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Article Excerpt
This article draws attention to the changing concepts of risk and security after 9/11 and the consequences that these changes have for political constructions of the state/market relation. By focusing on how the concept of partnership designates a certain understanding of risk and security, the article questions the construction of the role of private companies in US security policy after 9/11, as well as the construction of a politics of security in the private market of insurance. The article argues that, in political texts, the private company is constructed as an agent in the provision of national security; the private company is constituted as a political actor with political responsibilities that exceed respect for the law. Additionally, the article demonstrates the ways insurance businesses strive to uphold a classical understanding of the private insurance market and its responsibility. KEYWORDS: Counterterrorism, partnerships, risk, security, private business, TRIA
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Partnership has become a celebrated concept within a wide range of policy areas. Environmental policy, trade policy, and crime control are just a few examples of areas where partnerships are viewed as fundamental to political success. Although the concept of partnrship is very ambiguous, everyone seems to agree that it designates the possibility of combining, or even uniting, political, personal, and economic interests. (1)
During the past five years, partnerships between national security agencies and private business have increasingly been seen as central to the success of counterterrorism in the United States and Europe. By setting up partnerships (dialogue forums and outreach programs), the actions of private business are constructed as politically important to the possibility of counterterrorism. The idea of partnerships is especially interesting in the American context as it chal lenges a fundamental aspect of the American political identity: the liberal idea of an independent market.
There are two primary ways of explaining the seemingly urgent need to involve private companies in today's "war on terror." One explanation focuses on the changing nature of threats, the other on the symbolic relation between the company and the Western liberal state. In both academia and policy documents, the most widespread argument addresses the changing nature of the terrorist threat and the difficulty of separating internal from external threats. Accordingly, national security threats cannot be reduced to external threats, nor can they be handled by diplomatic or military means alone. Generally, this has been the reasoning behind the establishment of the Department for Homeland Security, for emphasizing the need for "neighborhood watch," and for asking private companies to actively take a role in the effort to combat terrorism. Besides its direct involvement, the private company also has a strong symbolic value that makes it particularly important in the so-called war on terror. The director of the FBI, Robert S. Mueller, said in a speech to the US Chamber of Commerce in 2006:
Economic opportunity is provided by the businesses represented here today and many throughout the country. But the same opportunity that brings us great prosperity makes our country--and your businesses-a target for terrorists and criminals alike. When terrorists struck the World Trade Center, they destroyed a symbol of America's strength. (2)
By being a threat to private companies, terrorism attacks Western images of market and capital. This metaphorical relation between the company and the vulnerability of the liberal state is very important politically because it describes some very fundamental values of our society. These are, allegedly, the same values that groups such as Al-Qaida try to fight. Therefore, decisions of private companies are no longer simply private. Instead, private decisions to act on a terrorist threat have become a matter of national security.
This article argues that, while law is a "medium" that normally communicates between politics and the market, other, subtler ways of governing are used in the name of combating terrorism. One method involves the political appeal to the moral responsibility of private companies as well as their economic self-interest. Most often, the moral appeal is made in the name of partnership. As repeatedly emphasized by President George W. Bush, a shared responsibility between government and the private sector is essential to national security in the face of a terrorist threat. (3)
The interesting question is, however, how the focus on public/private partnerships in security policies affects our understanding of national security, authority, and responsibility. This article addresses this question by analyzing US counterterrorism policy and the role of private companies in that policy, after 9/11.
Similar to the conceptual works of Jens Bartelson, R. B. J. Walker, James Der Derian, and others, the objective of this conceptual analysis is to identify and understand the premises for politics and political change. (4) Thus, concepts are understood as foundationalfoundational and constitutive; they both represent and are constitutive of human understanding and experience.
Although this article primarily focuses on the current understandings of risk and security, it also includes a brief summary of the historical context of the debate, describing the main features of the modern concepts of risk and security. The purpose is to set up the context, or convention, in which the concepts of risk and security are traditionally understood. Next, based on those conventions, the article analyzes how the US government and private insurance companies respectively understand and manage the concepts of risk and security. Focusing on how the concept of partnership designates a certain understanding of risk and security, the article asks how the role of private companies is constructed in security policies and how the politics of security is constructed in the private market of insurance.
The Concepts of Security and Risk
Until recently, the academic environments of risk analysis and security studies had hardly "spoken" to one another. The two fields of study were defined within different academic disciplines. Security studies were regarded as a matter for international relations (IR); risk studies were considered a matter for sociology, economics, and the natural sciences.
An increased policy focus on terrorism, climate change, and other transnational threats seems, however, to have brought the two fields of study closer together. The general argument is that these types of threats question the possibility of calculation and the means-end-rationality, which, for centuries, has been considered central to the concept of risk. Accordingly, the focus on catastrophic events has given the fields of security studies and risk analysis a common empirical theme and highlighted the need for a common research agenda.
This has resulted in a rather heated debate on what this means for the concepts of risk and security. Have the concepts changed; have they become outdated; or have they been replaced by other concepts? A central figure in the debate is Ulrich Beck. Analyzing 9/11, he states:
We live, think and act in concepts that are historically obsolete but which nonetheless continue to govern our...
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