The Discipline of Fear. The Securitisation of International Relations Post-9/11 in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This paper argues that International Relations as an academic discipline (IR) since 9/11 has become part of a growing preoccupation with ‘security’. This has not always been the case, and still today there are alternative theorisations also within the mainstream of the discipline. The security perspective however was shaped by two particular junctures in which the fear of impending attack on the USA and its allies was articulated at its most dramatic. The first occurred between the original establishment of the discipline in the interwar years and the postwar siege laid on the USSR. Here the role of IR was to define as rational the assumption of a nuclear surprise attack, equating the USSR as a ‘totalitarian’ state similar to the Axis Powers, one of which did attack Pearl Harbour. The second can be traced back to the 1970s when the threat of Third World revolt under the banner of national liberation was re-baptised ‘international terrorism’ at the instigation of the Israeli Far Right and militarists in the US, thus creating a continuity between the supposed Soviet threat and post-Soviet instances of anti-Western revolt. From this the paper concludes that IR has functioned to place policy-makers and opinion leaders under a ‘discipline of fear’ which is insufficiently recognized, let alone challenged by IR scholars.