Jennifer Mitzen

Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma

This article proposes that in addition to physical security, states also seek ontological security, or security of the self. Ontological security is achieved by routinizing relationships with significant others, and actors therefore become attached to those relationships. Like its physical counterpart, the ontological security motive is a constant. But states may adhere to routines rigidly or reflexively, and variation in attachment style has implications for security-seeking. This article conceptualizes the individual-level need for ontological security, scales it up to states, and applies the ontological security-seeking assumption to the security dilemma. Realists argue that states want to escape security dilemmas but uncertainty prevents them. Ontological security-seeking suggests that states may not want to escape dilemmatic conflict. Because even dangerous routines provide ontological security, rational security-seekers could become attached to conflict. Ontological security-seeking sheds new light on seemingly irrational conflict, and suggests lines of research into the stability of other outcomes in world politics.

Reading Habermas in Anarchy: Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Public Spheres

States routinely justify their policies in interstate forums, and this reason-giving seems to serve a legitimating function. But how could this be? For Habermas and other global public sphere theorists, the exchange of reasons oriented toward understanding—communicative action—is central to public sphere governance, where political power is held accountable to those affected. But most global public sphere theory considers communicative action only among nonstate actors. Indeed, anarchy is a hard case for public spheres. The normative potential of communicative action rests on its instability: only where consensus can be undone by better reasons, through argument, can we say speakers are holding one another accountable to reason. But argument means disagreement, and especially in anarchy disagreement can mean violence. Domestically, the state backstops argument to prevent violence. Internationally, I propose that international society and publicity function similarly. Public talk can mitigate the security dilemma and enable interstate communicative action. Viewing multilateral diplomacy as a legitimation process makes sense of the intuition that interstate talk matters, while tempering a potentially aggressive cosmopolitanism.

Knowing the Unknown Unknowns: Misplaced Certainty and the Onset of War

International Relations (IR) theory grants a privileged place to uncertainty. In practice, however, the problem does not seem to be uncertainty but certainty: if only the decision makers would acknowledge uncertainty, conflict might somehow be avoided. We challenge the “uncertainty bias” of IR scholarship by developing misplaced certainty as a distinct and common pathway to war. By misplaced certainty we mean cases where decision makers are confident that they know each others capabilities, intentions, or both; but their confidence is unwarranted yet persists even in the face of disconfirming evidence. We argue that misplaced certainty drives two familiar conflict pathways thought to depend on uncertainty: security dilemmas and spirals. We then conceptualize misplaced certainty, highlighting its affective dimension. Building on the work of post-Keynesian economists and economic sociologists we articulate the dynamics of certainty production and how it can go awry. Our “confidence model” of certainty can account for both the phenomenology and frequency of misplaced certainty, particularly in conflict situations, while providing social theoretical underpinnings to the Classical Realist admonition of prudence.

An introduction to the special issue : Ontological securities in world politics

The research community of ontological security scholars is vibrant and wide-ranging, defined by a conceptual core and by the themes through which scholars register their disagreements. In this special issue we have collected some of the work that has been produced or inspired by discussions and meetings during the last few years. The goal is to showcase some of the breadth of insights and possibilities on the topic of ontological securities and insecurities in world politics. Thus far, International Relations scholarship on ontological securities in world politics has been varied, focusing on different referent objects (individual, society, group, state), different political outcomes (cooperation, conflict, violence; stability or change) and different methods (quantitative, qualitative, discursive). While on the face of it such differences would seem to pose a challenge to the goal of developing a coherent research agenda, we have found the range of work and diversity among ontological security scholars to be exceptionally productive, leading already to cross-fertilisation and the deepening of our own approaches, while also inspiring new collaborations. The articles in this special issue discuss the subjective and foundational dimensions of ontological security in philosophical, existential and empirical terms and approach the ‘level-of-analysis’ problem from new perspectives.

Introduction to 2018 special issue of European Security: “ontological (in)security in the European Union”

ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) faces many crises and risks to its security and existence. While few of them threaten the lives of EU citizens, they all create a sense of anxiety and insecurity about the future for many ordinary Europeans. Amongst these crises are the more obvious challenges of sovereign debt and fiscal austerity; refugees from conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; and the rise of populist far-right parties across Europe. But behind these challenges lie less visible insecurities about economic prospects, social wellbeing, and a widespread expectation that the EU is unable to answer the challenges of twenty-first century global politics. In other words, the greatest security challenge facing people across Europe is not physical, despite the threats of Putin and ISIS, but is a sense of fear and anxiety over their daily lives.

Anxious community: EU as (in)security community

ABSTRACT From the Eurocrisis to the migration crisis, and from Brexit to a strengthening far right, the European Union (EU) faces multiple stressors. But while crises unleash anxiety, they do not necessarily portend the worst: because they disrupt old routines, crises can open space for new political possibilities. As a self-consciously hybrid, ‘post-national’ political form, the EU would seem poised to take advantage. Instead it is stuck. In this paper, taking an ontological security approach and focusing on EU migration governance, I propose that one cause of paralysis could lie – ironically – in an aspect of the EU that is crucial to its normative power: Europe’s long peace. An ontological security perspective highlights the management of existential anxiety as crucial to identity, suggesting how different modes of anxiety management have different political effects. Applied here, EU narratives and routines preserving ‘no war’ might suppress relations of structural power; they might mimic primitive defense mechanisms; or they might be symptoms pointing to unconscious processes keeping difficult knowledge – including colonial pasts – undealt with. I suggest how migration governance might manifest these mechanisms, contributing to the difficulties of desecuritising migration and linking its governance to EU values and institutions.

Illusion or Intention? Talking Grand Strategy into Existence

Richard Betts argued that strategy—the idea that a states political ends could be reliably linked to its coercive means—is a necessary illusion. Without strategy, war is mindless killing; but its rationales cannot guide state choices because there is a yawning gap between the macro level where strategy is articulated and the micro level of day-to-day choices. That gap is particularly insurmountable when beginning, as Betts does, from a rationalist model of action. I propose that grand strategy is best understood as a case of collective intentionality, a concept that amends the rationalist framework in a way that makes it possible to clarify an analytic pathway from grand strategy to state behavior. Crucial to this pathway are legitimation processes found in forums, and I argue that grand strategies can pull state behavior when they are tied to forums. Focusing on the interstate case, I develop a causal mechanism from the forum, to ways of talking, to commitment-consistent behavior. I illustrate the argument with an example from the Concert of Europe. Stacie E. Goddard and Ronald R. Krebs propose that legitimation processes might be particularly successful where institutions are weak. My framework helps flesh out that proposition: even in anarchy, action commitments can affect states’ behavior through the mechanisms of the forum.

The Irony of Pinkerism

This is quite a book. Its sheer heft is daunting, its central claim bold and sweeping, its data relentless. While the planet goes “cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity,” Steven Pinker argues, the human species has been progressing. We have reduced the fear of violent death for an ever-greater proportion of the population across the centuries. Pinker argues that every sort of violence has declined, from interpersonal cruelty to interstate war, beginning toward the end of the medieval period and extending to today. He then identifies the causes of decline so that we can know what can extend the trend into the future. This will allow us, as he puts it, to “obsess not just over what we have been doing wrong but also over what we have been doing right” (p. xxvi).

More Than Mere Words

In wondering the things that you should do, reading can be a new choice of you in making new things. Its always said that reading will always help you to overcome something to better. Yeah, more than mere words is one that we always offer. Even we share again and again about the books, whats your conception? If you are one of the people love reading as a manner, you can find more than mere words as your reading material.