2.1 Introduction

Chapter 1 established with the concept of must cause the critical juncture when securitization is not merely morally permissible but obligatory. Chapters 2–5 of this book are concerned with discovering who – that is, which actors – have the obligation to securitize, and whether or not this duty is conditional or overriding.Footnote ¹ In this context, it is crucial to realize that a duty to securitize rests on a prior duty to act on the threat using ordinary political measures, for short, a duty to secure; after all, if no one has a duty to act (politicize), must cause cannot ever be satisfied. In short, the duty to securitize is a derivative duty.Footnote ²

The present chapter focuses on individual state actors. I argue that regarding national security (encompassing the security of the state and its economy, but also the security of citizens within states), the obligation to securitize can be charted in terms of contractual responsibilities. In other words, I argue that in the context of national security must cause offers definitive guidance for when securitization is mandatory, at least where just states are concerned. The picture is much more complicated when it comes to states and mandatory securitization of outsiders (e.g., citizens of other states). I suggest that to understand why this issue is relevant at all we must commence by consulting the literature on global justice. I show how this literature enables us to understand: (1) why able states have a duty to make the insecure secure via politicization (i.e., use of ordinarily acceptable/normal measures), as well as (2) how much we owe.

I go on to chart the moral costs and risks that override the pro tanto obligation to securitize outsiders. I argue that – in addition to must cause – duty-bearing states have an obligation of other-securitization when: (1) the securitizing/intervening state possesses willing, able, and sufficiently numerous executors of securitization; (2) securitization will not create unreasonable levels of insecurity for the would-be securitizing actor; and (3) the financial costs of securitization do not create security deficits for the securitizing state or its citizens.

I go on to discuss liability and obligation, specifically whether liability for threat creation due to prior poor choices strips putative referent objects of the entitlement to being saved by mandatory securitization. I also discuss what liability for threat creation means for securitizing actors, specifically I am interested in the question whether liability for threat creation means that securitization is morally required before must cause is satisfied. That is, in virtue of the fact that they have either created the threat or done nothing/little to avert it, are such securitizing actors morally compelled to do everything possible right away to deal with a threat, or may they pursue a political solution first?

Finally, I discuss the circumstances when individual states are the primary duty-bearers of other-securitization. This is important because if all capable states (and other actors) have a pro tanto moral obligation to remedy the insecurity situation, who – out of the many possible actors – should act? To come by this problem, I suggest a ranking of David Miller’s (Reference Miller2007) triggers of remedial responsibility that I derive from common-sense morality. Concretely I suggest that moral responsibility for threat creation trumps, outcome responsibility, which – in turn – trumps ‘security friendship’, while friendship/community trump pure capacity to act in the ranking of such triggers.

2.2 Just States: Duties to Insiders

States are the most common actors in international relations. While we all know what states are, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves that states ‘must possess the following qualifications: a permanent population, a defined territory, and a government capable of maintaining effective control over its territory and of conducting international relations with other states’ (Evans and Newnham, Reference Evans and Newnham1998: 512). Moreover, a state has ‘legal personality and as such in international law possesses certain rights and duties’ (ibid: 512).

We can differentiate between just and unjust states. In line with Just Securitization Theory (JST), only just referents, including just states and just collectives of states, are eligible for self-securitization and to being saved via securitization by other states or actors. In accordance with JST, just states are states which satisfy a minimum floor of basic human needs. Unjust states can in principle justly securitize just referent object (notably, JST does not insist on legitimate authority (Floyd, Reference Floyd2019a: 140ff)). This includes just third states, groups of innocent people within third states, but also groups of people within its own territory, notably its citizens. Given that citizens (i.e., a permanent population) are – as we have just learnt – an integral part of the state, it could be argued that securitization of citizens as opposed to the regime/government is a form of self-securitization, and consequently that unjust states are eligible for some forms of self-securitization. Indeed, and as we shall see, all states are not merely permitted to secure their populations from just threats, but – at times – required to do so.Footnote ³

It is probably ultimately hair-splitting whether – when a state secures its population – we call this ‘self-securitization’, or whether only securitization of the regime (including its economic model, leadership, government, ideology) is self-securitization, notably the two are often hard to separate (cf. Buzan et al., Reference Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde1998: 146). The important point is that legitimate authority (which in much of just war theory takes the form of a state possessing a freely and fairly elected government) is not a necessary component of the moral obligation to securitize. We can see this by analogy. A murderer is not – simply because they have already committed a serious wrong – now somehow perpetually exempt from the law and thus permitted to commit further murders. Consider also that according to JST unjust states are permitted to securitize (i.e., make safe via emergency measures) their populations, provided that the population is morally innocent in the relevant sense. Indeed, in such circumstances unjust states have an overriding duty of securitization. Nevertheless, because unjust states do not have the moral right to self-securitization narrowly conceived (i.e., as securitization of the regime), and because I need to paint the broadest possible picture, I will work with just states only.

The purpose of the state is considered inseparably linked to the provision of security for its citizens (insiders). This is nowhere more pertinent than in the work of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Hobbes considered the state of nature a perpetual state of war, conflict, and consequently insecurity. A condition that according to Hobbes could only be overcome/ameliorated if people associate and bow to an absolute sovereign, the Leviathan. In Hobbes, thus, the purpose of the state (Leviathan) is to provide otherwise elusive: ‘internal security against each other; protection against other groups, or external enemies’ (Boucher, Reference Boucher1998: 152; see also Sorell, Reference Sorell2013). In order to enjoy security and peace, people are willing to give up ‘certain of their rights’ (Boucher, Reference Boucher1998: 152), most notably the right to use force in order to secure themselves and their property.

Other social contract theories have a more positive and benign view of the state of nature. John Locke (1632–1704) viewed it as a pre-political but still moral place, where adherence to god was pivotal and provided a moral baseline. However, the absence of authority meant that when conflict (usually over property) broke out, such conflicts could not easily be settled and continued often indefinitely (Friend, Reference Friend2004). Ultimately, the need to protect their life, liberty, and property (including of their own bodies) drove people to leave the state of nature and to associate in state-like groupings (ibid). In other words, for Locke too one purpose of the state is to provide security.

