to make sense of the world (Doty 1996: 6). The underlying themes of poststructural discourse theory are the
assumptions that the meanings of objects and subjects are not fixed and not pre-given by nature, god or reason, but are
rather “contextual, relational, and contingent” (Howarth 2005: 317).8 Things, events or actions do not ‘tell their own
tale’, but it is the discursive practices that produce meaning, which, for instance, makes a tank a means of aggression or
defense. The mere existence of brute facts does not have any intrinsic meaning, which could arise from itself. They become
meaningful only in discourse (Waever 2004: 198). So, the task for discourse analysts is to unveil the structures of meaning
and examine how they are constituted and changed.9 9 In the words of Janice Bially Mattern (2005: 5), discourse analysts
do not seek for discoveries, which suggest finding new facts of the world, but for uncoveries, which imply “an excavation
from underneath layers of ossified or never problematized knowledge” (see also Roland Bleiker 2005: xlviii). Laclau and
Mouffe (2001: 112) understand discourses as the (temporary) fixation of meaning around certain signs, which they call
nodal points. Meaning is produced through articulatory practices, which establish a particular relationship between other
signs and those nodal points, so that their meanings are mutually modified (ibid. 105). For instance, as it is shown in section
4, ‘peace’ or ‘stability’ acquire their specific meanings in relation to ‘denuclearization’, ‘non-proliferation’ or
‘normalization’ in the discourse of the Six-Party Talks. The study of language is seen crucial for discursive analyses
although the latter is not limited to the former (Neumann 2002). The common understanding of language in IR and other
disciplines regarding its significance is to refer to it as a transparent medium which merely reflects the world as it is.
Moreover, in traditional accounts of IR, such as (neo)realism, liberalism, institutionalism and conventional constructivism
the significance of language is ignored or treated as marginal.10 What counts, are (social inter-)actions. ‘Talk is cheap’ and
‘one cannot be sure if s/he really means what s/he says’ are commonly shared understandings.11 In contrast to that,
discourse theoretical approaches consider language – defined as any collective sign system – not just as a mirror or
mediator of the world, but as its very creator (cf. Campbell 1998; Howarth 2000; Hansen 2006). Basically it is stated that
subjects, objects and concepts do not exist or rather do not have any meaning unless they are talked (but also acted and
interacted) into existence through certain linguistic, non-linguistic and social practices.12 As Janice Bially Mattern (2005:
92) puts it, “the world is not real in any socially meaningful sense unless actors find ways to communicate about it”.
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Impact – Truth claims / epistemology
Threat perception is rooted in stimulation; not reality.
James der Derian ’90, James Der Derian is a Watson Institute research professor of international studies. He was a director of the
Institute's Global Security Program and founder of the Information Technology, War, and Peace Project and the Global Media Project.
The (S)pace of International Relations: Simulation, Surveillance, and Speed, International Studies Quarterly, Blackwell Publishing on
behalf of The International Studies Association. Vol. 34, No. 3, Sep., 1990, Page [295] of 295-31
After analyzing the political economy of the sign and visiting Disneyland, Jean Baudrillard, the French master of edifying
hyperbole, notified the inhabitants of advanced mediacracies that they were no longer distracted by the technical reproduction of reality, or alienated and repressed by their over-consumption of its spec- tacular representation. Unable to
recover the "original" and seduced by the simula- tion, they had lost the ability to distinguish between the model and the
real: "Abstrac- tion today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of
a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal"
(1983a: 2). Baudrillard exceeds Nietzsche in his interpretation of the death of god and the inability of rational man to fill
the resulting value-void with stable distinctions be- tween the real and the apparent, the true and the false, the good and the
evil. In the excessive, often nihilistic vision of Baudrillard, the task of modernity is no longer to demystify or disenchant
illusion-for "with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world" (see Nietzsche, 1968: 40-41; Der Derian, 1987:
Ch. 9)-but to save a principle that has lost its object: "Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that
the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the
hyperreal and of simula- tion. It is no longer a question of false representation of reality (ideology), but of concealing the
fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle" (1983a: 25).9
The representation of international relations is not immune to this development. In a very short period the field has
oscillated: from realist representation, in which world-historical figures meant what they said and said what they meant, and
diplo- matic historians recorded it as such in Rankean fashion ("wie es eigentlich gewesen ist"); to neorealist, in which
structures did what they did, and we did what they made us do, except of course when neorealists revealed in journals like
the International Studies Quarterly and International Organization what they "really" did; to hyperrealist, in which the
model of the real becomes more real than the reality it models, and we become confused.'
What is the reality principle that international relations theory in general seeks to save? For the hard-core realist, it is the
sovereign state acting in an anarchical order to maintain and if possible expand its security and power in the face of
penetrating, de-centering forces such as the ICBM, military (and now civilian) surveillance satel- lites, the international
terrorist, the telecommunications web, environmental move- ments, transnational human rights conventions, to name a few
of the more obvious. For the soft-core neorealist and peace-research modeler, it is the prevailing pattern of systemic power
which provides stable structures, regime constraints, and predicta- ble behavior for states under assault by similar forces of
fragmentation. Before we consider how simulations in particular "work" to save the reality princi- ple, we should note the
multiple forms that these simulations take in international relations. From the earliest Kriegspiel (war-play) of the Prussian
military staff in the 1830s, to the annual "Global Game" at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, simulations
have been staged to prepare nation states for future wars; by doing so, as many players would claim, they help keep the
peace: qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. Simulations are used at other defense colleges, such as the strategic and
counterterrorist games played at the National Defense University or the more tactically oriented computerized "Janus"
game perfected at the Army War College." Then there are the early academic models, like Harold Guetzkow's seminal
InterNa- tion Simulation (INS), which spawned a host of second- and third-generation models: SIPER (Simulated
International Processes), GLOBUS (Generating Long- term Options by Using Simulation), and SIMPEST (Simulation of
Military, Political, Economic, and Strategic Interactions).'2 Many simulations are now commercially available: the popular
realpolitik computer game Balance of Power; the remarkably sophisticated video games modeled on Top Gun, the Iranian
hostage rescue mission, and other historical military conflicts; and the film/video WarGames, in which a hacker taps into an
Air Force and nearly starts World War III. And then there are the ubiquitous think-tank games, like those at the Rand
Corporation, that model everything from domestic crime to nuclear war, as well as the made-to-order macro- strategic
games, like the war game between Iraq and Iran that the private consulting company BDM International sold to Iraq (the
[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
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[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
highest bidder?). It may grate on the ears of some of the players to hear "gaming," "modeling," and"simulation" used
interchangeably.'3 Yet in the literature and during interviews I found users using all three terms to describe practices that
could be broadly defined as the continuation of war by means of verisimilitude (Allen, 1987: 6-7). Conventionally, a game
uses broad descriptive strokes and a minimum of mathematical abstraction to make generalizations about the behavior of
actors, while simulation uses algorithms and computer power to analyze the amount of technical detail considered
necessary to predict events and the behavior of actors. Judging from the shift in the early 1980s by the military and thinktanks to mainly computerized games-reflected in the change of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gaming organization from SAGA
(Studies, Analy- sis, and Gaming Agency) to JAD (Joint Analysis Directorate)-it would seem that simulation is becoming
the preferred "sponge" term in international relations. "Sim- ulation" also has the obvious advantage of sounding more
serious than "gaming" and of carrying more of a high-tech, scientific connotation than "modeling." The object of this
inquiry is not to conduct an internal critique of the simulation industry, nor to claim some privileged grounds for disproving
its conclusions.'4 Rather, the intent is to show how, in the construction of a realm of meaning that has minimal contact with
historically specific events or actors, simulations have demon- strated the power to displace the "reality" of international
relations they purport to represent. Simulations have created a new space in international relations where actors act, things
happen, and the consequences have no origins except the artificial cyberspace of the simulations themselves.
Over the last four years I have collected numerous examples of this new phenome- non; I will share two of them here. 15
The first is the case of the U.S.S. Vincennes which shot down an Iranian civilian airliner on July 3, 1988, in the mistaken
belief that it was a military aircraft. The Vincennes was equipped with the most sophisticated U.S. naval radar system, the
Aegis, which according to a later military investigation functioned perfectly.'6 It recorded that the Iranian Airbus was on
course and flying level at 12,000 feet, not descending towards the Vincennes as the radar operator, the tactical information
coordinator, and one other officer reported at the time. Some- how, between machine and man, a tragic misreading took
place which resulted in the death of 290 people. One possible cause is stress: the Vincennes and its crew had never been in
combat and were engaged with Iranian speedboats when the Airbus was first detected. Yet stress has many origins, and the
military shows signs of ignoring the most serious one. The Vincennes trained for nine months before it went into the
Persian Gulf. That training relied heavily on tapes that simulate battle situations, none of which included overflights by
civilian airliners-a common occur- rence in the Gulf.17
To be sure, much more was involved in the decision to fire at the Airbus, not least the memory of the U.S.S. Stark which
was nearly destroyed in the Persian Gulf by an Exocet missile from an Iraqi warplane. But I would like to suggest that the
reality of the nine months of simulated battles displaced, overrode, absorbed the reality of the Airbus. The Airbus
disappeared before the missile struck: it faded from an airliner full of civilians to an electronic representation on a radar
screen to a simulated target. The simulation overpowered a reality which did not conform to it.
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Threats false – exaggerated
Minor impacts won’t escalate- fear of enemy space tech causes us to exaggerate all threats
Huntley 2009 (Wade L. Huntley, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the National Security Affairs department at the Naval Postgraduate
School 2009 “Securing Outer Space” )
"Joint Vision 2010" was superceded by "Joint Vision 2020" in 2000. This updated blueprint for the US Defense Department
retains the central US military planning objective of "full-spectrum dominance," meaning "the ability of U.S. forces,
operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations"
(Garamone 2000).
This vision elaboration, in turn, provides the "framing" within which current US military planning and policy-making on
expanding military uses of space is now being undertaken.4 The particular framing flowing from this planning is an everincreasing imperative to sustain US dominance in space. This framing provides the basis for grave interpretation of
otherwise modest events, such as, for example, Saddam Hussein's attempt to jam US GPS satellite signals at the outset of
the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. In the words of General Lance Lord, commander of US Space Command, this
action denoted: "The war in space began during Operation Iraqi Freedom."5
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Impact – depoliticization
The Aff’s Descriptions of Security Removes Policy From Politics – The Seeming Need For Instant
Solutions is Product of This Rhetoric.
Benjamin Berboth et. al., Prof. of Poli. Sci @ Johann Wolfgang Goeth-University, ‘7 [Norface Seminar, “Secur(itizing)ing the
West: The Transformation of Western Order,” http://www.soz.unifrankfurt.de/hellmann/projekt/Draft_Final_West_DVPW_BISA_08.pdf]
While securing the West by securitizing its existence has been the ordering macro-structure during the heydays of the Cold
War, the decline of the Soviet empire as the threatening other has made room for the question how the Western identity and
security discourse might change as a result. In many ways the macro-political transformation of the 'East-West conflict'
went hand in hand with the rise of discursive approaches in JR. When the "linguistic turn" (Rorty 1969) had finally arrived
at IR's disciplinary edge attention turned on processes of signification and the constitution of meaning by language in use
(for an introduction in the field of JR see Fierke 2003, 2002). Especially the concept of security has aroused special
attention (Baldwin 1997, Wolfers 1952, Walt 1990, Krause/Williams 1996, Kolodziej 1992, Lipschutz 1995). The
conceptual work of the Copenhagen School, especially as far as the work of Barry Buzan and Ole Wver were concerned,
departed from the rather narrow focus of a 'wide'-vs.-'narrow' definition of security by advocating an explicitly
constructivist / linguistic perspective! In this view security is neither an objective fact (like rationalist approaches assume)
nor just a subjective perception (like soft constructivism and cognitive approaches suggest). Rather security rests on an
intersubjective understanding (Buzan/Wver/de Wilde 1998: 29-31). Buzan, Wver and de Wilde argue that security is
essentially a speech act - a performative act with a specific grammar (Buzan et al. 1998: 23-26; Wver 1995: 55). As a
performative act, security is a self-referential practice with a specific rhetorical structure: Security is about the survival of a
threatened referent object. Because the survival of the referent object is considered a just cause securitization justifies the
use of extraordina!y measures, including the use of force, to protect it. To be successful, this move of securitization has to
be accepted as legitimate and appropriate by an audience. As an ordering mechanism, securitization entails far reaching
political and ethical consequences because ,,[s]ecurity is the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the
game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics" (Buzan/Wver/deWilde 1998: 23). While
po1iticiation presents an issue as a matter of choice, ie. normal politics, securitiation frames an issue as urgent and
existential calling for extraordinary measures which reduce the possibility of choice to an either-or level, ie. whether we
act or not. Especially Wever has stressed the "antidemocratic implications" of securitization (Wver 2003: 12; see also
Wver 2005; Buzan/Wver/deWilde 1998) because it represents a failure of handling challenges politically, ie. within the
normal procedure of (democratic) politics. This is what the opposite of securitization, desecuritization - ie. the process of
actually moving issues "off the security agenda and back into the realm of (...) 'normal' political dispute and
accommodation" (Williams 2003: 523) - is supposed to refer to. In many ways the result of de-securitization, normal
politics, is of particular interest to the process of the transformation of the West since it entails the key question whether
(and if so: to what extent) global politics can be politicized (and civilized) rather than securitized. Yet the securitization
literature is to a certain extent ambivalent in this regard. While Wver himself (eg. 1998: 92) is quite evasive, others have
argued that (unlike politicization) desecuritization presupposes a grammar of security itself and is therefore unable to
escape the problem of speaking security (cf. Aradau 2001).b0 Here Carl Schmitt's notion of exception resonates where the
act of speaking security constitutes the community by the radical differentiation between friend and foe (Schmitt 1996
[19321, see also Odysseos/Petito 2007, Behnke 2004, 2005; for a critical standpoint see Herborth 2005, Huysmans 2006:
127141).
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Impact – general
Their dependence on the security logic transforms the ambiguity of life into a quest for truth and
rationality, causing violence against the unknown and domesticating life.
Der Derian, 93. James Der Derian, “The value of security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard,” The Political Subject of
Violence, 1993, pp. 102-105
The desire for security is manifested as a collective resentment of difference that which is not us, not certain, not
predictable. Complicit with a negative will to power is the fear-driven desire for protection from the unknown. Unlike the
positive will to power which produces an aesthetic affirmation of difference, the search for truth produces a truncated
life which conforms to the rationally knowable, to the causally sustainable. In The Gay Science Nietzsche asks of the
reader: Look, isn't our need for knowledge precisely this need for the familiar, the will to uncover everything strange,
unusual, and questionable, something that no longer disturbs us? Is it not the instinct of fear that bids us to know? And is
the jubilation of those who obtain knowledge not the jubilation over the restoration of a sense of security?" The fear of the
unknown and the desire for certainty combine to produce a domesticated life, in which causality and rationality
become the highest sign of a sovereign self, the surest protection against contingent forces. The fear of fate assures a
belief that everything reasonable is true, and everything true reasonable. In short, the security imperative produces and is
sustained by the strategies of knowledge which seek to explain it. Nietzsche elucidates the nature of this generative
relationship in The Twilight of the Idols: A safe life requires safe truths. The strange and the alien remain unexamined, the
unknown becomes identified as evil, and evil provokes hostility - recycling the desire for security. The 'influence of
timidity,' as Nietzsche puts it, creates a people who are willing to subordinate affirmative values to the 'necessities' of
security: 'they fear change, transitoriness: this expresses a straitened soul, full of mistrust and evil experiences'." The point
of Nietzsche's critical genealogy is to show the perilous conditions which created the security imperative - and the western
metaphysics which perpetuate it - have diminished if not disappeared; yet the fear of life persists: 'Our century denies this
perilousness, and does so with a good conscience: and yet it continues to drag along with it the old habits of Christian
security, Christian enjoyment, recreation and evaluation." Nietzsche's worry is that the collective reaction against older,
more primal fears has created an even worse danger: the tyranny of the herd, the lowering of man, the apathy of the last
man which controls through conformity and rules through passivity. The security of the sovereign, rational self and state
comes at the cost of ambiguity, uncertainty, paradox - all that makes life worthwhile. Nietzsche's lament for this lost
life is captured at the end of Daybreak in a series of rhetorical questions:
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Impact – war
Securitization and its mediation ensures total war and genocide – Their Representations ensure large
scale violence
Karsten Friis, UN Sector @ the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2k [Peace and Conflict Studies 7.2, “From Liminars to
Others: Securitization Through Myths,” http://shss.nova.edu/pcs/journalsPDF/V7N2.pdf#page=2]
The problem with societal securitization is one of representation. It is rarely clear in advance who it is that speaks for a
community. There is no system of representation as in a state. Since literately anyone can stand up as representatives, there
is room for entrepreneurs. It is not surprising if we experience a struggle between different representatives and also their different
representations of the society. What they do share, however, is a conviction that they are best at providing (a new) order. If
they can do this convincingly, they gain legitimacy. What must be done is to make the uncertain certain and make the
unknown an object of knowledge. To present a discernable Other is a way of doing this. The Other is represented as an
Other -- as an unified single actor with a similar unquestionable set of core values (i.e. the capital “O”). They are
objectified, made into an object of knowledge, by re-presentation of their identity and values. In other words, the
representation of the Other is depoliticized in the sense that its inner qualities are treated as given and non-negotiable. In Jef
Huysmans (1998:241) words, there is both a need for a mediation of chaos as well as of threat. A mediation of chaos is
more basic than a mediation of threat, as it implies making chaos into a meaningful order by a convincing representation of
the Self and its surroundings. It is a mediation of “ontological security”, which means “...a strategy of managing the limits
of reflexivity ... by fixing social relations into a symbolic and institutional order” (Huysmans 1998:242). As he and others
(like Hansen 1998:240) have pointed out, the importance of a threat construction for political identification, is often
overstated. The mediation of chaos, of being the provider of order in general, is just as important. This may imply naming
an Other but not necessarily as a threat. Such a dichotomization implies a necessity to get rid of all the liminars (what
Huysmans calls “strangers”). This is because they “...connote a challenge to categorizing practices through the impossibility
of being categorized”, and does not threaten the community, “...but the possibility of ordering itself” (Huysmans 1998:241).
They are a challenge to the entrepreneur by their very existence. They confuse the dichotomy of Self and Other and thereby
the entrepreneur’s mediation of chaos. As mentioned, a liminar can for instance be people of mixed ethnical ancestry but
also representations of competing world-pictures. As Eide (1998:76) notes: “Over and over again we see that the “liberals”
within a group undergoing a mobilisation process for group conflict are the first ones to go”. The liminars threaten the
ontological order of the entrepreneur by challenging his representation of Self and Other and his mediation of chaos, which
ultimately undermines the legitimacy of his policy. The liminars may be securitized by some sort of disciplination, from
suppression of cultural symbols to ethnic cleansing and expatriation. This is a threat to the ontological order of the
entrepreneur, stemming from inside and thus repoliticizing the inside/outside dichotomy. Therefore the liminar must
disappear. It must be made into a Self, as several minority groups throughout the world have experienced, or it must be
forced out of the territory. A liminar may also become an Other, as its connection to the Self is cut and their former
common culture is renounced and made insignificant. In Anne Norton’s (1988:55) words, “The presence of difference in
the ambiguous other leads to its classification as wholly unlike and identifies it unqualifiedly with the archetypal other,
denying the resemblance to the self.” Then the liminar is no longer an ontological danger (chaos), but what Huysmans
(1998:242) calls a mediation of “daily security”. This is not challenging the order or the system as such but has become a
visible, clear-cut Other. In places like Bosnia, this naming and replacement of an Other, has been regarded by the
securitizing actors as the solution to the ontological problem they have posed. Securitization was not considered a political
move, in the sense that there were any choices. It was a necessity: Securitization was a solution based on a depoliticized
ontology.10 This way the world-picture of the securitizing actor is not only a representation but also made into reality. The
mythical second-order language is made into first-order language, and its “innocent” reality is forced upon the world. To
the entrepreneurs and other actors involved it has become a “natural” necessity with a need to make order, even if it implies
making the world match the map. Maybe that is why war against liminars are so often total; it attempts a total expatriation
or a total “solution” (like the Holocaust) and not only a victory on the battlefield. If the enemy is not even considered a
legitimate Other, the door may be more open to a kind of violence that is way beyond any war conventions, any jus in bello.
This way, securitizing is legitimized: The entrepreneur has succeeded both in launching his world-view and in prescribing
the necessary measures taken against it. This is possible by using the myths, by speaking on behalf of the natural and eternal,
where truth is never questioned.
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Impact – war
Geopolitical discourse propagate the possibilities for war.
Cairo 04 (Heriberto Cairo, Department of Political Science and Administration III Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, 2004,
“The Field of Mars: heterotopias of territory and war”, 1011-1012)
Our way of ‘‘visualizing global space’’ (Agnew, 2003: 15) is central to the understanding of war. The way we order things
in planetary space is constitutive of what we see and what we conceal: ‘‘proletarian internationalism’’, ‘‘national
liberation’’, ‘‘territorial integrity’’ are all dimensions of geopolitical discourses that inform the actions of combatants who
try to make them intelligible to a wider audience. War, in this sense, is not a matter of rational interest, ‘‘[p]eople go to war
because of how they see, perceive, picture, imagine, and speak of others: that is, how they construct the di!erence of others
as well as the sameness of themselves through representations’’ (Der Derian, 2002a). Understanding war is fundamental to
appreciate the relevance of geo-political considerations in its analysis. And in order to define the current social
understanding of war, we should take into account the regularity of its enunciation, which nowadays leads to us to regard
war as a kind of violent group behavior organized on a large scale. Strictly speaking, war is considered a conflict, but more
specifically it is usually defined as: (1) a conflict developed using weapons which surpass a determined threshold of
violence; (2) a violence of a political kind, because politics is a fundamental part of the action; (3) a violence related to a
state, because one of the opponents in wars in the modern world system is usually a state, or at least desires to become a
state; 3 (4) a territorial behavior, not only because it is conducted in a particular space, but because the contenders also aim
to control the opponent’s territory in full or in part. This definition applies to the so-called ‘‘civil’’ war as well as to the
inter-state war, but, obviously, excludes some different kinds of violent behavior: robberies or passionate murders clearly
do not fit, just as what are referred to as ‘‘terrorism’’ and ‘‘insurgency’’ do not qualify as war (although the aftermath of
September 11 and the American ‘‘War on terrorism’’ launched by the Bush administration suggests an important shift). In
fact, the dominant discourse of war is basically geopolitical and state-centered, and, as Shapiro states, ‘‘the map of global
warfare changes dramatically when one departs from the language of sovereignty’’ (Shapiro, 1999: 61). For instance,
struggles involving indigenous peoples constitute more than half of the wars that Bernard Nietschmann includes in ‘‘the
Third World War,’’ which is ‘‘hidden from view because the fighting is against peoples and countries that are often not
even on the map’’ (quoted in Shapiro, 1999: 61). It is also important to stress the historical, constructional and
‘‘constellational’’ character of war and its legitimation. Firstly, war is a human behavior, which has obviously occurred
since early times; that is why we cannot consider it exclusive to our age. 4 As Harvey points out, ‘‘capitalism did not invent
war any more than it invented writing, knowledge, science or art. Not all wars, even in the contemporary era, can be truly
regarded as capitalist wars, and war will not necessarily disappear with the demise of capitalism’’ (Harvey, 1985: 162–
163). In other words, war has happened in other economic and political contexts. Different kinds of power relations also
variously lead to war, and usually it is not the outcome of a single process. War is not caused by any one thing. Its origins
are in what we could call a ‘‘bellical constellation’’ 5 of factors and processes, which make each war a unique, but not a
singular, event. Notwithstanding, we are able to find constants in the issues of peace and war, and social scientists should
consider that we can hardly discuss the ‘‘mode of warfare’’ (Kaldor, 1981, 1982) that is, the way in which societies
organize for war without making assumptions about the world order from which these wars arise (Shaw and Creighton,
1987: 7). And, lastly, in such a world order it is possible to distinguish different elements of political, economic, symbolic
and legal character, that produce and are produced by ‘‘a constantly evolving sequence of spatialities’’ (Soja, 1985: 94).
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Impact – extinction
The revolution of military space technology risks extinction
Webb et al 09 (Dave Webb, Consultant to government agencies, corporations, universities and nonprofit organizations on various
aspects of aerospace development, technology, and education. Government and corporate agencies include: DOD, DARPA, USAF,
NASA, Rockwell International, McDonnell Douglas, SAIC, Rocketdyne, Space Services, General Space Corporation, Eagle
Engineering, International Space Corporation, Aerospace Industries Association. Universities include: Harvard, Stanford, MIT,
Caltech, California, Texas, Georgetown, George Washington University, George Mason University, William & Mary, North Carolina,
North Dakota, Florida, Central Florida, Embry-Riddle, Jonathan Havercroft, Associate Professor at Oklahoma University, Political
Philosophy, Political Theory, Raymond Duvall, Professor of Politcal Science at University of Minnesota, Penny Griffin, Senior
Lecturer - Convenor, MA International Relations - Convenor, Postgraduate Seminar Series at University of South Wales, “Securing in
Outer Space”, 2009)
For thousands of years the night sky has inspired people to tell stories and build models describing how and why the world
and the universe is as it appears to be. Legends and theories of the origins of stars, planets and comets and the significance
of their positions in the sky have had considerable influence on the way that humans have behaved and civilizations have
developed. Tales of traveling to and through space developed over the centuries have usually been accompanied by
descriptions of wonder and the discovery of new sources of power. Today the dreams of wonder, of discovery and
knowledge appear to have given way to nightmare scenarios of space weaponry and the possibility of actually fighting wars
in space has become a common discussion point among politicians, diplomats and the military. The Copernican revolution
was based on a model that demoted the Earth from the centre of the universe to a much less prominent position circling the
Sun. In the contemporary period, the so-called 'revolution in military affairs' has downgraded the heavens to just another
possible battlefield where humans can perform devastating acts of combat using high-tech weapons in order to dominate
and control the Earth below. In fact, many believe that this quest for ultimate power will have catastrophic consequences
and the human race will destroy itself and much of the planet in a frantic obsession with cultural and technological
superiority. To help assess trends and analyze debates it is useful to investigate the range of space technologies currently of
interest to the military. The purpose of this chapter is to explore some of the technical aspects of the push to weaponize
space - including concerns about the wisdom and feasibility of many of these developments. This may also help determine
whether the political/military dream of global superiority is realistic or whether its pursuit will turn out to be a nightmare.
The reality: military space technologies The space programs of both the US and USSR have unsavoury origins in the work
of rocket pioneers in Nazi Germany. Led by Wernher von Braun they were inspired by dreams of spaceflight in the 1930s
Weimar Republic but the huge expense of the pursuit of this dream in a time of economic depression led them to the
military where they were able to fulfill the dreams of their paymasters by the production of missiles for the Third Reich.
Their V-2 missiles were constructed at Mittelwerk in tunnels under Kohnstein Mountain near Nordhausen by slave labour
from the Dora, Harzungen and Ellrich concentration camps. In the twenty months of construction work that took place at
Mittlelwerk around one half of the 60,000 prisoners used to build the rockets died of starvation and abuse (mass executions'
were common occurrences). More people were killed in the construction of the rockets than the rockets themselves killed at
their targets. At the end of the war von Braun and his team were rounded up by the US Army and, instead of facing trial for
war crimes, were assimilated into the US. At the time President Truman would not allow anyone who had been a member
of the Nazi party or an active supporter of Naziism or German militarism to work in the US, so a programme known as
"Operation Paperclip" was used to obscure the histories of the German scientists and engineers (Lasby 1975; Thieme 2003).
Through this conspiracy, which lasted well into the 1950s, the law and presidential directive was bypassed to enable von
Braun's group to continue building rockets in the US. They produced the first ICBMs and the Saturn V which eventually
took Americans to the Moon. According to Piszkiewic2 the original dream of space exploration was perverted by the
complicity of its Nazi origins and military goals (Piszkiewicz 1995). Even though von Braun and his fellow scientists' real
interests were in exploring space, they nevertheless readily accepted the role in creating weapons of terror and mass
destruction that was offered by the Nazis. The Russians also took their share of German scientists from von Braun's rocket
design team and the V-2 technology was copied for Russia's first missile, the R-l, a later version of which (the R-7) was
used to launch Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, into orbit on 4 October 1957. This scientific dream of an artificial
satellite that could orbit the Earth became a nightmare as it generated panic in the West because of the possible
development of Soviet weapons systems with a global reach. Thus, from these less than satisfactory beginnings, space
technology developed through the Cold War, always with a strong steer from the military so that the use of space is now
deeply embedded into the planning and delivery of military strategy and practice.
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Self fulfilling prophecy
Representations become reality- threat construction becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
Lipschutz ’98, Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Columbia International Affairs Online, On Security, On Security. Lipschutz,
http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/lipschutz11.html
Security is, to put Wæver's argument in other words, a socially constructed concept: It has a specific meaning only within a
specific social context. 18 It emerges and changes as a result of discourses and discursive actions intended to reproduce
historical structures and subjects within states and among them. 19 To be sure, policymakers define security on the basis of
a set of assumptions regarding vital interests, plausible enemies, and possible scenarios, all of which grow, to a notinsignificant extent, out of the specific historical and social context of a particular country and some understanding of what
is "out there." 20 But, while these interests, enemies, and scenarios have a material existence and, presumably, a real import
for state security, they cannot be regarded simply as having some sort of "objective" reality independent of these
constructions. 21 That security is socially constructed does not mean that there are not to be found real, material conditions
that help to create particular interpretations of threats, or that such conditions are irrelevant to either the creation or
undermining of the assumptions underlying security policy. Enemies, in part, "create" each other, via the projections of
their worst fears onto the other; in this respect, their relationship is intersubjective. To the extent that they act on these
projections, threats to each other acquire a material character. In other words, nuclear-tipped ICBMs are not mere figments
of our imagination, but their targeting is a function of what we imagine the possessors of other missiles might do to us with
theirs.
