In the name of ‘national security’
Speaking Security Newsletter | Congressional Candidate Advisory Note 5 | 4 May 2020
One of the easiest ways to tell whether your opponent’s foreign policy is suspect is to take a cursory glance at how often he or she (usually he, unfortunately, given the gender imbalance in Congress) invokes ‘national security’ in defense of their policy positions.
Getting at the core of specific issues requires more nuanced methodologies/a lot more work, but what makes this broad approach useful is how quickly it gives you an idea of what your opponent actually cares about. Here are three things that I think can be discerned by someone who takes the concept of ‘national security’ seriously.
1. Priorities
If you define politics as a fight over who gets what, a solid indicator to discern whether someone is winning or losing that fight is by juxtaposing their interests with how public funds are spent each year. So if one group gets a lot, it means their interests are a priority to Congress; if not, it means the opposite.
This ordinal flow of public resources is largely determined by money (campaign contributions, lobbying, etc), which everyone already knows. But aside from the obvious quid pro quo situations, money in politics is such a problem because it empowers certain narratives over others. Particularly powerful narratives are able to arrange priorities, and therefore hold considerable sway over who gets what. Here’s the power of the ‘national security’ narrative, visualized:
2. Who security is supposed to be for
Sort of like how the US let a city drown in the wake of Hurricane Katrina after investing billions in ‘homeland security’, the COVID-19 pandemic has left us more insecure than ever despite the trillions invested in ‘national security’ over the last 20 years. Here’s the best expression I could find to illustrate this point, courtesy of the US Navy public relations department:
3. Bad Religion
Even before coronavirus, investing in ‘national security’ always demanded a leap of faith (Corey Robin’s words, more or less — see chapter 9 of Reactionary Mind, 1st ed.). I struggle to recall an instance when an action taken in its name hasn’t been associated with something appalling (war, torture, etc) or at least left everyone worse off (except for the one percent).
But it’s not just that ‘national security’ has not lived up to what its name implies, it’s that it isn’t clear it was ever supposed to. Here’s a quick etymological breakdown of the term (again leaning on Robin’s book, here):
Security: “The most vital of all interests” which no one can “possibly do without” (John Stuart Mill)
OK, cool. I think this is how most people understand it.
National: What’s in the national interest “is simply what citizens, after proper deliberation, say it is” (Joseph Nye)
This assumes that Congress actually listens to the people it says it represents (most Americans disagree with the establishment’s consensus on US imperialism; Americans are far less conservative than what the policies of Congress suggest). I also don’t know what “proper deliberation” actually means (neither does Nye — he never defines it in the book from which I pulled the quote above).
National security: *Undefined* (National Security Act of 1947, or any legislation since)
Despite the act entrenching ‘national security’ as a central tenet of US foreign policy (it also established the CIA), it never defined the term. So from the very beginning, it’s been the elites defining ‘national security’ through actions that, unsurprisingly, serve the elites.
Conclusion
You all know your opponents all too well by this point, but I hope this tactic 1) ends up saving your campaign some time if you decide to extend your critiques into the foreign policy space, and/or 2) makes it easier to ‘connect’ the foreign and domestic.
Happy to clarify any/all of the above.
All the best,
Stephen (stephen@securityreform.org; @stephensemler)