The third most significant social contract theorist of early modern political theory is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Like Locke, he had a positive view of the state of nature, unlike Locke, however, he believed that human ascent out of the state of nature into a social contract has left ordinary people insecure, because the contract serves only the most well off. Rousseau’s main aim was to right this condition by providing a normative theory specifying how the social contract would need to change so that people everywhere could become equal (Friend, Reference Friend2004). Although Rousseau’s work is not about security in the way Hobbes’ and even Locke’s work is, equality, which is to say the ability not to be exploited, abused, or otherwise violated, chimes with our modern-day extended concepts of security as a state of being, notably human security.

In summary, the basic idea of these early modern social contract theorists is that states are, or should be, intrinsically linked to the provision of security as a state of being, because they provide an escape from a permanent state of insecurity, and/or because states can only be deemed good/justified if they provide comprehensive security as a state of being.

I list these early social contract theorists here, because despite how much has been written about them and about the role, function, and make-up of the state since, the inter-linkage between states and security remains fundamental to our conception of the state. In our own time, this is obvious from the principle of the responsibility to protect (RtoP or R2P), which has sought to make state sovereignty conditional on that state’s provision of freedom from a small number of atrocity crimes (genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity) (see, e.g., Bellamy, Reference Bellamy, Williams and McDonald2018; cf. Chapter 5, Section 5.3). It is also obvious from national security strategies where the purpose of the state is irrevocably bound up with the security of its citizens. For example, the first objective of the United Kingdom’s National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence Review from 2015 is ‘to protect our people – at home, in our Overseas Territories and abroad, and to protect our territory, economic security, infrastructure and way of life’ (HM Government, 2015: 11). Finally, it is obvious from the concept of state failure. While this concept is contested with scholars setting different thresholds for state failure, most would agree that states have failed ‘when they are consumed by internal violence and cease delivering positive political goods to their inhabitants. Their governments lose credibility, and the continuing nature of the particular nation-state itself becomes questionable and illegitimate in the hearts and minds of its citizens’ (Rotberg, Reference Rotberg and Rotberg2004: 1).

Because states are responsible for the provision of security for their people, states also possess specific and practically unique capabilities to provide security. Most notably, they hold a monopoly on violence, which is to say, they are – bar some very limited allowances for self-defence – the only entity that can legitimately use coercive and lethal force (discharged most notably by the police, military, and intelligence agencies) within their given territory (Weber, Reference Weber1946: 1). The right to provide security by force and coercion, however, does not mean that states must provide national security in this way. In line with the argument in Chapter 1, securitization is mandatory only when must cause is satisfied.

States’ raison d’être as security providers means that their duty to self-securitize is overriding, which is to say, no considerations can override their duty to securitize insiders in relevant cases. As we shall see below, in other-securitization (e.g., where one state secures inter alia the population of another state by using extraordinary measures), one prominent consideration able to override the duty to securitize is the risk to the securitizing actor (e.g., in armed humanitarian interventions, most obviously in terms of own soldiers’ lives lost). This does not apply in cases of mandatory self-securitization, because in such cases the moral cost – for the would-be securitizing actor – of not providing security is always greater than the cost of not providing security.Footnote ⁴ Above all else, the failure to enact mandatory securitization terminates the social contract, which is to say the state itself disappears (hence the notion of state failure). Peter Steinberger has shown convincingly that we can find this in Hobbes. He argues: ‘When the state fails to do what it was designed to do – when it threatens, rather than protects, the interests of the citizens [and I would include here by failing to act in appropriate ways] – then the social contract, that is, the original agreement among citizens, is annulled’ (Steinberger, Reference Steinberger2002: 859). Concretely this means that a just state can use its military and security personnel to securitize. More controversially, it means that if there are insufficient numbers of persons that have voluntarily joined professions (e.g., military, police) in which they might incur the risk of death, dying, and disability (cf. Section 2.5) when defending the just state or its people, then it is within the right of the state to use conscription, including of medical personnel and other specialists.Footnote ⁵ To be sure, conscription is only permissible when the initiation of securitization is morally justifiable, when there is a must cause, and when numbers of executors of securitization are insufficient. This is because conscription is morally problematic. As Pattison has convincingly argued: ‘[…] a policy of conscription undermines several freedoms. It potentially violates self-ownership, since the individual’s body is used in a manner that they do not choose. In addition, it denies freedom of occupational choice and freedom of movement, which are restricted during the period in which the individual is conscripted’ (Pattison, Reference Pattison2014: 122).

These moral problems with conscription smooth the path for the use of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) (ibid: 173). Although the moral problems with employing PMSCs are extensive, Pattison’s impressive study ultimately concludes that such groups ‘can be permissibly employed in a wide variety of roles when their deployment is likely to have very beneficial consequences for the enjoyment of basic human rights’ (ibid: 179; see also example on p. 186). It should be noted here that the right to employ PMSCs and even conscription is not one held only by just states, provided that securitization is just, unjust regimes can – in principle – do likewise. For example, if an unjust regime defends its population (likely a morally innocent group of people and hence just referent) against unjust external aggression, it can – in principle – use PMSCs to do so. The problem is, however, that in this case the unjust regime helps secure itself as a side effect. Here thus a decision would have to be made which – the regime or the external threat – is the lesser evil for the population.