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Wrong priorities
Securitization removes structural violence from the realm of politics – makes it impossible to face real
threats
Michael Sheehan, Assistant-Secretary-General at the United Nations, Master of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown
University School of Foreign Service, 2005, “International Security An Analytical Survey”
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the expression "national security" was coined to describe the area of public
policy concerned with the preservation of state independence and autonomy. National security, deemed synonymous with
security as such, was seen as being related to the need for states to maintain their political independence and freedom of
national decisionmaking. The instruments for pursuing this objective included the armed forces, the diplomatic service, and
the intelligence services. In addition, other levers of influence could be brought to bear, such as a state"s economic strength
or the symbolic strength represented by cultural influence. However, diplomacy and conventional warfare were seen as the
primary means by which states sought to protect themselves from the threat represented by the armed forces of other states.
During the Cold War, "deterrence" of nuclear and conventional attack through contingent threats of nuclear retaliation was
added to the repertoire of the nuclear weapon states and their alliance systems. This was a clear, straightforward, and
limited approach to security. That which needed to be secured (the object of security) was the state, and the mechanism by
which security would be achieved was the manipulation of military capability in relation to actual or potential adversaries.
David Baldwin argues that security was not what Cold War security specialists were actually interested in. Their focus was
on military statecraft and they saw as security issues only those for which military statecraft was relevant (1997: 9). This
was a very narrow and limited way of thinking about security. It underpinned decades of military confrontation between the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, in which governments based their policies of deterrence
upon contingent threats to incinerate the civilian populations of the opposing alliance. It was an interpretation that denied to
the vast majority of the world"s population the resources and attention from governments that might have dramatically
improved their quality of life. While it is true that for most of the Cold War period this conception of security was not
successfully challenged from within the mainstream academic and policy communities, it is not true that there were no such
challenges at all.
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Impact – gender
Security discourse marginalizes women
McDonald ’08, Matt McDonald, Senior Lecturer in International Relations @ Queensland, 2008, “Securitization and the
Construction of Security,” (http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/14/4/563, European Journal of International Relations, International
Relations 18 (1)).
The question of which actors’ representations are viewed as significant within this framework, however, entails important
normative commitments and has important normative implications. Put simply, the securitization framework focuses on
articulations capable of leading to change in practice, with the default position being a focus on the ‘securitizations’ of
political leaders who are able to achieve a wide audience in their statements and interventions, and who are able to marshal
the resources of the state to respond to the existential threat. As Wæver (1995: 57) argues, ‘security is articulated only from
a specific place, in an institutional voice, by elites’. Such a focus serves to marginalize the experiences and articulations of
the powerless in global politics, presenting them at best as part of an audience that can collectively consent to or contest
securitizing moves, and at worst as passive recipients of elite discourses. In perhaps the clearest statement of this limitation,
Lene Hansen (2000) has discussed the ways in which the focus on speech acts means contributing to the silencing of
women, whose suffering and engagement with security discourses is neglected in a framework that focuses on the
articulations of the powerful: of those whose voices can be heard and of those whose successful attempts at securitization
can result in the enactment of emergency measures. Such a framework clearly has little to say about the plight of the most
vulnerable in global politics and their experiences of — and engagement with — security and threat. Indeed for Hansen, the
Copenhagen School does not simply neglect the experiences of women but in fact serves to further marginalize them. ‘If
security is a speech act’, Hansen (2000: 306) suggests, ‘then it is simultaneously deeply implicated in the production of
silence’
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Space weaponization impact – bare life
Securitization of space reduces all life to bare life – enables biopolitical extermination
Raymond Duvall, Prrofessor of political science @ University of Minnesota, and Dr. Jonathan Havercroft, professor of political
science @ Oklahoma University, October 2006, “Taking Sovereignty Out of This World: Space Weapons and Empire of the Future”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=2185920&jid=RIS&volumeId=34&issueId=04&aid=2185916 ACC
7/21/11
Each of the three forms of space weaponization has important constitutive effects on modern sovereignty, and, in turn,
productive effects on political subjectivities. Exclusive missile defense constitutes a “hard shell” of sovereignty for one
state, while erasing the sovereign political subject status of other states. Space control reinforces that exclusive
constitution of sovereignty and its potentiality for fostering unilateral decision. It also constitutes the ‘space-controlling’
state, the U.S., as sovereign for a particular global social order, a global capitalism, and as a state populated by an
exceptional people, “Americans.” Space weaponization in the form of capacities for direct force application obliterate the
meaning of territorial boundaries for defense and for distinguishing an inside from an outside with respect to the scope of
policing and law enforcement—that is authorized locus for deciding the exception. States, other than the exceptional
“American” state, are reduced to empty shells of sovereignty, sustained, if at all, by convenient fiction—for example, as
useful administrative apparatuses for the governing of locals. And their “citizens” are produced as “bare life” subject to
the willingness of the global sovereign to let them live. Together, these three sets of effects constitute what we believe can
appropriately be identified as late-modern empire, the political subjects of which are a global sovereign, an exceptional
“nation” linked to that sovereign, a global social order normalized in terms of capitalist social relations, and “bare life” for
individuals and groups globally to participate in that social order. If our argument is even half correct, the claim with
which this paper began—that modes of political killing have important effects—would be an understatement!
Space weapons reduce everyone to bare life
Raymond Duvall, Prrofessor of political science @ University of Minnesota, and Dr. Jonathan Havercroft, professor of political
science @ Oklahoma University, October 2006, “Taking Sovereignty Out of This World: Space Weapons and Empire of the Future”
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=2185920&jid=RIS&volumeId=34&issueId=04&aid=2185916 ACC
7/21/11
A second contemporary policy objective is to fight specific non-state actors. The 9/11 Commission Report discussed in
great detail the logistical obstacles that prevented the Clinton administration from capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden.
72 The primary obstacle was the difficulty in either launching cruise missiles into Afghanistan through another state’s
airspace or deploying U.S. Special Forces in an area so remote from U.S. military bases. Again, had the U.S. had spacebased weapons at the time, they probably would have been the weapons of choice. When combined with intelligence
about the location of a potential target, they could be used to kill that target on very short notice without violating the air
space of other states, or needing to have a military base nearby to offer a support role. In effect, any person or group of
people anywhere on Earth could be targeted on very short notice, thereby constituting everyone everywhere as objects of
the global sovereign. All would be subject to the rule of the U.S. state. The sovereignty of states would no longer be an
obstacle to killing enemies, and these assassinations could be carried out rather easily without the threat of retaliation by
the state whose sovereignty has been violated. The example of using space weapons to target non-state actors such as
Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda points to a third constitutive effect of space weapons. Because these weapons could
target anyone, anywhere, at anytime, everyone on the Earth is effectively reduced to “bare life.” 73 As Agamben
demonstrates in Homo Sacer (1998), one of the constitutive powers of the sovereign is to determine who is outside the
laws and protections of the state. While human rights regimes and the rule of law may exist under a late-modern global
empire policed by space weapons, 74 the global sovereign will have the ability to decide the exception to this rule of law,
and this state of exception in many cases may be exercised by the use of space weapons that constituted this sovereign in
the first place.
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Space weaponization impact – bare life
Weaponization of space ushers in a new form of sovereignty in which the US can unilaterally ban
individuals from the rule of law, constituting the targets as bare life in a global totalitarianism.
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, Uni¬versity of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 52-57//DN)
Agamben argues that there is a hidden point of intersection between the bio-political and the sovereign regimes of power.
He observes
that rhe two analyses cannot be separated and that the inclusion of bare life in the political realm constitutes the original - if
concealed - nucleus of sovereign power. It can even be said that the production of a biopolitical body is the original activity
of sovereign power. In this sense, biopolitics is at least as old as the sovereign exception.
, -s(Agamben 1998: 6)
Agamben locates this intersection in the Ancient Roman figure of homo sacer, a person with "a capacity to be killed and yet
not sacrificed, outside both human and divine law" (Agamben 1998: 73). The figure of homo sacer is a schism between
one's political and biological lives. Homo sacer is "bare life," the biological aspect of the individual that exists outside the
law and hence outside political subjectivity. The paradox of homo sacer is that the sovereign is the one who decides who
homo sacer is, and as such the sovereign power rhat excludes "-bare life" from the realm of political subjectivity also
constitutes "bare life" us homo sacer. As such, the bio-political regime that Foucault distinguishes from the sovereign
regime of power is actually constituted by the sovereign's capacity to exclude "bare life" from political subjectivity.
Agamben links the figure of homo sacer with the production of social spaces in which individuals are stripped completely
of their political subjectivity. In this social space of "the camp," "bare life" has no human rights at precisely rhe moment
that he or she needs diem most. Through the hegemonic weaponization of space a new global regime of sovereignty
emerges. One of the constitutive effects of a U.S. monopoly of space weapons is their capacity to ban specific individuals
from the global rule of law, thereby constituting the targets of these weapons as fully "bare life." So, one of the most
pernicious effects of U.S. space control is the emergence of a global totalitarianism, wherein the space-based empire has the
capacity to kill, but not sacrifice, all who oppose its objectives. While it does not logically follow that by possess¬ing this
capacity a space-based empite would necessarily use it, the possibility that a space-based empire would use such a power is
significantly increased because of the lack of potential counter-powers to protect the vulnerable human population and
thereby to produce a realm beyond "bare life."
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Space weaponization impact – empire
The erosion of sovereignty that accompanies space weponization is replaced with a global logic of Empire
that opens up populations to domination
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, Uni¬versity of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 52-57//DN)
A final implication for state sovereignty of a singular U.S. project of space weaponization can be found through an
engagement with the writings of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri on Empire. They argue that the erosion of the
sovereignty of the modern territorial state does not mean that sovereignty as such has disappeared. Rather, they maintain
that a new, globally diffuse form of sovereignty has emerged that is "composed of a series of national and supra-narional
organisms united under a single logic of rule" (Hardt and Negri 2000: xii), which they call Empire. There is no longer a
single, centralized governing apparatus located and bounded in the territorial state, or in a state's (classical) imperial
intervention into and control over other political societies. Instead there ate now a multitude of bio-political governing
apparatuses that rule over the different facets of political subjects' existence. As Hardt and Negri remind us "Modern
sovereignty has generally been conceived in terms of a (real or imagined) territory and the relation of that territory to its
outside" (2000: 187). Under Empire "this dialectic of sovereignty between the civil order and the natural order has come to
an end" (2000: 187). The sovereignty of Empire not only de-territorializes power, it also eliminates the boundary-drawing
aspect of modem sovereignty that constitutes particular spaces politically as either inside or outside. Simply put, according
to Hardt and Negri, under conditions of Empire "There Is No More Outside" (2000: 186).8 Space-weaponization is a
material manifestation of Hardt and Negri's idea of imperial sovereignty as de-territorializing and boundary erasing. By
possessing the capacity to project force from orbital space to any point on Earth, this new mode of destruction would make
the two dominant modern modes of protection/security - the sovereign real-state and the liberal-republican federation irrelevant. Neither the self-help of sovereign states nor the collective security of a pacific union could counteract or even
deter the ability to project force from outer space. Without the ability to protect its territory and population from external
threats, the sovereignty of the state would effectively wither away. In its place would emerge a new mode of
protection/security, although calling it a mode of domination may be more appropriate (Agamben 1998). This mode -spacebased empire - would have a centralized authority constituted by those who controlled the space-based military
infrastructure. However, because its capacity to govern would rest on its ability to project force to any point on
Earth at a moment's notice, there would be no need for it to control territory. As such, this new form of imperial sovereignty
would have three features not encountered in ptevious political forms. First, it would have a centralized locus of authority,
while being de-territorialized in terms of what it governed. Second, it would asymmetrically bind all individuals and
institutions, includ¬ing nominal states, into a hierarchical relationship with the imperial center at the top. Finally it would
possess a monopoly on the external violence between (then non-sovereign) states as well as the capacity to target any
specific indi¬vidual within a state at any point in time. Effectively, this space-based empire would possess sovereignty over
the entire globe (Duvall and Havercroft 2008).
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Space weaponization impact – A2: US will be good
The nature and power of a space empire would make checks on the ultimate tyranny of a state impossible
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, Uni¬versity of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 52-57//DN)
Conclusion: (bare) life under empire of the future
In his Astropolitik Dolman calls upon U.S. defense policy-makers to weaponize orbital space so as to enhance U.S.
hegemony over the planet. He does not address the astropolitical issues we have discussed here about what impact a spacebased hegemony would have on the structure of the international system. Dolman, however, is confident that America
would be responsible in using this awesome power to promote democracy and global capitalism. Setting aside the very
contentious issues of whether or not America should be involved in "promoting" democracy and capitalism and whether or
not current U.S. hegemony has been beneficial for the Earth's population, the moral and political implications of a spacebased empire are not nearly as clear-cut as Dolman makes them out to be. * One of the fundamental principles of classical
geopolitics was that sea-based empires (such as Athens, Britain, and America) tended to be more democratic than landbased empires (such as Sparta, China, and Rome). The reason for this is that sea-based empires needed to disperse their
forces away from the imperial center to exert control, whereas land-based empires exercised power through occupation.
Military occupations made it increasingly likely that the army would seize power whenever it came into conflict with the
government. Clas¬sical geopolitical theorist Otto Hintze argued that land powers tended toward dictatorships (Hintze 1975;
see also Deudney 2007). Dolman builds upon these classical geopolitical insights by arguing that because space-based
empires would not be able to occupy states, military coups,would be less likely and democracy would be more likely
(Dolman 2002a: 29). There is, however, a significant difference between space power and sea power. While neither is
capable of occupying territory on its own, space power is capable of controlling territory from-above through surveillance
and precise projection of force — control without occupation. While space power may not result in the dictator¬ships
normally associated with land power, it would be a useful tool is estab¬lishing a disciplinary society over all the Earth.
A second obstacle to the benevolent space-based empire that Dolman imagines is the lack of counterbalancing powers.
Under the two other modes of protection/security we have considered here - the real-statist and the federal-republican —
there are checks that prevent even the most powerful states in the system from dominating all the other units. In realstatism, the sovereignty of states means that any potential hegemon would have to pay a significant cost in blood and
treasure to conquer other states. While this cost may not be enough to dissuade a superpower from conquering one or two
states, the cumulative cost of conquest and occupation makes total domination over the Earth unlikely. In the federalrepublican model, the collective security regime of the entire system should act as a sufficient deterrent to prevent one state
from dominating the others. Conversely, in a space-based empire the entire world is placed under direct surveillance from
above. There is no point on Earth where the imperial center cannot project force on very short notice. So long as the spacebased empire can deny access to space to rival powers through missile defense and anti-satellite technologies, there is no
possibility that other states can directly counteract this force. As such, the space-based empire erases all boundaries and
places the Earth under its control.
While the possibility to resist such an empire will exist, the dynamics of resistance will be considerably altered. Traditional
insurgencies rely on physical occupation of territory by the conquering forces to provide targets of opportunity to the
resistance. Because space weapons would orbit several hundred to several thousands of miles above the Earth, they would
not be vulnerable to attack by anything except weapons systems possessed by the most advanced space powers, such as
ballistic missiles and advanced laser systems. Even such counter-measures, however, would only raise the financial cost of
space-based empire, not the cost in human lives that insurgencies rely upon to diminish domestic support for imperial
occupations. Consequently a space-based empire would be freer to dominate the Earth from above than a ttaditional landpower occupation would be. Without obvious counter-powers or effective means of resistance, the space-based empire
would be able to exercise complete bio-political control over the entire planet, turning all of Earth's inhabitants into "bare
life." Under such a political arrangement the likelihood that the imperial center would be a benevolent one, uncorrupted by
its total domination of the Earth, is very slim indeed.
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***NATIONALISM MODULE
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Nationalism links
The aff can't be detached from its historically nationalist underpinnings
Siddiqi '10 – assistant professor of history at Fordham University (Dr. Asif, April 2010, "Competing Technologies, National(ist)
Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration," Techonology and Culture, 51(2) p. 425-443,
MUSE, RG)
In the fifty years since the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957, more than 6,000 functioning satellites have been launched
into Earth orbit and beyond—some to the farthest reaches of our solar system. By its physical nature, space exploration has
a resonance beyond national borders—at a fundamental level, it is a project that transcends national claims and appeals to
the global, perhaps even to the universal. Yet our understanding of the half-century of space travel is still firmly rooted in
the framework of the national imagination. Until now, barring very few exceptions, only nation-states have been able to
mobilize the resources necessary for regular access to space. For most laypersons, the perceived apotheosis of space
exploration remains the heady days after Sputnik,when the United States and the Soviet Union competed to trump the other
in a series of progressively more complex feats in space. The cold-war space race retains its mystique, either as a
benchmark that subsequent accomplishments could never equal, or as an anomaly whose particular conditions could never
be repeated. It has, in fact, become impossible to think of space exploration without allusion to the halcyon days of the
1960s and equally inconceivable for historians to interpret the act of space travel without the space race hovering over the
very language that we use.
Space exploration is inherently linked to a quest for national identity -- this distorts the global
collaborative goals that they claim to solve
Siddiqi '10 -- assistant professor of history at Fordham University (Dr. Asif, April 2010, "Competing Technologies, National(ist)
Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration," Techonology and Culture, 51(2) p. 425-443,
MUSE, RG)
Space exploration’s link with national identity partly overlapped with its claims to a larger idea that appealed to a global,
even universal, vision of humanity. Counterintuitively, these ideas emerged from ideas deeply em-bedded in national
contexts. Roger Launius has noted that nations have historically justified space exploration by appealing to one (or a
combination) of five different rationales: human destiny, geopolitics, national security, economic competitiveness, and
scientific discovery.15 The latter four stem from national and nationalist requirements; the first, human destiny, appeals to
the idea of survival of the species. In the American context, this universal rationale of human destiny combines older
traditions of technological utopianism and an updated version of “manifest destiny.” Technological utopianism, i.e., a
notion that conflates “progress” (qualified technologically) with “progress” (unqualified), has been an essential part of
popular discourse since the late nineteenth century, and if the crisis of modernity and the Great War made Western
Europeans less enamored of the panacea promised by technology, Americans continued to embrace more fully the idea of
technological utopianism than most other societies.16
As Launius has shown, influential space activists of the past fifty years deployed rhetoric and rationale to support space
exploration that simultaneously invoked romanticized notions of the American frontier—Frederick Jackson Turner’s
“frontier thesis”was ubiquitous—with emphatic language that underscored that what was at stake with space exploration
was not about Americans but the entire human race. Commentators as varied as Wernher von Braun, Gerard K. O’Neill,
and Robert Zubrin all couched their arguments with a distinctly American spin—ingenuity, frontier, freedom— in their
search to create the opportunity for global survival in the form of human colonization of the cosmos.17 Here, the American
becomes the normative for space travel for the species.
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National identity prevents an effective response to global problems – only articulating a shared identity
can prevent extinction
Smith ‘3 -- Professor of Political Science at University of Pennsylvania and PhD Harvard University (Rogers, 2003, “Stories Of
Peoplehood, The Politics and Morals of Political Membership”, p. 166-169, RG)
It is certainly important to oppose such evolutionary doctrines by all intellectually credible means. But many have already
been widely discredited; and today it may well prove salutary, even indispensable, to heighten awareness of human identity
as shared membership in a species engaged in an ages-long process of adapting to often dangerous and unforgiving natural
and man-made environments.20 When we see ourselves in the light of general evolutionary patterns, we become aware that
it is genuinely possible for a species such as ourselves to suffer massive setbacks or even to become extinct if we pursue
certain dangerous courses of action. That outcome does not seem to be in any human's interest. And when we reflect on the
state of our species today, we see or should see at least five major challenges to our collective survival, much less our collective nourishing, that are in some respects truly unprecedented. These are all challenges of our own making, however, and
so they can all be met through suitably cooperative human efforts. The first is our ongoing vulnerability to the extraordinary
weapons of mass destruction that we have been building during the last half century. The tense anticipations of imminent
conflagration that characterized the Cold War at its worst are now behind us, but the nuclear arsenals that were so
threatening are largely still with us, and indeed the governments and, perhaps, terrorist groups possessed of some nuclear
weaponry have continued to proliferate. The second great threat is some sort of environmental disaster, brought on by the
by-products of our efforts to achieve ever-accelerating industrial and post-industrial production and distribution of an
incredible range of good and services. Whether it is global warming, the spread of toxic wastes, biospheric disruptions due
to new agricultural techniques, or some combination of these and other consequences of human interference with the air,
water, climate, and plant and animal species that sustain us, any major environmental disaster can affect all of humanity.
Third, as our economic and technological systems have become ever more interconnected, the danger that major economic
or technological failures in one part of the world might trigger global catastrophes may well increase. Such
interdependencies can, to be sure, be a source of strength as well as weakness, as American and European responses to the
East Asian and Mexican economic crises of the 1990s indicated. Still, if global capitalism were to collapse or a
technological disaster comparable to the imagined Y2K doomsday scenario were to occur, the consequences today would
be more far-reaching than they would have been for comparable developments in previous centuries. Fourth, as advances in
food production, medical care, and other technologies have contributed to higher infant survival rates and longer lives, the
world's population has been rapidly increasing, placing intensifying pressures on our physical and social environments in a
great variety of ways. These demographic trends, necessarily involving all of humanity, threaten to exacerbate all the
preceding problems, generating political and military conflicts, spawning chronic and acute environmental damages, and
straining the capacities of economic systems. The final major challenge we face as a species is a more novel one, and it is
one that may bring consciousness of our shared "species interests" even more to the fore. In the upcoming century, human
beings will increasingly be able to affect their own genetic endowment, in ways that might potentially alter the very sort of
organic species that we are. Here as with modern weapons, economic processes, and population growth, we face risks that
our efforts to improve our condition may go disastrously wrong, potentially endangering the entire human race. Yet the
appeal of endowing our children with greater gifts is sufficiently powerful that organized efforts to create such genetic
technologies capable of "redesigning humans" are already burgeoning, both among reputable academic researchers and less
restrained, but well-endowed, fringe groups.21 To be sure, an awareness of these as well as other potential dangers
affecting all human beings is not enough by itself to foster moral outlooks that reject narrow and invidious particularistic
conceptions of human identity. It is perfectly possible for leaders to feel that to save the species, policies that run roughshod
over the claims of their rivals are not simply justified but morally demanded. Indeed, like the writers I have examined here,
my own more egalitarian and cosmopolitan moral leanings probably stem originally from religious and Kantian
philosophical influences, not from any consciousness of the common "species interests" of human beings. But the ethically
constitutive story which contends that we have such interests, and that we can see them as moral interests, seems quite
realistic, which is of some advantage in any such account. And under the circumstances just sketched, it is likely that more
and more people will become persuaded that today, those shared species interests face more profound challenges than they
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have in most of human history. If so, then stressing our shared identity as members of an evolving species may serve as a
highly credible ethically constitutive story that can challenge particularistic accounts and foster support for novel political
arrangements. Many more people may come to feel that it is no longer safe to conduct their political lives absorbed in their
traditional communities, with disregard for outsiders, without active concern about the issues that affect the whole species
and without practical collaborative efforts to confront those issues. That consciousness of shared interests has the potential
to promote stronger and much more inclusive senses of trust, as people come to realize that the dangers and challenges they
face in common matter more than the differences that will doubtless persist. I think this sort of awareness of a shared
"species interests" also can support senses of personal and collective worth, though I acknowledge that this is not obviously
the case. Many people find the spectacle of the human species struggling for survival amidst rival life forms and an
unfeeling material world a bleak and dispiriting one. Many may still feel the need to combine acceptance of an evolutionary
constitutive story with religious or philosophical accounts that supply some stronger sense of moral purpose to human and
cosmic existence. But if people are so inclined, then nothing I am advocating here stands in the way of such combinations.
Many persons, moreover, may well find a sustaining sense of moral worth in a conception of themselves as contributors to
a species that has developed unique capacities to deliberate and to act responsibly in regard to questions no other known
species can yet conceive: how should we live? What relationships should we have, individually and collectively, to other
people, other life forms, and the broader universe? In time, I hope that many more people may come to agree that humanity
has shared responsibilities of stewardship for the animate and physical worlds around us as well as ourselves, ultimately
seeking to promote the flourishing of all insofar as we are capable and the finitude of existence permits. But even short of
such a grand sense of species vocation, the idea that we are part of humanity's endeavor to strive and thrive across evergreater expanses of space and time may be one that can inspire a deep sense of worth in many if not most human beings.
Hence it does not seem unrealistic to hope that we can encourage increased acceptance of a universalistic sense of human
peoplehood that may help rein in popular impulses to get swept up in more parochial tales of their identities and interests.
In the years ahead, this ethical sensibility might foster acceptance of various sorts of transnational political arrangements to
deal with problems like exploitative and wildly fluctuating international financial and labor markets, destructive
environmental and agricultural practices, population control, and the momentous issue of human genetic modifications.
These are, after all, problems that appear to need to be dealt with on a near-global scale if they are to be dealt with
satisfactorily. Greater acceptance of such arrangements would necessarily entail increased willingness to view existing
governments at all levels as at best only "semi-sovereign," authoritative over some issues and not others, in the manner that
acceptance of multiple particularistic constitutive stories would also reinforce. In the resulting political climate, it might
become easier to construct the sorts of systems of interwoven democratic international, regional, state and local
governments that theorists of "cosmopolitan democracy," "liberal multicultural nationalism," and "differentiated
democracy" like David Held, Will Kymlicka, Iris Young, William Connolly, and Jurgen Habermas all envision.
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Replacing the “national” with the “global” is key to the future stabilization of space exploration
Siddiqi '10 -- assistant professor of history at Fordham University (Dr. Asif, April 2010, "Competing Technologies, National(ist)
Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration," Techonology and Culture, 51(2) p. 425-443,
MUSE, RG)
This new postcolonial vision of space exploration is as much part of the fabric of space history as the more well-known
American and Soviet models grounded in the cold war.30 These multiple perspectives on space travel suggest that our
view of the long history of spaceflight may benefit from a standpoint that no longer privileges borders—demarcations
that create rigid analytical categories such as ownership, indigeneity, and proliferation. The Indian space program was at
the intersection of multiple flows of knowledge from a variety of sources, including, of course, local expertise. Likewise,
the history of spaceflight has been part of a consistent flow of knowledge and technology across (geographical) space and
time—among Germans, Soviets, Americans, British, French, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Israelis, Brazilians, and so on. By
rethinking the relationship between modernity and the postcolonial state, postcolonial thought challenges us to rethink the
connection betweenmodernity and spaceflight, and, ultimately, to replace the “national” with the “global” when
thinking of space exploration, an exercise that has become doubly important as dozens of developing countries in Asia,
Africa, and the Middle East are now spending money on space exploration.
The alternative is not a wholesale rejection of nationalism but spills over to overall identification as a
nation – only this can solve competition the aff references
Siddiqi '10 -- assistant professor of history at Fordham University (Dr. Asif, April 2010, "Competing Technologies, National(ist)
Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration," Techonology and Culture, 51(2) p. 425-443,
MUSE, RG)
I am not suggesting that we should ignore nations, national identity, or vital indigenous innovation. But I believe that
nation-centered approaches, useful and instructive as they were, occlude from view important phenom-ena in the history of
space exploration. My hope is that by deemphasizing ownership and national borders, the invisible connections and
transitions of technology transfer and knowledge production will be become clear in an abundantly new way. Such an
approach would inform a project encompassing the entire history of modern rocketry and space exploration, from the late
nineteenth century to the present, focusing on Europe, America, Russia, and Asia.Most important, a global history of
rocketry and space exploration would avoid the pitfalls of the “discursive battles” between nation-centered histories
and open up the possibility to revisit older debates in the historiography of space exploration in entirely new ways. Taking a
global history approach, one that favors decentering the conventional narrative, would allow historians to redirect their
attentions in three ways: we can shift our gaze from nations to communities, from“identification” to identities, and from
moments to processes. These three strategies, in one way or another, are inspired by the problems posed by historicizing the
ambitions and achievements of emerging space powers, which operate in a postcolonial context where categories such as
indigenous, modern, and national are problematic. I offer some brief examples of each below.
In the space imagination, nations typically represent airtight constituencies despite evidence to the contrary that
communities cutting across borders and cultures—national, institutional, and disciplinary—represent important actors and
actions. The most obvious example here, of course, is the German engineers who formed the core of the Army Ballistic
Missile Agency in the United States in the 1950s and who later directed the development of the Saturn V rocket that put
Americans on the surface of the Moon. Wernher von Braun’s team represented a unique mix of Germans and Americans
who worked together with several different communities, from Boeing, North American Aviation (including its separate
Space and Rocketdyne divisions), Douglas Aircraft Company, and International Business Machines. These communities
represented scientists and engineers, the government and private industry, and customers and contractors. In the rush to
draw up airtight national narratives, we inevitably tend to gloss over the ambiguities and flows among each of these
communities. By highlighting communities, we can also avoid the reductive problems of essentialization (another way of
talking about “national styles” of science and technology) that aspire to explain everything but fail to elucidate much at
all.36 Instead, one might think in terms of fluid identities of scientists and engineers engaged in particular projects,
identities which are not only tied to national identification but also regional, professional, cultural, religious, and
educational markers, to name only a few categories. Using the perspective of mutable identity—different in different
circumstances—we might be able the result of communities to understand more clearly the ways in which space exploration
has not only been a project of national consideration but also (or individuals) who identify with a whole host of other
markers that are not connected to national claims. In other words, it is a way to problematize the notion that space
exploration represents national aspirations.
