Strategic Assessment

• Book: Israel National Security and Securitization – The Role of the United States in Defining What Counts
• By: Ori Wertman and Christian Kaunert
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2023
• pp: 181

This book by Ori Wertman and Christian Kaunert, the scholar and his mentor, adds a further layer to the theoretical foundation of security or securitization. In this context, the book’s contribution is dual in nature. Together with a theoretical expansion of the components of the concept, referring to both the definition of extreme means and the types of audience, which can certainly be seen as an innovation, the authors have selected case studies—such as the Six-Day War—and have applied to them the principles of securitization in their latest and broadest conceptualization.

In their selection of essentially military-security case studies, which in any case were perceived as severe security threats, the authors stretch the definitions and the conceptual foundation of securitization to extremes that make the concept, its uniqueness, and its significance superfluous. The conceptual and theoretical development of securitization by the Copenhagen School and its successors was intended to provide an analytical tool to explain the way in which leaders seek to legitimize the use of extraordinary and extreme measures in order to deal with problems that are civilian by nature. The theoretical foundation provides the explanation through the idea of security argumentation and the conceptualization of an essentially civilian problem, by means of the same argumentation, as a severe and even existential security threat (for example, problems of migration, crime, and so forth). Given the existence of a serious or existential threat, it is essential to adopt extraordinary and extreme measures, including those that affect individual rights. If, as the authors propose, security threats, which in any case are conceived through security argumentation, can also undergo securitization, the unique contribution of the concept with reference to essentially civilian problems becomes superfluous. In my opinion, there is a logical failure in the very idea of securitizing a security problem, unless this controversial claim of theirs is the foundation for theoretical disputes that can sharpen and improve the existing theoretical foundation, and in this sense “a sword’s blade can only be sharpened against another one.”

The book is divided into seven central chapters, and the main points are covered in a long and detailed preface that gives a very clear presentation of the claims and innovations in the book. The first chapter presents the literature on the subject of securitization, referring to prominent milestones in the development of the theory and the most prominent scholars in this field, and with a partly critical discussion of the issues regarding the audience, the player, and the means of conveying the message from the player to the audience.

In the second chapter, the authors present the broader contribution to the conceptual foundation of the audience in the theory of securitization, which they seek to establish by means of four case studies later in the book. In this chapter, by critically engaging with the existing literature, they present two new concepts: the legal audience, which according to the laws of the state is the element that is authorized to approve the actions of securitization, and the political audience, whose support or lack of opposition is deemed essential for the implementation of these actions.

In the following four chapters (3–6), the authors present four case studies dealing with various security threats that the State of Israel has been forced to address (chapter 3—the Six-Day War; chapter 4—the Oslo Accords 1993–1995; chapter 5—Operation Defensive Shield; chapter 6—Operation Outside the Box—the bombing of the Syrian nuclear reactor in Deir ez-Zor, 2007). For each of these cases, the authors refer to relations between the political and military echelons, and between the government of Israel and the US administration. They have chosen case studies in which the American administration had an important role in one way or another, because in each case they refer to the American administration as a type of audience, to which they apply their innovative conceptual development.

In the final chapter of the book, the authors sharpen their theoretical innovation, which they have established through the four case studies. They define the book’s contribution to the existing literature, in the field of both international relations and Israeli studies, with an emphasis on American involvement and its impact on Israel, as well as indicating possible directions for further research.

As stated, the book’s main contribution is the first and unique reference, as far as I know, to the political-treaty process (the Oslo Process) as an expression of an extreme measure, essentially involving the recognition of the PLO, which until then was legally banned in Israel, and the political agreement with it, basically amounting to separation from the Palestinians. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (the player), as an epistemic authority, sought to enlist public and political legitimacy for implementing the agreement, perceived by the Israeli public as an extreme and surprising move, through securitization of the danger of a binational state, which he conceptualized and presented as an existential threat to the State of Israel, requiring and justifying the use of what was an extreme measure for the time and circumstances.