As we shall see below a second prominent factor that can override, the pro tanto obligation to securitize is the risk of instability. Scholars sceptical of humanitarian intervention often juxtapose justice (i.e., when human rights are met including through force) and order (Jackson, Reference Jackson2000; see also Hurrell, Reference Hurrell, Navari and Green2014; Bellamy, Reference Bellamy, Williams and McDonald2018: 247). Or, put differently, cosmopolitan forms of justice with more communitarian forms of justice (Williams, Reference Williams2015; Bain, Reference Bain, Navari and Green2014). Either way, the assumption of sceptics of humanitarian intervention certainly often is that the same will lead to disorder, instability, and even injustice (Cochran, Reference Cochran, Navari and Green2014: 191). While – as explained in Section 2.5 – this is a valid objection to mandatory other-securitization, it has no bearing on mandatory self-securitization of just states. If anything, the opposite is true. Thus, when states fail to act on must cause, it becomes permissible for sub-state actors to defy the state and seek self-securitization (we will return to this issue more fully in Section 2.7) resulting in all likelihood in instability, disorder, and insecurity for many. As Steinberger (Reference Steinberger2002: 859) explains:

Provided that must cause is satisfied, the duty to provide national security (i.e., essentially the security of citizens in virtue of securing the state) via securitization is straightforward; here, no other consideration can override the duty to provide security. Yet, what happens in situations, where states are unable to securitize effectively, for example, because they have insufficient financial means? Recall, from Chapter 1, the example of Dengue threat, whereby the population of the fictional sub-tropic, developing state Gabenia was threatened with dengue fever and severe dengue. We said that in this case securitization is required once political measures to tackle the outbreak have demonstrably failed to produce a reduction in new infections. Assume now, for the purposes of argument, that must cause is satisfied and that Gabenia must now securitize, for example, by mobilizing the military to exterminate vector-carrying mosquitos and to enforce curfews at key times of the day. But what if Gabenia does not have a functioning military force that could be deployed for these and other tasks, because there never was money available, or even the need, to sustain this. In other words, what happens if Gabenia recognizes their duty to securitize, but cannot deliver on securitization? It seems to me that if they cannot discharge their duty directly to their citizens, it is their duty to seek help from those who can (e.g., a capable neighbouring state, a regional body or even the international community).Footnote ⁶ I will discuss the issue of who has primary responsibility for other-securitization in Section 2.6, for now the important point to note is this: the inability to fulfil the specific duty to self-securitize does not exempt states from the related duties to seek and/or to acceptFootnote ⁷ help.Footnote ⁸

Regarding the issue of mandatory securitization and national security, it remains to discuss what happens when would-be referent objects request securitizationFootnote ⁹ before must cause is met. Recall the case of drought disaster discussed in Chapter 1, Section 1.4.3, where the fictitious 500.000 strong city of Millville is suffering from a severe drought. What if a significant number of the population (for instance, a clear majority of 70 per cent), who would be the referent object of securitization, demand – through peaceful protests, petitions, etc. – securitization before must cause is satisfied? In such situations, are not fully democratic states obligated to securitize because it is the will of the majority? Or, in other words, does popular revolt bring forward – in time – must cause. I think not, because while states have a duty to secure their citizens, in the absence of must cause there is no specific duty regarding how this is to be done.

To make this clearer, consider the issue of how welfare states provide welfare. We might say that welfare states count as such only if they provide a range of basic needs to their citizens, including one or more of the following sick pay, holiday pay, unemployment benefit, maternity pay, free healthcare, etc. This means that if the governing party of a state wants theirs to be a welfare state, then they must – specifics aside – ensure that a range of basic human needs are satisfied. However, said state is not required to provide, for example, unemployment benefit in accordance with the guidelines of other existing welfare states. In the European Union (EU), for example, how precisely welfare states look after the unemployed, including how much money the unemployed are entitled to and for how long, varies widely (cf. Harms and Juncker, Reference Harms and Juncker2019). In short, while citizens can demand that welfare states provide welfare, they cannot demand how precisely this is to be done. The parallel here to the provision of security is that while citizens can demand that states provide security, indeed as citizens they have a right to security, they do not have a right to security being provided in a specific way. The exception to this is formed by situations when must cause is satisfied.

In summary, we can now say that when must cause is satisfied just states have an overriding duty to provide national security, which includes the security of citizens of the state, via securitization.

2.3 States: Duties to Outsiders

The case of Gabenia shows that not all willing states are always able to act appropriately on a must cause for securitization, mostly because they lack the necessary resources. Part of the following discussion is dedicated to answering what might happen when states cannot act on mandatory self-securitization? In the above, I suggested that Gabenia is duty-bound to ask for help from more able actors. But are more able states and collectives thereof in such cases duty-bound to assist them? If so, where does this duty to assist the insecure come from?

The issue of states and other would-be securitizing actors and mandatory other-securitizationFootnote ¹⁰ is much more complicated than this still. It is one thing to discuss the duty to assist (just) states with securitization who actively want – and may even have requested securitization – that assistance (let us call this mandatory other-securitization by consentFootnote ¹¹), but quite another to act (1) against the will of beneficiaries but with the consent of the host state or (2) against states as threateners altogether. Let us call these mandatory other-securitization without consent.Footnote ¹²

Especially, the possibility of mandatory other-securitization without consent could have very severe consequences for executors of securitization and for the securitizing actor,Footnote ¹³ including embroiling these into violent conflicts, counter-sanctions, and counter-attacks by those objecting to unwanted external interference. As such, we can see that the issue of mandatory other-securitization without consent raises the question whether states and other external would-be securitizing actors actually have a duty to intervene and to other-securitize at all? Or is it the case that the moral costs and risks of security intervention void such a general duty?

I want to begin by discussing why able states and other actors have obligations to outsiders.Footnote ¹⁴ To do this, it is instructive to turn to the literature on global justice, which focuses on how much is owed to poor and disadvantaged people, and why it is owed.

Almost always the justification why states owe to outsiders rests with the ‘weak’ cosmopolitan principle of ‘equal moral worth’ of persons (Miller, Reference Miller2007: 27; see also Risse, Reference Risse2012: 10; Brock, Reference Brock2009: 11; Caney, Reference Caney2005: chapter 4), which, in turn, means that the claims of needy people ‘must count with us when we decide how to act or what institutions to establish’ (Miller, Reference Miller2007: 27). Indeed, this principle is at the heart of secular morality. Our very idea of morality and ethics is tied to how our actions impact on the life of humans. It is therefore unsurprising that, for instance, Miller argues that ‘[…] we find it morally unacceptable if the deprived person is simply left to suffer’ (2007: 98, emphases added). A crude way of putting all this is to say that any ethical theory that is not based on a theory of equal moral worth of persons, and on that basis automatically considers obligations to outsiders, is not a moral/ethical theory at all. Hence, by definition, a moral theory of securitization must start from the assumption that able states and other able actors have at least some obligations to the needy, or better still, to insecure outsiders. This includes just and unjust states, even though it is unlikely that states that undermine basic human needs (including of their own people) and are therefore unjust will act to assist the needy/insecure in other states.