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Alternative – performative resistance
Our criticism’s a performative political resistance allows for the creation of a new mode of politics—the
securitization inherent in the affirmative’s representations offers a unique place in which to deconstruct
subjectivity
Campbell, 1998. David Campbell, professor of international politics at the university of Newcastle, Writing Security, 1998,
Even more important, his understanding of power emphasizes the of freedom presupposed by the existence of disciplinary and
normalizing practices. Put simply, there cannot be relations of power unless subjects are in the first instance free: the need to
institute negative and constraining power practices comes about only because without them freedom would abound. Were there
no possibility of freedom, subjects would not act in ways that required containment so as to effect order.37 Freedom, though, is
not the absence of power. On the contrary, because it is only through power that subjects exercise their agency, freedom and
power cannot be separated. As Foucault maintains: At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are
the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. Rather than speaking of an essential freedom, it would be better
to speak of an “agonism” — of a relationship which is at the same time reciprocal incitation and struggle; less of a face-to--face
confmntalion which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation. 38 The political possibilities enabled by this permanent
provocation of power and freedom can be specified in more detail by thinking in terms of the predominance of the “bio-power”
discussed above. In this sense, because the governmental practices of biopolitics in Western nations have been increasingly
directed toward modes of being and forms of life — such that sexual conduct has become an object of concern, individual
health has been figured as a domain of discipline, and the family has been transformed into an instrument of government — the
ongoing agonism between those practices and the freedom they seek to contain means that individuals have articulated a series
of counterdemands drawn from those new fields of concern. For example, as the state continues to prosecute people according
to sexual orientation, human rights activists have proclaimed the right of gays to enter into formal marriages, adopt children,
and receive the same health and insurance benefits granted to their straight counterparts. These claims are a consequence of the
permanent provocation of power and freedom in biopolitics, and stand as testament to the “strategic reversibility” of power
relations: if the terms of govern mental practices can be made into focal points for resistances, then the “history of government
as the ‘conduct of conduct’ is interwoven with the history of dissenting ‘counterconducts.”’39 Indeed, the emergence of the
state as the major articulation of “the political” has involved an unceasing agonism between those in office and those they rule.
State intervention in everyday life has long incited popular collective action, the result of which has been both resistance to the
state and new claims upon the state. In particular, “the core of what we now call ‘citizenship’ . . . consists of multiple bargains
hammered out by rulers and ruled in the course of their struggles over the means of state action, especially the making of
war.”40 In more recent times, constituencies associated with women’s, youth, ecological, and peace movements (among
others) have also issued claims on society.41 These resistances are evidence that the break with the discursive/nondiscursive
dichotomy central to the logic of interpretation undergirding this analysis is (to put it in conventional terms) not only
theoretically licensed; it is empirically warranted. Indeed, expanding the interpretive imagination so as to enlarge the categories
through which we understand the constitution of “the political” has been a necessary precondition for making sense of Foreign
Policy’s concern for the ethical borders of identity in America. Accordingly, there are manifest political implications that flow
from theorizing identity As Judith Butler concluded: “The deconstruction of identity is not the deconstruction of politics;
rather, it establishes as political the very terms through which identity is articulated.”42
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Alternative – specific intellectual
Reject the affirmative’s complicity with biopolitics. As specific intellectuals, we should endorse a mode of
politics which functions through analysis and criticism of specific situations.
Owen 97 (David Owen, professor of social sciences at Southampton University, “Maturity and Modernity: Nietszche, Weber,
Foucault and the ambivalence of reason,” Routledge publishers, published July 22, 1997)
In our reflections on Foucault’s methodology, it was noted that, like Nietszche and Weber, he commits himself to a stance of valuefreedom as an engaged refusal to legislate for others. Foucault’s critical activity is oriented to human autonomy yet his formal account
of the idea of autonomy as the activity of self-transformation entails tat the content of this activity is specific to the struggles of
particular groups and individuals. Thus, while the struggle against humanist forms of power/knowledge relations denotes the formal
archiectonic interest of genealogy as critique, the determination of the ‘main danger’ which denotes the ‘filling in’ of this interest is
contingent upon the dominant systems of constraint confronted by specific groups and individuals. For example, the constitution of
women as ‘hysterical,’ of blacks as ‘criminal,’ of homosexuals as ‘perverted’ all operate through humanist forms of power/knowledge
relations, yet the specificity of the social practices and discourses engaged in producing these ‘identities’ entails that while these
struggles share a general formal interest in resisting the biopolitics of humanism, their substantive interests are distinct. It is against
this context that Foucault’s stance of value-freedom can be read as embodying a respect for alterity. The implications of this stance
for intellectual practice became apparent in Foucault’s distinction between the figures of the ‘universal’ and ‘specific’ intellectual.
Consider the following comments: In a general way, I think that intellectuals-if this category exists, which is not certain or perhaps
even desirable- are abandoning their old prophetic function. And by that I don’t mean only their claim to predict what will happen, but
also the legislative function that they so long aspired for: ‘See what must be done, see what is good, follow me. In the turmoil that
engulfs you all, here is the pivotal point, here is where I am.’ The greek wise man, the jewish prophet, the roman legislators are still
models that haunt those who, today, practice the profession of speaking and writing. The universal intellectual, on Foucault’s account,
is that figure who maintains a commitment to critique as a legislative activity in which the pivotal positing of universal norms (or
universal procedures for generating norms) grounds politics in the ‘truth; of our being (e.g. our ‘real’ interests). The problematic form
of this type of intellectual practice is a central concern of Foucault’s critique of humanist politics in so far as humanism
simultaneously asserts and undermines autonomy. If, however, this is the case, what alternative conceptions of the role of the
intellectual and the activity of critique can Foucault present to us? Foucault’s elaboration of the figure of the ‘specific’ intellectual
provides the beginnings of an answer to this question: I dream of the intellectual who destroys evidence and generalities, the one who,
in the inertias and constraints of the present time, locates and marks the weak points, the openings, the lines of force, who is
incessantly on the move, doesn’t know exactly where he is heading nor what he will think tomorrow for he is too attentive to the
present. The historicity of thought, the impossibility of locating an Archimedean point outside of time, leads Foucault to locate
intellectual activity as an ongoing attentiveness to the present in terms of what is singular and arbitrary in what we take to be universal
and necessary. Following from this, the intellectual does not seek to offer grand theories but specific analyses, not global but local
criticism. We should be clear on the latter point for it is necessary to acknowledge that Foucault’s position does not entail the
impossibility of ‘acceding to a point of view that could give us access to any complete and definitive knowledge of what may
constitute our historical limits’ and, consequently, ‘ we are always in the position of beginning again’ (FR p. 47). The upshot of this
recognition of the partial character of criticism is not, however, to produce an ethos of fatal resignation but, in far as it involves a
recognition that everything is dangerous, ‘a hyper-and pessimistic activism’ (FR p. 343). In other words, it is the very historicity and
partiality of criticism which bestows on the activity of critique its dignity and urgency. What of this activity then? We can sketch the
Foucault account of the activity of critique by coming to grips with the opposition he draws between ‘ideal’ critique and ‘real’
transformation. Foucault suggests that the activity of critique ‘is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are’ but rather
‘of pointing out what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, uncontested modes of thought and practices we
accept rest’ (PPC p. 154). This distinction is perhaps slightly disingenuous, yet Foucault’s point is unintelligible if we recognize his
concern to disclose the epistemological grammar which informs our social practices as the starting point of critique. This emerges in
his recognition that ‘criticism (and radical criticism) is absolutely indispensable for any transformation’: A transformation that remains
within the same mode of thought, a transformation that is only a way of adjusting the same thought more closely to the reality of
things can merely be a superficial transformation. (PPC p. 155) The genealogical thrust of this critical activity is ‘to show that things
are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident is no longer accepted as such’ for ‘as soon as one
can no longer think things as one formerly thought them, transformation becomes both very urgent, very difficult, and quite possible’
(PPC p. 155). The urgency of transformation derives from the contestation of thought (and the social practices in which it is
embedded) as the form of our autonomy, although this urgency is given its specific character for modern culture by the recognition
that the humanist grammar of this thought ties us into the technical matrix of biopolitics.
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Our criticism proceeds the affirmative- the racialized logic of securitization upon which the plan relies is
the root of their harms claims -- You have an ethical obligation to oppose this frame.
Roxanne Doty, Prof. of Political Science @ ASU [Woot], 1996 [Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Reprsentations in North-South Relations, p. 166-71]
One of the deadly traces that has been deposited in our current "reality" and that figures prominently in this study is "race." The
inventory of this trace has been systematically ignored by international relations scholarship. It seems fair to suggest that most
international relations scholars as well as makers of foreign policy would suggest that "race" is not even a relevant issue in
global politics. Some might concede that while "race" may have been a significant factor internationally during particular
historical periods-as a justification for colonialism, for example - "we" are past that now. The racial hierarchy that once
prevailed internationally simply no longer exists. To dwell upon "race" as an international issue is an unproductive, needless
rehash of history. Adlai Stevenson rather crudely summed up this position when he complained that he was impatiently waiting
for the time "when the last black-faced comedian has quit preaching about colonialism so the United Nations could move on to
the more crucial issues like disarmament" (quoted in Noer 1985: 84). This view is unfortunately, although subtly, reflected in
the very definition of the field of international relations, whose central problems and categories have been framed in such a
way as to preclude investigation into categories such as "race" that do not fit neatly within the bounds of prevailing conceptions
of theory and explanation and the legitimate methods with which to pursue them. As Walker (1989) points out, current
international relations research agendas are framed within an understanding that presumes certain ontological issues have been
resolved. Having already resolved the questions of the "real" and relevant entities, international relations scholars generally
proceed to analyze the world with an eye toward becoming a "real science." What has been defined as "real" and relevant has
not included race. As this study suggests, however, racialized identities historically have been inextricably linked with power,
agency, reason, morality, and understandings of "self" and "other."' When we invoke these terms in certain contexts, we also
silently invoke traces of previous racial distinctions. For example, Goldberg (1993: 164) suggests that the conceptual division
of the world whereby the "third world" is the world of tradition, irrationality, overpopulation, disorder, and chaos assumes a
racial character that perpetuates, both conceptually and actually, relations of domination, subjugation, and exclusion. Excluding
the issue of representation enables the continuation of this and obscures the important relationship between representation,
power, and agency. The issue of agency in international affairs appears in the literature in various ways, ranging from classical
realism's subjectivist privileging of human agents to neorealism's behavioralist privileging of the state as agent to the more
recent focus on the "agent-structure problem" by proponents of structuration theory (e.g., Wendt [19871, Dessler 119891).
What these accounts have in common is their exclusion of the issue of representation. The presumption is made that agency
ultimately refers back to some prediscursive subject, even if that subject is socially constructed within the context of political,
social, and economic structures. In contrast, the cases examined in this study suggest that the question of agency is one of how
practices of representation create meaning and identities and thereby create the very possibility for agency. As Judith Butler
(1990: 142-49) makes clear and as the empirical cases examined here suggest, identity and agency are both effects, not
preexisting conditions of being. Such an antiessentialist understanding does not depend upon foundational categories -an inner
psychological self, for example. Rather, identity is reconceptualized as simultaneously a practice and an effect that is always in
the process of being constructed through signifying practices that expel the surplus meanings that would expose the failure of
identity as such. For example, through a process of repetition, U.S. and British discourses constructed as natural and given the
oppositional dichotomy between the uncivilized, barbaric "other" and the civilized, democratic "self" even while they both
engaged in the oppression and brutalization of "others." The Spector of the "other" was always within the "self." The
proliferation of discourse in times of crisis illustrates an attempt to expel the "other," to make natural and unproblematic the
boundaries between the inside and the outside. This in turn suggests that identity and therefore the agency that is connected
with identity are inextricably linked to representational practices. It follows that any meaningful discussion of agency must
perforce be a discussion of representation. The representational practices that construct particular identities have serious
ramifications for agency. While this study suggests that "race" historically has been a central marker of identity, it also suggests
that identity construction takes place along several dimensions. Racial categories often have worked together with gendered
categories as well as with analogies to parent/child oppositions and animal metaphors. Each of these dimensions has varying
significance at different times and enables a wide variety of practices. In examining the construction of racialized identities, it
is not enough to suggest that social identities are constructed on the basis of shared understandings within a community: shared
understandings regarding institutional rules, social norms, and selfexpectations of individuals in that community. It is not
enough to examine the shared social criteria by which one identity is distinguished from another. Two additional elements must
be considered: power and truth. "Race" has not just been about certain rules and resources facilitating the agency of some
[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
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social groups and denying or placing severe limitations on the agency of other social groups. Though it has been about these
things, this is only one aspect of what "race" has historically been about. "Race" has most fundamentally been about being
human. Racist discourses historically have constructed different kinds and degrees of humanness through representational
practices that have claimed to be and have been accepted as "true" and accurate representations of "reality." Racist discourses
highlight, perhaps more than any other, the inextricable link between power and truth or power and knowledge. A theory of
agency in international relations, if it is to incorporate issues such as "race," must address the relationship between power and
truth. This realization in turn implies a reconceptualization of power and how it works that transcends those present in existing
theories of international relations. The cases examined in this study attest to the importance of representational practices and
the power that inheres in them. The infinity of traces that leave no inventory continue to play a significant part in contemporary
constructions of "reality." This is not to suggest that representations have been static. Static implies the possibility of fixedness,
when what I mean to suggest is an inherent fragility and instability to the meanings and identities that have been constructed in
the various discourses I examined. For example, to characterize the South as "uncivilized" or "unfit for self-government" is no
longer an acceptable representation. This is not, however, because the meanings of these terms were at one time fixed and
stable. As I illustrated, what these signifiers signified was always deferred. Partial fixation was the result of their being
anchored by some exemplary mode of being that was itself constructed at the power/ knowledge nexus: the white male at the
turn of the century, the United States after World War II. Bhabha stresses "the wide range of the stereotype, from the loyal
servant to Satan, from the loved to the hated; a shifting of subject positions in the circulation of colonial power" (1983: 31).
The shifting subject positions-from uncivilized native to quasi state to traditional "man" and society, for example -are all partial
fixations that have enabled the exercise of various and multiple forms of power. Nor do previous oppositions entirely
disappear. What remains is an infinity of traces from prior representations that themselves have been founded not on pure
presences but on differance. "The present becomes the sign of the sign, the trace of the trace," Derrida writes (1982: 24).
Differance makes possible the chain of differing and deferring (the continuity) as well as the endless substitution (the
discontinuity) of names that are inscribed and reinscribed as pure presence, the center of the structure that itself escapes
structurality. North-South relations have been constituted as a structure of deferral. The center of the structure (alternatively
white man, modern man, the United States, the West, real states) has never been absolutely present outside a system of
differences. It has itself been constituted as trace-the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates itself, displaces itself, refers itself
(ibid.). Because the center is not a fixed locus but a function in which an infinite number of sign substitutions come into play,
the domain and play of signification is extended indefinitely (Derrida 1978: z8o). This both opens up and limits possibilities,
generates alternative sites of meanings and political resistances that give rise to practices of reinscription that seek to reaffirm
identities and relationships. The inherently incomplete and open nature of discourse makes this reaffirmation an ongoing and
never finally completed project. In this study I have sought, through an engagement with various discourses in which claims to
truth have been staked, to challenge the validity of the structures of meaning and to make visible their complicity with practices
of power and domination. By examining the ways in which structures of meaning have been associated with imperial practices,
I have suggested that the construction of meaning and the construction of social, political, and economic power are inextricably
linked. This suggests an ethical dimension to making meaning and an ethical imperative that is incumbent upon those who toil
in the construction of structures of meaning. This is especially urgent in North-South relations today: one does not have to
search very far to find a continuing complicity with colonial representations that ranges from a politics of silence and neglect to
constructions of terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, international drug trafficking, and Southern immigration to the North as
new threats to global stability and peace. The political stakes raised by this analysis revolve around the question of being able
to "get beyond" the representations or speak outside of the discourses that historically have constructed the North and the
South. I do not believe that there are any pure alternatives by which we can escape the infinity of traces to which Gramsci
refers. Nor do I wish to suggest that we are always hopelessly imprisoned in a dominant and all-pervasive discourse. Before
this question can be answered-indeed, before we can even proceed to attempt an answer-attention must be given to the politics
of representation. The price that international relations scholarship pays for its inattention to the issue of representation is
perpetuation of the dominant modes of making meaning and deferral of its responsibility and complicity in dominant
representations.
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Rejecting their demand for immediate yes/no policy response is the only way to raise critical ethical
questions about the discourse and practice of ir in the middle east.
Shampa BISWAS Politics @ Whitman ‘7 “Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International Relations
Theorist” Millennium 36 (1) p. 117-125
The recent resuscitation of the project of Empire should give International Relations scholars particular pause.1 For a discipline long
premised on a triumphant Westphalian sovereignty, there should be something remarkable about the ease with which the case for brute
force, regime change and empire-building is being formulated in widespread commentary spanning the political spectrum. Writing
after the 1991 Gulf War, Edward Said notes the US hesitance to use the word ‘empire’ despite its long imperial history.2 This
hesitance too is increasingly under attack as even self-designated liberal commentators such as Michael Ignatieff urge the US to
overcome its unease with the ‘e-word’ and selfconsciously don the mantle of imperial power, contravening the limits of sovereign
authority and remaking the world in its universalist image of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’.3 Rashid Khalidi has argued that the US
invasion and occupation of Iraq does indeed mark a new stage in American world hegemony, replacing the indirect and proxy forms
of Cold War domination with a regime much more reminiscent of European colonial empires in the Middle East.4 The ease with
which a defence of empire has been mounted and a colonial project so unabashedly resurrected makes this a particularly opportune, if
not necessary, moment, as scholars of ‘the global’, to take stock of our disciplinary complicities with power, to account for colonialist
imaginaries that are lodged at the heart of a discipline ostensibly interested in power but perhaps far too deluded by the formal equality
of state sovereignty and overly concerned with security and order. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Edward Said’s
groundbreaking work in Orientalism has argued and demonstrated the long and deep complicity of academic scholarship with colonial
domination.5 In addition to spawning whole new areas of scholarship such as postcolonial studies, Said’s writings have had
considerable influence in his own discipline of comparative literature but also in such varied disciplines as anthropology, geography
and history, all of which have taken serious and sustained stock of their own participation in imperial projects and in fact regrouped
around that consciousness in a way that has simply not happened with International Relations.6 It has been 30 years since Stanley
Hoffman accused IR of being an ‘American social science’ and noted its too close connections to US foreign policy elites and US
preoccupations of the Cold War to be able to make any universal claims,7 yet there seems to be a curious amnesia and lack of
curiosity about the political history of the discipline, and in particular its own complicities in the production of empire.8 Through what
discourses the imperial gets reproduced, resurrected and re-energised is a question that should be very much at the heart of a discipline
whose task it is to examine the contours of global power. Thinking this failure of IR through some of Edward Said’s critical scholarly
work from his long distinguished career as an intellectual and activist, this article is an attempt to politicise and hence render
questionable the disciplinary traps that have, ironically, circumscribed the ability of scholars whose very business it is to think about
global politics to actually think globally and politically. What Edward Said has to offer IR scholars, I believe, is a certain kind of
global sensibility, a critical but sympathetic and felt awareness of an inhabited and cohabited world. Furthermore, it is a profoundly
political sensibility whose globalism is predicated on a cognisance of the imperial and a firm non-imperial ethic in its formulation. I
make this argument by travelling through a couple of Said’s thematic foci in his enormous corpus of writing. Using a lot of Said’s
reflections on the role of public intellectuals, I argue in this article that IR scholars need to develop what I call a ‘global intellectual
posture’. In the 1993 Reith Lectures delivered on BBC channels, Said outlines three positions for public intellectuals to assume – as an
outsider/exile/marginal, as an ‘amateur’, and as a disturber of the status quo speaking ‘truth to power’ and self-consciously siding with
those who are underrepresented and disadvantaged.9 Beginning with a discussion of Said’s critique of ‘professionalism’ and the ‘cult
of expertise’ as it applies to International Relations, I first argue the importance, for scholars of global politics, of taking politics
seriously. Second, I turn to Said’s comments on the posture of exile and his critique of identity politics, particularly in its nationalist
formulations, to ask what it means for students of global politics to take the global seriously. Finally, I attend to some of Said’s
comments on humanism and contrapuntality to examine what IR scholars can learn from Said about feeling and thinking globally
concretely, thoroughly and carefully. IR Professionals in an Age of Empire: From ‘International Experts’ to ‘Global Public
Intellectuals’ One of the profound effects of the war on terror initiated by the Bush administration has been a significant constriction
of a democratic public sphere, which has included the active and aggressive curtailment of intellectual and political dissent and a sharp
delineation of national boundaries along with concentration of state power. The academy in this context has become a particularly
embattled site with some highly disturbing onslaughts on academic freedom. At the most obvious level, this has involved fairly wellcalibrated neoconservative attacks on US higher education that have invoked the mantra of ‘liberal bias’ and demanded legislative
regulation and reform10, an onslaught supported by a well-funded network of conservative think tanks, centres, institutes and
‘concerned citizen groups’ within and outside the higher education establishment11 and with considerable reach among sitting
legislators, jurists and policy-makers as well as the media. But what has in part made possible the encroachment of such nationalist
and statist agendas has been a larger history of the corporatisation of the university and the accompanying ‘professionalisation’ that
goes with it. Expressing
[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
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concern with ‘academic acquiescence in the decline of public discourse in the United States’, Herbert Reid has examined the ways in
which the university is beginning to operate as another transnational corporation12, and critiqued the consolidation of a ‘culture of
professionalism’ where academic bureaucrats engage in bureaucratic role-playing, minor academic turf battles mask the larger
managerial power play on campuses and the increasing influence of a relatively autonomous administrative elite and the rise of
insular ‘expert cultures’ have led to academics relinquishing their claims to public space and authority.13
While it is no surprise that the US academy should find itself too at that uneasy confluence of neoliberal globalising dynamics and
exclusivist nationalist agendas that is the predicament of many contemporary institutions around the world, there is much reason for
concern and an urgent need to rethink the role and place of intellectual labour in the democratic process. This is especially true for
scholars of the global writing in this age of globalisation and empire. Edward Said has written extensively on the place of the academy
as one of the few and increasingly precarious spaces for democratic deliberation and argued the necessity for public intellectuals
immured from the seductions of power.14 Defending the US academy as one of the last remaining utopian spaces, ‘the one public
space available to real alternative intellectual practices: no other institution like it on such a scale exists anywhere else in the world
today’15, and lauding the remarkable critical theoretical and historical work of many academic intellectuals in a lot of his work, Said
also complains that ‘the American University, with its munificence, utopian sanctuary, and remarkable diversity, has defanged
(intellectuals)’16. The most serious threat to the ‘intellectual vocation’, he argues, is ‘professionalism’ and mounts a pointed attack on
the proliferation of ‘specializations’ and the ‘cult of expertise’ with their focus on ‘relatively narrow areas of knowledge’, ‘technical
formalism’, ‘impersonal theories and methodologies’, and most worrisome of all, their ability and willingness to be seduced by
power.17 Said mentions in this context the funding of academic programmes and research which came out of the exigencies of the
Cold War18, an area in which there was considerable traffic of political scientists (largely trained as IR and comparative politics
scholars) with institutions of policy-making. Looking at various influential US academics as ‘organic intellectuals’ involved in a
dialectical relationship with foreign policy-makers and examining the institutional relationships at and among numerous think tanks
and universities that create convergent perspectives and interests, Christopher Clement has studied US intervention in the Third World
both during and after the Cold War made possible and justified through various forms of ‘intellectual articulation’.19 This is not
simply a matter of scholars working for the state, but indeed a larger question of intellectual orientation. It is not uncommon for IR
scholars to feel the need to formulate their scholarly conclusions in terms of its relevance for global politics, where ‘relevance’ is
measured entirely in terms of policy wisdom. Edward Said’s searing indictment of US intellectuals – policy-experts and Middle East
experts - in the context of the first Gulf War20 is certainly even more resonant in the contemporary context preceding and following
the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The space for a critical appraisal of the motivations and conduct of this war has been considerably
diminished by the expertise-framed national debate wherein certain kinds of ethical questions irreducible to formulaic ‘for or
against’ and ‘costs and benefits’ analysis can simply not be raised. In effect, what Said argues for, and IR scholars need to pay
particular heed to, is an understanding of ‘intellectual relevance’ that is larger and more worthwhile, that is about the posing of critical,
historical, ethical and perhaps unanswerable questions rather than the offering of recipes and solutions, that is about politics (rather
than techno-expertise) in the most fundamental and important senses of the vocation.21
Exilic intellectualism accommodates those suffering oppression by showing respect for all humanity
Shampa BISWAS, Prof – Politics, Whitman, 2007 "Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International
Relations Theorist" Millennium 36 (1)
The kind of globalism that Said advocates involves a felt and sympathetic awareness of an in- and co-habited world. In an interview
with Bruce Robbins, Said is at pains to underscore that the rootlessness and exilic marginality he promotes are not detached, distant
positions that exclude ‘sympathetic identification with a people suffering oppression ... [e]specially when that oppression is caused
by one’s own community or one’s own polity’.47 The exilic orientation ‘involves the crossing of barriers, the traversing of borders,
the accommodation with various cultures, not so much in order to belong to them but at least so as to be able to feel the accents and
inflections of their experience’.48 It is a globalism that is very much linked to Said’s unabashed defence of ‘humanism’. At the heart
of this defence is a commitment to an aware and felt ethic of ‘humanity’ that emerges from a sense of ‘worldliness’ (i.e. a sense of
‘the real historical world’49) and knowledge of difference. A central defining pole of (Said’s) humanism, says Akeel Bilgrami in the
foreword to Said’s posthumously published collection of essays in Humanism and Democratic Criticism, is ‘the yearning to show
regard for all that is human, for what is human wherever it may be found and however remote it may be from the more vivid
presence of the parochial’.50 Said himself criticises the rampant use of the word ‘human’ in much of the current discourse on
‘humanitarian intervention’, which, as he points out, is conducted largely by visiting violence on distant humans.51 His humanism is
an attempt to retrieve the humanity of those distant humans by developing a genuinely globalist ethic. This globalist ethic is not
based on a crass abstract universalism, but is very much a concrete, grounded ethic that takes the local seriously.
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K comes first; the affirmative’s attempts to explore space for humanitarian causes cannot be successful
without a prior rethinking of humanity’s relationship with the universe.
Peter Dickens and James S. Ormrod, Univerity of Essex, 2007, “Outer Space and Internal Nature: Towards a Sociology of the
Universe” Sociology 2007 41: 609 (British Sociological Association)
This article has explored some of the past relationships between humanity’s internal nature and the universe. We have also suggested
some of the more troubling ways in which these relationships are developing in contemporary society. One development is the trend
toward a cosmic narcissism in the ways in which elites and the affluent middle classes relate to the universe as an object for
maintaining imperial dominance and sustaining personal fantasies about omnipotence respectively. However, narcissistic relationships
with external nature are intrinsically unsatisfying. Objectifying nature and the cosmos does not actually empower the self, but rather
enslaves it. Even the wealthy and the technocratic new middle class who relate to the universe in this way become subjected to the
objects of their own narcissistic desire. The other development is a return to a fearful and alienated relationship with the universe,
again experienced as a frightening subject controlling Earthly affairs from on high. It is a 21st-century version of the Platonic and
Mediaeval universes in which humans are made into repressed objects and thereby brought to heel. This is a relationship experienced
by those not in control of the universe: those on the margins of Western society. Commodification, militarization and surveillance by
the socially powerful are again making the universe into an entity dominating human society, as are contemporary cosmological
theories divorced from most people’s understanding. Once more, socially and politically powerful people (some even claiming to be
on a mission from God) are attempting to make the cosmos into a means by which they can control society on Earth. The combination
of these two trends is a ‘Wizard of Oz’ effect, in which power is maintained by those with mechanical control of the universe, but
hidden by a mask of mysticism that keeps the public in a position of fear and subservience. Society’s relations with the cosmos are
now at a tipping point. The cosmos could be explored and used for primarily humanitarian ends and needs. Satellites could continue to
be increasingly used to promote environmental sustainability and social justice. They can for example be, and indeed are being, used
to track the movements of needy refugees and monitor environmental degradation with a view to its regulation (United Nations,
2003). But if this model of human interaction is to win out over the use of the universe to serve dominant military, political and
economic ends then new visionaries of a human relationship with the universe are needed. In philosophical opposition to the
majority of pro-space activists (though they rarely clash in reality) are a growing number of social movement organizations and
networks established to contest human activity in space, including the military use of space, commercialization of space, the use of
nuclear power in space and creation of space debris. Groups like the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
and the Institute for Cooperation in Space are at the centre of this movement. The activities and arguments of these groups, to which
we are by and large sympathetic, demonstrate the ways in which our understanding and use of outer space are contested in pivotal
times.
Assumptions are a-priori to questions of politics.
