Rewriting ‘the West’ vis-a-vis the West’s New Others: An Analysis of Todorov’s Liberalism versus Behnke’s Realist Constructivism

Introduction

During the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in mapping the western geo-cultural and geo-political space in relation to various Others. While some scholars discussed the rise of ‘the Rest’ and its consequences for the western world following the end of the cold war, ¹ others have been more critical of such accounts in general and Huntington’s clash of civilisations thesis in particular on the grounds that they overlook the constitutive effect of the interaction between ‘the West’ and ‘the non-West’. ² Nevertheless, even the works that explore the implications of such binary juxtapositions and call for a view beyond the West to make sense of the post-cold war order are not fully freed from western-centrism. ³

Tzvetan Todorov’s The Fear of Barbarians and Andreas Behnke’s NATO’s Security Discourse after the Cold War are not an exception in this regard. Both authors draw attention to the ways in which the West has differentiated itself from ‘the Rest’ and how such representations are constitutive of the western identity. While Todorov highlights the need to avoid dehumanising and degrading forms of Othering for the protection of western security and values, as well as for ‘the consolidation of peace on earth’ (p. 191), Behnke, following a Schmittean perspective, underscores the indispensability of a threatening non-western Other for NATO’s identity and the impossibility of willing it away. Notwithstanding the differences in their approaches to the politics of identity, and although both authors refrain from providing a clear-cut definition of the West, western civilisation in both accounts is taken as the main referent object to be secured, against which Others are compared.

When read together, the two books serve as each other’s corrective and provide a timely account of the implications of the contemporary identity claims prominent in the West. While the discursive construction of identity, the link between discourses of civilisation and violence, and the constitutive nature of the civilisational discourse have been extensively studied both in postcolonial and critical security studies, ⁴ the two books are a must-read for those interested in identity politics and security studies for several reasons. Todorov’s liberal account of the notions of fear and resentment is a good reminder of the significance of emotions, as well as the need for multi-disciplinary analyses in the study of international relations. Behnke’s analysis of how NATO can no longer serve as the rhetorical pillar of western civilisation and pursue territorial politics due to the changes brought by globalisation draws attention to not only the ways in which the western identity has been reproduced after the end of the cold war, but also to the paradoxes inherent in NATO’s contemporary discourse. Both books are particularly strong in their rich illustration of the West’s recent representations of the Rest, as well as the role of language in the demise of the West as a civilisational mainstay.

From the Clash of Civilisations towards a Trans-culturally Defined Notion of Civilisation

In The Fear of Barbarians, Todorov’s main thesis is that western countries’ discriminatory (and at times violent) treatment of Muslims, denigrating representation of Islam, and disproportionate responses aiming to eliminate threats to western security and identity, have tragic consequences for the West, as well as the world at large. Such practices do not only contravene the democratic values that western societies claim to adhere to, but also reproduce violence by fuelling the resentment and vengeance of those defined in opposition to the West. Arguing that the fear of barbarians can lead to barbarity, Todorov urges to overcome that fear, exercise a certain degree of self-detachment in order to feel empathy towards others, and build mutual respect on the basis of commonly agreed norms.

Todorov’s book is hence not only a strong critique of the scholarly as well as political attempts to remap the contemporary world politics in terms of a naturalised clash between western and Islamic identities. It also has an explicit normative concern to highlight the possibility of, as well as the need for, overcoming Manichean distinctions. Todorov does so by first providing an alternative classification of countries based on their prevailing attitudes towards others and introducing a trans-historically and trans-culturally defined notion of barbarity and civilisation. In Todorov’s account, West is defined in terms of its preoccupation with fear, while countries with a Muslim population are categorised as the countries of resentment. Rejecting the uses of civilisation to refer to a group of countries sharing a similar (attitude to) religion, he designates civilisation in opposition to barbarity, which is defined as treating others as lesser humans, incapable of reasoning, negotiating and participating in the public life of the community. Todorov thus asserts that civilisation needs to be understood not as a unit of analysis, but rather as a unit of measure for evaluating particular human practices, defined in terms of the recognition of a shared humanity and non-discriminatory treatment of others. Drawing attention to the primordial understanding of cultures presupposed in absolutist juxtapositions of western and Muslim cultures, he introduces culture as an ethically neutral category, defines it as a mental representation of collective modes of living and thinking, and underlines its changing nature and the heterogeneity of its contents.

