Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-25DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2230879
Densua Mumford, James Shires
{"title":"Toward a Decolonial Cybersecurity: Interrogating the Racial-Epistemic Hierarchies That Constitute Cybersecurity Expertise","authors":"Densua Mumford, James Shires","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2230879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2230879","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Beginning with a startling pattern of racialized practices in cybersecurity expert communities in the Gulf States, and drawing on the decolonial insights of the modernity/coloniality school, this article argues that race operates as a marker of who is a legitimate knower of dominant Euro-American knowledges of cybersecurity and who is not, and therefore whose understandings, experiences, and practices of cybersecurity are privileged. In demonstrating that decolonial thought can be fruitfully applied to questions of cybersecurity, this article makes three contributions to security studies. The first is empirical, drawing on original interview data to identify racial hierarchies of rationality and authority in cybersecurity expert communities. The second contribution is theoretical, demonstrating how a decolonial perspective is especially well equipped to understand racialized practices in cybersecurity knowledge production. The third contribution is programmatic, outlining a decolonial research agenda for cybersecurity—or, as we put it in the title, a path toward a decolonial cybersecurity.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135814265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-25DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2250259
Ondřej Rosendorf, Michal Smetana, Marek Vranka
{"title":"Algorithmic Aversion? Experimental Evidence on the Elasticity of Public Attitudes to “Killer Robots”","authors":"Ondřej Rosendorf, Michal Smetana, Marek Vranka","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2250259","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2250259","url":null,"abstract":"Lethal autonomous weapon systems present a prominent yet controversial military innovation. While previous studies have indicated that the deployment of “killer robots” would face considerable public opposition, our understanding of the elasticity of these attitudes, contingent on different factors, remains limited. In this article, we aim to explore the sensitivity of public attitudes to three specific factors: concerns about the accident-prone nature of the technology, concerns about responsibility attribution for adverse outcomes, and concerns about the inherently undignified nature of automated killing. Our survey experiment with a large sample of Americans reveals that public attitudes toward autonomous weapons are significantly contingent on beliefs about their error-proneness relative to human-operated systems. Additionally, we find limited evidence that individuals concerned about human dignity violations are more likely to oppose “killer robots.” These findings hold significance for current policy debates about the international regulation of autonomous weapons.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135814263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-14DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2250253
Sarah G. Phillips, Nadwa al-Dawsari
{"title":"Trivializing Terrorists: How Counterterrorism Knowledge Undermines Local Resistance to Terrorism","authors":"Sarah G. Phillips, Nadwa al-Dawsari","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2250253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2250253","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how counterterrorism knowledge practices affect the groups they study. We argue that these practices typically construct terrorist groups as ontologically stable and organizationally rational, which makes them appear familiar to, and so governable by, counterterrorism organizations. We show that by excluding prevalent local knowledge, Western counterterrorism policy discourses assign the power to construct the category of “terrorist” to those without daily lived experience of the “terrorists” in question. This undermines different ways of knowing what sustains these groups, what might eradicate them and, more importantly, what might make their ability to pose a serious threat seem unlikely, or even absurd, to those whose support they purportedly need to survive as terrorists. Using evidence from Yemen, we show that groups labelled as “terrorists” do not fit into the stable categories that counterterrorism organizations require to produce actionable targets. We argue that while imposing such categories helps counterterrorists find targets that reflect their assumptions, it also generates pathways for violent actors to evolve and reproduce.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134913161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-09-13DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2241991
Stacie E. Goddard, Paul K. MacDonald
{"title":"From ‘butcher and bolt’ to ‘blugsplat’: Race, counterinsurgency, and international politics","authors":"Stacie E. Goddard, Paul K. MacDonald","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2241991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2241991","url":null,"abstract":"Beginning in the early 2000s, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan revived interest among security studies scholars in counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. Yet most studies of COIN in mainstream security studies have not explored the role of race, despite the fact that the principles of COIN warfare were developed during the colonial period when racialized visions dominated world politics. We argue that mainstream security scholars tend to overlook race for two interconnected reasons: first, they treat race as an emotional and interpersonal phenomenon, and second, they assume that racial hostility will manifest in intense and indiscriminate violence. We argue instead that race should be understood as a particular kind of social ontology, one that places human communities into socially reductionist hierarchies based on assumed bio-cultural traits. We then examine how different kinds of racial ontologies were used in the colonial period to develop different kinds of COIN doctrines, whether punitive or paternalistic in character. We demonstrate how these different racialized COIN frameworks informed state practices on the battlefield through a comparative illustration of two COIN campaigns: Britain on the “North-West frontier” of India in the late nineteenth century and the United States along the “Af-Pak border” in the early twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135742048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-08-25DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2246875
Bianca Freeman
{"title":"Racial Hierarchy and Jurisdiction in U.S. Status of Forces Agreements","authors":"Bianca Freeman","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2246875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2246875","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) establish when and how the domestic laws of host governments are applied to American soldiers. Why does the United States share jurisdiction under some SOFAs but not others? I argue that U.S. SOFAs project a racialized conception of host state capacity for governance over American troops on foreign soil. It is through the notion of “capacity” that non-white host partners are stereotyped as possessing inferior courts and legal values. The United States is less likely to share jurisdiction with non-white majority host countries. I motivate my argument with primary accounts of racial discrimination in debates over U.S. SOFA policy. Then, I code U.S. SOFA jurisdiction and estimate its determinants. The results suggest that the United States imposes concurrent jurisdiction to govern its interactions with predominantly white host states, allowing these peer countries to try U.S. personnel, while withholding this same right from most non-white host partners, ceteris paribus. I conclude with a discussion of implications for understanding international law and security from its racial underpinnings.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46639461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2230447