Jayan Nayar, shape-shifter, horse whisperer, 1999 (“SYMPOSIUM: RE-FRAMING INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: Orders of
Inhumanity” Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems Fall, 1999) Lexis
The description of the continuities of violence in Section II in many ways is familiar to those who adopt a critical perspective of the
world. "We" are accustomed to narrating human wrongs in this way. The failures and betrayals, the victims and perpetrators, are
familiar to our critical understanding. From this position of judgment, commonly held within the "mainstream" of the "nonmainstream," there is also a familiarity of solutions commonly advocated for transformation; the "marketplace" for critique is a
thriving one as evidenced by the abundance of literature in this respect. Despite this proliferation of enlightenment and the profession
of so many good ideas, however, "things" appear to remain as they are, or, worse still, deteriorate. And so, the cycle of critique,
proposals for transformation and disappointment continues. Rightly, we are concerned with the question of what can be done to
alleviate the sufferings that prevail. But there are necessary prerequisites to answering the "what do we do?" question. We must first
ask the intimately connected questions of "about what?" and "toward what end?" These questions, obviously, impinge on our vision
and judgment. When we attempt to imagine transformations toward preferred human futures, we engage in the difficult task of judging
the present. This is difficult not because we are oblivious to violence or that we are numb to the resulting suffering, but because,
outrage with "events" of violence aside, processes of violence embroil and implicate our familiarities in ways that defy the simplicities
of straightforward imputability. Despite our best efforts at categorizing violence into convenient compartments--into "disciplines" of
study and analysis such as "development" and "security" (health, environment, population, being other examples of such
compartmentalization)--the encroachments of order(ing) function at more pervasive levels. And without doubt, the perspectives of the
observer, commentator, and actor become crucial determinants. It is necessary, I believe, to question this, "our," perspective, to reflect
upon a perspective of violence which not only locates violence as a happening "out there" while we stand as detached observers and
critics, but is also one in which we are ourselves implicated in the violence of ordered worlds where we stand very much as
participants. For this purpose of a critique of critique, it is necessary to consider the "technologies" of ordering.
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Critique is necessary to discussions of politics
Simon Dalby, Profesor @ Carleton University, September 2008, “GEOPOLITICS, GRAND STRATEGY AND CRITIQUE:
TWENTY YEARS AND COUNTING” Paper for presentation to the "Critical Geopolitics 2008" conference Durham University
Google Scholar
In so far as critical geopolitics does these things it contributes to the larger political conversation about the human condition
and the possible futures we collectively make. But in doing this it is an intellectual practice that is more than research
understood in narrow quasipositivist sense of specialized knowledge applied to social "problems" in need of a technical
solution. Neither is it just a matter of historical scholarship alone but a contribution to the larger intellectual discussion of
humanity's condition in general and its violent cartographies in particular (Shapiro 2007). But none of these questions can
be divorced from either the larger historical legacies of the cultures that produce contemporary geographers nor the
ontological structures that shape the categorizations which subsequently become the objects for epistemological reflection.
Critique is part of the intellectual activity in which we are all involved and being clear about this is essential to discussions
of geography as well as politics (Dalby 2007).
We must critique security – that is critical to a more peaceful world
Simon Dalby, Profesor @ Carleton University, September 2008, “GEOPOLITICS, GRAND STRATEGY AND CRITIQUE:
TWENTY YEARS AND COUNTING” Paper for presentation to the "Critical Geopolitics 2008" conference Durham University
Google Scholar
My own attempt to do all these things has been to address the key that links violence, wars, strategy and identity in the
discussions of security and, over the decades, write a series of critical essays pointing out the political choices implicit in
how danger is articulated to various identities. In doing so it seems to me essential to take the geographical formulations in
these arguments seriously and use these as the starting points for analyzing how these discursive formations work. It also
seems important to understand how these discussions play out in popular culture (Dalby 2008b), the practical geopolitical
reasoning of policy makers and the writings of the journalists who legitimize these practices. Geopolitics works in all these
places and hence is worth tackling in many genres; this is precisely what the proliferation of critical geopolitical analyses
have been doing in this decade, and in that sense at least, this critical work has become the normal way of doing
geographical scholarship. But all this is premised on the assumption that war as either a tool of policy or a permanent social
relation is unethical, that in the long run in a small biosphere that humanity is rapidly destabilizing, nuclear weapons and
strategies to use them are untenable. In Burke’s (2007) terms we all need to start from formulations of an ethical peace
rather than from assumptions that war is just. Doing so requires tackling the big hard questions about violence, questions
which have been made more pressing of late by the insistence by the most powerful state on the planet that it is at war, in an
aggressive “long war” as part of its struggle to end tyranny on the planet. Its this prior condition of war that is the most
important point that needs critique, but after twenty years the contributions to this discussion are now widespread and at
times somewhat inchoate, not least because war and domination sometimes get forgotten. The sub discipline looks very
different now in comparison to what existed in the 1980s when this all got started (Dalby 2008a). The current discussion of
audience reception, fandom and how popular readers and viewers extends the analysis of critical geopolitics further in
another useful direction, and offers considerable possibilities for critical engagement with the framing of larger political
debates (Dodds 2006; Dittmer and Dodds 2008). But it seems that if we are to take Sparke's (2007) arguments about a postfoundational ethic seriously as geographers we do need to tie his concerns not only to matters of identities and spaces, but
to the other major traditional theme of geography too, matters of nature, environment and the biosphere as the home of
humanity. While much of the discussion of social nature, of hybrids and cyborgs, commodity chains and animal
geographies has updated these themes, at the largest scale, that of the geopolitical, matters that concern us here, much more
work remains to be done on these themes (Dalby 2007). Not least in linking war, identity, geography and ecology together
much more closely in contemporary thinking while simultaneously looking to the alternatives for a more peaceful world.
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Discourse matters
Language effects international politics- Globalization’s mode of operation shows that the reality-making
scripts of the aff are pretextualized interpretations.
Timothy Luke, university distinguished professor of political science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2003, Language, Agency, and Politics
in a Constructed World, p. 118-20
To comprehend fully how nonanarchic codes, collectives, and commodities interact in the culture and space generated by the
transnational polity, one must indicate how globalization is operating concursively now, in the early twenty-first century. These
disclosures are important to understand fully how the reticulations of power and knowledge work in most locales through what
Baudrillard has identified as “the system of objects” in local, national, and global markets. All of these terms, however, are
mutable in their meanings, and they are constantly evolving, everyday in fact, in new objectifications of the systems at play in
capitalism, nationalism, technology, and urbanization. Immense collectives of concursive activity underpin everyday life by
paralleling discursive formations under contemporary conditions of world power. As agent/structure assemblies in motion,
most events are difficult, if not entirely impossible, to divide with infinite declensions of cause and effect, form and substance,
act and actor, even though the ontologies of realism declare things to be otherwise. Nonetheless, these methodological
presumptions impair one’s ability to understand what actually seems to happen in the realms of foreign and domestic affairs.
All too often, the sovereign “we” does not choose to act decisively in this or that manner. Rather, concursive networks of
indecisive, unchosen action and reaction emerge everywhere all the time, as the April 1, 2001 incident over the South China
Sea indicates. The need for notions like concursivity becomes more pressing with modernity. Becoming modern means
coexisting with many complex nonhuman objects, processes, and structures at the coincidence of inside and outside (Latour
1999). These structures, processes, and objects, in turn, situate individuals and groups amidst ongoing activities with their own
unique meanings and goals that usually occur without reflection. Rather than seeking out crises to account for these networks
of interaction, it makes more sense to dive into ordinary events. The quotidian dimension of materiale, system, and artifact is
where another web of international relations really gels. Diplomatic incidents reveal disruptions, but the disruptive is
remarkable only inasmuch as it demarcates extraordinary aberrations in bigger ordinary patterns. Thus, studies of concursivity
implicitly must accept the merits of Onuf’s claims about language, namely that “people use words to represent deeds and they
can use words, and words alone, to perform deeds” (1989, 82), while at the same time reversing Onuf’s conceptual polarities in
an effort to understand how people perform deeds, and then see how deeds alone can be used to represent and enact words.
This is real interdependence: discursivity plus concursivity. Michael J. Shapiro’s insights (1989) about interpretation are
suggestive indicators of other patterns and presences in the workings of the world. Reality-making scripts are, at the same time,
scriptedness made-real, something that pretextualizes practices and institutions for textual interpretation. Realities are not just
there to be read uncritically in their empirical richness. They are wrought from scripted practices and then written in accord
with practical scripts. As the operations of the American and Chinese militaries on April 1, 2001, illustrate, subjectivity spoken
and acted congeals in objects and processes that henceforth coexist with subjects. This chapter has pushed out into the open, if
only as glimpses, those often undetected strings of critically significant dark matter behind the visible spectrum of discursive
formulations and their politics. Discursive analysis shows how language is acting, organizes action, or prevents action in
international politics, while considerations of concursivity show how action might be another language. Actions can eventuate
or instantiate different languages, and actions might short-circuit language. Discursive politics, therefore, can only take place
when it is reticulated through systems of political concourse that are, in turn, always at once inoperative and conflictual,
national and transnational, exploitative and emancipatory, at the coincide of inside and outside.
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The Criticism is Necessary for Alternative Discourses and Practices – Continuing Traditional Security
Ensure Repeated Political failure.
C.A.S.E. Collective 6 [Security Dialogues 37.4, “Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: A Networked Manifesto,” Sage
Political Science, p. 464]
To take this discussion one step further, we need to ask ourselves, as researchers and as a collective, what the claim of
being ‘critical’ and repre- senting a ‘collective intellectual’ entails for our engagement with the political. This question
naturally can be extended to all CASE scholars. First, what do we mean by ‘critical’? Are not all theories by definition
critical (of other theories)? In virtue of which principle, as a networked collective, would we allow ourselves to be selflabelled as critical? What is so critical about the general perspective we are collectively trying to defend here? From the
Kantian perspective to the post-Marxist Adornian emancipatory ideal, from Hockheimer’s project to the Foucaldian stance
toward regimes of truth, being critical has meant to adopt a particular stance towards taken-for- granted assumptions and
unquestioned categorizations of social reality. Many of these critical lines of thought have directly or indirectly inspired
this critical approach to security in Europe. Being critical means adhering to a rigorous form of sceptical questioning,
rather than being suspicious or dis- trustful in the vernacular sense of those terms. But, it is also to recognize one-self as
being partially framed by those regimes of truth, concepts, theories and ways of thinking that enable the critique. To be
critical is thus also to be reflexive, developing abilities to locate the self in a broader heterogeneous context through
abstraction and thinking. A reflexive perspective must offer tools for gauging how political orders are constituted. This
effort to break away from naturalized correspondences between things and words, between processes framed as problems
and ready-made solutions, permits us to bring back social and political issues to the realm of the political. Being critical
therefore means, among other things, to disrupt depoliticizing practices and discourses of security in the name of
exception- ality, urgency or bureaucratic expertise, and bring them back to political dis- cussions and struggles. This
goal can partly be achieved through a continuous confrontation of our theoretical considerations with the social practices
they account for in two directions: constantly remodelling theoretical considerations on the basis of research and critical
practice, and creating the possibilities for the use of our research in political debate and action. This raises questions about
the will- ingness and modalities of personal engagement. While critical theories can find concrete expressions in multiple
fields of practice, their role is particularly important in the field of security. Since engaging security issues necessarily
implies a normative dilemma of speaking security (Huysmans, 1998a), being critical appears as a necessary moment in
the research. The goal of a critical intellectual is not only to observe, but also to actively open spaces of discussion and
political action, as well as to provide the analytical tools, concepts and categories for possible alternative discourses and
practices. However, there are no clear guidelines for the critical researcher and no assessment of the impact of scholarship
on practice – or vice versa. Critical approaches to security have remained relatively silent about the role and the place of
the researcher in the political process, too often confining their posi- tion to a series of general statements about the
impossibility of objectivist science.19 The networked c.a.s.e. collective and the manifesto in which it found a first
actualization may be a first step toward a more precisely defined modality of political commitment while working as a
researcher. Writing collectively means assembling different types of knowledge and different forms of thinking. It means
articulating different horizons of the unknown. It is looking at this limit at which one cannot necessarily believe in
institutionalized forms of knowledge any longer, nor in the regimes of truth that are too often taken for granted. It is in
this sense that being critical is a question of limits and necessities, and writing collectively can therefore help to critically
define a modality for a more appropriate engagement with politics.
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Alternative – must resist policy approach
Discussion and understanding of security discourse is key to challenge it – policy solutions fail
Catherine Charrett, BA at the University of British Columbia International Catalan Institute for Peace, December 2009, “A Critical
Application of Securitization Theory: Overcoming the Normative Dilemma of Writing Security”,
http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/icip/Continguts/Publicacions/WorkingPapers/Arxius/WP7_ANG.pdf / KX
Critics of the CS have challenged its fixed conceptualization of security and its “apparent unwillingness to question the
content or meaning of security” (Wyn Jones 1999: 109). The role of the critical securitization analyst therefore, is to do
exactly what the CS has not, and that is to deconstruct and politicize security as a concept. In order to develop ‘new
thinking’ about security it is essential to understand how dominant modes of approaching security have previously ordered
subjectivities and how these subjectivities continue to regenerate certain emotions or actions such as political ‘othering’ or
social exclusion, or how they reinforce particular forms of governing. Walker argues that “security cannot be understood, or
reconceptualized or reconstructed without paying attention to the constitutive account of the political that has made the
prevailing accounts of security seem so plausible” (Walker 1997: 69). Here Walker asserts that it is necessary to understand
how notions of sovereignty and statism have delimited conceptualizations of security and how modern accounts of security
“engage in a discourse of repetitions, to affirm 33 over and over again the dangers that legitimize the sovereign authority
that is constituted precisely as a solution to dangers” (Walker 1997: 73). Modern accounts of security therefore remain
firmly embedded in a typically realist understanding of international relations which has structured approaches to
securitization and security policy. In order to demonstrate the restrictive approaches to security during the Cold War, for
example, Klein explores the clutch of ‘containment’ thinking through an examination of Robert McNamara’s discussion of
the shortcomings of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ approach to the Vietnam War. The argument posited here is
that the “prevailing mind-set of decision makers working within the operational code of the Containment allowed no room
for critical inquiry” into the failings of the Vietnam War. Klein argues that there was a complete “lack of imagination” of
how to respond to security threats and an incapacity to critique or learn from policy decisions embraced during this period
(Klein 1997: 361). We should therefore, not be surprised when we see similar security approaches repeated decades later,
argued here to be the result of restraining realist subjectivities and the reinforcement and repetition of hegemonic modes of
approaching security. Bellamy et al. argue that America’s response to 9/11 for instance, can be characterized “by a return to
dualistic and militaristic thinking patterns that dominated foreign policy during the Cold War” (Bellamy et al 2008: 3). As
was noted above realist orientated approaches to security embedded in a subjectivity of statism often have negative
implications for individual or global security, therefore an application of securitization which does not challenge dominant
modes of statist thinking will only serve to reinforce negative securitization practices. In order to overcome the normative
dilemma of writing security the securitization analyst must gain a nuanced understanding of the symbolic power of security,
how it shapes subjectivities and how they may be reoriented to promote alternative approaches to securitization.
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Alternative – marginal voices
Marginal voices must be incorporated into critiques of security
McDonald ’08, Matt McDonald, Senior Lecturer in International Relations @ Queensland, 2008, “Securitization and the
Construction of Security,” (http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/14/4/563, European Journal of International Relations, International
Relations 18 (1)).
In many ways this focus on dominant voices in the construction of security is not a problem for the Copenhagen School
alone. Traditional security proponents and some post-structuralists limit the number of actors deemed important in security
terms in focusing on either state policy or dominant discourses. While Copenhagen School proponents allow the possibility
for security actors and ‘securitizers’ other that state political leaders (Buzan et al., 1998: 31–3), this move is ultimately
closed off by the dual suggestions that security is ultimately about states (e.g. Wæver, 1989: 314; Wæver, 1995: 47–9) and
that security is articulated from a position of institutional power (Wæver, 1995: 57; Buzan et al., 1998: 32–3). The default
position here is therefore a focus on the political leaders of states and their designations of threat. The methodological focus
on speech acts might also be seen as relevant to this bias. As Jennifer Milliken (1999: 243–5) has argued, the tendency to
ignore subjugated knowledge or voices is a general inclination within discourse analytical approaches to international
relations. In short, the focus only on dominant voices and their designation of security and threat is normatively
problematic, contributing to the silencing of marginal voices and ignoring the ways in which such actors have attempted
precisely to contest these security constructions. But it also has problematic implications analytically. First, and echoing
criticisms noted above, it pays insufficient attention to the means through which particular articulations of security and
threat become possible: how, for example, are marginal actors and their articulations of security silenced or marginalized?
Focusing on these marginalized or subjugated actors could point to some of the ways in which ‘securitization’ becomes
possible, expanding the emphasis on ‘contexts’ noted in the previous section. Second, it arguably encourages the particular
logic of security which the Copenhagen School embraces. A range of (often marginal) actors contest dominant logics or
discourses of security and threat through articulating alternative (even emancipatory) discourses of security and threat
rather than simply arguing for ‘desecuritization’. Amnesty International’s campaign on human rights violations against
Kurdish populations in Turkey in the 1990s, for example, particularly questioned the justification of these violations on the
grounds of ‘security’. This was reflected in the title of its publication, Turkey: No Security Without Human Rights. For
such actors, security (defined in non-statist, non-exclusionary and non-militaristic ways) can be a means for — or site of —
emancipatory change. For the so-called Welsh School of critical security studies, focusing on the marginalized and
‘voiceless’ (Wyn Jones, 1999: 159) points to the ways in which potentially exclusionary, statist and militaristic security
discourses can be challenged and replaced without simply giving up on security as a political category. Here, it could be
argued that the choice within the Copenhagen School to ultimately limit attention to powerful actors and voices blinds its
proponents to the role of security as a site of competing discourses or images of politics, and even potentially as a site for
emancipation. Narrowness in this context has important normative implications that those using the framework would do
well to reflect upon.
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Alt solves – challenges security
Examinations like the alt key to challenging security reps
McDonald ’08, Matt McDonald, Senior Lecturer in International Relations @ Queensland, 2008, “Securitization and the
Construction of Security,” (http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/14/4/563, European Journal of International Relations, International
Relations 18 (1)).
Ultimately, those interested in the construction of security must pay attention to the social, political and historical contexts
in which particular discourses of security (even those defined narrowly in terms of the designation and articulation of
threat) become possible. Why are some political communities more likely to view certain actors and dynamics as
threatening? What role do narratives of history, culture and identity have in underpinning or legitimating particular forms of
securitization? To what extent is political possibility defined by the target audience of speech acts? How are some voices
empowered or marginalized to define security and threat? These highly contextual factors, I would suggest, are central to
understanding how security works in different contexts, but are ultimately given short shrift in the securitization
framework. The appeal of universalism in the development of a conceptual framework goes some way towards explaining
the neglect of contextual factors, but the failure also to draw out the ways in which securitizing actors and audiences
interact beyond the broad and amorphous recognition of ‘facilitating conditions’ and being ‘backed up’ by relevant
audiences is unsatisfying.
Alt solves- critique of representations breaks down security
McDonald ’08, Matt McDonald, Senior Lecturer in International Relations @ Queensland, 2008, “Securitization and the
Construction of Security,” (http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/14/4/563, European Journal of International Relations, International
Relations 18 (1)).
Analytically we need to recognize and explore the range of ways in which political communities and their values are
positioned by different actors, and explore the contexts in which particular security visions ‘win out’ over others. We
should also focus more on the understanding or discourse of security underpinning particular representations and practices
rather than the act of ‘securitizing’ or ‘desecuritizing’. Such a research agenda is clearly less elegant and more unwieldy
than the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework, whose attraction will always in part be the desire to simply apply
a set of universal and ready-made tools to different social, historical and political contexts. But resisting this attraction
means recognizing the breadth and complexity of the construction of security in global politics. A broader framework
would therefore have analytical value, but would also have potentially progressive normative implications. In
understanding how particular visions of security and the voices promoting them come to prominence, we can better
understand how alternative security discourses (that reject militarism, statism and exclusion, for example) can replace them.
Such a praxeological or normative concern with acknowledging possibilities for emancipatory change would work well if
combined with that which the Copenhagen School is able to contribute: a sociological concern with pointing to important
elements of the construction of the present.
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Alt solves China
Only US concessions and transparency can solve the China problem they reference
Martel and Yoshihara '3 -- *professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College AND **doctoral candidate at the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a research fellow at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (William
& Toshi, "Averting a Sino-U.S. Space Race," The Washington Quarterly, 26(4), p. 19-35, RG)
Perhaps it is too soon to conclude that Beijing and Washington are locked on a path toward a military space race. Because
of the potential for such competition, however, it is in both their interests to consider opportunities for cooperation that
would ensure that the space infrastructure remains a public good for the international community. One option could be to
develop [End Page 27] a series of measures to establish transparency in an effort to bolster mutual confidence, thus
decreasing the likelihood of competition in space. The incentives for establishing transparency that could lead to further
Sino-U.S. cooperation in space remain so woefully limited, however, that it may be years before these conditions could
prevail.
The term "transparency" basically refers to a condition of openness that allows states to signal their intentions and
capabilities by obtaining or exchanging information on items or activities that are of interest to the parties involved.
Transparency permits states to increase their confidence about whether an activity is taking place and, more importantly,
provides early warning of suspicious behavior. Although the term is generally associated with arms control, the concept of
transparency has broader applications, such as preserving openness in global financial transactions.
In practical terms, transparency requires se
veral key steps, including military-to-military contacts and broader exchanges (between weapons labs, for example) of
information on defense budgets, doctrine, plans and operations, decisionmaking processes, acquisition, and research and
development programs. In its most intrusive form, transparency involves full accounting of a declared activity or a
commitment to a treaty regime. The purpose of mutually understood declaratory policies and doctrines is to spell out the
rules of the game and thus those actions that could lead to confrontation. The goal is to enable each state to engage in
reciprocal and observable activities that signal a commitment to enforcing predictable rules of behavior in times of peace
and of crisis as part of a strategy to avoid the miscalculation that could lead to war.
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***A2: STUFF
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The plan cannot be re-configured or detached from its discursive underpinnings. The noble effort to
restrict the violence conducted by the United States is enframed by a larger structure of security logic
that writes the effort into a broader system of hegemonic power and economic domination.
Anthony Burke, Senior Lecturer @ School of Politics & IR @ Univ. of New South Wales, ‘7 [Beyond Security, Ethics and
Violence, p. 3-4]
These frameworks are interrogated at the level both of their theoretical conceptualisation and their practice: in their
influence and implementation in specific policy contexts and conflicts in East and Central Asia, the Middle East and the
'war on terror', where their meaning and impact take on greater clarity. This approach is based on a conviction that the
meaning of powerful political concepts cannot be abstract or easily universalised: they all have histories, often complex and
conflictual; their forms and meanings change over time; and they are developed, refined and deployed in concrete struggles
over power, wealth and societal form. While this should not preclude normative debate over how political or ethical
concepts should be defined and used, and thus be beneficial or destructive to humanity, it embodies a caution that the
meaning of concepts can never be stabilised or unproblematic in practice. Their normative potential must always be
considered in relation to their utilisation in systems of political, social and economic power and their consequent worldly
effects. Hence this book embodies a caution by Michel Foucault, who warned us about the 'politics of truth . . the battle
about the status of truth and the economic and political role it plays', and it is inspired by his call to 'detach the power of
truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time'.1
It is clear that traditionally coercive and violent approaches to security and strategy are both still culturally dominant, and
politically and ethically suspect. However, the reasons for pursuing a critical analysis relate not only to the most
destructive or controversial approaches, such as the war in Iraq, but also to their available (and generally preferable)
alternatives. There is a necessity to question not merely extremist versions such as the Bush doctrine, Indonesian militarism
or Israeli expansionism, but also their mainstream critiques - whether they take the form of liberal policy approaches in
international relations (IR), just war theory, US realism, optimistic accounts of globalisation, rhetorics of sensitivity to
cultural difference, or centrist Israeli security discourses based on territorial compromise with the Palestinians. The surface
appearance of lively (and often significant) debate masks a deeper agreement about major concepts, forms of political
identity and the imperative to secure them. Debates about when and how it may be effective and legitimate to use military
force in tandem with other policy options, for example, mask a more fundamental discursive consensus about the meaning
of security, the effectiveness of strategic power, the nature of progress, the value of freedom or the promises of national and
cultural identity. As a result, political and intellectual debate about insecurity, violent conflict and global injustice can
become hostage to a claustrophic structure of political and ethical possibility that systematically wards off critique.
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A2: Perm
Reconstructing security discourse fails. They change the content but maintain the imperialist form.
Identifying current policy as a threat to stability strengthens the exlusionary constructions of security.
Anthony Burke, Senior Lecturer @ School of Politics & IR @ Univ. of New South Wales, ‘7 [Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence,
p. 30-1]
Second, the force of such critiques shattered Realism's claim to be a founding and comprehensive account of security:
scattering its objects, methods, and normative aims into an often contradictory and antithetical dispersal. What was revealed
here was not a universality but a field of conflict - as much social as conceptual. This creates some serious problems for a
more radical and inclusive language of security, however important its desire for justice. This was recognised later by
Walker, who argued in 1997 that 'demands for broader accounts of security risk inducing epistemological overload'."
Indeed Simon Dalby argues that security, as a concept, may no longer be viable. He thinks that radical reformulations
suggest that: 'the political structures of modernity, patriarchy and capitalism are the sources [rather than the vulnerable
objects] of insecurity ... [are] so different as to call into question whether the term itself can be stretched to accommodate
such reinterpretations. Inescapably, it puts into question the utility of the term in political discourse after the Cold War."'
Thus humanist critiques of security uncover an aporia within the concept of security. An aporia is an event that prevents a
metaphysical discourse from fulfilling its promised unity: not a contradiction which can be brought into the dialectic,
smoothed over and resolved into the unity of the concept, but an untotalisable problem at the heart of the concept,
disrupting its trajectory, emptying out its fullness, opening out its closure. Jacques Derrida writes of aporia being an
'impasse', a path that cannot be travelled; an 'interminable experience' that, however, 'must remain if one wants to think, to
make come or to let come any event of decision or responsibility' 14
As an event, Derrida sees the aporia as something like a stranger crossing the threshold of a foreign land: yet the aporetic
stranger 'does not simply cross a given threshold' but 'affects the very experience of the threshold to the point of
annihilating or rendering indeterminate all the distinctive signs of a prior identity, beginning with the very border that
delineated a legitimate home and assured lineage, names and language •'•1 With this in mind, we can begin to imagine how
a critical discourse (the 'stranger' in the security state) can challenge and open up the self-evidence of security, its self- and
boundary-drawing nature, its imbrication with borders, sovereignty, identity and violence. Hence it is important to open up
and focus on aporias: they bring possibility, the hope of breaking down the hegemony and assumptions of powerful
political concepts, to think and create new social, ethical and economic relationships outside their oppressive structures of
political and epistemological order - in short, they help us to think new paths. Aporias mark not merely the failure of
concepts but a new potential to experience and imagine the impossible. This is where the critical and life-affirming
potential of genealogy can come into play.
My particular concern with humanist discourses of security is that, whatever their critical value, they leave in place (and
possibly strengthen) a key structural feature of the elite strategy they oppose: its claim to embody truth and to fix the
contours of the real. In particular, the ontology of security/threat or security/insecurity which forms the basic condition of
the real for mainstream discourses of international policy - remains powerfully in place, and security's broader function as a
defining condition of human experience and modern political life remains invisible and unexamined. This is to abjure a
powerful critical approach that is able to question the very categories in which our thinking, our experience and actions
remain confined.
This chapter remains focused on the aporias that lie at the heart of security, rather than pushing into the spaces that
potentially lie beyond. This is another project, one whose contours are already becoming clearer and which I address in
detail in Chapters 2 and 3•16 What this chapter builds is a genealogical account of security's origins and cultural power, its
ability to provide what Walker calls a 'constitutive account of the political' - as he says, 'claims about common security,
collective security, or world security do little more than fudge the contradictions written into the heart of modem politics:
we can only become humans, or anything else, after we have given up our humanity, or any other attachments, to the
greater good of citizenship' .17 Before we can rewrite security we have to properly understand how security has written us
how it has shaped and limited our very possibility, the possibilities for our selves, our relationships and our available
images of political, social and economic order. This, as Walker intriguingly hints, is also to explore the aporetic distance
that modernity establishes between our 'humanity' and a secure identity defined and limited by the state. In short, security
needs to be placed alongside a range of other economic, political, technological, philosophic and scientific developments as
one of the central constitutive events of our modernity, and it remains one of its essential underpinnings.
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A2: Perm
Focus on feasibility destroys our critical project. Their perm shores up the exclusivist discourse of
security.
Anthony Burke, Senior Lecturer @ School of Politics & IR @ Univ. of New South Wales, ‘7 [Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence,
p. 21-2]
A further argument of the CSS thinkers, one that adds a sharply conservative note to their normative discourse, needs
comment. This states that proposals for political transformation must be based on an identification of 'immanent
possibilities' for change in the present order. Indeed, Richard Wyn Jones is quite, militant about this:
[D]escriptions of a more emancipated order must focus on realizable utopias ... If [critical theorists] succumb to the
temptation of suggesting a blueprint for an emancipated order that is unrelated to the possibilities inherent in the present ...
[they] have no way of justifying their arguments epistemologically. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that a vision of an
emancipated order that is not based on immanent potential will be politically efficacious. 47
Certainly it is helpful to try to identify such potentials; but whatever the common sense about the practicalities of political
struggle this contains, I strongly reject the way Jones frames it so dogmatically. Even putting aside the analytical
ambiguities in identifying where immanent possibilities exist, such arguments are ultimately disabling and risk
denying the entire purpose of the critical project. It is precisely at times of the greatest pessimism, when new potentials
are being shut down or normative change is distinctly negative arguably true of the period in which I am writing - that the
critical project is most important. To take just one example from this book, any reader would recognise that my
arguments about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be extremely difficult to 'realise' (even though they
endorse a negotiated two-state solution). This only makes it more important to make them because the available contours of
the present, confined as they are within the masculinist ontology of the insecure nation-state, fail to provide a stable
platform either for peace or a meaningful security. In the face of such obstacles the critical project must think and conceive
the unthought, and its limiting test ought not to be realism but responsibility.