If we accept this definition, it follows that all ethical theories of global justice then necessarily consider a duty of beneficence.Footnote ¹⁵ Despite this unity, there is disagreement on: (1) how much we owe and (2) when such duties kick in (cf. Beauchamp, Reference Beauchamp and Zalta2019). Starting with the latter first, most theorists of global justiceFootnote ¹⁶ are wedded to the idea of human rights, because rights place duties on states, institutions, and even individuals. Cécile Fabre explains: ‘[…] to say that someone has a right is to say that an interest of hers is important enough to impose on third parties duties not to interfere with her pursuit of that or some related interest, as well as duties to promote that interest’ (Fabre, Reference Fabre2012: 23).Footnote ¹⁷ In short, on Fabre’s and other similar accounts pro tanto obligations to assist outsiders become relevant when their human rights are infringed (cf. Miller, Reference Miller2007: 164).

While scholars generally agree on the power rights have regarding duties, the origins of human rights and therefore their precise nature (i.e., how extensive they are in terms of the number of human rights identified) are subject to debate. This matters because more extensive lists of human rights entail more extensive corresponding duties than more basic lists of human rights can generate. Some scholars believe that we have human rights because we are human (Griffin, Reference Griffin2008: 36), some think that they make us human (Booth, Reference Booth2007: 382), and others think that more important than their origin is that they work in practice (Beitz, Reference Beitz2009). Consequently, scholars have advanced lists of different lengths specifying human rights. At the moderate end of a spectrum sits David Miller’s non-extensive list because he advocates the grounding of human rights in basic human needs. For Miller, ‘something is a human right by showing that having that right fulfils the needs of the right-holder’ [while] ‘needs are those items or conditions it is necessary for a person to have if she is to avoid being harmed’ (Miller, Reference Miller2007: 179). Miller considers the linkage between needs and rights essential. Thus, on the one hand, rights need to be restricted by grounding them in human needs,Footnote ¹⁸ while, on the other hand, only rights place remedial responsibilities (i.e., duties) on people. Remedial responsibility is as far as I am aware also a term advanced by Miller. Unlike the standard ‘outcome responsibility’ which tracks agents who are responsible for causing X or Y, remedial responsibility begins ‘with a state of affairs in need of remedy […] and we then ask whether there is anyone whose responsibility it is to put that state of affairs right’ (Miller, Reference Miller2007: 98).

Just Securitization Theory is heavily steeped in needs-based thinking. Notably I argue that putative referent objects are eligible for self-securitization, or for being defended by means of securitization by third parties (for short other-securitization), only when they are morally valuable. Moral value, in turn, depends on their ability to satisfy basic human needs (physical health and autonomy), with thresholds set differently for social and political orders and non-human species and ecosystems (Floyd, Reference Floyd2019a: chapter 4). In other words, Miller’s human rights – grounded as they are in basic human needs – offer a valid and coherent way of triggering remedial responsibilities.

While Miller’s formulation of combining needs with rights is tempting and, I think, convincing (cf. Floyd, Reference Floyd2011), there are nonetheless reasons to be wary of rights talk. Gillian Brock argues that empirical evidence shows that needs-based justifications of moral duties enjoy greater mass appeal than rights talk, in part because rights are limited by being culturally specific to the West (Brock, Reference Brock2009: 63–69). Moreover, Brock believes that we do not need to translate needs into rights, because the principle of equal moral worth of people already means that ‘we are obliged to ensure that persons are adequately positioned with respect to meeting their basic needs’ (2009: 63). Clearly, Brock’s account of obligation sits easily (i.e., in reflective equilibrium) with JST which makes use of basic human needs satisfaction to determine whether putative referent objects are morally valuable and as such either permitted to defend themselves via securitization, or eligible to defensive assistance by means of securitization (Floyd, Reference Floyd2019a: chapter 4). However, because Miller grounds rights in needs, and because JST makes use of human rights to place constraints on security practitioners in their handling of suspects, protesters, and innocent bystanders (Floyd, Reference Floyd2019a: chapter 6), Miller’s account is equally compatible.

Important about both is that duties (or to use Miller’s term remedial responsibilities) kick in when people are not able to be and function as they should as humans. Or, put differently, when they are unable to live minimally decent lives because they are either directly or indirectly (i.e., when a morally valuable referent object is directly threatened) objectively existentially threatened. This is important, because it corresponds to JST’s principles of existential threats, as well as the theory’s conception of macro-proportionality. As explained in Chapter 1, Section 1.3, in JST threats must be sufficiently demanding (i.e., existential) to count as just causes for securitization, yet demandingness does not mean that threats have to be either directly or indirectly lethal to human beings. Not only would such a formulation render JST unable to account for existential threats to non-human referents (such threats often do not have lethal consequences for humans), but also it would undermine that some non-lethal threats are – in terms of the harm they cause – comparable with lethality (notably threats that render severe mental or physical disabilities). Thus, if I am threatened by something that would hinder me to be and function as a human and to participate fully in society, I might not be lethally threatened, but I cannot live as a human should. For this reason, JST includes also non-lethal, but nevertheless existential threatsFootnote ¹⁹ to humans.

The issue of the level of harm – in JST– pops up again, namely, with regard to macro-proportionality. In a nutshell, I hold that because securitizations cause harm it can only be used against threats that are sufficiently harmful to humans, which is the case when objective well-being is either directly or indirectly threatened.Footnote ²⁰ In summary, we can see that not only is it true that states have some positive duties to outsiders, but also – in reflective equilibrium with JST – states have a pro tanto moral obligation to act on those duties.

