This book maps the increasing convergence of US domestic and international security regimes, analyzing the trend towards global pacification in the name of 'security'.
The dream of liberal world peace after the Cold War is on the verge of collapsing into permanent global pacification – not only in the global south but also in pockets of the ‘Third World’ within the territory of Western states. In this volume, the author explores the ways in which regimes of security have been extended into increasingly large aspects of social life and shows that their expansion has been driven by a constant broadening of the notion of 'war'.
Filling a gap in the literature, the book demonstrates how US security agencies have sought to develop indeterminate security capabilities aimed at distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate flows of people and resources. This analysis of regimes of security is tied to a more general discussion about the persistence, or even multiplication, of illiberal forms of power within liberal governmentality.
This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, war and conflict studies and international relations in general.
Author(s): Markus Kienscherf
Series: Routledge Critical Security Studies Series + 9
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: 201
Tags: international security us security policing pacification governamentalities of security geopolitics
Contents
US Domestic and International Regimes of Security 3
Acknowledgments 8
Introduction 9
From ‘defense’ to ‘security’ 9
Threats to the global homeland 11
Method 14
The book 18
The ‘reality’ of insecurity 19
1 Liberal security and the biopolitics of global pacification 21
Security beyond the inside/outside divide 21
A permanent state of exception? 22
Political power as war and/or government 25
Liberal government 27
Liberalism and its others 29
Biopolitics and the pacification of illiberal life 31
Governmentalities and agents of liberal security 37
2 Expeditionary pacification 39
Introduction 39
The rise of counterinsurgency doctrine 40
Security, development and the management of modernization 42
The military contribution 47
Vietnam and the ‘end’ of US counterinsurgency doctrine 51
Counterinsurgency revamped 55
How new is the new doctrine? 57
Conclusion 61
3 Domestic pacification 62
Introduction 62
Nixon and the war on drugs 63
COINTELPRO 66
The war on drugs under Reagan 67
The war on drugs under Bush and Clinton 70
Managing risky populations 72
Paramilitary policing 75
Domestic pacification 76
Conclusion 79
4 Geographies of security 81
Introduction 81
Command, control, surveillance and reconnaissance 82
Interdicting ‘risky’ circulations 84
Global borderlands 84
Domestic borderlands 87
The securitization of urban design 90
Warehousing ‘risky’ populations 94
The violence of detention 99
Conclusion 101
5 Organizing security 103
Dreams of omnipotence through omniscience 103
A changing security environment 106
Violent non-state actors 106
The militarization of policing and the ‘policization’ of warfighting 109
The privatization of security 111
Losing hearts and minds 115
Plugging cultural knowledge into the US military 117
Conclusion 122
6 Legitimizing security 124
Introduction 124
The biopolitics of human (in)security 124
Biopolitical pacification 128
Legitimizing expeditionary pacification 132
Legitimizing domestic pacification 136
Enemies of humanity 141
Conclusion 142
The problematic of liberal violence 142
How to challenge liberal violence? 143
Notes 147
Introduction 147
2 Expeditionary pacification 147
3 Domestic pacification 150
4 Geographies of security 150
5 Organizing security 151
References 152
Index 184