The realism underlying the idea of immanent possibility sets up an important tension between the arguments of this book
and the normative project of cosmopolitanism which was most famously set out by Kant in his Perpetual Peace as the
establishment of a 'federation of peoples' based on Republication constitutions and principles of universal hospitality, that
might result in the definitive abolition of the need to resort to war. 41 However, Kant's image of universal human
community and the elimination of war exists in fundamental tension with its foundation on a 'pacific federation' of national
democracies. With two terrible centuries' hindsight we know that republics have not turned out to be pacifistic vehicles of
cosmopolitan feeling; instead, in a malign convergence of the social contract with Clausewitzian strategy, they have too
often formed into exciusivist communities whose ultimate survival is premised upon violence. Is the nation-state the
reality claim upon which cosmopolitanism always founders? Could a critique of security, sovereignty and violence, along
the lines I set out here, help us to form a badly needed buttress for its structure?
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A2: Perm – realism coopts
Perm can’t solve – Realism can’t conceptualize itself.
Linklater, Senior Lecturer in Politics Monash University, 1990 [Andrew, Beyond Realism and Marxism, pp 14-15]
Although some realists and rationalist have argued for the transformation of world politics, most nevertheless emphasize the
limited opportunities for significant reform. On these grounds, most members of these traditions have been dismissive of the
revolutionist tradition. As noted above, several recent attempts to apply critical theory to international relations accept the
realist’s point that Marxism and critical sociology failed to recognize the importance of international systemic constraints.
From the perspective of critical theory, however, realism can only be true if the species is unfree. What realism offers is an
account of historical circumstances which human subject have yet to bring under their collective control. What it does not
possess is an account of the modes of political intervention which would enable human beings to take control of their
international history. That is the ultimate task facing the critical theory of international relations. An inquiry into the
alternative forms of foreign policy behavior cannot be divorced from the question of how to construct a post-realism analysis
of international relations. Rationalism and critical theory of world politics have a similar approach to this problem. Both reject
the method of analyzing the states-system as if it were a domain apart. Both regard the abstraction of the state-system as a
barrier to understanding one of the crucial dimensions of international relations: the universalization of the basic principles of
international order, and the universalizastion of the demand for the self-determination respectively. As for Waltz’s realism, the
problem is not that it fails as an account of the reproduction of the states-system, or that it errs by emphasizing the need for a
technically-rational dimension of foreign policy. The issue is whether the decision to abstract the states-system from other
domains ignores the existence of actual or potential logics of system-modification which may strengthen the bond of
international community; and it is whether the preoccupation with the systemic reproduction ends in a practice which
suppresses the tendencies inherent in alternative logics. Consequently, although realism succeeds in explaining the necessitous
character of international relations it fails to explicate its role in reproducing the power relations which it regards as the
objective foundation for the “impossibility theorem.”
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A2: State Good
Alt doesn’t do away with the state - it challenges security politics to create a more stable state.
Burke 7 [Anthony, Senior Lecturer @ School of Politics & IR @ Univ. of New South Wales, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence,
p. 81]
Whatever the power of its insight, the absolutist tendency of Foucault's rhetoric requires qualification. States and
governments are fundamentally ambiguous, simultaneously nurturing and dangerous. Thus the refusal of a type of
'individuality' and Being that ties individuals to the state and its commands is one that at least asserts some agency and
choice with regard to them; that engages them in refusal, dialogue and dissent without necessarily jettisoning them
completely (every 'Refusenik' or conscientious objector, who still considers themself a patriot, is just such one example of
the 'new forms of subjectivity' Foucault hints at). Nationstates and bureaucratic governments are certainly relatively recent
inventions, but as the dominant form of domestic society and the normative core of international society, they are not about
to disappear. Hence the urgency, not in doing away with states (as if that were possible), but in questioning their
ontologies, their politics of identity and otherness, their narratives and practices of history, responsibility and self.
Therefore, we should interpret Foucault's argument not as one for an egoistic, unconditioned form of liberation, but as a call
to enable new forms of Being and society that cut through and beyond the insecure national community and its technologies
of individualisation and power. That is: new forms of Being and society whose powers are ethically limited, yet whose
webs of relationship, dialogue and responsibility are theoretically unlimited. Hence, I would rewrite his argument to say:
we need to enable new forms of subjectivity, new kinds of selves who are not merely less credulous and pliable in the
hands of modem power, but who can build newly ethical, just and non-violent forms of relationship and interconnection,
and new social forms and institutions that can extend and preserve such relationships.
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A2: Cede the political
Turn – our poststructuralist stance is the only effective political strategy – the political has already been
ceded to the right – broadening the scope of politics is key to effective engagement.
Grondin 4 [David, master of pol sci and PHD of political studies @ U of Ottowa “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How
and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War,” http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf]
A poststructuralist approach to international relations reassesses the nature of the political. Indeed, it calls for the
repoliticization of practices of world politics that have been treated as if they were not political. For instance, limiting the
ontological elements in one’s inquiry to states or great powers is a political choice. As Jenny Edkins puts it, we need to
“bring the political back in” (Edkins, 1998: xii). For most analysts of International Relations, the conception of the
“political” is narrowly restricted to politics as practiced by politicians. However, from a poststructuralist viewpoint, the
“political” acquires a broader meaning, especially since practice is not what most theorists are describing as practice.
Poststructuralism sees theoretical discourse not only as discourse, but also as political practice. Theory therefore becomes
practice. The political space of poststructuralism is not that of exclusion; it is the political space of postmodernity, a
dichotomous one, where one thing always signifies at least one thing and another (Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 14).
Poststructuralism thus gives primacy to the political, since it acts on us, while we act in its name, and leads us to
identify and differentiate ourselves from others. This political act is never complete and celebrates undecidability, whereas
decisions, when taken, express the political moment. It is a critical attitude which encourages dissidence from traditional
approaches (Ashley and Walker, 1990a and 1990b). It does not represent one single philosophical approach or perspective,
nor is it an alternative paradigm (Tvathail, 1996: 172). It is a nonplace, a border line falling between international and
domestic politics (Ashley, 1989). The poststructuralist analyst questions the borderlines and dichotomies of modernist
discourses, such as inside/outside, the constitution of the Self/Other, and so on. In the act of definition, difference – thereby
the discourse of otherness – is highlighted, since one always defines an object with regard to what it is not (Knafo, 2004).
As Simon Dalby asserts, “It involves the social construction of some other person, group, culture, race, nationality or
political system as different from ‘our’ person, group, etc. Specifying difference is a linguistic, epistemological and, most
importantly, a political act; it constructs a space for the other distanced and inferior from the vantage point of the person
specifying the difference” (Dalby, cited in Tvathail, 1996: 179). Indeed, poststructuralism offers no definitive answers, but
leads to new questions and new unexplored grounds. This makes the commitment to the incomplete nature of the political
and of political analysis so central to poststructuralism (Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 15). As Jim George writes, “It is
postmodern resistance in the sense that while it is directly (and sometimes violently) engaged with modernity, it seeks to go
beyond the repressive, closed aspects of modernist global existence. It is, therefore, not a resistance of traditional grandscale emancipation or conventional radicalism imbued with authority of one or another sovereign presence. Rather, in
opposing the large-scale brutality and inequity in human society, it is a resistance active also at the everyday, com- munity,
neighbourhood, and interpersonal levels, where it confronts those processes that systematically exclude people from
making decisions about who they are and what they can be” (George, 1994: 215, emphasis in original). In this light,
poststructural practices are used critically to investigate how the subject of international relations is constituted in and
through the discourses and texts of global politics. Treating theory as discourse opens up the possibility of historicizing it. It
is a myth that theory can be abstracted from its socio-historical context, from reality, so to speak, as neorealists and
neoclassical realists believe. It is a political practice which needs to be contextualized and stripped of its purportedly neutral
status. It must be understood with respect to its role in preserving and reproducing the structures and power relations
present in all language forms. Dominant theories are, in this view, dominant discourses that shape our view of the world
(the “subject”) and our ways of understanding it.
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The political has already been ceded – try or die for the alternative.
Grondin 4 [David, master of pol sci and PHD of political studies @ U of Ottowa “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How
and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War,” http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf]
As American historian of U.S. foreign relations Michael Hogan observes in his study on the rise of the national security
state during the Truman administration, “the national security ideology framed the Cold War discourse in a system of
symbolic representation that defined America’s national identity by reference to the un-American ‘other,’ usually the Soviet
Union, Nazi Germany, or some other totalitarian power” (Hogan, 1998: 17). Such a binary system made it difficult for any
domestic dissent from U.S. policy to emerge – it would have “amounted to an act of disloyalty” (Hogan, 1998: 18).15While
Hogan distinguishes advocates from critics of the American national security state, his view takes for granted that there is a
given and fixed American political culture that differs from the “new” national security ideology. It posits an “American
way”, produced by its cultural, political, and historical experience. Although he stresses that differences between the two
sides of the discourse are superficial, pertaining solely to the means, rather than the ends of the national security state,
Hogan sees the national security state as a finished and legitimate state: an American state suited to the Cold War context of
permanent war, while stopping short of a garrison state: Although government would grow larger, taxes would go up, and
budget deficits would become a matter of routine, none of these and other transformations would add up to the crushing
regime symbolized in the metaphor of the garrison state. The outcome instead would be an American national security state
that was shaped as much by the country’s democratic political culture as it was by the perceived military imperatives of the
Cold War (Hogan, 1998: 22). I disagree with this essentialist view of the state identity of the United States. The United
States does not need to be a national security state. If it was and is still constructed as such by many realist discourses, it is
because these discourses serve some political purpose. Moreover, in keeping with my poststructuralist inclinations, I
maintain that identity need not be, and indeed never is, fixed. In a scheme in which “to say is to do”, that is, from a
perspective that accepts the performativity of language, culture becomes a relational site where identity politics happens
rather than being a substantive phenomenon. In this sense, culture is not simply a social context framing foreign policy
decision-making. Culture is “a signifying part of the conditions of possibility for social being, […] the way in which
culturalist arguments themselves secure the identity of subjects in whose name they speak” (Campbell, 1998:221). The
Cold War national security culture represented in realist discourses was constitutive of the American national security state.
There was certainly a conflation of theory and policy in the Cold War military-intellectual complex, which “were observers
of, and active participants in, defining the meaning of the Cold War. They contributed to portray the enemy that both
reflected and fueled predominant ideological strains within the American body politic. As scholarly partners in the national
security state, they were instrumental in defining and disseminating a Cold War culture” (Rubin, 2001: 15). This national
security culture was “a complex space where various representations and representatives of the national security state
compete to draw the boundaries and dominate the murkier margins of international relations” (Der Derian, 1992: 41). The
same Cold War security culture has been maintained by political practice (on the part of realist analysts and political
leaders) through realist discourses in the post-9/11 era and once again reproduces the idea of a national security state.
This (implicit) state identification is neither accidental nor inconsequential. From a poststructuralist vantage point, the
identification process of the state and the nation is always a negative process for it is achieved by exclusion, violence, and
margina-lization. Thus, a deconstruction of practices that constitute and consolidate state identity is necessary: the writing
of the state must be revealed through the analysis of the discourses that constitute it. The state and the discourses that
(re)constitute it thus frame its very identity and impose a fictitious “national unity” on society; it is from this fictive
and arbitrary creation of the modernist dichotomous discourses of inside/outside that the discourses (re)constructing the
state emerge. It is in the creation of a Self and an Other in which the state uses it monopolistic power of legitimate violence
– a power socially constructed, following Max Weber’s work on the ethic of responsibility – to construct a threatening
Other differentiated from the “unified” Self, the national society (the nation).16 It is through this very practice of normative
statecraft,17 which produces threatening Others, that the international sphere comes into being. David Campbell adds that it
is by constantly articulating danger through foreign policy that the state’s very conditions of existence are generated18.
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We don’t cede the political – the alt opens up new, better space for political practices
Gunhild Hoogensen and Kirsti Stuvøy, Department of Political Science, University of Tromsø, Norway, June 2006, “Gender,
Resistance and Human Security”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 37 No. 2, pg. 221-222 / KX
Human security can direct analytical attention to security as a life-world phenomenon in a societal context and, inspired by
gender theory, provides an epistemological attitude for engaging practices of security in non-state domains, exploring
contextually dependent securities and insecurities. The characterization of human security as people-centred and vested in
the individual but realized intersubjectively in specific local contexts forms the core of our understanding of human security
as an epistemic attitude to empirical security studies. It suggests that the way to understand and to establish knowledge
about security in empirical terms is to enter people’s life-worlds and access local experiences of in/securities. Such an
approach to studying world politics resonates in the work of Tétreault, who criticizes the limited imaginary that informs the
narrow conceptualization of political space as structures (e.g. rules, beliefs, laws, acts, agencies) that constrain the domain
of the political to the nation-state, thereby marginalizing other forms of political practice (see, for example, Tétreault, 2005:
180). Political practices are comprehended as institutionalized practices. To the contrary, Tétreault argues that political
practice constitutes all actions initiated to challenge the management of politics. Political space is established as a common
enterprise of humans: ‘Speech and action create politics, spaces of appearance in which people have the power to make the
world. People matter!’ (Tétreault, 2005: 185). Analysis of world politics, therefore, concerns how social individuals enter
political space and create support and legitimacy for their political projects (Tétreault, 2005: 181). In the context of security
studies, this concern with creating political space directs attention to the actors, whose practices aim at creating secure
spaces (Hoogensen, 2005a: 125). Security is not only about the recognition of threats but also about building capacities to
create secure spaces. This focus on agency reflects upon the fundamental commitment of gender theory pertaining to the
investigation of women’s lives ‘within states or international structures in order to change or reconstitute them’ (Tickner,
2005: 7). In terms of an epistemic attitude to empirical studies of human security, the analytical focus should therefore be
on practices of capacity-building and enabling in specific life-world contexts.
Focusing on policy relevance obscures sources of suffering in search for political threats – it elevates
realist ontology above individual security
Alex J. Bellamy and Matt McDonald, School of Political Science and International Studies, at the University of Queensland,
September 2002, “The Utility of Human Security’: Which Humans? What Security? A Reply to Thomas & Tow” Security Dialogue
Vol. 33 No. 3, pg. 374 / KX
Second, Thomas & Tow’s understanding of human security prioritizes ‘death by politics’ over ‘death by economics’.3 This
shift comes when they argue that the hu-man security agenda needs to ‘provide tan-gible threat parameters’ (p. 181). In
order to prevent human security from becoming ‘too amorphous and therefore question-able’, Thomas & Tow propose
demarcating between general and specific threats, which they confess means emphasizing the threat from terrorism over
and above the threat from malnutrition. Thus, they argue that humanitarian intervention and peacebuild-ing operations are
the most effective practi-cal strategies for responding to human se-curity threats. By fortunate coincidence, such strategies
‘dovetail’ with the continua-tion of a statist conception of security. It appears that the sole criterion used by Tho-mas &
Tow for singling out ‘specific’ over ‘general’ threats, and statist rather than non-statist solutions, is so-called ‘policy
relevance’. This is deeply problematic, be-cause it allows realist ontology to ‘trump’ the security of individuals. If we were
to follow Thomas & Tow, therefore, we would argue that the needs of human security dic-tated that terrorism, which kills
fewer than 5,000 people per year – even in a year as unusually bloody as 2001 – should be given political priority (and
hence more re-sources) over the ‘general’ threat of malnu-trition, which kills over 40,000 people every day. Thomas & Tow
focus their analysis on areas of human security prioritized by the West in terms of ‘death by politics’ and the strategies for
addressing those threats in terms of intervention. What they overlook, however, is that the threats they identify are not the
most prescient ones globally, nor will the interventionist strategies they advocate deal with the global human inse-curity
predicament. Although the West be-came more interventionist in the 1990s, the result has not been an easing of the human
insecurity predicament. Rather, while there are certainly more elections around the world, there is also more inequality,
more malnutrition, more refugees and more pre-ventable disease than there was before Western states became ‘good
international citizens’. It is also worth bearing in mind that the Third World pays nine times more to the West in debt
servicing than the West gives to the Third World in humanitarian assistance and development aid.
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Schmitt’s wrong – he neglects the strategic location of security
Thomas Moore , Department of Social and Political Studies, University of Westminster, 2007, “Epistemic Security Regimes”, pg.
24-30 / KX
Schmitt is more interested in the metaphorical or fictive landscape of the leviathan than in examining the epistemic
foundations of a security regime through complex processes of authorization. Where Hobbes constructs a nuanced
understanding of the way in which security is authorized within the state, Schmitt presumes that auctoritas and summa
potestas do not require such authorization. In keeping the substantive questions of authorization off the political agenda
(especially those dealing with contract) the state is able to enforce the security regime, Page 25 of 30 turning citizens into
docile subjects: ‘If protection ceases, the state ceases, and every obligation to obey ceases’ (Schmitt, [1938] 1996: 50). Risk
builds the Schmittian security regime. But whereas Schmitt thinks that Hobbes has solved the problem of political order (by
instituting a legal order which guarantees security) we should keep in mind the way in which risk is contingently
constructed. In this regard, we are well served by Ulrich Beck’s account of ‘world risk society’ in which the management of
risk becomes the core mission of the state. Schmitt’s need to justify the existence of absolute command within the state, an
apologia for both summa auctoritas and summa potestas, is not sufficiently critical to question the difference between
security as a condition and security as a regime. World risk society thus becomes, as Beck details, ‘how to feign control
over the uncontrollable’ (Beck, 2002: 41). Schmitt treats security as a condition, something to be attained rather than, as the
word ‘regime’ suggests, a network of power relations which determines the conditions under which a system occurs or is
maintained. In this respect, we should reject Schmitt’s naturalisation of Hobbesian political epistemology, because it
neglects the strategic location of ‘security’ in justifying the state. A state which seeks to build friendship across and
between other states (as distinct from the state which builds alliances) is met with condemnation by Schmitt. For Schmitt,
‘it would be a mistake to believe that a nation could eliminate the distinction of friend and enemy by declaring its
friendship for the entire world or by voluntarily disarming itself’ (Schmitt, [1932] 1996: 52). The failure of the state to
define the enemy concretely endangers the Hobbesian reason of state; namely, the mutual relation between protection and
obedience. This leads Schmitt to claim that ‘protego ergo obligo is the cogito ergo sum of the state’ (Schmitt, [1932] 1996:
52). Page 26 of 30 Taking protego ego obligo as the reason of state involves the marginalisation of the contractual
foundations of the security regime. Christopher Hill’s call for academic international relations to open itself up to the vox
populi can only succeed if the contractual basis of the security regime is scrutinized (Hill, 1999: 122). Schmitt’s
unidirectional understanding of security looks in admiration at the armature of the modern state – the army, the police, the
legal system – but fails to appreciate the epistemic foundations of security. Foucault’s observation that political theory has
‘never ceased to be obsessed with the person of the sovereign’ provides an illuminating critique of Schmittian state theory
(Foucault, 1980: 121). Schmitt cannot imagine security without the logic of the friend and enemy grouping. Forged through
the binary of antagonism, his security regime pays little heed to the Arendtian concept of excellence – aretē and virtus – in
the public sphere. Whilst Arendt’s account of excellence unduly reinforces the division of space into public and private
there is utility in considering how Schmitt’s public political space (the state) narrows the opportunity for innovation,
excellence, and creativity. Arendt intimates that the ‘public realm, as the common world, gathers us together and yet
prevents us falling over each other, so to speak’ (Arendt, 1958: 52). Schmitt’s security regime, carried metaphorically
through the leviathan, is less benign than the account of the public realm offered by Arendt. Were Schmitt to talk of the
state in terms of ‘gather us together’ it would be to signal the need for democratic homogeneity across a political
community. The technology of this political community is the state, supported by the leviathan which Schmitt describes as
potentially ‘the most total of all totalities’ (Schmitt, [1938] 1996: 82). Page 27 of 30 Schmitt is troubled by the fact that the
leviathan, the most total of all totalities, no longer commands the respect it enjoyed in the early modern period. This is
because the modern state has become a site in which the expression of the political is characterised by heterogeneity rather
than homogeneity. Multiple expressions of the political undermine the binding force of the leviathan. This means that the
security regime is unable to function in terms of summa auctoritas and summa potestas. The leviathan is now a ‘museum
curiosity’ which can ‘no longer make a sinister impression’ (Schmitt, [1938] 1996: 82). The decline of the leviathan image
is due to the fact that in becoming the dominant technology of the state the ‘huge whale’ was eventually caught (Schmitt,
[1938] 1996: 82). The capacity of the leviathan image to regulate conduct now comes to an end as democratic pluralism
unleashes itself on the popular imagination. If democratic homogeneity aimed at the unitary expression of the political,
defining the friend and enemy grouping without ambiguity, then democratic pluralism withdraws itself from the security
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regime. The leviathan lost signals the colonisation of the Hobbesian reason of state by ‘political’ liberalism. Measured
against the Schmittian concept of the political the liberal reason of state is weak. Its right to be called ‘political’ reason is
doubtful, owing to the fact that in expanding the points at which decisions are to be made it delegitimates the summa
auctoritas and summa potestas of the leviathan. Schmitt admires the technology of power instituted through Hobbesian
legal positivism. Yet Schmitt simplifies the Hobbesian theory of state, transposing the image of leviathan directly onto the
contours of the modern state. The dilemmas of authorization, are left off the agenda. Page 28 of 30 The generic rendering of
security in realist international relations presumes that there is only ‘one way to skin a cat’. Joseph S. Nye, for example,
once commented that it is not ‘very helpful when some realists urge NATO expansion while others deplore it’ (Nye, 1998:
167). When traditions are so concerned with defending themselves against their critics that they neglect the different ways
in which political claims are justified then extensive excavation of traditions is, in fact, required. Looking back to Thomas
Hobbes and Carl Schmitt should not be regarded as a form of ‘heritage’ international relations (Booth, 1995: 108). The
increasing literature on Carl Schmitt demonstrates that international relations has not lost its capacity to generate dangerous,
risky questions. Jeffrey C Isaacs famously remarked that ‘political theory fiddles while the fire of freedom spreads, and
perhaps the world burns’ (Isaac, 1995: 649). According to Isaacs the professionalisation of academia has meant that
theorists have ‘become ensnared in their various disciplinary matrices. Preoccupied with situating ourselves vis-à-vis the
writing of Strauss and Arendt, Adorno and Lyotard, we have become puzzle solvers of the problems of others, focusing on
approved topics, following academic conventions’ (Isaac, 1995: 642). Taking Carl Schmitt as a foundation for investigating
the epistemic status of security regimes is not an inward looking act. Schmitt has never been an approved topic in
international relations. Nor does Schmitt present the international system as a puzzle ready to be solved. Positioning
Schmitt vis-à-vis Hobbes tests the limits of authorization within a security regime. If a security regime is treated
exclusively in terms of danger—involving the perpetual working out of pre-agreed understandings of the form and content
of danger, risk and security—then international relations itself Page 29 of 30 is destined to overlook the way in which
security constitutes itself authoritatively through fiction.
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Be skeptical of their authors—security has infiltrated into their writings and disrupted neutrality
Webb 9 (Dave Webb is a Professor of Engineering Modeling, Director of the 'Praxis Centre" (a multidisciplinary research centre for
the 'Study of Information Technology to Peace, Conflict and Human Rights') and a member of the School of Applied Global Ethics at
Leeds Metropolitan University. "Securing Outer Space"; "Space Weapons: Dream, nightmare or reality?" Routledge Critical Security
Studies Series, 2009,
It appears therefore that the military industrial complex is hard at work here. The US aerospace companies are very good
lobbyists - they are constantly reminding politicians about the number of jobs that they are generating in their
constituencies and they make large donations to both Republican and Democrat parties. They are the sellers of the dreams
of ultimate political control of space and of the Hatth in return for billion-dollar contracts. The politicians don't know
enough about physics to question the projects in any details and nowadays there is a third partner in all this - the
universities. The academic world is increasingly involved as funding for science and engineering research projects at
univcrsirics comes increasingly to depend on the military and aerospace companies - it is questionable as to whether they
can be considered to be neutral and to give unbiased advice to government.
Even if their impacts are true, injection of security politicizes engagement and dooms solvency.
Huysman 98 [JEF HUYSMANS is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the Open
UniversitySecurity! What Do You Mean?: From Concept to Thick Signifier European Journal of International Relations 1998; 4; 226]
Approaching security as a thick signifier pushes the conceptual analysis further. It starts from the assumption that the
category security implies a particular formulation of questions, a particular arrangement of material. But, instead of
stopping at the conceptual framework by means of which the material can be organized into a recognizable security
analysis, one searches for key dimensions of the wider order of meaning within which the framework itself is embedded. In
a thick signifier analysis, one tries to understand how security language implies a specific metaphysics of life. The
interpretation does not just explain how a security story requires the definition of threats, a referent object, etc. but also how
it defines our relations to nature, to other human beings and to the self. In other words, interpreting security as a thick
signifier brings us to an understanding of how the category 'security' articulates a particular way of organizing forms of life.
For example, Ole Wver has shown how security language organizes our relation to other people via the logic of war (Wver,
1995); James Der Derian has indicated how it operates in a Hobbesian framework by contrasting it with Marx's, Nietzsche's
and Baudrillard's interpretation of security (Der Derian, 1993; also Williams, forthcoming); Michael Dillon has argued that
our understanding of security is embedded in an instrumental, technical understanding of knowledge and a particular
conception of politics by contrasting it with the concept of truth as aletheia and politics as tragedy in the Greek sense
(Dillon, 1996); J. Ann Tickner has outlined the gendered nature of security by disclosing how security studies/policies
privilege male security experiences while marginalizing the security feelings of women (Tickner, 1991: 32 5, 1992).
A thick signifier approach is also more than a deepening of the conceptual approach. While conceptual analyses of security
in JR assume an external reality to which security refers an (in)security condition in a thick signifier approach 'security'
becomes self referential. It does not refer to an external, objective reality but establishes a security situation by itself. It is
the enunciation of the signifier which constitutes an (in)security condition. 5 Thus, the signifier has a performative rather
than a descriptive force. Rather than describing or picturing a condition, it organizes social relations into security relations.
For example, if a society moves from an economic approach of migration to a security approach, the relation between
indigenous people and migrants and its regulation change (among others, instead of being a labour force, migrants become
enemies of a society) (Huysmans, 1995, 1997). Since the signifier 'security' does not describe social relations but changes
them into security relations, the question is no longer if the security story gives a true or false picture of social relations.
The question becomes: How does a security story order social relations? What are the implications of politicizing an issue
as a security problem? The question is one of the politics of the signifier rather than the true or false quality of its
description (or explanation).
Security is not just a signifier performing an ordering function. It also has a 'content' in the sense that the ordering it
performs in a particular context is a specific kind of ordering. It positions people in their relations to themselves, to nature
and to other human beings within a particular discursive, symbolic order. This order is not what we generally understand
under 'content of security' (e.g. a specific threat) but refers to the logic of security. This is not a configuration (such as the
Cold War) or a form (such as the framework that a conceptual analysis explores) but an ensemble of rules that is immanent
to a security practice and that defines the practice in its specificity (Foucault, 1969: 63). I will use the Foucaultian concept
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'discursive formation' to refer to this ordering logic which the signifier articulates.' Different dimensions of this formation
have been explored by Walker, Wver, Der Derian, Dillon, Dalby and others. In the next section I will try to contribute to
this literature by interpreting security as a strategy constituting and mediating our relation to death.
The thick signifier approach also formulates a separate research agenda in security studies. In that sense it is more
ambitious than a conceptual analysis or a definition. The latter serve an already existing agenda and concentrate on
correctly defining and explaining security questions in International Relations. This agenda exists largely independently of
the conceptual interest in the meaning of security. This is not the case in the thick signifier approach. It implies in itself a
security studies agenda which interprets security practices by means of interpreting the meaning of security, that is, the
signifying and, thus, ordering work of security practices. How does security order social relations? What does a security
problematic imply? What does the signifier do to the discussion of the free movement of persons in the EU, for example?
Rather than being a tool of clarification serving an agenda, the exploration of the meaning of security is the security studies
agenda itself. The main purpose is to render problematic what is mostly left axiomatic, what is taken for granted, namely
that security practices order social life in a particular way. This brings two important elements into security studies which
are not present in the traditional agenda supported by definitions and Wolfers' and Baldwin's conceptual analyses. First, as
already argued, it adds an extra layer to the exploration of the meaning of security. It introduces the idea that besides
definitions and conceptual frameworks, the meaning of security also implies a particular way of organizing forms of life. It
leads to interpretations of how security practices and our (IR) understandings of them are embedded in a cultural tradition
of modernity (Walker, 1986). Second, interpreting security as a thick signifier also moves the research agenda away from
its techno instrumental or managerial orientation. The main question is not to help the political administration in its job of
identifying and explaining threats in the hope of improving the formulation of effective counter measures. Rather, the
purpose of the thick signifier approach is to lay bare the political work of the signifier security, that is, what it does, how it
determines social relations.
This introduces normative questions into the heart of the agenda. The way these questions are introduced differs from the
normative dimension of security policies which Classical Realists sometimes discussed. For example, Arnold Wolfers'
classic piece (1962: 147 65) on national security argues that security is a value among other social values, such as wealth.
This implies that a security policy implicitly or explicitly defines the importance of security in comparison with other
values (to put the question crudely how much do we spend on nuclear weapons that we cannot spend on health care?). The
policy also has to decide the
level of security that is aspired to (for example, minimum or maximum security (see also Herz, 1962: 237 41)). But, this
normative 'awareness' does not capture the basic normative quality of security utterances that the thick signifier approach
introduces. If security practices constitute a security situation, a normative question is introduced which, in a sense,
precedes the value oriented decisions Wolfers refers to. One has to decide not only how important security is but also if one
wants to approach a problem in security terms or not. 7 To make the point in oversimplified terms (especially by bracketing
the intersubjective character of the politics of the signifier) once security is enunciated, a choice has been made and the
politics of the signifier is at work. The key question, then, is how to enunciate security and for what purpose.
