Annual Societal Security Report 2018

SOURCE Project-Deliverable (3.8): Annual Societal Security Report 5

Published: December 2018
Authors (VICESSE): Reinhard Kreissl, Ben Hayes

Full Text: Available Here

Executive Summary:

Capturing Europe in a tag cloud of key words and concepts, security would sit in bold letters in the centre as one of the main policy issues, frequently referred to in public discourse, shaping discussions in the governing political bodies of the European Union. The political importance of security as a European policy area has been highlighted time and again, for example in 2016 when Julian King took office as the newly established Commissioner for the Security Union. Describing the portfolio in his Letter to the new Commissioner, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, linked King’s mission to a number of popular threats:

“Security is one of the pressing challenges I have highlighted in my Political Guidelines, which recalled that “Combatting cross-border crime and terrorism is a common European responsibility”. This was followed-up by the adoption of the European Agenda on Security on 28 April 2015, setting out the main actions envisaged to ensure an effective EU response to security threats over the period 2015-2020. In particular, three priorities were identified as needing to be addressed: tackling terrorism and preventing radicalisation, disrupting organised crime, and fighting cybercrime. Repeated subsequent terrorist attacks have underlined the importance and urgency of making swift progress towards an operational and effective Security Union, as highlighted in the Commission Communication of 20 April 2016. The focus of your portfolio work should therefore be on concrete operational measures where the action of the EU can have an impact – and where we can show that this does not compromise our commitment to fundamental rights and values.” [1] 

Terrorism, radicalization, organised and cyber-crime – these are in the Commission’s view the main security concerns guiding European security policy. They are described in more detail in the European Agenda on Security (see further below).

The description resonates nicely in style, tone and overall rhetoric with other key policy documents such as e.g. the EU global security strategy, presented by Frederica Mogherini in 2016. Here the same threats are repeatedly highlighted justifying the close link between internal and external security policy initiatives, between military intervention and economic development.

The internal/external link in security discourse semantically and politically bridges the gap between military and civil security, bringing old-school ideas of security in International Relations studies, where the state was the main referent of security and where threats were primarily of a military nature, closer to internal and civil security.

Another important conceptual divide in security discourse was to draw a line between private and public security provision. As with internal/external and military/civil, however, the difference between private and public is blurring in security discourse. A plethora of policy papers addressing so-called “hybrid threats” push for more cooperation and a shared responsibility between public and private actors. For example, as Limnéll points out in a 2018 paper, listing all the presumed benefits of PP-models in security points out:

“There are numerous examples of the ways in which the private sector has become deeply involved in providing security against diverse, complex and often transnational security risks. They are not only protecting the vital functions of society, private companies are also taking care of border security and emergency preparedness, for example. The armed forces have also become increasingly dependent on infrastructure and assets in the private sector. The trend in Western countries is for private companies to take on even greater responsibilities task-wise, which was previously the remit of the public sector. The role of the private sector in national security is duly increasing as a result. On the other hand, careful consideration should be given to those areas of national security and vital societal functions that would be considered “off limits” for privatization.” [1]

The areas of security that are declared to be “off limits” for privatization have become smaller over the years – though being off-limits does not mean that there is not a business case for the private sector. While national and European defence policy and military affairs may legally still be a prerogative of the political sphere, equipment, technology, research and development are provided and governed by private corporations, merging with the political sphere into what has since the days of American President Dwight D. Eisenhower, been called the military-industrial complex. With the end of the Cold War, the military-industrial complex has spawned and morphed into a broader security-industrial complex.[2] While the main driver sustaining the dynamic growth of the military-industrial complex was the threat emanating from the communist countries – the so-called Empire of Evil in the bipolar world order – the security-industrial complex operates with the idea of complex, blurred, protracted, cross-sectoral threats that no longer can be captured within the frame of established dichotomies of internal/external, military/civil, public/private. The new threat landscape driving security policy constitutes a seamless continuum from natural disasters, vulnerable techno-enabled infrastructures to civil unrest and economic crisis, from terrorist attacks to globally operating organised criminal cartels. As will be shown in the following sections, this rapidly expanding notion of what must addressed under the banner of “security” is reflected in rapidly expanding EU security budget lines.

This has happened precisely as European security policies have merged the traditional inter-state security scenarios with new inner-state threats. And just as the emergence of security as a central policy area within the EU was crowned with the establishment of the Commissioner for Security in Junker’s administration, so the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has evolved into the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), reflects the ever closer links between the military, the political and the economic.

[1] Limnéll, J. (2018) Countering Hybrid Threats: Role of Private Sector Increasingly Important. Shared Responsibility Needed, European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats: https://www.hybridcoe.fi/about-publications/.

[2] Hayes, B., Rowlands, M., & Buxton, N. (2009). NeoConOpticon: the EU security-industrial complex. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.

[1] Mission Letter to the Commissioner for the Security Union, 2 August 2016