This week, courtesy of my colleague Adam Stulberg and the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy, our department hosted Matthew Kroenig. When I first learned of Kroenig’s visit, my initial thought was that it would be a great opportunity to do (yet another) take on his arguments regarding the possible use of force against Iran. But I think there is little value added to such an exercise. It has been done, not only here on the Duck but in other venues as well. What I think might be a more fruitful way to take advantage of Kroenig’s visit is to think about some of the challenges of bridging the gap between academics and policymakers.
Specifically, I am thinking here about the possible parallels with Jef Huysmans’ examination of the normative dilemma of writing security. Like myself, Huysmans is writing from a social constructivist perspective, and as such understands “the creation of a security problem as a social phenomenon.” Security then is the “result of a practice of definition: security is what agents make of it.” These insights inform discourse-oriented constructivist approaches to security like securitization theory. Turning issues into security then involves, among other things, “…a particular kind of knowledge (security knowledge)”. This is where the dilemma comes in: by analyzing and writing about the practices and discourses of security, scholars may in turn reinforce and reify those practices and discourses. This occurs not only through the repetition of the security claims, but also through the legitimacy imparted through association with the authority of academia. As Huysmans points out, in this discursive interpretation, “speaking and writing about security is never innocent.”
What if the normative dilemma of writing is not constrained to security, but to the larger interface between the academy and the policy world? That is, in seeking to influence/provide value to policymakers, scholars unavoidably shift themselves from the position of analyst to the position of political actors, and in the process create and reify policy dynamics. Which brings me back to Kroenig. A skim of his CV quickly reveals that he has built his career in a substantial way on bridging the gap between academia and policy. While I suspect that Kroenig does not accept the epistemological or ontological precursors to Huysmans’ arguments, I thought it worthwhile nonetheless to ask Kroenig what he thought of the dilemma. He answered, more or less, that he felt there was a substantial amount of misinformation regarding US policy (and policy options) toward Iran’s nuclear program, and he sought to rectify that misinformation. Therein I suspect lies a substantial part of the charm for academics regarding bridging the academy-policy gap. By contributing to the policy discussion, academics improve the marketplace of ideas that underpins policymaking. That is a powerful lure, and in some ways gets scholars out of the dilemma by reversing the normative dilemma into a normative imperative: it is a socially good and normatively desirable for scholars, with their carefully considered arguments, deep knowledge, emphasis on analytical and theoretical thinking, and focus on linking theory with empirics to enrich the public/policy discourses and as a consequence improve the store of ideas from which policymakers make their withdrawals.
I don’t know if there is an answer to the dilemma of writing policy or security. And perhaps the dilemma for policy broadly is less problematic than for security specifically. Or perhaps the dilemma of writing security does not translate at all to policy writ large. Nonetheless, I am left with a nagging concern. As I watched Kroenig’s public talk (which is impressive) I found myself analyzing him as a securitizing actor. How was he making his arguments about Iran as a threat to the United States? What social and discursive tools was he drawing on? Therein lies the source of my concern. In bridging the gap, at least on this security related issue, Kroenig (perhaps unavoidably) goes from being a security analyst to a security actor. He is in his own way creating a specific security knowledge, of Iran and its nuclear program (and possible nuclear weapons) as a threat to the United States. I suspect for Kroenig that is not a problem because he does not share my or Huysmans theoretical orientation. But for those that do, it becomes very challenging to think about how to bridge the gap without becoming a part of the very security/policy practices we seek to examine, uncover, and problematize.
I had the good fortune to be present for your conversation with Matt Kroenig. Here’s what I would have added to the discussion if it weren’t for the blurring effect of pinot gris…
I often get frustrated when debate on what a security actor should or should not do starts to pivot on what is “socially good and normatively desirable,” as you put it. This is not because I am dismissive of our collective values but because I believe that cloaking oneself in what society is said to value represses the high-stakes, tragic grandeur of IR.