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Depiction of threats is never neutral. If they are real it’s only because they are accepted as such
Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Assistant-Secretary-General at the United Nations, Master of Science in Foreign Service
from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Professor in Department of Politics at Northeastern University, 20 09,
“Securing Outer Space”
It should be clear from the above that the approach taken here eschews an "essentialist" reading of security issues. In other
words, what is posited is that meaning and identity can never be fixed since there is, as Laclau and Mouffe suggest, no
"underlying principle Cor essence} fixing — and hence -constituting the whole field of differences" (1985: 111). In this
sense, since meaning and identity are not intrinsic and are always relational, never self-present or self-engendered, they are
unstable and in constant need of reiteration. What this enables, is an understanding of meaning and of the contestation over
meaning(s) - such as that related to the weaponization of space discourse - that is intimately political. Within the context of
security studies, and informed by the above, this approach is also intimately associated with an understanding of security as
a speech act as developed by Ole Weaver and the Copenhagen School (Buzan et aL 1998). In short, and in relation to the
above discussion on essence, treating security as a speech act means, as Ole Weaver explains, that you do not understand it
as "a sign that refers to something more real, the utterance itself'is the act." (Waever 1995: 55). In other words, what makes
a security issue a security issue is not the fact that the threat is itself intrinsically a security threat, but that it is framed as
such by calling it one. However, this does not simply mean that making an issue a security issue occurs solely in the
ideational realm. On the contrary, by making an issue a security issue, certain practices and technologies associated with
security are deployed in order to neutralize what has been deemed a "security threat." Understanding something as a
security issue is thus never a neutral enterprise. Furthermore, through this understanding of security, more security is not
always a good thing. Understanding security in this way has thus led to calls to either desecuririze certain issues or to not
make an issue a security issue in the first place — e.g. immigration (Huysmans 1995) or the environment (Deudney 1990).
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The LITANY of Departures From Realism and Failure of “Systemic Punishment” Disproves Their
Theory.
Ronald R. Krebs, Faculty Fellow - Government @ University of Texas at Austin, Donald D. Harrington, Prof. of Political
Science Univ. of Minnesota, ‘6 [Rhetoric, Strategy, and War: Language, Power, and the Making of US Security Policy,
http://www.polisci.umn.edu/~mirc/paper2006-07/fall2006/Krebs.pdf]
Structural realists, focusing on the imperatives to security- or power-maximization that states must obey if they are to
survive in the anarchic international system, are simply uninterested in domestic debate of any sort. They have long argued
that these systemic imperatives, derived from the distribution of material power and perhaps geography, constitute an
objective “national interest” that must be the chief driver of foreign policy.23 When states, for whatever reason, behave in
contrary ways, they will eventually suffer punishment for their foolishness.24 But are there really such objective systemic
dictates? The very fact that American structural realists frequently rail against US foreign policy suggests that departures
from realist expectations are hardly exceptional. The typical realist response is that in these cases actors with more
parochial or moralistic perspectives have hijacked policy, but realists, with their inattention to domestic politics, are then
hard pressed to explain when such views hold sway.25 Moreover, the fact that such “hijackings” are so common suggests
either that the system does not often punish states for disobeying its rules, in which case the structural logic collapses,
or that there are no such rules in the first place. Structural realism imagines foreign policy as an exceptional realm above
the political fray. Yet, even when the house is on fire, foreign policy lies in the realm of choice, not compulsion, and thus
very much in the realm of the political.
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The alt solves their claims of IR inevitability – there is no objective way of viewing geopolitics. Actively
questioning how we know what we know is necessary to understand all politics.
Grondin 4 [David, master of pol sci and PHD of political studies @ U of Ottowa “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How
and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War,” http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf]
Neorealist and neoclassical realism offer themselves up as a narrative of the world institutional order. Critical approaches
must therefore seek to countermemorialize “those whose lives and voices have been variously silenced in the process of
strategic practices” (Klein, 1994: 28). The problem, as revealed in the debate between gatekeepers of the subfield of
Strategic Studies (Walt, 1991), is that those analyses that contravene the dominant discourse are deemed insignificant by
virtue of their differing ontological and epistemological foundations. Approaches that deconstruct theoretical practices in
order to disclose what is hidden in the use of concepts such as “national security” have something valuable to say. Their
more reflexive and critically-inclined view illustrates how terms used in realist discourses, such as state, anarchy, world
order, revolution in military affairs, and security dilemmas, are produced by a specific historical, geographical and sociopolitical context as well as historical forces and social relations of power (Klein, 1994: 22). Since realist analysts do not
question their ontology and yet purport to provide a neutral and objective analysis of a given world order based on military
power and interactions between the most important political units, namely states, realist discourses constitute a political act
in defense of the state. Indeed, “[…] it is important to recognize that to employ a textualizing approach to social policy
involving conflict and war is not to attempt to reduce social phenomena to various concrete manifestations of language.
Rather, it is an attempt to analyze the interpretations governing policy thinking. And it is important to recognize that policy
thinking is not unsituated” (Shapiro, 1989a: 71). Policy thinking is practical thinking since it imposes an analytic order on
the “real world”, a world that only exists in the analysts’ own narratives. In this light, Barry Posen’s political role in
legitimizing American hegemonic power and national security conduct seems obvious: U.S. command of the commons
provides an impressive foundation for selective engagement. It is not adequate for a policy of primacy. […] Command of
the commons gives the United States a tremendous capability to harm others. Marrying that capability to a conservative
policy of selective engagement helps make U.S. military power appear less threatening and more tolerable. Command of the
commons creates additional collective goods for U.S. allies. These collective goods help connect U.S. military power to
seemingly prosaic welfare concerns. U.S. military power underwrites world trade, travel, global telecommunications, and
commercial remote sensing, which all depend on peace and order in the commons” (Posen, 2003: 44 and 46). Adopting a
more critical stance, David Campbell points out that “[d]anger is not an objective condition. It (sic) is not a thing which
exists independently of those to whom it may become a threat. […] Nothing is a risk in itself; [...] it all depends on how one
analyses the danger, considers the event” (Campbell, 1998: 1-2). In the same vein, national security discourse does not
evaluate objective threats; rather, it is itself a product of historical processes and structures in the state and society that
produces it. Whoever has the power to define security is then the one who has the authority to write legitimate security
discourses and conduct the policies that legitimize them. The realist analysts and state leaders who invoke national security
and act in its name are the same individuals who hold the power to securitize threats by inserting them in a discourse that
frames national identity and freezes it.9 Like many concepts, realism is essentially contested. In a critical reinterpretation
of realism, James Der Derian offers a genealogy of realism that deconstructs the uniform realism represented in IR: he
reveals many other versions of realism that are never mentioned in International Relations texts (Der Derian, 1995: 367). I
am aware that there are many realist discoursesin International Relations, but they all share a set of assumptions, such as
“the state is a rational unitary actor”, “the state is the main actor in international relations”, “states pursue power defined as
a national interest”, and so on. I want to show that realism is one way of representing reality, not the reflection of
reality. While my aim here is not to rehearse Der Derian’s genealogy of realism, I do want to spell out the problems with a
positivist theory of realism and a correspondence philosophy of language. Such a philosophy accepts nominalism, wherein
language as neutral description corresponds to reality. This is precisely the problem of epistemic realism and of the realism
characteristic of American realist theoretical discourses. And since for poststructuralists language constitutes reality, a
reinterpretation of realism as constructed in these discourses is called for.10 These scholars cannot refer to the “essentially
contested nature of realism” and then use “realism as the best language to reflect a self-same phenomenon” (Der Derian,
1995: 374). Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that the many neorealist and neoclassical realist discourses in International
Relations are not useful. Rather, I want to argue that these technicist and scientist forms of realism serve political purposes,
used as they are in many think tanks and foreign policy bureaucracies to inform American political leaders. This is the
relevance of deconstructing the uniform realism (as used in International Relations): it brings to light its locatedness in a
[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
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[CONTINUED…NO TEXT REMOVED]
hermeneutic circle in which it is unwittingly trapped (Der Derian, 1995: 371). And as Friedrich Kratochwil argues, “[…]
the rejection of a correspondence theory of truth does not condemn us, as it is often maintained, to mere ‘relativism’ and/or
to endless “deconstruction” in which anything goes but it leaves us with criteria that allows us to distinguish and evaluate
competing theoretical creations” (Kratochwil, 2000: 52).
Given that political language is not a neutral medium that gives expression to ideas formed independently of structures of
signification that sustain political action and thought, American realist discourses belonging to the neorealist or neoclassical
realist traditions cannot be taken as mere descriptions of reality. We are trapped in the production of discourses in which
national leaders and security speech acts emanating from realist discourses develop and reinforce a notion of national
identity as synony- mous with national security. U.S. national security conduct should thus be understood through the prism
of the theoretical discourses of American political leaders and realist scholars that co-constitute it. Realist discourses depict
American political leaders acting in defense of national security, and political leaders act in the name of national security. In
the end, what distinguishes realist discourses is that they depict the United States as having behaved like a national security
state since World War II, while legitimating the idea that the United States should continue to do so. Political scientists and
historians “are engaged in making (poesis), not merely recording or reporting” (Medhurst, 2000: 17). Precisely in this
sense, rhetoric is not the description of national security conduct; it constitutes it.
Realism creates a death drive.
Der Derian 98 [JAMES, ON SECURITY, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/lipschutz12.html]
In epistemic realism, the search for security through sovereignty is not a political choice but the necessary reaction to an
anarchical condition: Order is man-made and good; chaos is natural and evil. Out of self-interest, men must pursue this
good and constrain the evil of excessive will through an alienation of individual powers to a superior, indeed supreme,
collective power. In short, the security of epistemic realism is ontological, theological and teleological: that is,
metaphysical. We shall see, from Marx's and Nietzsche's critiques, the extent to which Hobbesian security and epistemic
realism rely on social constructions posing as apodictic truths for their power effects. There is not and never was a "state of
nature" or a purely "self-interested man"; there is, however, clearly an abiding fear of violent and premature death that
compels men to seek the security found in solidarity.
Realism operates as a state control mechanism – we’re told we are violent and hence we become violent.
Bleiker 2K [Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Page 16, Google Books]
Human agency is not something that exists in an a priori manner and can be measured scientifically in reference to external
realities. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as human agency, for its nature and its function are, at least in part,
determined by how we think about human action and its potential to shape political and social practices. The mutually
constituted and constantly shilling relationship between agents and discourses thus undermines the possibility of observing
social dynamics in a value-free way. To embark on such an endeavour nevertheless is to superimpose a static image upon a
series of events that can only be understood in their fluidity. It is to objectivise a very particular and necessarily subjective
understanding of agency and its corresponding political practices. The dangers of such an approach have been debated
extensively. Authors such as Richard Ashley, Jim George and Steve Smith have shown how positivist epistemologies have
transformed one specific interpretation of world political realities, the dominant realist one, into reality per se ." Realist
perceptions of the international have'. gradually become accepted as common sense. to the point that any critique against
them has to be evaluated in terms of an already existing and obiectivised world-view. There are powerful mechanisms of
control precisely in this ability to determine meaning and rationality. 'Defining common sense', Smith thus argues, is 'the
ultimate act of political power'." It separates the possible from the impossible and directs the theory and practice of
international relations on a particular path.
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Realism mandates the perpetual fact of conflict – anarchy is constructed, not natural
Michael Sheehan, Assistant-Secretary-General at the United Nations, Master of Science in Foreign Service from the Georgetown
University School of Foreign Service, 2005, “International Security An Analytical Survey”
In the anarchic international environment all states maintain military capabilities for their own defense. In wartime there is
a clear military advantage gained from having larger armed forces and superior weapons systems or military doctrine. Other
states can use methods such as spying to try to uncover the secrets of potential enemies, but failing that they are forced to
estimate as best they can what the true military capabilities of these potential enemies are. When they are not sure just how
great the threat or capabilities are, they assume the worst, believing that it is safer to overestimate a threat and plan for it,
than to underestimate it and be overwhelmed if it materializes. This situation gives rise to a fundamental element of realist
security thinking, the security dilemma. In the international anarchy, "the self-help attempts of states to look after their
security needs, tend, regardless of intention to lead to rising insecurity for others as each interprets its own measures as
defensive and the measures of others as potentially threatening" (Herz, 1950: 157). States cannot escape the security di
lemma; because military power is not inherently defensive, it will always appear offensive to others, regardless of whether
or not it is being acquired for offensive purposes. Nicholas 1. Wheeler and Ken Booth define the dilemma in terms of the
unresolvable uncertainty "that exists in the minds of one set of decision makers as to whether the intentions of another set
are benign or malign" (Wheeler and Booth, 1996: 4). The armed forces of other states in the system always appear to be
threatening, and any change in their size or capability triggers a rise in feelings of insecurity. States cannot be certain about
the intentions of other countries and therefore they err on the side of pessimistic caution and shape their policies in relation
to the capabilities possessed by other states, rather than in relation to possible intentions. Bradley Klein has called this the
grand master narrative of Western strategic discourse, "the Gothic Hobbesian- ism of a tightly structured, statist "state of
war" in which all states find them- selves confronting an ineluctable security dilemma" (Klein, 1988: 297).
Realism is doomed to eternal war – it’s not a realistic mode of security
Simon Dalby, Profesor @ Carleton University, September 2008, “GEOPOLITICS, GRAND STRATEGY AND CRITIQUE:
TWENTY YEARS AND COUNTING” Paper for presentation to the "Critical Geopolitics 2008" conference Durham University
Google Scholar
What Megoran (2008) doesn't do in his pointed raising of the possibilities of nonviolence is push his analysis of realism to
the conclusion that operating within an ontology of rival spatial units arbitrated ultimately by violence is doomed to the
tragedy of the eternal return of war. The logic of clashing rival autonomous entities arbitrated by violence runs through the
neo-realist approach to international relations just as much as it runs through the cultural logic of the national rifle
association in the United States. These two share more than the acronym NRA, they share an ontological presupposition of
competitive and potentially antagonistic autonomy. In the world of nuclear superpowers it was quite clear two decades ago
that this wasn't "realistic" as a long term mode of security for anyone on the planet. The discussions of nuclear winter and
the immediate climate change that a central nuclear war would create got attention in many places; coupled to the
Chernobyl disaster it was part of the shakeup of the Soviet system in the 1980s. The Gorbachev innovations in new
thinking concerning security recognized that the nuclear standoff was far too dangerous a game to play and set out to defuse
the confrontation and manage international rivalries in a manner designed to remove the danger of crisis escalation
(MccGwire 1991). The tragedy is that American foreign policy makers, wedded to the ontology of clashing entities,
interpreted the subsequent implosion of the Soviet Union as a victory and a confirmation of their superiority and rectitude.
In the process the wisdom showed by the Soviet leaders in recognising the necessity of defusing an impossible standoff,
and thinking anew about security in a fragile biosphere, was swept aside and numerous possibilities of a politics of
international cooperation were precluded in the West as the financial shocks of neo-liberalism humbled and humiliated
former Russian rivals (Klein 2007).
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A2: Realism inevitable – human nature
Evolutionary theory is nothing without interpretation – cultural knowledge shapes responses by defining
proper biology, only the alt can allow actual engagement with non-violent knowledge
Busser 6 [Mark, Master’s Candidate Department of Political Science, York University, The Evolution of Security: Revisiting the
Human Nature Debate in International Relations, York Centre for International and Security Studies Working Paper Number 40,
August, http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/documents/WP40-Busser.pdf]
Unfortunately for Bradley Thayer, evolutionary arguments do not provide a simple and incontestable ontological and
epistemological foundations for revitalized realism. Since arguments like Thayer’s draw on controversial scientific
branches of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, which arguably assume the basic features of human nature they
seek to prove, the conclusions for political theory remain almost as scientifically arbitrary as Morgenthau’s assumption of
an animus dominandi. In framing the problematic of their exploration, many of these arguments assume an individualistic
and egoistic human nature and question how political relations might arise out of the mechanical dynamics of self-interest.
As Mary Clark’s work demonstrates, this ignores important factors in the evolutionary development of the human being.
Since interpersonal, cultural, political ,and social influences have had a large role in shaping the evolution of humans and
our primate relatives, it is not such a simple task to explain human nature based on rational actor models and mathematical
calculations. In contrast to the sociobiology and evolutionary psychology’s depiction of human nature as biologically
determined, Clark argues that it is a society’s construction of a ‘story’ of human nature that affects how people will imagine
ways to live together, fulfilling basic human needs or not. Biology is not destiny, she seems to argue, but what we believe
about our biology threatens to become our destiny if we allow it. This highlights the possibility that seemingly universal
traits like competition, aggression and egoism might be contingent on the weight we lend them and not biologically
determined. If we have a choice in the matter, it is possible to begin conceiving of political possibilities for global social
orders that do not depend on a combative and competitive engagement with Others. In turn, this allows a
reconsideration of the conceptual lens through which to view security. If it is not programmed into our genes to be
intolerant, ethnocentric, and aggressive, then we can find ways to abandon the traditions that have normalized such
behaviours. Following Jim George and David Campbell, perhaps a new conception of international relationships would
serve better than the current paradigm, which is based on traditional views of an aggressive and competitive human nature.
It may be that, as Clark suggests, conflict can only be mitigated when basic human needs are met. Doing so, it seems,
would require a rethinking of how differences are engaged with, interpreted and reconciled in both international and local
societies. If we humans are not biologically destined to draw lines between ourselves and others, then it is possible for us to
escape conceptions of security that necessitate aggression against, or protection from, outsiders. Perhaps the security long
sought after in international relations will come not from making societies secure from difference, but making difference
secure within and between states.
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A2: Realism inevitable – Guzzini
Guzzini’s Analysis is a Reason to Refuse the International System as natural - Realist explanations are
Politically Mandated.
Pinar Bilgin, Prof. of IR @ Bilkent, Berivan Elis, PhD Candidate in IR @ Ankara, ‘8 [Hard Power, Soft Power: Toward a More
Realistic Power Analysis, http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~pbilgin/Bilgin-Elis-IT-2008.pdf]
While the realist conception of power has come to shape mainstream accounts of world politics, critical scholars have
pointed with vigor to the increasingly unrealistic analysis it delivers. Underscoring the limits of realist power analysis,
Caporaso’s study of ‘structural power’56 points to the difference between dependence as a corollary of interstate relations
and dependency as a structural feature of the existing world order; i.e. less developed countries find themselves in a
‘limited’ choice situation due to the structure of the capitalist international economy. Strange’s focus on international
political economy highlights the role of global markets as an arena where power is exercised by actors other than the state
in that ‘structural power decides outcomes (both positive and negative) much more than relational power does’.57 Guzzini,
in turn, points to the ‘impersonal part of the power phenomena’, which he calls ‘governance’. Although both power and
governance are needed for a comprehensive power analysis, he argued, the concept of power should remain attached to
agents/actors so that an actor’s responsibilities and possible actions for emancipatory change would become more visible.58
With the aim of rendering power analysis more realistic, we should open up to new research agendas as required by the
multiple faces of power. Power is far too complex in its sources, effects and production to be reduced to one
dimension.59 Indeed, power is diffused and enmeshed in the social world in which people live in such a way that there are
no relations exempt from power.60 Since power shapes the formation of actors’ consciousness, no interest formation can
be objective;61 defining what an actor’s ‘real interests’ are is not free of power relations. That is to say, not only the
mobilization of bias and agenda-setting but also the production and effects of all norms and values that shape human
consciousness should be critically scrutinized. This, in turn, calls for not three- but four-dimensional power analysis –
“Lukes plus Foucault” – as dubbed by Guzzini.62 Contra Lukes, whose three-dimensional power analysis rests on
assumptions regarding (1) the possibility of uncovering power relations, and (2) B’s objective (‘real’) interests that A
denies through various expressions of hard and soft power, Foucault maintains that ‘power and knowledge directly imply
one another… [in that] there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any
knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’.63 The academic field of International
Relations constitutes a supreme example of the workings of the ‘fourth face of power’. Over the years, students of IR have
studied international relations as an effect of power. It is only recently that they have begun to study power as an effect of
international relations (as world politics) 64 and International Relations (as an academic field).65 However, as Booth
reminds us, such silences, as with IR’s narrow conception of power, “are not natural, they are political. Things do not
just happen in politics, they are made to happen, whether it is globalization or inequality. Grammar serves power”.66
One of the sites where the productive effects of grammar in the service of power is most visible is the ‘Third World’. This
has been one of the central themes of postcolonial studies where “[f]rom Fanon to Jan Mahomed to Bhabha, the connecting
theme is that Western representations construct meaning and ‘reality’ in the Third World. Concepts such as “progress”,
“civilized” and “modern” powerfully shape the non-European world”.67 The ways in which grammar serves power
becomes detectable through more realistic power analysis.
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Redefining Security Cedes Authority and Agency to Elite – Worse Outcomes are Ensured.
Mark Neocleous, Prof. of Government @ Brunel, 8 [Critique of Security, p. 2-4]
So if, as it seems, talk about security is often unintelligible, then perhaps we need to ask after the conditions of this unintelligibility.
This is not an easy task, since our whole political language and culture has become saturated by 'security'. Nearly all political disputes
and disagreements now appear to centre on the conception of security, and nothing seems to advance a policy claim more than to be
offered in the discourse of security.' But it is not just formal politics at issue here. The contemporary social and political imagination is
similarly dominated by the lexicon of security and the related idea that we are living in an increasingly insecure world. Everywhere we
look a 'need' for security is being articulated: a discussion of the effect on UK academics of the Fixed-Term Employees (Prevention of
Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 is called 'Security Alert'; a group of farmers aiming to halt what it sees as a perceived
decline in UK food production calls itself Food Security Ltd; the potential extinction of tigers sees the Wildlife Conservation Society,
the World Wildlife Fund and the Smithsonian National Zoological Park demand that 'now more than ever, tigers need homeland
security.' Just three examples, but they make clear the extent to which the paradigm of (in)security has come to shape our imaginations
and social being. 'Security consciousness' is the new dominant ideology; every day is Security Awareness Day.' This saturation of the
political and social landscape with the logic of security has been accompanied by the emergence of an academic industry churning out
ideas about how to defend and improve it. Security has been defined' and redefined.' It has been re-visioned,'0 remapped," gendered,'2
refused." Some have asked whether there is perhaps too much security," some have sought its civilisation," and thousands of others
have asked about how to 'balance' it with liberty. Much of this redefining, re-visioning, re-mapping, and so on, has come about
through a more widespread attempt at widening the security agenda so as to include societal, economic and a broad range of other
issues such as development or the environment. These moves have sought to forge alternative notions of 'democratic' and 'human'
security as part of a debate about whose security is being studied, the ontological status of insecurities and questions of identity, and
through these moves security has come to be treated less as an objective condition and much more as the product of social processes.
At the same time, a developing body of work known as 'critical security studies' has emerged. This range of research - now quite
formidable, often impressive and sometimes drawn on in this book - has a double lack. First, for all its talk about discourse, processes
and the need for a critical edge, it still offers a relatively impoverished account of the different ways in which security and insecurity
are imagined." To speak of different 'security fields' such as the environment, migration, energy, and so on, often fails to open up the
analysis to the ways in which spaces and places, processes and categories, are imagined through the lens of insecurity and in turn
appropriated and colonised by the project of security. Given the centrality of the state to the political imagination, to imagine the
whole social order through the lens of insecurity is to hand it over to the key entity which is said to be the ground of security, namely
the state." This is related to the second lack, which is that for all the critical edge employed by the authors in question, the running
assumption underpinning the work is that security is still a good thing, still necessary despite how much we interrogate it. The
assumption seems to be that while we might engage in a critical interrogation of security we could never quite be against it. 'Why we
might want "security" after all' is how one of the most influential essays in this area ends." As Didier Bigo points out, how to
maximise security always seems to remain the core issue." And so there is a danger that these approaches do not quite manage to
shake off the managerialism prevalent in more traditional security studies: the desire to 'do' security better. The common assumption
remains that security is the foundation of freedom, democracy and the good society and that the real question is how to improve the
power of the state to 'secure' us.
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A2: We use our power for good
The idea of ‘good wars’ allows the US to securitize and maintain hegemony.
Cairo 04 (Heriberto Cairo, Department of Political Science and Administration III Faculty of Political Science and Sociology, 2004,
“The Field of Mars: heterotopias of territory and war”, 1031-1032)
Attention to these new virtuous wars allows us to understand and locate the new Field of Mars as a networked spatiality.
Network-centric modes of warfare imply ‘‘a reversal and virtualization of the war continuum’’ (Der Derian, 2001: 160).
Contrary to Clausewitzian beliefs that war was the continuation of politics by other means, it now seems that politics is the
continuation of war by other means, and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) allow an expansion of
the community that celebrates the virtuous war. The new Field of Mars, thus, surrounds bodies that are plugged into ‘‘the
dominant networks of virtuous war.’’ The modern Fields of Mars began in the barracks, where all national citizens spent
their compulsory military service. Now the Postmodern Field of Mars emerges in the media coverage of war. Finally, it is
worth emphasizing that these new postmodern Fields of Mars, like the old Campus Martius, bridges the ‘‘gap between
military virtues and civilian values [that] was on spectacular display, representing a democratic void that all kinds of
virtuous solutions appeared ready to fill’’ (Der Derian, 2001: 171). The postmodern Field of Mars emerges with the
transition from one social mode of warfare, the Industrialized Total Warfare, to another, ‘Spectator-Sport’ Warfare. Of
course, some nation-states continue to wage war according to past models (Russia, China, India .), but most Western
powers, and particularly the US, are fully engaged in the development of this new type of warfare. The menace of nuclear
war and the threat of Doomsday were key to achieving a ‘‘balance of terror’’, implying ‘‘a generalized resignation to that
what exists, to the co-existing powers of the specialists that organize the fate’’ (Internationale Situationniste, 1962: 3). The
menace of terrorist attacks are nowadays the key to the re-construction of the political community, and the emergence of a
new normalcy and the spatial structures with which it is associated. ‘Spectator-Sport’ Warfare implies, of course, the
participation of people, but in a very different way to modern and traditional modes of warfare. No longer are battalions of
citizen-soldiers required to die in the trenches, now citizen-spectators celebrate the accuracy and power of their ‘‘team’’ in
these allegedly ‘‘casualty-free wars.’’ ‘‘Victory’’ in war shall unite the American (and Western?) political community,
already purified by ‘‘Patriot’’ Acts, in a virtual Field of Mars in perfect communion with their leaders. Therefore, virtuous
wars do not just deal with distant and maybe confusing (for the right citizens) lands inhabited by bare life forms. As Der
Derian (2002b) implies, they may also provide the ultimate means by which the US intends to re-secure its borders and
maintain its hegemony.
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A2: Aff  public participation
They conflate participation with public consumption – the public are just appreciative bystanders to
exploration
Jordan '3 -- Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (John W., 2003, "Kennedy's
Romantic Moon and Its Rhetorical Legacy for Space Exploration," Rhetoris & Public Affairs, 6(2), p. 209-231, MUSE, RG)
Several scholars have offered reasons for the decline of both the public's interest in space exploration and presidential
abilities to rekindle such interest. 63 This analysis of the Rice University address suggests an additional explanation that
focuses on an element of strength in Kennedy's rhetoric that later became a problem for those who sought to emulate it: the
role of the public in space initiatives. Following Kennedy, the role of the people in space exploration was transformed
from active participants to appreciative bystanders. This transformation can be viewed as a particular instance of what
G. Thomas Goodnight has discussed as the disappearance of public knowledge. 64 As space rhetoric made its
"pragmatic" turn, space programs were proposed and discussed more in terms of technological innovations—building a
reusable space shuttle, creating more efficient satellites—than inspirational missions. As the public observed the
technological accomplishments of NASA, their own role in the nation's space program was left to wilt. To be sure, the
public benefited from space innovations, but these benefits were presented in a way that invited public consumption more
than participation. The public no longer was asked for their sacrifice and commitment, which were key elements in
Kennedy's call for support. The technological complexity of the Apollo program made Kennedy's attention to the public
sphere an important rhetorical element that subsequent space advocates seemed unable to incorporate into their own
messages, either because of oversight or circumstance. If Kennedy's rhetoric said to the public, "We need your help, we
must all lend our support," then post-Kennedy space rhetoric went in a different direction, saying, "Don't worry, it's being
handled by experts." The Rice University address demonstrated how and why romantic frontier rhetoric must provide a
role for the public even in highly complex technological endeavors, thereby moving the space program into the public
realm of knowledge and enabling everyday people to feel a part of the project. In other words, Kennedy's romantic space
rhetoric worked because it allowed the people to be romanced by it.
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They misunderstand the overview effect – space is constructed by the individual and its association with
material practices
Bormann '9 – dept. of politics @ Northeastern; previously held a position @ Watson Institute for Int'l Studies @ Brown (Natalie,
2009, "Securing Outer Space," ed. by Natalie Bormann & Michael Sheehan, p. 76-89, RG)
The fish analogy highlights some of the key notions on space and how we (or, fish, for that matter) invent space at a certain time and
under certain circumstances. Frank White uses the fish story as a means to point out the ways in which to makes sense of the
experiences and perceptions of space astronauts in their new environment. White makes a vital claim in this tegard: outer space is
always constituted by various astronauts — differently — by that which already precedes their perception of space. In other
words, previous experiences, expectations, historical events (such as the-Challenger disasrer), and the individual state of mind have an
impact on the ways outer space is seen, imagined, mapped, and subsequently narrated to us — in White's case, by various individuals
at certain times. To put it differently yet again: nothing about outer space is 'out there'; what we get to know about outer space is
always socially, spatially and locally embedded. Virilio (2000: 116) agrees; he writes, 'a landscape has no fixed meaning, no
privileged vantage point. It is orientated only by the itinerary of the passerby*.