Recall that above I said that global justice scholars disagree on two issues in particular. One concerns when duties kick in (we have seen that this – for different scholars – is the case when rights are infringed or when human needs are unmet), the other relates to how much is owed? We have seen that some of this depends on the definition of rights and needs scholars work with, respectively. If, for example, one works with an elaborate list of human rights (e.g., one that includes welfare rights), what is owed to people everywhere would be quite different, to a scholar who worked with a list of only the most basic human rights (e.g., the right to life). Certainly, working with basic human needs – as I do – already restricts what one is owed and what one owes. Notably, securitization cannot be justified when people in other countries simply feel vulnerable.

But more is at stake here, because how much is owed also rests on a prior mindset/conviction about justice. Let us consider briefly how global justice scholars divide on the issue of how much is owed.

We can imagine the issue of how much is owed as a continuum (cf. Beauchamp, Reference Beauchamp and Zalta2019: 3; Scheid, Reference Scheid and Scheid2014) that has as its respective opposing ends practically ‘equal positive duties’ to all and ‘unequal positive duties’.Footnote ²¹ The former end is populated by radical cosmopolitans, which includes effective altruists who advocate giving as much income away as possible to combat global poverty, but also that people should select jobs that make them high earners, in order to enable them to give more away (Singer, Reference Singer2013). At the other end of our continuum, we find ‘merely’ ‘moral cosmopolitans’, which is to say statists or communitarians who believe in the principle of equal moral worth but who believe that ties of national allegiance mean that we owe more to fellow-nationals than people in other states (Miller, Reference Miller2007: 30). Holding the centre ground are those global justice scholars who recognize that states and people cannot be required to be impartial to allegiances; however, they are ‘permitted to confer greater weight on their own goals, projects and attachments’ only once the needy have opportunities for ‘a minimally decent life’ (Fabre, Reference Fabre2012: 21; see also Brock, Reference Brock2009: 14–15).

Although this is not a book about the fair distribution of security (as a state of being) and therefore how much security wealthy states must redistribute, instead one about justified security practice, the trends in the literature are relevant, because scholars located at different points of the spectrum would take different views on whether the pro tanto obligation of other-securitization can be overridden. Certainly, some radical cosmopolitans would discount potential risks to securitizing actors (notably in terms of lives lost) as valid objections to not securitizing. We can see this from the radical cosmopolitan literature on humanitarian intervention. Mary Kaldor, for example, argues that the lives of peacekeepers and of victims are equally important, and that peacekeeping (‘cosmopolitan law-enforcement’) entails ‘risking the lives of peacekeepers in order to save the lives of victims’ (Kaldor, Reference Kaldor2012: 138). In my view, Kaldor also discounts the risk of global instability caused by intervention aka ‘cosmopolitan law-enforcement’, not only because intervention must be based on partial consent (ibid: 134–136), but also because there is the implicit assumption that everyone would recognize such interventions as good and unproblematic. Relatively, more moderate cosmopolitans, as here Caney (Reference Caney2005: 253), argue that ‘intervention [should] not impose undue costs on the intervening authorities’. For Fabre (Reference Fabre2012: 21), undue moral cost is incurred when intervention ‘would require of the better off to sacrifice their own opportunities for a minimally decent life’ (Fabre, Reference Fabre2007: 369; by contrast see Singer, Reference Singer1972: 231Footnote ²²).

This shows that there is a tangible difference between states’ duties to securitize insiders and outsiders. Unlike in the latter, in the former case no consideration regarding moral costs or risks can override the duty to securitize because the costs of not acting are always greater (notably the state ceases to exist, or it fails unless it provides security). In Section 2.5, I will consider in detail the moral costs and risks that override states’ duties to act on must cause where third parties are concerned, before this however it is necessary to briefly revisit must cause.

2.4 Must Cause and Mandatory Other-Securitization

I argued in Chapter 1 that securitization is morally required only once politicization of the threat has been tried and has failed to satisfy just cause. I have also argued that real threats require politicization, because when threats are real, strategic inaction is not a feasible option. Especially in mandatory other-securitization by consent, this raises the question whose political solutions count? Is it those performed by the state/group, etc., in need of help with securitization, or that of the external actor? In other words, in other-securitization when precisely is must cause satisfied. I want to suggest that – in other-securitization – all would-be securitizing actors must establish the satisfaction of must cause anew and independently. This means that, if A requests help with the securitization against an issue from B,Footnote ²³ then B is obligated to securitize only once the political solutions B has to offer have been tried and failed to satisfy just cause. Provided securitization is just, B is permitted to use exceptional measures before that point is reached, namely, when securitization is ex ante anticipated to be the best option. But the obligation to do something extraordinary to counter a threat comes into force only once other less harmful measures B can provide have not worked. Concretely this means that the duty of other-securitization is a derivative duty, that is, a duty that rests on a prior duty of ‘other-politicization’,Footnote ²⁴ meaning a duty to save relevant third parties using ordinary political measures, or in other words a duty to secure.

The fact that each (including each successiveFootnote ²⁵) would-be securitizing actor must establish must cause before they have a duty to other-securitize is crucial for another reason. A central requirement of JST is macro-proportionality – the principle that securitization must not cause more harm than it seeks to prevent. Other-securitization (especially without consent) is likely to cause more harm than a state using emergency measures to protect its own people from an external threat. In other words, the threshold for when other-securitization is proportionate is likely to be higher (in terms of the harm prevented by such action) than in cases of self-securitization.Footnote ²⁶ This also shows once more that the above-mentioned prior duty of other-politicization does not entail an automatic duty to securitize when politicization fails. Notably, securitization by third parties may be disproportionally harmful to the threat in question, in which case securitization is impermissible.

Finally, one difference between the two types of mandatory other-securitization is that mandatory other-securitization without consent can apply only when there is an unaddressed objective existential threat to a just referent object, or when the state itself is the threatener, whereas mandatory other-securitization by consent applies in cases when states acquiesce to relevant assistance offered or when they request securitization by third parties, and this can happen while the requesting state addresses the threat. To be sure, an unaddressed threat exists when a sovereign state does not address a relevant threat to a just referent object, which is the case when the state has no relevant and targeted political strategy to address the threat.Footnote ²⁷ One reason why outside interference and coercion in such cases are morally permissible is that states that do not protect just referents within their territory have forfeited the right to political self-determinationFootnote ²⁸ (cf. Wellman in Wellman and Cole, Reference Wellman and Cole2011: 15–16; Altman and Wellman, Reference Altman and Wellman2009: chapter 4; McMahan, Reference McMahan, Davis, Keshen and McMahan2010: 57; Tesón, Reference Tesón and Scheid2014: 71–72). Or, in other words, sovereignty is conditional on good behaviour.