Such a reconceptualisation of culture and civilisation enables Todorov to evaluate particular historical and contemporary practices in terms of their degree of being civilised. It also allows him to challenge the absolutist ethical borders drawn between western and Muslim cultures without propagating relativism which he emphatically rejects. From this normatively grounded theoretical stance, Todorov draws parallels between murders, threats, human rights violations and terrorism incidents in the name of Islam or western liberal values: attacks on the Twin Towers; the United States’ ‘war on terror’; the legitimisation of torture in the secret CIA prisons, Abu Ghraib and Guantanámo; the rising Islamophobia in the EU; and acts of humiliation in defence of the freedom of speech. Referring to the implications of the recent controversial incidents in the EU that range from a Danish newspaper’s publication of the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 to the speech made by Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg in 2006, Todorov discusses how the public condemnation of Islam that was reinforced by these events served as ‘a façade for the rejection of immigrants’, and further exacerbated many Muslims’ feeling of exclusion in the EU countries (p. 138). He argues that the very representation of these issues as ‘conflicts between the European lifestyle and that of Muslims’ (p. 127), let alone the ways they were handled by the authorities, reproduced the prevailing absolutist juxtapositions between the western/European and Muslim cultures, violated the principles upon which the EU is based, increased the sense of humiliation and rage on the part of ‘the countries of resentment’, and thereby escalated the conflict (p. 143).

How Culturally Neutral and Realisable Is Todorov’s Account?

Todorov’s proposal for a way out of the apparent vicious circle noted above is multifold and not without its problems. If, as Todorov argues, our fears are a product of a certain cultural context, and if our ways of thinking are continuously moulded by the irresponsible attempts of the politicians who deny the intrinsic plurality of our cultures and speak of the threatening ethnic Others to fix national identities, the risk of turning into a barbarian can only be eliminated by individual attempts to dissociate ourselves from a culture of fear, and by realising the merits of ‘a culture of ambivalence’ (p. 75). Yet it is not clear how such morally cognizant self-detachment could originate independently of the specific culture we live in. Pointing out that a culture of fear and acts of barbarism are reinforced by the ethically irresponsible convictions of the political elites, Todorov urges that political action be driven by ‘an ethics of responsibility’ (p. 143). However, it is unclear how such a rationally driven responsible stance on the part of the political elite would reconcile with their equally rational concern to win their electorates’ votes. Although the alleged conflict between cultures could be abated by the self-restraint of the political elites, calculating the social risks of their political actions, the result will fail to be a civilised move that Todorov calls for, as it will have originated from their pragmatic calculations, rather than their sense of empathy. Lastly, since the fear of barbarians and the feelings of resentment equally contribute to barbaric acts, then western countries’ emancipation from fear will fail to resolve the problem, unless the source of resentment is also dealt with. If conflicts result, as Todorov argues, from the unequal distribution of resources, and if it is ‘inevitable’ that ‘those who will have less will become increasingly aggressive towards those who have more, and the latter will become increasingly worried about preserving and protecting their advantages’ (p. 2), then it is also unclear how the feeling of resentment can be overcome exclusively via a Habermasian discursive ethics. One cannot help wondering how Todorov’s admirable humanist call for exercising mutual respect and overcoming the fear of Others can serve as the sole path to the resolution of the imagined clash between the West and the Muslim cultures, let alone the consolidation of peace on earth.