Thus, when alluding to outer space as space it must be understood that the concept of space does not lie in space; but space is
constituted 'from the outside'. It is 'what we (can) know about space' and how a space is understood and framed at any given time
which provides us with one reality of that space. In this sense, outer space as a space does never pre-exist independently and is never
explored nor innovated; it is always constituted through that which it precedes (and through that which always-already exists). As
Foucault (1986: 22) depicts, 'space is not an innovation; space itself has a history in* Western experience'.
Henry Lefebvre (1991) speaks here of the production of space, whereby space becomes a location of a certain type through its
association with certain practices, rituals and representations. He uses the example of a church, which gains meaning through its
invention as a place of faith (space is thus at once a precondition as much as a result of society and its practices). Following on from
this point, it is clear that the social dimension of spatial relations is inescapable; while one might assume that the space of a room or a
house could be 'physically' cut off from social relations, for example, through the construction of doors and walls, creating these
boundaries that demarcate a practice of inclusion and exclusion is inherently always meaning-constructive: the signs and symbols of
private property as opposed to the public one (the garden wall or front door), the single room as opposed to the house, outer space as
opposed to Earth, is always-already part of that collective social space. In this sense, space is produced, and can be explained, by
means of meanings as well as by means of an absence of meaning (Lefebvre 1991). Lefebvre uses the example of a containet and
argues that one must not think of space in terms of such a container (or confined space) in which we put 'things' (buildings, inhabitants
etc.).
While Virilio may not necessarily speak of a production of space along these lines, he would certainly agree that information and data
about something matters more than that which composes something. The author clarifies this ptocess by using the example of a
mountain: while certain physical aspects of a mountain, such as its mass, are linked to fixed 'data' (its density), this is not the case for
information about the mountain. For example, the mountain's name or its topography, is located in a particular point in time; it thus
evolves overtime given the impact of technology (determining what kind of information we can rerrieve) (Virilio 2000). Virilio goes
as far as to claim that information about a space will matter exclusively leading to a disappearance of matter and physical-ity all
together. As such, space will stop having a 'location' on its own. Michel de Certeau (1984) makes a vital point in this regard, and for
this chapter, when he claims that the importance of abstract (non-fixed, non-static) space is not only that it cannot be inhabited in any
permanent way but moreover that it makes possible a certain kind of action; and embodies a certain kind of practice. It is in this sense,
and at this juncture, that I suggest we must begin when contemplating outer space and its weaponisation. Outer space must be seen,
and to use Virilio's term, as a 'disembodied space' with no fixed and static coordinates. It follows from here, then, that two
questions emerge; first, what dominant information about outer space can we read, see and know; and second, how has this
information become our dominant reading, seeing and knowing? What will become clear in the process of addressing these questions
is that what we get to know about the space of outer space - our conception of it - is dominated by information provided through the
possibilities (and limits) of military technology
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The global view provided by satellites is totalizing – makes problem solving impossible. The Overview
effect fails.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,19 97, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
The Global Gaze Global corporatization is one of the dangers of the "global view" afforded by remote sensing, which
brings us to the fifth assumption. At first glance, the assumption that a global perspective is necessary appears indisputable.
After all, if problems like climate change, deforestation, desertification, and ozone depletion are global in scope, then we
must take a global view in order to solve them. And if these environmental problems are simply the "negative externalities"
of a global economy, then a global view seems inescapable. To some extent, all of this is true, but it overlooks the dangers
implicit in globalism-particularly the conceptual and pragmatic links between hegemony and globalism. In an unequal
world, globalism-including global science-is all too likely to mean white, affluent men universalizing their own
experiences. Global problems are amenable to large data banks, to Big Science, to grand managerial schemes. As we saw
earlier, the view from space renders human beings invisible, both as agents and as victims of environmental destruction. It
also erases difference, lending itself to a totalizing vision. The "global view" cannot adequately depict environmental
problems because the impacts of these problems vary with class, gender, age, and race. The very abstractness of the global
view may thwart efforts to heal natural systems. Charles Rubin echoes this sentiment, suggesting that the global view
removes environmental problems from the realm of immediacy where meaningful action is possible and most likely to be
effective. Rubin goes so far as to reject the term "the environment" because, by essentially referring to "everything out
there," it simultaneously serves to distance people from the local places where they live even as it erects an artificial
totalizing structure.53 Rubin's claim about the concept of "environment" can be equally applied to "the global view": Both
seem to include just about everything except the particularism of place. Ronnie Lipschutz extends this line of reasoning,
suggesting that if place is a critical constitutive element of identity, then environmental degradation is not likely to be
resolved by embracing the place-eradicating "Blue Planet" image. Rather, it is in the local realm, which is laden with
cultural and personal meanings, where most women live their lives and where environmental healing is most likely to
occur.54 According to Joni Seager, the "global view" is especially problematic for women: The experience of women on
the front lines should help us change our notion of what environmental destruction looks like: it is not big, flashy, of global
proportions, or if global, it manifests locally. Environmental degradation is pretty mundane-it occurs drop by drop, tree by
tree. This fact is discomfiting to big scientific and environmental organizations whose prestige depends on solving "big"
problems in heroic ways.55 Ecofeminsts who argue for the necessity of a "subsistence perspective" on issues of
environment and development echo Seager's claim that women's lives are especially entwined with the local and the
organic. Their general claims about the scientific method associated with "capitalist patriarchy" could be applied to the
global gaze of Earth remote sensing: "But in order to be able to do violence to Mother Nature and other sister beings on
Earth, homo scientificus had to set himself apartfrom, or rather above, nature."''56 While the explicit purpose of the earth
remote sensing project is to rescue nature through monitoring and modeling it, ecofeminists would claim that the global
gaze, by virtue of its position apart from and above nature, does violence to nature.
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Observation of earth from space seeks to manage and control, creating a totalizing vision of earth and
undercutting any possible benefits.
Karen T. Litfin, Ph.D., Department of Political Science University of Washington ,1997, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 18, No. 2, Intersections of Feminisms, The Gendered Eye in the Sky: A Feminist Perspective on Earth Observation Satellites
Managing Planet Earth Feminist analysis suggests that the practical inspiration behind the global view is the managerial
impulse, which brings us to the sixth assumption implicit in the remote sensing project. In the discourse surrounding global
environmental monitoring programs like the USGCRP and the WCRP, terms like "managing the planet" and "global
management" abound.57 The "blue marble" image fosters the notion that the earth is manageable. Talk of management is
so ubiquitous, and the connotation of orderly administration so seemingly innocuous, that gaining a critical perspective on
it requires a great effort. Yet the matter is not particularly complex: To manage means to control, to handle, to direct, to be
in charge. The remote sensing project functions simultaneously as symptom, expression, and reinforcement of modernity's
dream of knowledge as power. The drive to gain "objective" knowledge about the earth by maximizing the actual and felt
distance between subject and object, I have argued above, is fundamental to androcentric modernity. The planetary gaze,
relying on cameras collecting data at various wavelengths to inform us about the earth through color- coded computer
simulations, is fundamentally a visual project. As ecofeminist writer Yaakov Jerome Garb shows, drawing upon feminist
philosophy and the work of classicist Eric Havelock, vision has been deemed the cardinal sense in Western thinking."58 Of
all of our senses, vision requires the least engagement; the advantage lies in separation rather than closeness. The
photograph, and most especially that of the earth from space, "places the final seal on the disengagement from participation
that vision allows, on the standing back so that subject views object across a void. It transforms the external world into a
spectacle, a commodity, a manipulable package ... [through] the predatory nature of the camera." The miniaturization of the
earth made possible by satellite photography appeals to the managerial impulse; the "blue-and-white Christmas ornament"
can be "managed" far more easily that a world of 5.5 billion people and thousands of cultures. The distinctive combination
of will-to-power and the sense of the earth's fragility that typifies the remote sensing project is expressed in the words of
astronaut "Buzz" Aldrin: "The earth was eventually so small I could blot it out of the universe by holding up my thumb."60
From space, the ultimate domination of the earth, or at least the illusion of it, becomes possible. While it is the earth that is
objectified by the planetary gaze, ultimately "managing planet earth" will mean controlling human behavior, not the earth
itself. Ecosystems will respond in various ways to changes in human behavior, but they will only be vicariously "managed."
It is people, even as they are rendered invisible by the planetary gaze, who will be managed. The science and technology of
remote sensing perpetuate the knowledge/power nexus with respect not only to human domination of nature, but also to
social control. Thus, the six assumptions implicit in the project of global environmental monitoring by satellite turn out to
be plagued with internal inconsistencies, parochial biases, and moral difficulties. Neither the science nor the technology of
Earth remote sensing is neutral. The vast quantities of data generated by satellites are unlikely to lead to either scientific
certainty or rational policy. Indeed, EOS technology, at least as presently constituted, seems to reinforce the drive to
industrialization and the interrogatory approach to nature that lie at the heart of modernity. The global view that it purports
to provide may become a totalizing perspective that omits human agency and substitutes the vantage point of a technical
elite for the collective experiences of the diversity of human beings. EOS technology, like other photographic technologies,
is a voyeuristic endeavor that maximizes the distance between subject and object-in this case, between the observing human
and Earth's dynamic processes. Finally, the language of planetary management that pervades discussions of EOS suggests
that the disciplinary power inherent in the managerial impulse is at the heart of the remote sensing project. Is the
celebratory discourse surrounding the project, then, nothing more than a mask? On the positive side, even at a cost of thirty
billion dollars it may be a better investment than spending the same number of dollars to send someone to Mars. Clearly
there are some potential benefits in the mammoth project: Improve- ments are likely to be made on knowledge about crop
conditions, soil moisture, forest cover, pollution levels, infestations, and climate change. Some of that knowl- edge will
help to save lives and conserve resources. But any potential benefits of the remote sensing project are likely to be
unrealized or undercut as long as the project's deeper assumptions and repurcussions are not critically assessed. If implicit
in the project is the modernist equation of knowledge and power, and if it is this very equation that propels the devastation
of Earth's habitability, then the gains from the planetary gaze are likely to be unevenly enjoyed and, in the long run,
illusory.
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The overview effect is a grand scheme to that is rooted in imperialism
Fraser MacDonald, Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Melbourne, 2007 “Anti-Astropolitik outer space and the orbit
of geography” Progress in Human Geography 35(1) p. 592-615 http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.full.pdf+html ACC 7/19/11
Aside from military space applications, to which I will later return, one of the most significant geographical engagements
with outer space is in the sphere of ‘planetary geomorphology’. There is a vast literature on surface processes on the
moon and on the other inner planets (Mars, Mercury and Venus) in journals such as Icarus and Journal of Geophysical
Research (for an introduction, see Summerfield, 1991). Terrestrial landscapes become analogues for interpreting remotely
sensed images of planetary bodies, which has in turn heightened the importance of s a t e l l i t e ima g e r y i n u n d e
r s t a n d i n g E a r t h surface processes. One of the very few points of common reference in physical and human
geographical considerations of outer space is the imagery from the US Apollo space prog r a m m e . W h i l e g e o m o
r p h o l o g i s t s h a v e examined photographs of the lunar surface to cast light on, for example, cratering and mass
movement, Denis Cosgrove has attended to the cultural significance of the now iconic Apol lo photog r aphs ‘The Whole
Ea r th’ , ‘Earthrise’ and ‘22727’ (Cosgrove, 1994; 2001a). Cosgrove outlines the momentous impor t of the wes tern
concept ion of the Earth as a globe, which culminated in photographing the earth from space to provide an ‘Apollonian
gaze’ that had been dreamed about since the age of Cicero (Cosgrove, 2001a). 2 Despite his claim that ‘geography is not
a lunar practice’, Cosgrove is rare among contemporary human geographers in thinking beyond the terrestrial (Cosgrove,
2001b; 2004). But even the ‘Apollo’s eye’ views, as James Sidaway (2005: 71) has argued, embody their own particular
geography. Sidaway presents a critical visual exegesis of the cover of Hardt and Negri’s Empire, showing how a
photograph of the Earth ‘innocently’ chosen by the publisher is itself predicated on a matrix of ‘geo-political-ecologies’ –
the Cold War; the aeronautical agency of the pre-eminent capitalist state; corporate copyright controls – whose operations
are purportedly the subject of the book (Hardt and Negri, 2000). For Sidaway, the image signifi es empire in ways u n a n
t i c i p a t e d b y t h e a u t h o r s o f Emp i r e. Another exception to geography’s prevailing worldliness, though
not one that deals with outer space per se, is Rob Kitchin and James Kneale’s collection of essays on geographies of
science fi ction, Lost in space (Kitchin and Kneale, 2002). In these essays, literary form quite rightly determines the genre
rather than necessarily requiring an outer space setting. The most explicit extraterrestrial treatments by geographers are by
Jason Dittmer and Maria Lane who examine how a Martian geography has been produced through particular discourses of
scientifi c advancement, place naming and colonial ex ploration (Dittmer, 2006; Lane 2005; 2006).
The results of the overview effect are impossible – even if it does break down state sovereignty, elites take
over which still excludes agency
Jill Stuart, LSE Fellow in Global Politics in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, 2009 “Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space” Securing Outer Space Edited by Natalie Bormann and
Michael Sheehan, pg. 8-23
A critical point in regards to the cosmopolitan sovereignty approach is that the perception of the "collectivity" and
"humanity" in the discourse of outer space politics is in fact that of the dominant, most powerful forces, and that a common
category of "humanity" is not possible (or at least not in the present state of affairs). Notions of cosmopolitan sovereignty
could lead us to over-emphasize the significance of the sense of community based on outer space, when in reality the effect
of, for example, "common heritage" resources in outer space, or the "transnational" benefits from the space station are
actually to the benefit of certain elite segments of world society. In this sense, sovereignty may still become de-linked from
the state, but only to be reclaimed by collectives of elites, particularly in outer space where exploitation and exploration is
prohibitively expensive and hence naturally excludes the vast majority of actors.
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The image of earth from space fails to produce environmental justice – it affirms retrograde social
dynamics
Greta Gaard, cofounder of the Minnesota Green Party, Gaard documented the transition of the U.S. Green movement into the Green
Party of the United States in her book, Ecological Politics. She is currently a professor of English at University of Wisconsin-River
Falls and a community faculty member in Women's Studies at Metropolitan State University, Twin Cities, 10/1/2010, “New
Directions for Ecofeminism: Toward a More Feminist Ecocriticism”, http://isle.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/4/643.full
Ecofeminists have argued that NASA's whole earth image of the planet from space creates not only a physical distance, but a psychic
detachment as well (Garb 264–78). In this image, we earthlings become mere observers, not participants. This whole earth image
depicts earth as an object of art, seen from such a distance that we do not see such simultaneously personal and political experiences as
military occupation, death, sexual assault, deep sea oil drilling, aerial gunning of wolves, toxic waste, social injustice, human and
inter-species oppression. In other words, this perspective does not provide a standpoint for understanding eco-justice problems, and
thus cannot lead us to holistic eco-justice solutions, either: “the ‘global view’ cannot adequately depict environmental problems
because the impacts of these problems vary with class, gender, age, and race” (Litfin 38). Perhaps the most dangerous implication of
this “God's eye view” from space is its valorization of space exploration, and the idea that extraterrestrialism is viable: the whole earth
view is “a rearward view of the earth, a view seen as we leave” (Garb 272). It supports the myth that we can live apart from the earth,
that we are not, in the most profound sense, earthlings. Seen from an ecofeminist perspective, the space program is “an oversized
literalization of the masculine transcendent idea, an attempt to achieve selfhood freed not only from gravity but from all it represents:
the pull of the Earth, of mater, dependence on the mother, the body” (Garb 272). The resonant detachment of both ecoglobalism and
the whole earth image offers fruitful ground for feminist ecocritical explorations.
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Regime theory doesn’t explain space politics – it ignores transformation and the relationship between
sovereignty and territory
Jill Stuart, LSE Fellow in Global Politics in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, 2009 “Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space” Securing Outer Space Edited by Natalie Bormann and
Michael Sheehan, pg. 8-23
However the conservatism of the approach is also in some ways a weak-ness. By not critiquing the original concept of
sovereignty in relation to the state itself, but merely seeking to explain how it is adjusted for transnational issues, regime
theory potentially presents an ahistorical and overly static picture of sovereignty. By taking the states-system as it is, regime
theory potential ignores more radically different forms of order that have preceded Westphalian sovereignty, and shortsightedly misses how the system may be fundamentally transformed in the future. Medieval methods of governance are
one obvious historical example of non-Westphalian practices of sovereignty. In medieval systems, territory and sovereignty
were not mutually exclusive (Ruggie 1993: 150), and over-lapping systems of governance regulated physical spaces.
Another example of pre-Westphalian notions of sovereignty is sovereignty based on patterns of migration, ^wheraijy
systems of rule need not be territorially fixed, but based on nomadic movement ovet different pasturelands for livestock.7
Such exarqples from the past remind us that Westphalian sovereignty is only one approach to the relationship between
sovereignty, territory and the state. . In continuing to use the language of Westphalian sovereignty, regime theory manages
to explain actor preferences, negotiations and outcomes, but provides little insight into the bigger picture of the shifting
nature of the relationship between sovereignty and territory conceptually and in practice. Regime theory focuses on a
discussion of the negotiations behind regime formation, when in fact the underlying processes may be far more significant
and indicate the possibility of fundamental discontinuity in the system of states. By accepting a relatively superficial "repackaging" of sovereignty within the existing discourse, we are perhaps not making a significant enough break from
Westphalian sovereignty, particularly when it comes to the unique area of outer space and outer space politics. The next
approach explores the ways in which sovereignty may be more radically reconceived, and also how outer space may be part
of the feedback loop that is causing that reconceptualization.
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***BLOCKS
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AT: Perm
1. Impossible – our link work applies here – if we’re winning that the ACTION of the plan is a bad thing
its necessarily a reason that they would coopt alt’ solvency
2. The perm is either severance or intrinsic – the alt’ rejects solely the aff’s security logic – any shift in
advocacy allows the aff to dodge around to spike out of any offense
3. Presumption – absent their representations, there’s no reason to vote aff
4. The plan cannot be re-configured or detached from its discursive underpinnings. The noble effort to
restrict the violence conducted by the United States is enframed by a larger structure of security logic
that writes the effort into a broader system of hegemonic power and economic domination.
Anthony Burke, Senior Lecturer @ School of Politics & IR @ Univ. of New South Wales, ‘7 [Beyond Security, Ethics and
Violence, p. 3-4]
These frameworks are interrogated at the level both of their theoretical conceptualisation and their practice: in their
influence and implementation in specific policy contexts and conflicts in East and Central Asia, the Middle East and the
'war on terror', where their meaning and impact take on greater clarity. This approach is based on a conviction that the
meaning of powerful political concepts cannot be abstract or easily universalised: they all have histories, often complex and
conflictual; their forms and meanings change over time; and they are developed, refined and deployed in concrete struggles
over power, wealth and societal form. While this should not preclude normative debate over how political or ethical
concepts should be defined and used, and thus be beneficial or destructive to humanity, it embodies a caution that the
meaning of concepts can never be stabilised or unproblematic in practice. Their normative potential must always be
considered in relation to their utilisation in systems of political, social and economic power and their consequent worldly
effects. Hence this book embodies a caution by Michel Foucault, who warned us about the 'politics of truth . . the battle
about the status of truth and the economic and political role it plays', and it is inspired by his call to 'detach the power of
truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time'.1
It is clear that traditionally coercive and violent approaches to security and strategy are both still culturally dominant, and
politically and ethically suspect. However, the reasons for pursuing a critical analysis relate not only to the most
destructive or controversial approaches, such as the war in Iraq, but also to their available (and generally preferable)
alternatives. There is a necessity to question not merely extremist versions such as the Bush doctrine, Indonesian militarism
or Israeli expansionism, but also their mainstream critiques - whether they take the form of liberal policy approaches in
international relations (IR), just war theory, US realism, optimistic accounts of globalisation, rhetorics of sensitivity to
cultural difference, or centrist Israeli security discourses based on territorial compromise with the Palestinians. The surface
appearance of lively (and often significant) debate masks a deeper agreement about major concepts, forms of political
identity and the imperative to secure them. Debates about when and how it may be effective and legitimate to use military
force in tandem with other policy options, for example, mask a more fundamental discursive consensus about the meaning
of security, the effectiveness of strategic power, the nature of progress, the value of freedom or the promises of national and
cultural identity. As a result, political and intellectual debate about insecurity, violent conflict and global injustice can
become hostage to a claustrophic structure of political and ethical possibility that systematically wards off critique.
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AT: Specific Scenarios
1. This flows neg – we’ll win specific links based on the both the action of plan and its representations – if
they can’t provide a specific defense of their reps, then there’s no reason to evaluate them
[insert some specific analytic or carded link work specific to the aff]
2. Irrelevant – the aff still engages in security logic which makes loss of value and their impacts
inevitable – weigh this as an external disad to the aff
3. Their form of evaluation lead to the worst policies – we need to reject this ideology to effectively deal
with policymaking
Schneier 10 (Bruce, An internationally renowned security technologist and author, MA CS American University, 3-13,
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/worst-case_thin.html)
At a security conference recently, the moderator asked the panel of distinguished cybersecurity leaders what their nightmare scenario
was. The answers were the predictable array of large-scale attacks: against our communications infrastructure, against the power grid,
against the financial system, in combination with a physical attack. I didn't get to give my answer until the afternoon, which was: "My
nightmare scenario is that people keep talking about their nightmare scenarios." There's a certain blindness that comes from worst-case
thinking. An extension of the precautionary principle, it involves imagining the worst possible outcome and then acting as if it were a certainty.
It substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis, and fear for reason. It fosters powerlessness and vulnerability and
magnifies social paralysis. And it makes us more vulnerable to the effects of terrorism. Worst-case thinking means generally bad decision making
for several reasons. First, it's only half of the cost-benefit equation. Every decision has costs and benefits, risks and rewards. By speculating
about what can possibly go wrong, and then acting as if that is likely to happen, worst-case thinking focuses only on the extreme but improbable
risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes. Second, it's based on flawed logic. It begs the question by assuming that a proponent of an
action must prove that the nightmare scenario is impossible. Third, it can be used to support any position or its opposite. If we build a nuclear
power plant, it could melt down. If we don't build it, we will run short of power and society will collapse into anarchy. If we allow flights near
Iceland's volcanic ash, planes will crash and people will die. If we don't, organs won’t arrive in time for transplant operations and
people will die. If we don't invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein might use the nuclear weapons he might have. If we do, we might destabilize the Middle
East, leading to widespread violence and death. Of course, not all fears are equal. Those that we tend to exaggerate are more easily
justified by worst-case thinking. So terrorism fears trump privacy fears, and almost everything else; technology is hard to understand and
therefore scary; nuclear weapons are worse than conventional weapons; our children need to be protected at all costs; and annihilating
the planet is bad. Basically, any fear that would make a good movie plot is amenable to worst-case thinking. Fourth and finally, worstcase thinking validates ignorance. Instead of focusing on what we know, it focuses on what we don't know -- and what we can imagine.
Remember Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's quote? "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me,
because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is
to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't
know." And this: "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Ignorance isn't a cause for doubt; when you can fill that
ignorance with imagination, it can be a call to action. Even worse, it can lead to hasty and dangerous acts. You can't wait for a smoking gun, so
you act as if the gun is about to go off. Rather than making us safer, worst-case thinking has the potential to cause dangerous escalation. The
new undercurrent in this is that our society no longer has the ability to calculate probabilities. Risk assessment is devalued. Probabilistic
thinking is repudiated in favor of "possibilistic thinking": Since we can't know what's likely to go wrong, let's speculate about what can
possibly go wrong. Worst-case thinking leads to bad decisions, bad systems design, and bad security. And we all have direct experience with
its effects: airline security and the TSA, which we make fun of when we're not appalled that they're harassing 93-year-old women or
keeping first graders off airplanes. You can't be too careful! Actually, you can. You can refuse to fly because of the possibility of
plane crashes. You can lock your children in the house because of the possibility of child predators. You can eschew all contact with
people because of the possibility of hurt. Steven Hawking wants to avoid trying to communicate with aliens because they might be
hostile; does he want to turn off all the planet's television broadcasts because they're radiating into space? It isn't hard to parody worstcase thinking, and at its extreme it's a psychological condition. Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent, writes: "Worstcase thinking encourages society to adopt fear as one of the dominant principles around which the public, the government and institutions should
organize their life. It institutionalizes insecurity and fosters a mood of confusion and powerlessness. Through popularizing the belief that worst
cases are normal, it incites people to feel defenseless and vulnerable to a wide range of future threats." Even worse, it plays directly into the hands
of terrorists, creating a population that is easily terrorized -- even by failed terrorist attacks like the Christmas Day underwear bomber and
the Times Square SUV bomber. When someone is proposing a change, the onus should be on them to justify it over the status quo.
But worst-case thinking is a way of looking at the world that exaggerates the rare and unusual and gives the rare much more credence than it
deserves. It isn't really a principle; it's a cheap trick to justify what you already believe. It lets lazy or biased people make what seem to be cogent
arguments without understanding the whole issue. And when people don't need to refute counterarguments, there's no point in listening to them.
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AT: Threats Real
1. Don’t evaluate this until they provide a specific defense of their reps – we’ll win that security
institutions exaggerate threats as an excuse to build up our defenses
2. No they’re not – their representation of space rationalizes the need to defend it, creating the threats
they hope to solve***
Bormann '9 – dept. of politics @ Northeastern; previously held a position @ Watson Institute for Int'l Studies @ Brown (Natalie,
2009, "Securing Outer Space," ed. by Natalie Bormann & Michael Sheehan, p. 76-89, RG)
In an attempt to close the circle to the start of this chapter and draw the line back to the notion of an imagination of outer
space as a battlefield - yet devoid of matter - consider rhe following: creating, fabricating, moulding and representing a
field of combat in outer space, ubiquitous and instant in its ability to project modes of destruction and killing, in fact
determines, reproduces and locks in the very existence and rationale of the need to defend space against an other,
colonise space before a competitor can do so, and divide space into 'ours' and 'theirs'. Put differently, the invention of outer
space as a battlefield with the above 'qualities' assumes a notion of vulnerability and thteat to that space - at any time and
from anywhere - before it in fact becomes one. Thus, outer space as a sphere of permanent crisis in effect constitutes
and constructs the very reality that it purports to counter. I am referring here to Carol Cohn's (1987) argument that
military projects pre-empt threats and threatening intentions. In the context of past US/Soviet rivalry she contends that, if
one asks what the Soviets 'can' do, one quickly comes to assume that 'that is what they intend to do'. In other words,
strategic planning and the logic of worst-case-scenarios commit us to assume something will happen. Foucault's notion of'
technologies of normalization' springs to mind by way of summary, and by which the author depicts technology as an
essential component in the systematic creation, classification and control of space, habitat and its claim to contingent action
drawn from that control over that space.
3. Be skeptical of their case – the military industrial complex has infiltrated discussions of space
Webb 9 (Dave Webb is a Professor of Engineering Modeling, Director of the 'Praxis Centre" (a multidisciplinary research centre for
the 'Study of Information Technology to Peace, Conflict and Human Rights') and a member of the School of Applied Global Ethics at
Leeds Metropolitan University. "Securing Outer Space"; "Space Weapons: Dream, nightmare or reality?" Routledge Critical Security
Studies Series, 2009)
It appears therefore that the military industrial complex is hard at work here. The US aerospace companies are very good
lobbyists - they are constantly reminding politicians about the number of jobs that they are generating in their
constituencies and they make large donations to both Republican and Democrat parties. They are the sellers of the dreams
of ultimate political control of space and of the Hatth in return for billion-dollar contracts. The politicians don't know
enough about physics to question the projects in any details and nowadays there is a third partner in all this - the
universities. The academic world is increasingly involved as funding for science and engineering research projects at
univcrsirics comes increasingly to depend on the military and aerospace companies - it is questionable as to whether they
can be considered to be neutral and to give unbiased advice to government.
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1. No link -- the alternative doesn't necessarily abandon all global realism -- the alt' rejects the aff's
security logic which creates an alternative political language but still allows for policy evaluation -- that's
Neoclous
2. Realism’s wrong – positivism in IR falsely presupposes the naturalness of states as prior to IR system
Ashley ‘84 [Richard, professor of political science at Arizona State University, “The Poverty of Neorealism,” International
Organization, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring, 1984), pp. 225-286, JSTOR]
The issue, however, is the theoretical discourse of neorealism as a move- ment, not the protective clauses that individual
neorealists deploy to preempt or deflect criticisms of that discourse's limits. Once one enters this theoretical discourse
among neorealists, the state-as-actor model needs no defense. It stands without challenge. Like Waltz, one simply assumes
that states have the status of unitary actors.32 Or, like Gilpin, one refuses to be deterred by the mountainous inconsistencies
between the state as a coalition of coalitions (presumably in opposition to the losing coalitions against which the winning
coalition is formed) and the state as a provider of public goods, protector of citizens' welfare, and solver of the free-rider
problem in the name of winners and losers alike. Knowing that the "objectives and foreign policies of states are determined
primarily by the interests of their dominant members or ruling coalitions,"3 one nonetheless simply joins the victors in
proclaiming the state a singular actor with a unified set of objectives in the name of the collective good. This proclamation
is the starting point of theoretical discourse, one of the unexamined assumptions from which theoretical discourse proceeds.
