Security as living history

We live in ‘hard times’, and are faced not just with looming threats, pending crises and real wars, but we also have to cope with ‘selfish men, jealous men, fearful men’, who proclaimed that our cause is ‘hopeless’, and that with respect for wars, we ‘should ask for a negotiated peace.’

These are not my words, or of any current political leader, but spoken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on 23 February 1942, more than 80 years ago. He shared these thoughts in a radio speech, a so-called ‘fireside chat’. That was an instrument that he had introduced early in his presidency, to address the American people directly. Fearful that newspapers (in those times media moguls and entrepreneurial gigants also tried to influence politics and waged politicized and polarized campaigns) that were biased against him would distort his words, Roosevelt decided to use the radio to circumvent ‘mainstream media’ and take the Americans by the hand and guide them through stormy weather himself. The chats became very popular and are still seen as an exemplary way of crisis communication: tell the people in accessible, easy language what the problem is, what has been done, and what we all can do about it. Interestingly, Roosevelt oftentimes resorted to history to make his case. In this particular speech in early 1942, he pauses to tell his listeners about the plights of general George Washington, who had to cope with ‘odds and defeats’ and indeed ‘selfish men’ who did not want to support him in his fight for independence and freedom, but tried to undermine his cause, his command of the continental army and demanded him to give in, settle for a compromise with the British oppressors in the late 1770s. Just like Washington, Roosevelt wanted to mobilize his populace and raise (financial) support for the cause that he believed would serve both the US’s security, freedom and that of Europe – by joining in and stepping up the fight against nazi Germany.

This magazine sees the light in hard times as well. While reading through the brilliant and highly original contributions to the special issue on ‘security’, several instances of threatening news came out. President-elect Trump’s issued outrageous claims and near-warlike declarations regarding Greenland, Canada or Panama (countries he either wants to buy, invade or intimidate in caving in to his demands). Tech gigant Elon Musk is going to provide Italy with an autonomous satellite system, supports the radical right candidate Alice Weidel in bid for power in Germany, and is on all accounts trying to undermine and assault Europe’s social and liberal order (the satellite deal with Italy is a direct attack on the EU’s Odin’s Eye project). Other tech gigants, such as Mark Zuckerberg, are following in his footsteps. And these are only the political and media related insecurities. The military developments are even more worrisome. News about increased Russian sabotage attempts in the Baltic and the Nord Sea came out as well – it appears that a suspected Russian spy ship carried out espionage activities and targeted an internet cable off the coast of the Dutch WAdden Island of Terschelling. And these are hybrid and covert threats – we have not even started to discuss the slaughter and the intense ground assaults that Russia is waging at the eastern front in Ukraine’s Pokrovk’s region around the publication date of this issue (early 2025). The conventional war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine started in February 2022 and has left more than 40.000 Ukrainian soldiers and approximately 600.000 Russian soldiers dead by now – a state of insecurity Europe has not seen since the end of the WOII.

History is not dead, but jumps back at us to haunt us, particular in the realm of security.

What is security? According to Jeremy Bentham, an Enlightenment and early 19th century philosopher of the social contract and public governance, it is the ‘anticipated state of being unharmed in the future’, and the key expectation and task that citizens demand from their centralized nation state and legitimate government to take care of. The interesting aspect of this definition is that it underscores the physical aspect of security (the state of being unharmed) as much as the psychological, intersubjective and temporal part of security: the anticipation and expectation that this state of being unharmed is not just a momentarily one, but is a stable situation that can be projected at least into the near future. In other words, it is the opposite of being in a state of insecurity. Security is a derogative of the Latin word ‘securitas’, which is a composite of ‘sine cura’, without worries. In the domain of security studies, the constructivist approach to security has enriched the field with the notion of security as a sentiment, as an emotional commodity, that can be used, manipulated, generated and of course also instrumentalized by actors to put their interests high on the agenda – a process that is sometimes called ‘securitization’.

This is not the place to dive deeper into the debates regarding this concept and its uses and abuses in studying security. It suffices to say that all articles in this special issue demonstrate that it can be put to good effect in applying this methodological approach to the realm of security issues: for example to understand how the process of securitization takes place and is shaping the way the ’Arctic’ is put on the international security agenda (done in a highly illuminating contribution by Midas van de Weetering); or how securitization is not just a top down process, but can emerge within a society as whole, as demonstrated in an equally informative article by Jasper Dietz, on the ‘total defence’ approach adopted in and by the Lithauanian society. Or on how preparing for security agenda’s, countries dive in deep, and develop long standing intelligence relations and positions in regions that they deem relevant to their national security interests, something Pepijn Lapidaire demonstrates by excavating the deep history of Soviet-Russian and American intelligence gathering and espionage operations in the Middle East (in particular in Bagdad).’