The implications of this are important; thus, my framework can answer Ramesh Thakur’s provocative question whether the level of gun violence (32.000 deaths annually)Footnote ²⁹ necessitates RtoP-type intervention within domestic US jurisdiction (Thakur, Reference Thakur2017: 291) with a decisive no. Thus, while – certainly from a Western European perspective – the United States’s efforts at reducing gun violence are poor (i.e., why not simply ban gun ownership altogether?), gun violence is addressed. In the wake of the Parkland shooting in February 2018, for example, many states have introduced and tightened gun laws, including by raising of the minimal age for gun ownership, as well as by temporarily (for one year) barring dangerous people from gun ownership (Kramer and Harlan, Reference Kramer and Harlan2019). In short, in the case of the United States it is simply not the case that the threat is not addressed by relevant authorities, and in the absence of an unaddressed threat there is no moral case for a duty to politicize – and if that fails – of mandatory other-securitization. This is so for two interrelated reasons. First, mandatory securitization is triggered either for contractual reasons or because of the moral equality of people. Duties are based on the rights that affected people (or groups thereof) hold against duty-bearers. The obligation of mandatory securitization is however not triggered by a right to a policy that works 100 per cent. For one thing, such a policy may not be available. Instead, affected persons simply have a right to the issue being addressed. Moreover, this brings me to my second point that if a state has not forfeited the right to political self-determination (here because they are addressing a threat) other actors do not have a duty to intervene.Footnote ³⁰

2.5 Factors Overriding Individual States’ Duties to Securitize Outsiders

In addition to breaking the normal peacetime rules between states (including, by using tough sanctions, blackmail, subversion, the threat of expulsion from international organizations, etc.), mandatory other-securitizations may see an external actor A act within the sovereign territory of state B in order to protect a just referent object (which can be a social or political order, an ecosystem, a non-human species, or a group of people; cf. Introduction). For example, the external securitizing actor could enforce curfews with the help of its military in dengue threat (Section 1.4.3) or they could help enforce restrictions on the use of water resources, as necessary in the hypothetical example of drought disaster (Section 1.4.3).

Above I have said that we can distinguish between mandatory other-securitization by consent and mandatory securitization without consent. The former is perhaps less likely to bring adverse consequences for the external securitizing actor. It is logical to assume, for example, that when aforementioned Gabenia asks for help from another sovereign state to deal with dengue threat then – provided they satisfy must cause and that securitization is carried out in line with the principles of just conduct during securitization – such help is likely to be gladly received by the government of Gabenia and its population, in short by the beneficiaries of securitization. This should mean that the risks to putative executors of securitization – for example, in terms of the lives lost due to violent resistance to securitization – are comparatively low as there simply will be little in the way of opposition to securitization. Conversely, a comparable course of action is unlikely to be morally justifiable where would-be securitizing actors do not have the consent of the host state. To be sure, this is not because of the lack of consent, but rather because in the absence of consent by the host state escalation (including into war) is preprogramed. And the high likelihood that other-securitization will lead to violent conflict renders the same morally impermissible on the grounds of the proportionality criterion (cf. Introduction). This means that in most cases, other-securitization without consent by the host state can only take the form of remote action, that is, sanctions, not direct intervention within the state’s territory.

This said, there is another form of mandatory other-securitization without consent, namely, one whereby the host state (i.e., the government) has consented to rescue, including by other-securitization, but (part of) the beneficiary (the population) has not. Consider as a case in point the Ebola virus crisis in 2014/2015 in West Africa. Here, the affected states requested help from the international community, but many locals rejected the finding that Ebola was a threat, and once they accepted the virus as a threat, they became scared and resentful of international enforcers of the securitization (Linn, Reference Linn2015).Footnote ³¹ Some of these were violently attacked by locals, not to mention the fact that all these enforcers were exposed to the risk of contracting Ebola themselves. I do not want to go into the Ebola crisis here in any more detail, because here the obligation to securitize is further complicated by the fact that Ebola is not a localized threat. That is to say that unless contained, Ebola could easily have developed into a pandemic affecting everyone. The case thus blurs the lines between mandatory self- and other-securitization. The Ebola case is interesting here merely to showcase that even in seemingly straightforward uncontroversial cases of other-securitization executors of securitization can be at risk of being attacked and even of losing their lives.

Given that most scholars who theorize the permissibility of humanitarian intervention (and those that focus on the justice of non-state organized violence) insist on consent (usually of the beneficiaries of the intervention/organized violence) (see, e.g., Kaldor, Reference Kaldor2012: 134; Parry Reference Parry2017a; Pattison Reference Pattison2010; Finlay, Reference Finlay2015), the idea of mandatory other-securitization without consent, including against the will of beneficiaries, raises the question why such securitizations are morally permissible (which we know forms the basis of a theory of mandatory securitization) at all? Indeed, does not the referent object’s refusal to being saved by securitization serve as a valid reason that voids the duty of other-securitization?

In JST, I discount the importance of consent of the beneficiary of securitization for two reasons. First, consent in theories of humanitarian intervention or political violence waged by non-state actors primarily serves to exonerate the intervener in cases gone awry. Second, consent is meant to guard against interveners being driven by their own political goals. In JST, however, inter alia the criterion of right intention already guards against that possibility. Having thus discounted the moral relevance of consent, mandatory other-securitization without consent requires our consideration and I will now move on to discuss the moral costs and risks as well as other practical reasons that void capable states’ pro tanto obligation of other-securitization.Footnote ³²

2.6 Individual States as Primary Duty-Bearers for Mandatory Other-Securitization?

One issue this chapter has alluded to but not yet addressed is that capable states are not the only actors that have a pro tanto remedial responsibility of other-securitization on the grounds of the moral equality of people. As will become clear in subsequent chapters, other actors – including sub-systemic collectives of states with a security focus (e.g., NATO) – can also have this remedial responsibility. This begs the question when, if ever, are sufficiently capable individual states (and other actors) the primary duty-bearers? By primary duty-bearer, I mean the actor who – among several possible duty-bearers – should be assigned the first duty of other-politicization, evolving – if necessary – into a duty of other-securitization.