In short, the state-as-actor assumption is a metaphysical commitment prior to science and exempted from scientific
criticism. Despite neorealism's much ballyhooed emphasis on the role of hard falsifying tests as the measure of theoretical
progress, neorealism immunizes its statist commitments from any form of falsification. Excluded, for instance, is the
historically testable hypothesis that the state-as-actor construct might be not a first-order given of international political life
but part of a historical justificatory framework by which dominant coalitions legitimize and secure consent for their
precarious conditions of rule. Two implications of this "state-centricity," itself an ontological principle of neorealist
theorizing, deserve emphasis. The first is obvious. As a frame- work for the interpretation of international politics,
neorealist theory cannot accord recognition to-it cannot even comprehend-those global collectivist concepts that are
irreducible to logical combinations of state-bounded re- lations. In other words, global collectivist concepts-concepts of
transnational class relations, say, or the interests of humankind-can be granted an objective status only to the extent that
they can be interpreted as aggregations of relations and interests having logically and historically prior roots within statebounded societies. Much as the "individual" is a prism through which methodological individualists comprehend
collectivist concepts as aggrega- tions of individual wants, needs, beliefs, and actions, so also does the neorealist refract all
global collectivist concepts through the prism of the state.34 Importantly, this means that neorealist theory implicitly takes
a side amidst contending political interests. Whatever the personal commitments of in- dividual neorealists might be,
neorealist theory allies with, accords recognition to, and gives expression to those class and sectoral interests (the apexes of
Waltz's domestic hierarchies or Gilpin's victorious coalitions of coalitions) that are actually or potentially congruent with
state interests and legitimations. It implicitly opposes and denies recognition to those class and human interests which
cannot be reduced to concatenations of state interests or transnational coalitions of domestic interests. The second
implication takes longer to spell out, for it relates to neorealist "structuralism"-the neorealist position with respect to
structures of the international system. Reflecting on the fourth element of structuralist ar- gument presented above, one
might expect the neorealist to accord to the structure of the international system an identity independent of the parts or units
(states-as-actors in this case); the identities of the units would be supplied via differentiation. The neorealist orrery
disappoints these expectations, how- ever. For the neorealist, the state is ontologically prior to the international system. The
system's structure is produced by defining states as individual unities and then by noting properties that emerge when
several such unities are brought into mutual reference. For the neorealist, it is impossible to describe international structures
without first fashioning a concept of the state-as-actor. The proper analogy, as Waltz points out, is classical economic
theory- microtheory, not macrotheory. As Waltz puts it, "International-political sys- tems, like economic markets, are
formed by the coaction of self-regarding units." They "are individualist in origin, spontaneously generated, and unintended."35
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3. Realism can’t address nuclear threats—the notion of autonomous, self-interested nation states is not
viable in the nuclear age
Morgenthau ‘95 (Hans, was a political scientist who taught at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate Center at the City
University of New York, “The Intellectual and Political Functions of Theory”, International Theory: Critical Investigations, edited by
James Der Derian, p. 41-42)
It is this repetitive character of internationa politics, that is, the configurations of the balance of power, that lends itself to
theoretical sysemization. I would also hesitate to equate international theory with philosophy of history. Theory is implicit
in all great historiography. In historians with a philosophic bent, such as Thcydides and Ranke, the history of foreign policy
appears as a mere demonstration of certain theoretical assumptions which are always present beneath the surface of
historical events to provide the standards for their selection and to give them meaning. In such historians of international
politics, theory is like the skeleton, which, invisible to the naked eye, gives form and function to the body.what
distinguishes such a history of international politics from a theory is not so much its substance as its form. The historian
presents his theory in the form of a historical recital, using the chronological sequence of events as a demonstration of his
theory. The theoretician, dispensing with the historical recital, makes the theory explicit and uses historic facts in bit and
pieces to demonstrate his theory. Yet both Wight’s and my orientation are historical, and it is this historical orientation that
sets us apart from the present fashionable theorizing about international relations. This theorizing is abstract in the extreme
and totally unhistoric. It endeavors to reduce international relations to a sytem of abstract propositions with a predictive
function. Such a system transforms nations into a stereotyped symmetric or assymmetric relations. What Professor Wight
has noted of international law applies with particular force to these theories: the contrast between their abstract rationalism
and the actual configurations of world politics. We are here in the presence of still another type of progressivist theory. Its
aim is not the legalization and organization of international relations in the interest of international order and peace but the
rational manipulation of international relations and, more particularly, of military strategy in the interest of predictable and
controlled results. The ideal toward which these theories try to progress is ultimately international peace and order to be
achieved through scientific precision and predictability in understanding and manipulating international affairs. In view of
their consistent neglect of the contigencies of history and of the concreteness of historical situations that all these theories
have in common, they are destined to share the fate of their progressivist predecessors: they must fail both as guides for
theoretical unerstanding and as precepts for action. However, the practical consequences of their theoretical deficiencies are
likely to be more serious than those of the predecessors. The straits in which the Western democracies found themselves at
the beginnning of WWII were, in good measure, the result of the reliance upon the inner force of legal pronouncements,
such as the Stimson Doctrine, which refused to recognize territorial changes brought about by violence; of legal
agreements, such as the Kelogg-Briand Pact and non-aggression treaties; and of international organizations, such a the
League of Nations, which were incapable of collective action. The scientist theories of our day pretend to be capable of
manipulating with scientific precision a society of soverign nations that use weapons of total destruction as instruments of
their respective foreign policies. With that pretense, these theories create the illusion that a society of soverign nations thus
armed can continue the business of foreign policy and military strategy in the traditional manner without risking its
destruction. They create the illusion of the viability of the nation-state in the nuclear age. If statesmen should take these
theories as their pseudoscientific word and act upon them, they would fail, as the statesmen of the interwar period failed
when they acted upon the progressivist theories of their day.
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4. Failing to reform realism lets the state control the discussion of possibility – their definition of what is
important is only a construction of state identity
Bleiker 2K [Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Page 16, Google Books]
Human agency is not something that exists in an a priori manner and can be measured scientifically in reference to external
realities. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as human agency, for its nature and its function are, at least in part,
determined by how we think about human action and its potential to shape political and social practices. The mutually
constituted and constantly shilling relationship between agents and discourses thus undermines the possibility of observing
social dynamics in a value-free way. To embark on such an endeavour nevertheless is to superimpose a static image upon a
series of events that can only be understood in their fluidity. It is to objectivise a very particular and necessarily subjective
understanding of agency and its corresponding political practices. The dangers of such an approach have been debated
extensively. Authors such as Richard Ashley, Jim George and Steve Smith have shown how positivist epistemologies have
transformed one specific interpretation of world political realities, the dominant realist one, into reality per se ." Realist
perceptions of the international have'. gradually become accepted as common sense. to the point that any critique against
them has to be evaluated in terms of an already existing and obiectivised world-view. There are powerful mechanisms of
control precisely in this ability to determine meaning and rationality. 'Defining common sense', Smith thus argues, is 'the
ultimate act of political power'." It separates the possible from the impossible and directs the theory and practice of
international relations on a particular path.
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1. Irrelevant – no reason the alt’ can’t operate under a realist framework – international actors can act
within their own interest under alternative political frameworks
2. Realism is only inevitable now because of existing power structures – challenging dominant discourses
via the alt’ overcomes realism
Grondin 4 [David, master of pol sci and PHD of political studies @ U of Ottowa “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How
and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War,” http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf]
Neorealist and neoclassical realism offer themselves up as a narrative of the world institutional order. Critical approaches
must therefore seek to countermemorialize “those whose lives and voices have been variously silenced in the process of
strategic practices” (Klein, 1994: 28). The problem, as revealed in the debate between gatekeepers of the subfield of
Strategic Studies (Walt, 1991), is that those analyses that contravene the dominant discourse are deemed insignificant by
virtue of their differing ontological and epistemological foundations. Approaches that deconstruct theoretical practices in
order to disclose what is hidden in the use of concepts such as “national security” have something valuable to say. Their
more reflexive and critically-inclined view illustrates how terms used in realist discourses, such as state, anarchy, world
order, revolution in military affairs, and security dilemmas, are produced by a specific historical, geographical and sociopolitical context as well as historical forces and social relations of power (Klein, 1994: 22). Since realist analysts do not
question their ontology and yet purport to provide a neutral and objective analysis of a given world order based on military
power and interactions between the most important political units, namely states, realist discourses constitute a political act
in defense of the state. Indeed, “[…] it is important to recognize that to employ a textualizing approach to social policy
involving conflict and war is not to attempt to reduce social phenomena to various concrete manifestations of language.
Rather, it is an attempt to analyze the interpretations governing policy thinking. And it is important to recognize that policy
thinking is not unsituated” (Shapiro, 1989a: 71). Policy thinking is practical thinking since it imposes an analytic order on
the “real world”, a world that only exists in the analysts’ own narratives. In this light, Barry Posen’s political role in
legitimizing American hegemonic power and national security conduct seems obvious: U.S. command of the commons
provides an impressive foundation for selective engagement. It is not adequate for a policy of primacy. […] Command of
the commons gives the United States a tremendous capability to harm others. Marrying that capability to a conservative
policy of selective engagement helps make U.S. military power appear less threatening and more tolerable. Command of the
commons creates additional collective goods for U.S. allies. These collective goods help connect U.S. military power to
seemingly prosaic welfare concerns. U.S. military power underwrites world trade, travel, global telecommunications, and
commercial remote sensing, which all depend on peace and order in the commons” (Posen, 2003: 44 and 46). Adopting a
more critical stance, David Campbell points out that “[d]anger is not an objective condition. It (sic) is not a thing which
exists independently of those to whom it may become a threat. […] Nothing is a risk in itself; [...] it all depends on how one
analyses the danger, considers the event” (Campbell, 1998: 1-2). In the same vein, national security discourse does not
evaluate objective threats; rather, it is itself a product of historical processes and structures in the state and society that
produces it. Whoever has the power to define security is then the one who has the authority to write legitimate security
discourses and conduct the policies that legitimize them. The realist analysts and state leaders who invoke national security
and act in its name are the same individuals who hold the power to securitize threats by inserting them in a discourse that
frames national identity and freezes it.9 Like many concepts, realism is essentially contested. In a critical reinterpretation
of realism, James Der Derian offers a genealogy of realism that deconstructs the uniform realism represented in IR: he
reveals many other versions of realism that are never mentioned in International Relations texts (Der Derian, 1995: 367). I
am aware that there are many realist discoursesin International Relations, but they all share a set of assumptions, such as
“the state is a rational unitary actor”, “the state is the main actor in international relations”, “states pursue power defined as
a national interest”, and so on. I want to show that realism is one way of representing reality, not the reflection of
reality. While my aim here is not to rehearse Der Derian’s genealogy of realism, I do want to spell out the problems with a
positivist theory of realism and a correspondence philosophy of language. Such a philosophy accepts nominalism, wherein
language as neutral description corresponds to reality. This is precisely the problem of epistemic realism and of the realism
characteristic of American realist theoretical discourses. And since for poststructuralists language constitutes reality, a
reinterpretation of realism as constructed in these discourses is called for.10 These scholars cannot refer to the “essentially
contested nature of realism” and then use “realism as the best language to reflect a self-same phenomenon” (Der Derian,
[continued…no text removed]
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1995: 374). Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that the many neorealist and neoclassical realist discourses in International
Relations are not useful. Rather, I want to argue that these technicist and scientist forms of realism serve political purposes,
used as they are in many think tanks and foreign policy bureaucracies to inform American political leaders. This is the
relevance of deconstructing the uniform realism (as used in International Relations): it brings to light its locatedness in a
hermeneutic circle in which it is unwittingly trapped (Der Derian, 1995: 371). And as Friedrich Kratochwil argues, “[…]
the rejection of a correspondence theory of truth does not condemn us, as it is often maintained, to mere ‘relativism’ and/or
to endless “deconstruction” in which anything goes but it leaves us with criteria that allows us to distinguish and evaluate
competing theoretical creations” (Kratochwil, 2000: 52).
Given that political language is not a neutral medium that gives expression to ideas formed independently of structures of
signification that sustain political action and thought, American realist discourses belonging to the neorealist or neoclassical
realist traditions cannot be taken as mere descriptions of reality. We are trapped in the production of discourses in which
national leaders and security speech acts emanating from realist discourses develop and reinforce a notion of national
identity as synony- mous with national security. U.S. national security conduct should thus be understood through the prism
of the theoretical discourses of American political leaders and realist scholars that co-constitute it. Realist discourses depict
American political leaders acting in defense of national security, and political leaders act in the name of national security. In
the end, what distinguishes realist discourses is that they depict the United States as having behaved like a national security
state since World War II, while legitimating the idea that the United States should continue to do so. Political scientists and
historians “are engaged in making (poesis), not merely recording or reporting” (Medhurst, 2000: 17). Precisely in this
sense, rhetoric is not the description of national security conduct; it constitutes it.
3. Implicates the aff – [insert reason why aff doesn’t make sense in a realist context]
4. Even if it’s inevitable, the aff is not a successful way of re-engaging these existing practices (that’s
above) – failing to reform realism lets the state control the discussion of possibility
Bleiker 2K [Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Page 16, Google Books]
Human agency is not something that exists in an a priori manner and can be measured scientifically in reference to external
realities. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as human agency, for its nature and its function are, at least in part,
determined by how we think about human action and its potential to shape political and social practices. The mutually
constituted and constantly shilling relationship between agents and discourses thus undermines the possibility of observing
social dynamics in a value-free way. To embark on such an endeavour nevertheless is to superimpose a static image upon a
series of events that can only be understood in their fluidity. It is to objectivise a very particular and necessarily subjective
understanding of agency and its corresponding political practices. The dangers of such an approach have been debated
extensively. Authors such as Richard Ashley, Jim George and Steve Smith have shown how positivist epistemologies have
transformed one specific interpretation of world political realities, the dominant realist one, into reality per se ." Realist
perceptions of the international have'. gradually become accepted as common sense. to the point that any critique against
them has to be evaluated in terms of an already existing and obiectivised world-view. There are powerful mechanisms of
control precisely in this ability to determine meaning and rationality. 'Defining common sense', Smith thus argues, is 'the
ultimate act of political power'." It separates the possible from the impossible and directs the theory and practice of
international relations on a particular path.
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1. Interpretation – the judge should evaluate the discursive modes under which the plan operates
2. There is no neutral deployment of policy – the 1AC necessarily operates under specific discursive
circuits that shape the implementation of their plan – criticizing those discourses is impacted by the
1NC
3. The affirmative chose each card and advantage of their 1AC and security literature is a predictable
negative rejoinder – its fair
4. The merits of the current mode of politics are important – only kritiks access this discussion critically
– important negative ground
5. Security creates an “astropolitical gaze” that makes intelligible otherwise incoherent and false
formulations of empire – criticism is superior political education
Havercroft and Duvall 9 (Jonathan Havercroft (PhD University of Minnesota 2006) is an SDF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Centre of International Relations, Uni¬versity of British Columbia Raymond D. Duvall's research covers international political
economy, international relations, global governance, social institutions of global capitalism and international organizations. He has
published on the capitalist state, the democratic peace, and approaches to security. He co-edited Power and Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)., “3
Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state
sovereignty,” Securing Outer Space Eds. Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, Routledge, Pp. 50-52//DN)
In the broad intellectual tradition of geopolitics, advocates of a critical perspective - particularly Simon Dalby, John
Agnew, and Gearoid O TuathaiJ -have challenged mainstream geopolitical theory for assuming and validating power
relations implicit in the production of geopolitical knowledge, and fot a tendency to be a reifying and totalizing discourse
that erases difference and political contestation from processes of representing space (Agnew 2003, 2005; Dalby 1991;
Dalby and 6 Tuathail 1998; 6 Tuathail.1996).
O Tuathail has criticized earlier forms of geopolitics for their ocular-centrism and what he terms the "geopolitical gaze."
Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, he reads geopolitical discourse as power/knowledge, such that knowledge of
spaces produces subjects empowered for expansive control. Geopolitical representations — what 6 Tuathail terms geopower — are in a mutually supportive relation with the imperial institutions in which they are produced (6 Tuathail 1996:
6-20). Empires cannot function without clear representations that explore, chart, and bring under control cartographic
spaces. The spatial imaginary of the "geopolitical gaze," then, is immanent to empire. In a related vein, Simon Dalby, too,
has studied the role that geographical representations play. He has examined official policy documents and academic
analyses of U.S. strategic thinking in both Cold War strategies and the Bush doctrine to determine how geographical
representations of the earth shape U.S. imperial strategy (Dalby 2007). Additionally, John Agnew's work examines how a
particular geopolitical imagining - a global order constituted by sovereign states - "arose from European-American
experience but was then projected on to the rest of the world and in to the future in the theory and practice of world
politics" (Agnew 2003: 2).
Such scholarly work of critical geopolitics makes two crucial contribu¬tions. First it draws on the interpretive strategies of
various theorists - from Foucault to Derrida and others - to critique the assumptions of mainstream geopolitical analysis.
Second it moves toward a reformulation of geopolitics in a form that is more conscious of how power operates in the theory
and practice of world politics. In the first two parts of this chapter we have drawn on the first of those contributions for our
critical reading of realist and liberal-republican astropolitics, albeit without our making explicit reference to specific social
theorists. Thus, just as Mackinder's geopolitics re-presented how the world operated in a way that could be understood and
controlled by British imperialists, it can be argued, following Agnew's, 0 Tuathail's and Dalby's lead, that the kinds of
representations of space proffered by Dolman (as orbits, regions, and launching points of strategic value) make the exercise
of conttol over space intelligible from an American imperialist perspective. The "astropolitical gaze" and its cartographic
representations are mutually productive with the current U.S. policy of attempting to secure control over orbital space. As
we saw, realist astropolitics celebrates the ways in which extending U.S. military hegemony into space could amplify
America's imperial power. Yet, Dolman's realist astropolitik leaves under-theorized the normative implication of spacebased imperialism. Instead, Dolman merely asserts that America would be a benevolent emperor without explaining what
[continued…no text removed]
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[continued…no text removed]
checks on U.S. power might exist to prevent it from using the "ultimate high ground" to dominate all the residents of the
Earth. Conversely, Deudney focuses on the potential for inter-state collaboration to produce a federal-republican global
political order. However, Deudney leaves under-theorized the very real possibility that a unilateral entry into space by the
U.S. could create an entirely new mode of protection and security. While our approach to critical astropolitics shares the
political commit¬ments and many of the theoretical foundations of critical geopolitical scholar¬ship, our interest is more in
the study of the constitutive as opposed to the representational consequences of astropolitics. Accordingly, in the remainder
of this chapter we draw on the second contribution of critical geopolitics - the reformulation of geopolitical theory through
concepts of critical theoretical analysis — to address the normative and theoretical absences we have identified in the realist
and liberal astropolitical writings of Dolman and Deudney. First we will draw on the critical theories of sovereignty offered
in writings of Foucault, Agamben, and Hardt and Negri to theorize the form that the missing mode of protection/security
from Deudney's "historical security mate¬rialist" analysis - empire - would take, Second, we conclude by arguing that such
a mode of protection/security would lack any effective counterbalances to its ability to project force, and as such it is
unlikely that it would be the benevolent imperial power that Dolman claims it would be.
6. Their notion of what politics consist of is flawed – questioning assumptions is the only political option
Jayan Nayar, shape-shifter, horse whisperer, 1999 (“SYMPOSIUM: RE-FRAMING INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: Orders of
Inhumanity” Transnational
Law & Contemporary Problems Fall, 1999) Lexis
The description of the continuities of violence in Section II in many ways is familiar to those who adopt a critical
perspective of the world. "We" are accustomed to narrating human wrongs in this way. The failures and betrayals, the
victims and perpetrators, are familiar to our critical understanding. From this position of judgment, commonly held within
the "mainstream" of the "non-mainstream," there is also a familiarity of solutions commonly advocated for transformation;
the "marketplace" for critique is a thriving one as evidenced by the abundance of literature in this respect. Despite this
proliferation of enlightenment and the profession of so many good ideas, however, "things" appear to remain as they are, or,
worse still, deteriorate. And so, the cycle of critique, proposals for transformation and disappointment continues. Rightly,
we are concerned with the question of what can be done to alleviate the sufferings that prevail. But there are necessary
prerequisites to answering the "what do we do?" question. We must first ask the intimately connected questions of "about
what?" and "toward what end?" These questions, obviously, impinge on our vision and judgment. When we attempt to
imagine transformations toward preferred human futures, we engage in the difficult task of judging the present. This is
difficult not because we are oblivious to violence or that we are numb to the resulting suffering, but because, outrage with
"events" of violence aside, processes of violence embroil and implicate our familiarities in ways that defy the simplicities of
straightforward imputability. Despite our best efforts at categorizing violence into convenient compartments--into
"disciplines" of study and analysis such as "development" and "security" (health, environment, population, being other
examples of such compartmentalization)--the encroachments of order(ing) function at more pervasive levels. And without
doubt, the perspectives of the observer, commentator, and actor become crucial determinants. It is necessary, I believe, to
question this, "our," perspective, to reflect upon a perspective of violence which not only locates violence as a happening
"out there" while we stand as detached observers and critics, but is also one in which we are ourselves implicated in the
violence of ordered worlds where we stand very much as participants. For this purpose of a critique of critique, it is
necessary to consider the "technologies" of ordering.
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7. Critique is a pre-requisite to successful policy action
Catherine Charrett, BA at the University of British Columbia International Catalan Institute for Peace, December 2009, “A Critical
Application of Securitization Theory: Overcoming the Normative Dilemma of Writing Security”,
http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/icip/Continguts/Publicacions/WorkingPapers/Arxius/WP7_ANG.pdf / KX
Critics of the CS have challenged its fixed conceptualization of security and its “apparent unwillingness to question the
content or meaning of security” (Wyn Jones 1999: 109). The role of the critical securitization analyst therefore, is to do
exactly what the CS has not, and that is to deconstruct and politicize security as a concept. In order to develop ‘new
thinking’ about security it is essential to understand how dominant modes of approaching security have previously ordered
subjectivities and how these subjectivities continue to regenerate certain emotions or actions such as political ‘othering’ or
social exclusion, or how they reinforce particular forms of governing. Walker argues that “security cannot be understood, or
reconceptualized or reconstructed without paying attention to the constitutive account of the political that has made the
prevailing accounts of security seem so plausible” (Walker 1997: 69). Here Walker asserts that it is necessary to understand
how notions of sovereignty and statism have delimited conceptualizations of security and how modern accounts of security
“engage in a discourse of repetitions, to affirm 33 over and over again the dangers that legitimize the sovereign authority
that is constituted precisely as a solution to dangers” (Walker 1997: 73). Modern accounts of security therefore remain
firmly embedded in a typically realist understanding of international relations which has structured approaches to
securitization and security policy. In order to demonstrate the restrictive approaches to security during the Cold War, for
example, Klein explores the clutch of ‘containment’ thinking through an examination of Robert McNamara’s discussion of
the shortcomings of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ approach to the Vietnam War. The argument posited here is
that the “prevailing mind-set of decision makers working within the operational code of the Containment allowed no room
for critical inquiry” into the failings of the Vietnam War. Klein argues that there was a complete “lack of imagination” of
how to respond to security threats and an incapacity to critique or learn from policy decisions embraced during this period
(Klein 1997: 361). We should therefore, not be surprised when we see similar security approaches repeated decades later,
argued here to be the result of restraining realist subjectivities and the reinforcement and repetition of hegemonic modes of
approaching security. Bellamy et al. argue that America’s response to 9/11 for instance, can be characterized “by a return to
dualistic and militaristic thinking patterns that dominated foreign policy during the Cold War” (Bellamy et al 2008: 3). As
was noted above realist orientated approaches to security embedded in a subjectivity of statism often have negative
implications for individual or global security, therefore an application of securitization which does not challenge dominant
modes of statist thinking will only serve to reinforce negative securitization practices. In order to overcome the normative
dilemma of writing security the securitization analyst must gain a nuanced understanding of the symbolic power of security,
how it shapes subjectivities and how they may be reoriented to promote alternative approaches to securitization.
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A2: Cede the Political
1. Discursive normalized circuits are what shape politics – not political ideology. There is no difference
between democrats and republicans because both support the mode of politics that makes necessary
the military industrial complex and empire – the only unique impact to ceding the political is the K
2. This means that we access a new form of politics outside of current notions of purely realist
deliberation – link turn
Grondin 4 [David, master of pol sci and PHD of political studies @ U of Ottowa “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How
and Why Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War,” http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf]
A poststructuralist approach to international relations reassesses the nature of the political. Indeed, it calls for the
repoliticization of practices of world politics that have been treated as if they were not political. For instance, limiting the
ontological elements in one’s inquiry to states or great powers is a political choice. As Jenny Edkins puts it, we need to
“bring the political back in” (Edkins, 1998: xii). For most analysts of International Relations, the conception of the
“political” is narrowly restricted to politics as practiced by politicians. However, from a poststructuralist viewpoint, the
“political” acquires a broader meaning, especially since practice is not what most theorists are describing as practice.
Poststructuralism sees theoretical discourse not only as discourse, but also as political practice. Theory therefore becomes
practice. The political space of poststructuralism is not that of exclusion; it is the political space of postmodernity, a
dichotomous one, where one thing always signifies at least one thing and another (Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 14).
Poststructuralism thus gives primacy to the political, since it acts on us, while we act in its name, and leads us to
identify and differentiate ourselves from others. This political act is never complete and celebrates undecidability, whereas
decisions, when taken, express the political moment. It is a critical attitude which encourages dissidence from traditional
approaches (Ashley and Walker, 1990a and 1990b). It does not represent one single philosophical approach or perspective,
nor is it an alternative paradigm (Tvathail, 1996: 172). It is a nonplace, a border line falling between international and
domestic politics (Ashley, 1989). The poststructuralist analyst questions the borderlines and dichotomies of modernist
discourses, such as inside/outside, the constitution of the Self/Other, and so on. In the act of definition, difference – thereby
the discourse of otherness – is highlighted, since one always defines an object with regard to what it is not (Knafo, 2004).
As Simon Dalby asserts, “It involves the social construction of some other person, group, culture, race, nationality or
political system as different from ‘our’ person, group, etc. Specifying difference is a linguistic, epistemological and, most
importantly, a political act; it constructs a space for the other distanced and inferior from the vantage point of the person
specifying the difference” (Dalby, cited in Tvathail, 1996: 179). Indeed, poststructuralism offers no definitive answers, but
leads to new questions and new unexplored grounds. This makes the commitment to the incomplete nature of the political
and of political analysis so central to poststructuralism (Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 15). As Jim George writes, “It is
postmodern resistance in the sense that while it is directly (and sometimes violently) engaged with modernity, it seeks to go
beyond the repressive, closed aspects of modernist global existence. It is, therefore, not a resistance of traditional grandscale emancipation or conventional radicalism imbued with authority of one or another sovereign presence. Rather, in
opposing the large-scale brutality and inequity in human society, it is a resistance active also at the everyday, com- munity,
neighbourhood, and interpersonal levels, where it confronts those processes that systematically exclude people from
making decisions about who they are and what they can be” (George, 1994: 215, emphasis in original). In this light,
poststructural practices are used critically to investigate how the subject of international relations is constituted in and
through the discourses and texts of global politics. Treating theory as discourse opens up the possibility of historicizing it. It
is a myth that theory can be abstracted from its socio-historical context, from reality, so to speak, as neorealists and
neoclassical realists believe. It is a political practice which needs to be contextualized and stripped of its purportedly neutral
status. It must be understood with respect to its role in preserving and reproducing the structures and power relations
present in all language forms. Dominant theories are, in this view, dominant discourses that shape our view of the world
(the “subject”) and our ways of understanding it.
3. Doesn’t turn the alt – we can still break down the values of the system without participation in it
4. Impacts outweigh – the current system maintains biopolitical control over populations and justifies
militaristic expansions of empire. Makes it try or die for the alt.
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Alternative Overview
The alternative is to reject the affirmative’s security logic. It solves – the alternative seeks an alternative
political language through which to articulate solutions to problems – we do not need to take action to
change political thought – negating is sufficient for new thought. Alternative forms of communicating
ideas arise when status quo politics are undone to allow formulations of politics that don’t immediately
throw us into the arms of the state. This is a reason the alternative is literally mutually exclusive with the
affirmative because inclusion of the political language of the aff itself maintains dependence upon the
systems of rhetoric and thought that are the integral production of the current system.
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Link – A2 We’re Benign
No distinction between satellites and ASATs – the fundamental construction of security logic underpins
the entirety of status quo aerospace industry. The Aff is built by Lockheed Martin and is implemented
by hegemonic politicians. Any benevolent use of the plan can only be corrupted for the use of political or
military might.
(Insert specific link work)
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Link – SPS
1. The new military-energy regime – the securitization of resource scarcity and oil necessitates that the
military spearhead new avenues of energy acquisition. Securitizing those resources would result in
inevitable weaponization of space – first a satellite to get our energy then hardening to protect it then
a weapon to guard it, all part of securing the upper hand against Russia or China or India. The
inevitable result can only be violence.
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Link – Aliens/SETI
1. Knowledge acquisition – the instrumentalization of the Aff is the state’s desire to know all that it
doesn’t to secure itself against the next threat that hasn’t even been identified yet. The search for ET
can only develop surveillance techniques and knowledge to extend military dominance over earth’s
inhabitants and justify slaughter when the aliens are actually found.
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Link – Colonization
]
1. The controlled life – a colony that is built as a response to a security threat can only be done in the
context of biopolitical control that would manage every facet of life in the colony – what food people
eat, who lives where, what air you can breathe – the only quality kind of life in colony cannot be one
that is constructed solely as a response to a threat to the impending asteroid attack that is going to kill
us all.
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Link – Cooperation
1. Defensive realism is still realism – any cooperation the Aff seeks is set against the backdrop of
competition, soft power, and hegemony that necessitates eventual conflict when US interests turn
from cooperation to domination.
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Link - Asteroids/Super – Volcanoes/We’re all going to die
1. Political Gridlock – Congress would be in such a fit from the constructed dangers of space
__________ that the Aff will never be fully implemented in enough time to actually achieve significant
presence in space. K solves this.
2. Our case arguments prove that these are deployed to sway public opinion, not neutral descriptions of
reality – err neg
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