None of us have it in ourselves to conduct flawless analysis and tease out perfect decisions. In most walks of life this is tolerable – one can weather making a foolhardy business decision or ignoring negative film reviews and buying a ticket to a bad movie. In the realm of international security, however, people stand to get killed by both “good” and “bad” decisions. Lives, and possibly a country, may well be ruined if we decide it is “a time to attack” Iran. Conversely, if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon and the shit hits the fan then we, in retrospect, would have ample reason to regret not attacking. In short, our field of study dooms us to a uniquely uncertain and grave environment and the inputs that we offer, as voices in international security, always run the risk of rooting for some variety of destruction – even when these inputs are designed to promote peace.
This is not to say that scholars and other voices should adopt a “do no harm” approach and keep their noses out of the policy world. To the contrary, I believe we have no choice but to accept the dark hopelessness of our position as we press on with our work, be it theoretical or practical,and hope for the best. We do owe it to our prospective victims, however, not to shrink behind the conceptions of “the good life” that form the linchpin of standard normative valuation and, instead, make it our mission to be conscious of, and perpetually wrestle with, our own guilt.
It is like Martin Wight said in a brilliant 1966 piece – “international theory is the theory of survival.” As such, it is quite distinct from “pursuit of the good life” realms such as political theory and law. How can this not be true for writing security in the policy world, where the gun play is literal and quite direct?
Thanks for this Jeremiah. I think you have the core of it here: “make it our mission to be conscious of, and perpetually wrestle with, our own guilt” or rather, undertake writing policy but do so in as self-reflective and contingent a way as possible, which is what I take away from Dan’s point about certainty. If we accept policy to be *mostly* populated with social facts, then the only escape from the dilemma is to constantly keep in mind what we do when we write policy.
Jarrod,
I read Huysman’s piece on the normative dilemma several times some years ago and was deeply influenced by it for a while (it’s a great article everyone should read it).
These days I’ve kind of soured on the argument. It presumes far too much influence for security academics in the security field. One can hold security issues as social constructions but on can also hold that in many instances academic’s impact on this social field is close to zero. Look at Walt and Mearsheimer, they’re by all accounts the vanguard of conventional security studies. Yet they spend much of their time bemoaning the failure of American foreign policy.
Huysman’s argument is a product of a deep poststructuralism where the security field is a product of social knowledge of actors. If you are a monist and hold epistemology and ontology are reflexively intertwined then you are going to believe that all knowledge produced about security will inherently reshape that field. Yet new ways of thinking about security are persistently rebuffed. This had led to contemporary securitization theory to consider a much broader array of factors (social authority, context, institutions, pop culture, identity, etc.) to explain why some security discourses take hold while others fall by the wayside.
Huysmans is right, speaking about security is never innocent. But to suggest that talking about a policy risks reproducing and reifying the knowledge that sustains it? I don’t really worry about it.
Thanks Eric. As always, insightful observation. I agree that Huysmans approach oversimplifies the creation of discourses and new security social facts–the socially constituted political space matters tremendously (shameless plug for my own work here). That said, I think there is a tension. I agree that most academics are irrelevant, and so the normative dilemma is either small or non-existent. But the more success academics have at ‘impact’ the greater the dilemma becomes. So perhaps Huysmans should have been more nuanced in his argument, but we can think about it perhaps as we think about relativity in physics. At very low speeds, relativity is operative but not especially useful (vis-a-vis Newtonian mechanics). But at high speeds it becomes crucial. The same with policy impact. The greater the potential/success of policy impact, the more the dilemma becomes something to be considered. Thus, for me the dilemma is negligible but for Kroenig the dilemma is significant.
For me the issue isn’t putting on the hat of policy advocate, e.g., Matt’s writings on Iran. This isn’t a “bridging the gap” question at all. We’re just doing what any number of policy advocates do.
Rather, it has to do with the certainty with which we represent scholarly findings in a policy context. This is a broad issue for the discipline as we increase our efforts to pitch our work.
Thanks Dan. A useful distinction, and one I did not make.
Unfortunately, I don’t think academics to afford to keep their “hands clean” and avoid becoming an actor in IR if they actually want to have an impact. yes they produce knowledge that matters: There is no such thing as an objective observer, and they should use those observations to impact policy in a way that makes better policy
Thanks for the comment Jonah. I wonder if academics should think in the longer term about impact, i.e. primarily through the teaching element of the profession?