To be sure, the duty of other-politicization is a general duty that stems from the moral equal worth of people. This duty is variably described as a duty of justice, a humanitarian duty, or even a duty of assistance (Miller, Reference Miller2007: 254–256). What matters is that there is a general agreement that there is a duty to help/rescue, or as I would put it secure, if actors are unable to help themselves. Some philosophers argue that there are no such things as special duties, but merely ‘“distributed general duties” […] whereby the moral community’s general duties get assigned to particular agents’ (Goodin, Reference Goodin1988: 678). Regardless of where one stands on this,Footnote ⁵⁵ for the purposes of other-securitization Goodin’s view of assigning duties differently to distinct agents is instructive. While Goodin (Reference Goodin1988: 678 FN 41) leaves it open how duties are assigned to particular agents, Miller argues that remedial responsibility is tied to the following triggers: outcome responsibility (causal responsibility), moral responsibility (causal responsibility + blameworthiness), benefit (beneficiary of situation), capacity (capable of remedying the situation), and community (i.e., ties of friendship). Miller does not advance a ranking of these in terms of who should be assigned remedial responsibility; one reason for his reluctance is that reality is too messy. It is, for example, often difficult to be certain who has moral responsibility for an outcome, in part because ‘moral responsibility is a matter of degree’ (Miller, Reference Miller2001: 467).

A second reason for Miller’s reluctance is that he aims to ensure that those in need of help are always helped (ibid: 471). As Wouter Peeters et al. argue, however, this victim-centred view is not only unfair to ‘responsibility-bearers’ who ought to know why precisely they are being called upon, but also indeterminacy of multiple equally weighted principles means that potential bearers of responsibility can pass the buck (Peeters et al., Reference Peeters, De Smet, Diependaele, Sterckx, McNeal and De Smet2015: 23). Following Peeters et al., one can achieve a sequential ranking when one compares Miller’s criteria of remedial responsibility with common-sense morality.Footnote ⁵⁶ In a nutshell, we can summarize common-sense morality as saying that moral responsibility for acts is considered weightier than omissions,Footnote ⁵⁷ while moral and outcome responsibility are weightier than friendship and ties of community, both of which are considered morally significant. While there are difficulties with establishing moral responsibility, our moral intuitions tell us that those responsible for creating an undesired outcome have a primary duty to alleviate the situation. We can find this, for example, in climate ethics where the polluter pays principle tracks remedial responsibility as outcome, specifically moral responsibility (Caney, Reference Caney, Gardiner, Caney, Jamieson and Shue2010: 125–127), and where the beneficiary pays principle tracks remedial responsibility as causal responsibility.

Moreover, in common-sense morality pure capacity to remedy a situation is ranked, behind the obligation to help friends.Footnote ⁵⁸ As Diane Jeske (Reference Jeske and Zalta2014) explains: ‘[…] Even if a person who is wealthier than me is actually in a better position to aid my friend, [in common-sense morality] it nonetheless seems to be the case that I have some reason to aid my friend that the person at least as well or better causally situated to do so does not have. She may have stronger agent-neutral reason to aid my friend, but she does not have the agent-relative reason arising from friendship that I have’.

Of course, common-sense morality faces its own challenges. Consequentialists, for example, discount the role of friends in favour of the obligation to maximize the greater good. Samuel Scheffler holds against this that special obligations to friends/community obtain when ‘persons have reason to value the relationships’ (cited in ibid.). To me, it seems intuitively right that persons should be assigned greater responsibility to help their friends than strangers.Footnote ⁵⁹ After all: ‘You cannot be somebody’s friend unless you understand that this entails giving them certain kinds of priority in your life […]’ (Miller, Reference Miller2007: 35–36).

The thought that ties of friendship/community are weightier than ties of pure capacity is less likely to be controversial when provisions are made that – when friends cannot or (for whatever reason) will not deliver – ensure that responsibility shifts to capable actors, thus ensuring that ‘victims’ are cared for. But what does friendship or community mean in the context of mandatory other-securitization? Community is perhaps easier to understand because this term already exists in security studies where a security community describes the situation when war between members of the community has become unthinkable (Adler and Barnett, Reference Adler, Barnett, Adler and Barnett1998). Security communities can overlap with the boundaries of formal institutions (e.g., in the EU or NATO) or not, such as ‘the West’. Friendship is a fuzzier notion. In international relations, friendships may be motivated by care for the other, but perhaps more so by utilitarian motives. As Felix Berenskoetter (Reference Berenskoetter2014: 3–4) explains:

The utilitarian motive means that friendships can serve different ends. This is important. It seems to me that relevant for remedial responsibility in mandatory other-securitization is not whether states are friends simpliciter but whether they are ‘security friends’. Berenskoetter would probably think that the idea of security friendship is tautological because real friendship is indivisibly bound to security (cf. Wheeler, Reference Wheeler2018). Berenskoetter holds that ‘friendship is […] a special relationship of choice which does not simply form on the basis of geographic proximity, close trade links or an otherwise high level of “interaction”, but through a mutual commitment to use overlapping biographical narratives for pursuing a shared idea of international order’ (2014: 9). Leaving aside the point whether relationships between states based on trade render them friends or merely trade/international business partners or acquaintances, Berenskoetter’s wider analysis suggests that we can recognize friendships between states when they voluntarily and trustingly engage in joint practices to shape the world in line with their ideal. States are most obviously security friends when they have formed what Adler and Barnett (Reference Adler, Barnett, Adler and Barnett1998: 55) have called ‘tightly coupled’ mature security communities where ‘national identity is expressed through the merging of efforts’ (ibid: 56).