The second problem is related to Todorov’s attempt to approach the issue from a non-essentialist and culturally neutral perspective on the one hand, while representing the western Enlightenment values and contemporary liberal democratic principles as a way out of the present impasse on the other. This argument is no longer culturally neutral because it places western liberalism on a higher plane. For Todorov, cultural belonging is a precondition for civilised behaviour; hence both western and Muslim societies ought not to be stripped off their cultural identities in order to reach a common understanding. While Todorov introduces the Enlightenment heritage as a unique guide for western societies due to its ability ‘to combine the universality of values with the plurality of cultures’ (p. 30), he urges for an authentic, ‘non-dogmatic reading of Islam’ and a cultural ‘evolution towards a liberal Islam’ (p. 163), led by the Muslims themselves, in order to facilitate an open dialogue between western and Muslim cultures. This suggestion can be read as a call for a mutual struggle to identify the common human values within one’s own cultural heritage. However, it implicitly presupposes not only the current incongruence of Islamic practices with western liberal norms, but also that it is Islam that needs a liberal stretch, rather than the other way round. If certain interpretations of Islam would be agreeable and desirable only for their proximity to the Enlightenment values (p. 163), then Todorov’s suggestion is more a call for Islam’s absorption into western/European norms and rationality than into a shared horizon, since he admits that much of the contemporary liberal democratic norms and critical thought have originated in the West and are characteristic to western/European culture (pp. 167, 172–4, 185). As it appears, the point of reference for a common terrain in Todorov’s account remains western modernity.

Moreover, and relatedly, Todorov does not pay sufficient attention to the historical and hegemonic relationship between the West and the non-West, and the processes through which the non-West has differentiated itself from the West, and/or accommodated western concepts, practices, and identity to varying degrees. ⁵ As Norbert Elias once noted, it is impossible to understand the current state of affairs within societies without examining the relations between them. ⁶ Detached from their historical context, it becomes unclear how cultures of resentment and fear have been produced and have interacted in time, and thus, how these can be transcended through a one-way street. When civilisation is predominantly defined in terms of the Enlightenment values, it is dubious if the ‘civilising process’ of promoting respect for liberal norms would be equally welcome in all non-western societies as the essence of the non-western ‘Golden Age’. Therefore, Todorov’s eloquent liberal appeal for an evolution in cultural norms and practices and the collective realisation of the unity of global community does not only fail to eschew the construction of hierarchical power relations despite its explicit attempt to do so, but also takes an unrepresentative picture of the current state of affairs in assuming the desirability as well as the possibility of such a common understanding on the part of both sides to the imagined conflict.

Back to ‘Politics’ and ‘the Western’ Discourses of Danger

The clear normative concern and a Habermasian perspective on politics in The Fear of Barbarians contrast with Behnke’s ‘realist constructivist’ analysis of NATO’s post-cold war discourse (p. x). The two books also diverge in their main units and levels of analysis in examining the construction of a Western Self in juxtaposition to various Others. While Todorov points out the role of multiple actors, for example individuals, media, political elite, and states in (un)making the cultures of fear and resentment, Behnke focuses on a single non-state entity – NATO – and specifically on the implications of its discursive attempts to draw the boundaries of the West in its representation of the new security threats in the post-cold war era. Based on the assumption that ‘the political relevance of the Alliance rests on its ability to re-produce “the West” as a geo-cultural space’ (p. 1), Behnke argues that NATO’s post-cold war claim to universalism and its discursive construction of its periphery in terms of systematic and de-territorialised threats deprive it of its ‘epistemic privilege’ to map the world and define the issues according to its own standards, and to secure the Core’s identity in terms of western values (p. 184). As the threatening Other is no longer culturally or territorially defined, there can be no western identity in opposition to it. The transformation of NATO’s security discourse in response to the global threats and a corollary expansion of NATO’s scope thus signify the dissolution of its spatial and civilisational basis and its security-political relevance for contemporary politics.

