Securitizing Iraq: The Bush Administration's Social Construction of Security

Abstract

In September 2002 Iraq became a grave danger. As such, there was an urgent need to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, according to the Bush administration. On closer examination, however, there was little underpinning this sudden shift in the Bush administration's security claims. How then could an eventual war come about from a lack of objective threats? The Copenhagen School's notion of ‘securitization’ seems ideally suited to help explain this situation, since it posits that security is about the perception of threat which flows from claims that something poses a grave danger, rather than the discovery of so-called objective threats. The purpose of this article therefore is to test the explanatory value of this conceptual framework. The approach taken is to view the lead up to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq through securitization's lens by juxtaposing the Bush administration's public pronouncements and private statements with broader evidence related to its security claims at the time. An additional, and necessary, part of the analysis is to explore the political uses of claiming that something is a ‘security’ issue. While suggesting how a heightened appreciation of audience socialization can help explain why identical security claims resonate with some groups but not others, the investigation reveals that securitization is indeed a useful tool to understand what occurred.