To this significant innovation, the authors have added their expanded and updated conceptualization of the audience in the securitization equation, in which three components are recognized: the player, the audience, and the message. Apart from the typology of two types of audience (legal and political), the authors stress the role of the audience and its necessity for the sake of the legitimacy and success of the securitization process (p. xiii). In their reference to the issue of extended audiences, the authors refer to the existing literature while broadening their conceptual reach by clarifying or stressing the subjective dimension of how the threat is perceived. Their emphasis on the subjective dimension is also presented as a critique of what they define as the consensus over the objective dimension of threats. The authors are certainly persuasive with regard to the subjective dimension, but I am not convinced that treating the objective dimension as an existing consensus in the study of securitization is indeed valid.

In their comprehensive preface, the authors emphasize the book’s unique contribution, as the first broad treatment of the securitization of Israel’s terror threats and security threats, and because of their integrated approach that combines the worlds of international relations, the Middle East, political psychology, and sociology (p. xiv). Without detracting from the book’s contribution, the authors appear to have somewhat overstepped the mark with their stress on integrating a range of fields of knowledge. There is a difference between the use of concepts from the various disciplines and their theoretical integration. For example, their statement that “the book bridges the gap between accepted approaches to the security of the Middle East and synthesizes them with a perception and erroneous perception in international relations” (p. xiv) sounds rather pretentious.

The methodology chosen by the authors is a comparative analysis of case studies, with each case study chosen according to three main criteria: Each case study presents a different type of security threat; each case study describes a successful process of securitization; and for each case study, sufficient sources are available, taking into account the restrictions of Israeli security censorship. The three criteria were intended to ensure a sufficiently broad canvas for an analysis of the cases based on the updated and extended conceptualizations introduced by the authors and to validate them. The authors have relied on primary and secondary sources and based their work on personal interviews with a long and impressive list of Israeli decision-makers from the political and security-military echelons. In this context, it is worth stressing the methodological limitation of personal interviews, especially when the subject of the interview refers to events that happened many years ago and the interviewees may have a tendency to change their versions or adapt them to the zeitgeist. For example, this applies to the interviews with Ehud Olmert on the Annapolis process that took place in 2010–2012, compared to interviews in later years in which he presented some of the events in a different manner.

As stated, the case of the Oslo Accords—unlike the Six-Day War, Operation Defensive Shield, and the bombing of the Syrian nuclear reactor, which in my opinion were essentially security-military events to which the logic of securitization does not really apply—is an important innovation. Here a political move is referenced as securitization. The political move is the extreme measure that was taken and for the purpose of legitimizing its implementation, securitization was activated, hence the security argumentation.

The authors’ innovative reference to the audience and its typology—political and legal audiences—is persuasive and has added an important analytical tool to the analysis and understanding of securitization processes. Here the authors unintentionally point to an additional dimension that is worthy of further theoretical development and linked to the audiences. This additional dimension is the aspect of duality, as expressed in cases where the legal audience can at some stage become a political audience, and vice versa, or where a specific audience may be simultaneously both legal and political. For example, this could apply to the Israeli government in the case of the Oslo process when Yitzhak Rabin, as prime minister, had to persuade the government as the political audience of the necessity of the move and obtain their consent, to legitimize it. Another duality may be expressed when a political or legal audience becomes a player. For example, the Israeli government starts as the legal and political audience, which after legitimizing a securitization move, becomes a player facing another audience, such as the American administration (p. 19). This duality adds complexity that requires further theoretical development.

In summary, the book is focused, readable, and correctly structured, although it would be a good idea to tighten the links between the chapters, which seem to have been written as independent articles, in order to avoid repetition. It is important to be scrupulous with historical comparisons and define the significance of the context in each comparison. For example, there is the problematic comparison between two prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Arik Sharon (p. 155). It may be assumed that if Prime Minister Barak were operating in the context in which Prime Minister Sharon operated, he would not have acted differently from Sharon, and not in the way attributed to him in that comparison. The book contains a dimension of theoretical innovation, partly controversial in my opinion, and worthy of further discussion, and it certainly makes an important contribution to the existing literature on securitization, with reference to cultural and political differences between countries, and its emphasis on the subjective dimension in the perception of threats (p. 154). This adds another interesting angle to the discussion, analysis, and understanding of the way in which Israel has tackled security threats and the place of the United States in these contexts.