Behnke develops this argument by first wedding a critical constructivist definition of identity and security with a Schmittean understanding of the political. He argues that identity cannot be defined ontologically prior to discourse and that the security of identity paradoxically depends on the presence of a threatening Other. Drawing on Carl Schmitt’s characterisation of politics in terms of the distinction between friend and enemy, he asserts that all politics is essentially security-politics and is based on a spatialised relationship between a ‘purified’ inside and a ‘contaminating’ outside (p. 7). He utilises Schmitt’s focus on the changing spatial structure (nomos) of the earth, that is, a political order that ‘identifies collectives and defines their geopolitical spaces’ and relationships with one another (p. 4). Schmitt’s idea of sovereignty as the power to decide on the state of exception is reconceptualised by Behnke as ‘the discursively created position from which these spaces are delineated and defined’ (p. 14).

Such an interpretation of Schmitt and focus on the spatial dynamics of identity politics allow him to study how actors that do not have formal sovereignty, such as NATO, have constructed the post-cold war nomatic order by claiming an authoritative status on behalf of the West. From this theoretical stance, he challenges not only the state-centrism in International Relations theory in general, and in the studies on NATO in particular, but also the substantialist understandings of identity, as well as the liberal assumptions implicit in constructivist and the critical security studies. In this context, he argues that the definition of politics in terms of dialogue, the juxtaposition of politics and security, and the reintroduction of Habermasian discursive ethics as a way out of insecurities are futile attempts to escape the very logic of politics. In the same way, according to Behnke, NATO’s claims ‘to create security without insecurity [and] community without exclusion’ (p. 70) signify the same inclination.

Based on his analysis of NATO documents, press releases, and articles by NATO representatives published in NATO Review, Behnke provides readers with a theoretically well-grounded study of NATO’s post-cold war discourse. He first discusses how NATO took on ‘the role of an epistemic centre from which knowledge is to be distributed and disseminated to the former adversaries’ (p. 98) by categorising the countries in its periphery in terms of their lack of western values and the dangers they pose to the Alliance members. For Behnke, the Partnership for Peace Program and the Mediterranean Dialogue, which resulted from NATO’s attempt to address external insecurities by fostering mutual understanding, rendered the countries involved into the objects of NATO’s security community, rather than its subjects, and asserted NATO’s agency on regions, ‘the identity of which is reduced to a receptacle for the reservoir of Western political and strategic knowledge’ (p. 128).

For Behnke, the consequences of NATO’s later efforts to de-securitise its periphery bore high political costs. NATO’s redefinition of its relationship with the Russian Federation in terms of a special partnership due to the latter’s size, importance and capabilities, rather than its embracement of western values, signifies the loss of NATO’s civilisational basis. Similarly, the co-action of NATO and Russian Federation in Bosnia in the context of IFOR, and NATO’s coordination of its activities with the EC, the CSCE and the UN, are considered by Behnke as NATO’s relinquishment of its epistemic privilege for graphing European security and stability by sharing it with other actors. Behnke analyses how, with its traditional technique of territorialising the threats, NATO constructed a new enemy to replace its Cold War Other and identified its southern periphery as the ‘arc of tension’, delineating the South in general, and Islamic fundamentalism in particular, as an anti-thesis of the West (p. 125). Finally, Behnke discusses the consequences of NATO’s projection of the new threats on the global level after 9/11 and the deconstruction of its claimed roles. He argues that NATO’s de-territorialised definition of terrorism, its consequent assumption of a global task and a universalist agency, and its eventual adoption of a non-pedagogical discourse towards its periphery, regardless of these countries’ embracement of western values of democracy, rendered NATO’s western gaze into a gaze from everywhere, hence from nowhere at all (p. 179). For Behnke then, NATO’s attempts to escape the basic grammar of politics merely transferred the insecurities to other regions and levels and led to the loss of NATO’s authorship ‘as the meta-sovereign of its member-states’ (p. 182).

