Substantive #7

To securitize or to not securitize?

As I was reading my classmates’ blog posts, it was easy to find somewhat of a consensus that everything can be securitized and that security is malleable. The reason for that is because on a holistic scale, small actions within or out of a country can be indicative of a pattern of behavior that can impact a country’s state of being. Countries like to remain in homeostasis where they want to stay in the status quo. But, if a force is powerful enough to change the status quo, the country securitizes as a defense mechanism. In her blog post, Annie speaks how the closure of a small car store is not a national security risk, I claim that it could very well be if it is part of a larger pattern. For example, car stores rely on car factories to produce their cars. However, with the current trend of automobile companies offshoring their factories, workers are laid off which puts stress on the homeostasis of the country. Thus, protests occur and the blue collar workers gets angry and votes in a conservative president that promises to put “America first,” Actions are almost always reactions. Thus, because anything can be a reason to act, anything can be a reason to securitize. 

At the end of class on Monday, PTJ required us to state our main takeaway/question about the security discussions, and my group literally stated that it was how the definition of who should be protected changes through time which is what this blog post question is about! In a global system of governance where people are supposed to be represented/ruled over by a higher governing power, the term “national interest” is always indicative of who that country supports and who is suppressed. After reading these security documents, I realized that national security is decided upon as a policy directive by the government. NSC-68 spoke to how the executive branch of the government along with the military need to protect the American way of life and hegemony when it comes to engagement with the USSR. Our Nigeria simulation ended with the comment that we had failed to prove why the US should get involved in Nigeria which means we had failed to prove why Nigeria was key to US national interest. Thus, I view national interest to be a top-down process where the government gets to decide what the country cares about, and the people have to follow.