José O. Pérez
{"title":"Brazil’s Foreign Policy and Security under Lula and Bolsonaro: Hierarchy, Racialization, and Diplomacy","authors":"José O. Pérez","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2230447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2230447","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article outlines how Brazil’s state actors carry out racialized diplomatic performances, which coexist alongside the oppression of Black, Indigenous, and mixed-race Brazilians, and at times even affect their physical security. Moreover, these racialized diplomatic performances are a continuous feature of Brazilian foreign policy across the two presidencies compared here, but with important differences due to their divergent ideologies and policy goals. During the Lula (2003–10) administration, racialized enactments of national identity furthered Brazil’s commercial interests across the Global South while having a mixed impact on marginalized domestic populations. Invocations of Brazil’s position within global hierarchies, under Lula, allowed its Global South activism to advance alongside the violence Brazil’s security forces perpetrated during the MINUSTAH mission in Haiti and in Brazil’s favelas. Meanwhile, for the Bolsonaro (2019–22) administration, racialized appeals functioned as a method for minimizing and disavowing the political violence that occurred during his term. Bolsonaro employed Brazil’s hybrid national identity to downplay concerns over deforestation in the Amazon as external “neocolonialism” while centering the role of Christianity in his foreign policy. This article draws upon trade/commercial figures, public speeches, data from official visits, and other sources to illustrate these claims regarding hierarchy, racialization, and diplomacy.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44919269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2230881
Naima Green-Riley, Andrew Leber
{"title":"Whose War is it Anyway? Explaining the Black-White Gap in Support for the Use of Force Abroad","authors":"Naima Green-Riley, Andrew Leber","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2230881","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2230881","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Building on long-standing work on a “gender gap” in war support, this article documents a recurring “race gap” in which Black Americans display less enthusiasm for war than their White counterparts. We compile time-series data on public opinion during the Iraq War collected from over fifty national polls and successive waves of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to assess potential explanations for the gap. We show that concerns about casualties best explain lower levels of support for war among Black Americans. Feelings of political alienation and preferences for domestic spending serve as more salient contributors to Black disapproval of war during the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, having a family member in the military does not explain lower Black support for war. Black antiwar rhetoric suggests that our casualty sensitivity and alienation findings stem from linked fate attitudes and concerns about fairness and “justness” of the war effort among Black Americans.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45345746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-10DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2230882
Zoltán I. Búzás, Anna A. Meier
{"title":"Racism by Designation: Making Sense of Western States’ Nondesignation of White Supremacists as Terrorists","authors":"Zoltán I. Búzás, Anna A. Meier","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2230882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2230882","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How can we make sense of Western states’ nondesignation of white supremacists as terrorists compared to other actors engaged in similar political violence? This article offers three arguments and supports them with rich case studies of designation in the United States and the United Kingdom. First, the racially disparate impact of designations can be understood as a form of institutional racism. Second, within the Western racial order, Arabs/Muslims are stereotypically seen as terrorists, whereas whites benefit from the presumption of not being terrorists. The result is a racial double standard at the core of the norm against terrorism, such that white supremacists are disproportionately less likely to be designated as terrorists than other groups. Third, we caution against viewing the few recent white supremacist designations as transformative and overestimating their ability to deracialize counterterrorism.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42100858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-10DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2230880
Kelebogile Zvobgo, Arturo C. Sotomayor, M. Rublee, Meredith Loken, G. Karavas, C. Duncombe
{"title":"Race and Racial Exclusion in Security Studies: A Survey of Scholars","authors":"Kelebogile Zvobgo, Arturo C. Sotomayor, M. Rublee, Meredith Loken, G. Karavas, C. Duncombe","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2230880","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2230880","url":null,"abstract":"increased attention to racialized knowledge and methodological whiteness has swept the political science discipline, especially international relations. yet an important dimension of race and racism continues to be ignored: the presence and status of scholars of color in the discipline. in contrast to other fields, there is little research on (under)representation of scholars of color in security studies, and no systematic studies of race and racial exclusion that center their voices and experiences. Building on scholarship that contends with the fundamental whiteness of academia and knowledge creation, we present results from a 2019 survey of members of the international Security Studies Section of the international Studies Association. the data show that scholars of color and white scholars experience the field in dramatically different ways; scholars of color report at greater rates feeling unwelcome, experiencing harassment, and desiring more professional development opportunities. dozens of studies across academia support these findings.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48053743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Security StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-05DOI: 10.1080/09636412.2023.2230891
Brian C. Rathbun, Nina Srinivasan Rathbun
{"title":"Volk Theory: Prejudice, Racism, and German Foreign Policy Before and Under Hitler","authors":"Brian C. Rathbun, Nina Srinivasan Rathbun","doi":"10.1080/09636412.2023.2230891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2023.2230891","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Drawing on John Duckitt’s dual-process model of prejudice, we hypothesize that there are two primary types of racial prejudice, biological and symbolic-cultural, and that these are associated with particular ideological outlooks—dangerous and competitive world beliefs, respectively—that might substantially affect foreign policy. Biological racism is associated with a materialistic understanding of the world as a zero-sum struggle for scarce resources, symbolic-cultural racism with a conception of the world as filled with threats that must be dealt with through the creation of national cohesion and conformity. The dual-process framework makes sense of the differences between Wilhelmine and Nazi foreign policy and puts race at the heart of the contrast, most clearly seen in the treatment of the same conquered Eastern European territory during World War I and World War II. Our approach puts individual-level variation in the degree and type of prejudice front and center, something generally overlooked in critical approaches.","PeriodicalId":47478,"journal":{"name":"Security Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42883495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}