The point that I am addressing here in this foreword is threefold: if we study and read about security, we always have to bear in mind that 1) security is never just a physical state, a counting of missiles or an alleged neorealist ‘zero sum game’ played out, 2) it is always also a subjective or intersubjective process, where imaginations, cultural representations, identity related interests are key as well, 3) it is also always a temporal process that turns its eye to the future, but draws is projections from the past. Let me finish this foreword to elaborate on this.

First of all (1), if we just would count the numbers, the missiles and the budgets, Russia, North Korea, Hamas and the Sudanese RSF perhaps should have just ceased the fighting, since they were either outnumbered against their enemy in terms of manpower (initially, RSF, and Hamas), or their war was not sustainable economically and socially speaking (Russia, North Korea). Yet, that is not what we see. Zeal, dedication, sacrifice, manipulation, and psychological warfare (either against the own population or that of the enemy) can make up for what materially speaking would not have convinced people in safe, affluent societies to give up their welfare and start a war. Therefore (2), subjective, or at least intersubjective and temporal notions of security are always key – a point that Roosevelt also tried to drive home to his audience in 1942 as well by invoking the heroic history and courage of general Washington. Security is not just a state of being unharmed, it is an expectation, a desire and a collective-subjective (or intersubjective) ambition. A society needs to want to be secure, and needs to understand collectively what kind of security it is projecting into the future. Even if the society of the US seemed relatively peaceful and aloof, a policy of isolationism (as addressed as well in the insightful piece by Vali Jamal), would only serve the immediate short term interests of the US, and not the longer term expectations, or meet with the underlying more transcendent goals of standing up for free and just institutions. There is of course a highly tricky, ambivalent and even contentious or contested aspect to this. Then, how do we know Roosevelt’s vision was not biased? As Judith Buuts explains, this is also something that is being held against Kaja Kallas: is her anti-Russian stance not too much influenced and biased by the context of her family being deported and oppressed by the Soviet regime in the past? That is where the element of mobilizing hope and expectations factors in, based on the notion of ‘value’: what is it that drives a longing for security? Is it revenge, renown, or is it justice, peace even? And how can followers be convinced that they should share and pursue these values as well? This does of course require an open debate, and a transparent explanation and accountability by the leaders in charge 3) That brings me to the last aspect of security: there is always an element of time related to it. With this I do not just mean that security takes time, that things may change, opportunities may be missed and new chances to make amends present itself (as Claire van Voorst tot Voorst very meticulously and convincing lays out for the way the EU is finally getting its military act together after some years of mishaps). What I mean is that the temporal aspect is crucial to the way security is indeed projected into the future. It does so, almost invariably, by invoking the histories of a country’s past. As William Piras made clear: Armenia has had a lot to suffer from being dependent on Russia, and therefore may consider rewinding its security regime and project expectations towards the West. Peter Malcontent in an interview explains how the history or myth of Israel’s existential fight for its survival, its history of Zionism and conquest of its land is being invoked, rekindled and kept aflame by subsequent Israeli governments, with the current right wing government and its leaders at the helm. What they try to convey is not just that Israel is facing a historical enemy (the Palestinian people), but that it is a perennial and existential one, and that the future for an Israeli state and Israeli security depends on winning that fight. That is why whenever people from outside a conflict develop their thoughts, ideas, commentaries on the settlement of such a conflict, it is not just the current state of affairs, but those deep histories, emotions, and underlying values that matter and need to be digged up and laid bare as well.

In sum, these points, and in particular the last one, makes us as historians especially well equipped to understand national and international security interests. I am therefore most happy to contribute to this magazine, that has collected such eminently relevant, inspiring and insightful papers on various elements of security.

It is of course a good tradition to offer some points of constructive feedback: with respect to the temporal notion of security, it is remarkable that the most historical paper only goes back as far as the Cold War, whereas such world leaders as Trump (Monroe doctrine), Macron (Napoleon) and Putin (Peter the Great, Nicholas I) have been busy the past years quoting 18th and 19th century leaders, and seem to want raise from the dead the 19th century ‘balance of power’ system and its unholy backbone, the ‘sphere of influences’. History is not dead, but jumps back at us to haunt us, particular in the realm of security. Good security students therefore know their history – a history that can lurk deeper and live longer than we may think.