NATO’s Discourse and the (De)Construction of the ‘West’

Behnke insightfully points out the central paradox in NATO’s post-cold war behaviour. On the one hand, NATO’s understanding of security is still territorially based, since it seeks to externalise threats to protect the security of its western identity. On the other hand, it can no longer sustain territorial politics against a de-territorialised enemy, nor can it represent the West, since global terrorism is beyond the western/non-western distinction. Behnke is incisive in showing the change in NATO’s post-cold war discourse – how its pedagogical and value-based discourse towards its periphery has transformed into an overtly globalist and inclusive one. While this is a noteworthy analysis of how ‘the West’ now ceases to be the referent object in NATO’s post-cold war security discourse because its embraces its previously externalised Others, it is unclear whether this necessarily means the demise of NATO’s political significance in the new era or the deconstruction of the ‘West’ as such.

First of all, NATO’s sharing of some of its functions with other states and intergovernmental organisations may still be considered as constitutive of power relations, which would indicate, according to Behnke’s theoretical framework, the preservation of its political relevance, rather than the loss of authoritative status. After all, it was NATO, and not the southern countries, that initiated the Mediterranean Dialogue and decided upon its terms. Secondly, Behnke maintains that NATO’s attempts to build partnership with Russia simply because of its capabilities, significance and size, without demanding its acceptance of western values, transformed NATO into a ‘sounding board’ that carries out ‘good practices’ on the basis of contingent needs (p. 181). But why should NATO’s declarations that Russia is too big and capable a state to be excluded from negotiations be necessarily taken as evidence for the erasure of value-markers from NATO’s discourse and the deconstruction of NATO’s previously held epistemic privilege? It is equally plausible to view it as another instance where NATO constructs its identity on the basis of its ‘rationality’ versus ‘irrational Others’. Indeed, in his analysis, Behnke refers to the cases where NATO identified Russia’s objections to the enlargement as ‘somewhat irrational suspicions’, which rendered Russia still subject to NATO’s ‘sovereign gaze and agency’, despite its being considered as a partner (pp. 114–15). As Behnke points out, such a Cartesian perspective has been one of the central themes of NATO’s post-cold war discourse that served to reinforce NATO’s authoritative status (p. 85).

Similarly, it is not clear why NATO’s discourse towards various Others in its periphery is not formative of NATO’s identity. Although Behnke agrees that identity requires difference for its existence, his exclusive focus on the spatial (and binary) aspects of identity constitution leads him to focus on situations where difference collapses into a negative Other. Hence, in Behnke’s account, politics is reduced to geopolitics, especially to situations where a sovereign Self externalises the danger. However, as Ole Weaver points out, identity is also constructed in juxtaposition to various spatial and temporal Others that are not necessarily cast as an existential threat to the Self. ⁷ If there is no intrinsic NATO identity that can be conceptualised independently of NATO’s discourse, and if discourse is subject to changes, then the changes in the way NATO represents its nomatic space are also constitutive of NATO’s identity. From this position, NATO’s redefinition of its universal status may then denote the transformation in NATO’s role, rather than its deconstruction. In the same vein, NATO’s reiterations that its struggle is not against cultures or religions but terrorism, as well as its calls for negotiation and a common stance against the threat of terrorism, can be read as a discursive move that constructs NATO’s identity as ‘tolerant’ and ‘respectful of diversity and dialogue’. Even though there may be a spatially unlimited negative Other in NATO’s post-9/11 discourse, NATO’s representation of the forms of its struggle vis-a-vis the ambiguously defined terrorism inescapably contributes to its identity and hence its political significance.

Moreover, it is problematic to interpret the absence of a specific reference to the western values in NATO’s discourse in terms of the deconstruction of the West without considering the discourse of its member states on NATO’s questioned identity, and without examining how NATO is seen through the glass of its periphery. Similar to Todorov’s account, Behnke’s analysis treats the interaction between the ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’ as a single product of western representation of Others, not vice versa. Behnke draws attention to the ways in which NATO constitutes a ‘trans-national space’ by providing authoritative accounts of amity and enmity, and constituting its member states as a community of values and identity (pp. 30–1). This would have been an outstanding contribution to the security studies had Behnke also explored the parallels between the discourses of NATO and the member states, as well as how the way NATO is viewed from its periphery is also constructive of its claimed identity. Without looking at the internal and international processes of NATO’s identity formation, it is not only clear how NATO’s relinquishment of its hitherto-asserted westernist discourse can be considered as the deconstruction of ‘the West’ as such. It is also unclear how NATO’s previous monologue over its western identity could be representative of NATO’s westernness.

