ON SECURITY

The Main Concepts of Security in the Modern Age - from ‘The Security Principle: From Serenity to Regulation’ by Frédéric Gros

This month marks twenty years since 9/11 - an epoch after which notions of ‘security' (particularly national security) have shifted significantly both politically and culturally - when collective grief was exploited to expand state powers (both in the US and Europe) and justify imperialist foreign policy in the Middle East. 

With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan now ‘complete’, where do the crimes and violence enacted in the name of national security sit? And how have wider notions of security provided the basis for the expansion of state power and systems of control that continue now?

In his book ‘The Security Principle’ [nb. here’s our book review - you can skip the first two chapters, tbh bit wanky. Third chapter is where it’s at, and fourth is a ~ride~ when read during a pandemic ….¯\_(ツ)_/¯. fin] Frédéric Gros sets out that we “think of the state as the bearer of the monopoly of the forces of security: it is the state that must maintain public order, it is the state that ought to protect us against terrorist threats, it is the state that has to implement health policies adequate to dealing with the threat of epidemics, and so on”. (lol at that last bit amirite?)

Cultural ideas of security in the “modern era” have steadily moved away from that of serenity or the guarantee of one’s fundamental rights. Instead, security is more and more invoked in the name of public order and the safety (and preservation) of the state itself rather than its people. For instance: national, military and police security take precedence over the millions of adults and children that experienced food ‘insecurity’ (read: food poverty) during the pandemic. 

This priority further surfaces in a number of ways, including intrusive surveillance and the expansion of the carceral estate. Security in this sense is removed from any inherent stability; instead it is a constantly moving target, its continuity relying on perpetual new inputs and provoking new reactions. Sold as the antidote to the fear and instability purposefully instilled by the state, security is positioned as a commodity, and as with all commodities, it is then capitalised, privatised, and outsourced.

While contradictory to the model of the state as the guarantor, this outsourcing is a practise prevalent across the multiple dimensions of security, such as the presence of defence companies and private military personnel in military security; or the expansion of surveillance, through private tech and domestic doorbell cameras in police security. Outsourcing allows the state to remove itself from accountability and obfuscate the modes and methods used in the pursuit of security.

Gros concludes that “Neoliberal regimes are doomed to become police states” - in order to contain the “explosions of misery” of the dispossessed and marginalised pushed further into inequality. The apparatus of security put in place by those in power is then self perpetuating, its implementation not only widening these already vast inequalities, but proclaiming to guard against the instability and fear instilled by the securitarian state itself.