US Domestic and International Regimes of Security: Pacifying the Globe, Securing the Homeland

Description

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. Acknowledgments 5 Introduction 7 From ‘defense’ to ‘security’ 7 Threats to the global homeland 9 Method 12 The book 16 The ‘reality’ of insecurity 17 1 Liberal security and the biopolitics of global pacification 19 Security beyond the inside/outside divide 19 A permanent state of exception? 20 Political power as war and/or government 23 Liberal government 25 Liberalism and its others 27 Biopolitics and the pacification of illiberal life 29 Governmentalities and agents of liberal security 35 2 Expeditionary pacification 37 Introduction 37 The rise of counterinsurgency doctrine 38 Security, development and the management of modernization 40 The military contribution 45 Vietnam and the ‘end’ of US counterinsurgency doctrine 49 Counterinsurgency revamped 53 How new is the new doctrine? 55 Conclusion 59 3 Domestic pacification 60 Introduction 60 Nixon and the war on drugs 61 COINTELPRO 64 The war on drugs under Reagan 65 The war on drugs under Bush and Clinton 68 Managing risky populations 70 Paramilitary policing 73 Domestic pacification 74 Conclusion 77 4 Geographies of security 79 Introduction 79 Command, control, surveillance and reconnaissance 80 Interdicting ‘risky’ circulations 82 Global borderlands 82 Domestic borderlands 85 The securitization of urban design 88 Warehousing ‘risky’ populations 92 The violence of detention 97 Conclusion 99 5 Organizing security 101 Dreams of omnipotence through omniscience 101 A changing security environment 104 Violent non-state actors 104 The militarization of policing and the ‘policization’ of warfighting 107 The privatization of security 109 Losing hearts and minds 113 Plugging cultural knowledge into the US military 115 Conclusion 120 6 Legitimizing security 122 Introduction 122 The biopolitics of human (in)security 122 Biopolitical pacification 126 Legitimizing expeditionary pacification 130 Legitimizing domestic pacification 134 Enemies of humanity 139 Conclusion 140 The problematic of liberal violence 140 How to challenge liberal violence? 141 Notes 145 Introduction 145 2 Expeditionary pacification 145 3 Domestic pacification 148 4 Geographies of security 148 5 Organizing security 149 References 150 Index 182