Furthermore, in his chapter on NATO’s discourse on Bosnia, Behnke also identifies inner contradictions in the identity-politics employed by NATO by pointing out NATO’s claimed respect for diversity and multi-ethnicity on the one hand and the adoption of an ethno-nationalist narrative of the war on the other. Despite the fact that NATO cast the war in Bosnia as a challenge to the western values, Behnke argues that NATO contradicted the very principles it defended by violating a multi-ethnic space both ontologically and physically. Albeit a significant criticism of NATO’s practices, it is not clear how this specific argument fits in the general thesis of the book in its focus on the extent to which NATO was truthful to the values it represented, or why NATO’s identity representations should be without contradictions for its continual political relevance. The implicit assumption of the stability of identity runs counter to the logic of the discursive understanding of identity that Behnke draws upon.

Lastly, Behnke’s analysis omits certain crucial cases, for example the Kosovo War of 1999 and the enlargements of 2004 and 2009, while covering other developments and speeches within the same time frame. The omission of the Kosovo case may perhaps be justified since it involved similar dynamics with the Bosnian one in terms of the prevalence of the ethno-nationalist language that NATO used in both. However, there was a major difference as well – NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo was not backed by the UNSC or consented to by Russia. Thus, it would have been interesting to see whether or how NATO represented its international and global claims, as well as its respect for the values of international community in the case of Kosovo. Relatedly, Behnke’s frequent switching between different dates works against his preference for a specific timeframe for analysis rather than a single event or document. A more chronological account and a clearer emphasis on the temporal change in NATO’s discourse could provide a further theoretical punch to his argument, in underlining the changing aspects of the identity represented by NATO.

Towards a Post-Western IR?

Todorov’s book compels the readers to realise the ethically and physically violent effects of fear, resentment, cultural stereotyping, the politics of exclusion, and counter-terrorism. Behnke’s equally significant book points our attention to the spatial dynamics of and the power relations constructed by the politics of identity. From Todorov’s perspective, overcoming one’s assertion of moral and cultural superiority over Others is necessary to secure one’s moral Self and avoid further insecurities. However, Todorov’s assumptions about arriving at a common horizon, and similar liberal arguments that associate desecuritisation with politicisation and normalisation within the critical security studies (especially within the Copenhagen School) are merely wishful thinking in Behnke’s terms because they deny the agonistic nature of politics and insecurity. For Behnke, NATO’s assertion of its civilisational identity via the securitisation of its spatially containable Others is what secures NATO’s status as an author of contemporary politics. While for Todorov, the assertion of an exclusive civilisational discourse runs contrary to the normal functioning of politics, for Behnke, this is what politics is all about. In this respect, the two books do not only provide contrasting insights on the link between civilisational identity and security/politics but also point our attention to the role of emotions, as well as various non-state actors in the West’s encounters with its significant Others. That is why both are highly recommended for all those interested in the politics of civilisational identity and critical security studies.

Both authors provide timely perspectives on the implications of the contemporary narratives prominent in the West and focus on the present crisis of the West from radically different approaches. Yet, neither can be read as a post-western account because of the problems in the ways they theorise the (de)construction of ‘the West’. Western-centrism is prominent in both in failing to examine the constitutive role of the ways in which ‘the West’ has interacted with and been perceived by its significant Others. This is not to suggest that we need to move beyond the self-other nexus in International Relations or beyond the ‘the West’ in order to escape from the hegemonic and West-centric conceptions of IR as this would presuppose that there are clear-cut borders and radical differences between ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ in approaching to international politics. What is required, however, is to show how such taken-for-granted differences between ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ are not self-evident but reinforced, securitised and reconstituted in time and through interactions between various actors of international politics. In this regard, both accounts serve as significant but limited attempts to scrutinise and denaturalise such binary juxtapositions.