Overall, Miller’s insights combined with Peeters et al.’s suggestion to invoke common-sense morality allow for the following sequential ranking of the various triggers for remedial responsibility for initially other-politicization and – if this fails to have the desired effect – other-securitization: (1) moral responsibility; (2) outcome responsibility (I would include benefit here); (3) friendship; and finally (4) capacity. While moral and outcome responsibility trump the other triggers, it can only be actioned when actors have the relevant capabilities.

What then does all this mean for individual state’s moral duty of other-securitization? It means that states are the primary duty-bearers of other-securitization when they are morally or outcome responsible for the insecurity. The ranking further means that states can be the primary duty-bearers when special ties of friendship are present. Given, however, that many states are a part of collective security arrangements and/or friends of collectives (for instance, Ukraine or Georgia with NATO), who are often more capable than individual states, individual states are not likely to be primary duty-bearers on the grounds of friendship very often. Moral responsibility trumps both of the other triggers, even when there are capable friends that could act, provided that the wrongdoer is capable of relevant action. In cases where duties conflict, but where both securitization and counter-securitization are justified (cf. Floyd, Reference Floyd2019a: 176), contractual obligations trump obligations to others.

Lest one should think otherwise this ranking of triggers holds true for mandatory other-securitization by consent as well as without consent. It is crucial to remember that other-securitization is not about large-scale armed military intervention into a friend’s territory; instead, it might mean that friends suspend – as part of mandatory other-securitization without consent – diplomatic ties or trade guarantees.

Finally, I have argued (including in Section 2.4) that other-securitization rests on a prior duty of other-politicization. This raises the following question: are morally culpable actors that are obviously incapable of other-securitization (e.g., because they do not have a functioning military) still the designated first outside responder in relevant situations? Against this, we might argue that our focus should be on what is best for those in need of help as opposed to what is best for those that should help.Footnote ⁶⁰ And that by requiring these actors to help first, we risk that a suitable response is delayed during which suffering continues.Footnote ⁶¹ By contrast, the affirmative case is based on fairness (e.g., solve what you have caused), while it is also informed by the view that we must not overrate the value of securitization. After all, the outcome responsible actor can still do something ‘ordinary’ to alleviate the situation, and this something might reduce the need for other-securitization (cf. Chapter 1, Section 1.2) by further actors. I lean towards the latter explanation, also because a theory of mandatory securitization insures against unnecessary delay by demanding that when actors have reached ‘must cause’ but can go no further, they have a duty to request help from other more capable actors.Footnote ⁶²

2.7 Conclusion

This concludes my analysis of the obligations of state actors regarding securitization. To summarize, I have argued that when must cause is satisfied just states are obligated to securitize the state or the citizens within states because the primary function of the state is the provision of security. I suggested that no considerations concerning the risks involved in securitization (e.g., instability) can override just states’ obligation of self-securitization because the failure to provide security terminates the social contract and thus effectively spells the end of the state. In short, here, when must cause is satisfied, not securitizing is always a greater risk than securitizing.

From here, I have gone on to examine the obligation that able states have regarding securitization of people within less able states. I have shown why they have a duty to help people abroad, and when they have such a duty. I have shown why a number of considerations including – the risk of dying, disease, and disability – can override the pro tanto obligation of other-securitization. In short, unlike self-securitization within just states, the duty of able states to securitize to save third parties is conditional. Finally, I have examined what triggers the remedial responsibility of first mandatory other-politicization and – if must cause is satisfied – mandatory other-securitization. I have argued for a ranking of triggers, whereby culpability for threat creation trumps benefit, which in turn trumps friendship, while friendship trumps pure capacity.

One issue that remains outstanding is whether states and other actors have a duty to actively look for insecurities in other places. This issue comes about, because of the possibility of mandatory other-securitization. It seems, however, that ‘the duty of beneficence’ does not require this. This is clear from the much-used example of the Good Samarian, wherein ‘a would-be rescuer has a duty to aid a victim, even if no special circumstances obtain between them’ but without ‘a duty to patrol the road seeking to apprehend robbers or looking for other robbery victims’ (Scheid, Reference Scheid and Scheid2014: 9).Footnote ⁶³

Finally, and as before with Chapter 1, the analysis provided in this chapter raises some questions regarding the specifics of JST and whether the theory is allowed to stand, or whether it needs amending in some way. Just Securitization Theory argues that securitization is morally permissible when there is a current objective existential threat to an objectively valuable referent object. In other words – and provided that all other criteria are satisfied – in those circumstances would-be securitizing actors are morally permitted to use emergency measures against a threatener or a threat. In this chapter, I have argued that other-securitization without consent is not obligatory unless there is an unaddressed objective existential threat. In and of themselves both statements are sound, but they do raise the question whether other-securitization is also only morally permissible when there is an unaddressed real threat? Or is it the case that external powers are permitted to other-securitize when the threat is addressed but when the strategy to deal with the threat is poor? To stick, with the example from above (Section 2.4), would the EU be morally permitted to securitize against gun violence in the United States (e.g., by using sanctions) on the grounds that the United States’s strategy of addressing the threat is poor, after all gun violence continues to be a problem?Footnote ⁶⁴ Recall that in the above I argue that in this case there is no obligation to securitize, indeed to act at all, because the issue is – even if poorly– addressed by the sovereign state, and sovereign states can determine how they address issues. And yet, it seems intuitively correct that if, in this case, the EU wants to do something, and if the United States’s strategy really is poor, they should be permitted to do just that (note here that proportionality might render securitization unjust anyway). The question ultimately is whether permissible other-securitization can be reconciled with self-determination. The principle of mandatory securitization is really based on the idea that there are some things states are not allowed to do. Most notably if a state endangers an innocent (in the relevant sense) minority – other states, etc., have a duty to come to the rescue. In other words, self-determination is not sacrosanct. This is important because it allows for some much-needed nuance. Thus, while a duty to act does not arise when a threat is addressed by the primary duty-bearer (cf. Section 2.4), if the threat is only partially mitigated by the actions of the primary duty-bearer, nothing prohibits external actors (here the EU) from acting on the issue.