Routledge Critical Security Studies

This book maps the increasing convergence of US domestic and international security regimes, analysing 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 a nightmare of permanent global pacification -- not only in the Global South but also in pockets of the 'Third World' within the territory of Western states. This book shows that regimes of security have been extended into increasingly large aspects of social life and that their expansion has been driven by a constant broadening of the notion of 'war' to encompass an ever-wider array of 'emergency situations' that seem far removed from traditional ideas of interstate conflict. The book fills a gap in the literature by offering an interdisciplinary study of the growing convergence of domestic and international regimes of security. Not only has the production of domestic public safety been 'militarised', but foreign defence has also been increasingly 'civilianised'. In fact, contemporary regimes of security seek to control civilian populations through an ever-tighter articulation of civilian and military organisations, tactics and doctrines, which aim to identify, track and target dangerous elements supposedly hiding among the circulations of everyday life. Potential and actual insurgents, terrorists and criminals are indistinguishable from ordinary civilians; while flows of contraband, such as illegal weapons and narcotics, are hidden amongst the licit circulations of global capitalism. This book shows that US security agencies have sought to develop spatially and temporally indeterminate security capabilities aimed at distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate flows of people and resources. While regimes of security are ultimately doomed to fail, because some dangerous elements will always elude identification, tracking and targeting, their very failure also drives their constant expansion, fine-tuning, overhauling and re-organisation. 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.