The War on Terror borrowed securitization logic from finance to manage risk

Evidence

For Martin (2007, 65–96), the paradigm of securitization has both guided and benefited from the War on Terror. He charts the way it has migrated into the character of imperialist warfare, guiding the “revolution in military affairs” that stood behind the Bush regime’s foreign and domestic policy. Within this paradigm, the world was read as a vector of omnipresent and unending terrorist risk (or, more accurately, risk to American military and economic supremacy and/or the unhindered global flow of capital), in need, in all places, of securitization. Far from a Cold War logic of security, containment or détente, based on a logic of preparedness and the accumulation of robust defences, the terror war sees the enemy as a vast, illogical and ubiquitous threat to be scientifically pre-empted, predicted and intervened in with decisive, (allegedly) exact and extreme force. Martin identifies the “Rumsfeld Doctrine” of shock and awe, of a constantly revolutionizing, streamlined, high-tech and precise military apparatus, as one geared to what he calls “derivative wars”: the casting of a global net of advanced surveillance and predictive calculation punctuated by brief, sharp and devastating “surgical” interventions in global “hotspots.” These actions, which make use of lightning-fast, disposable technology (predator drones, smart bombs, special ops), are aimed not at traditional imperial or colonial domination, but at shifting and shaping the flows of global risk. While this attempt at risk management has actually produced greater global volatility, this insecurity has also been “externalized,” unleashing new forms of terror on abject populations. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Direct bridge to deWaard’s cultural argument about finance colonizing everyday life and imagination — this is the military-imperial wing of the same securitization logic Haiven will carry into culture. — connects to: Securitization couples financial risk management with surveillance and militarized security. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 47; Securitization converts uncertainty into quantifiable, tradeable risk and shapes daily life — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 248; Financialization treats risk as probabilisable, displacing close knowledge of the object valued — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 35 (+5 more)
• SEED: Angles toward an essay on how risk-management thinking migrated from derivatives markets through the War on Terror and into everyday security culture — surveillance, insurance, preventive policing as financial rationality.

Broader Connections

• The derivative logic colonizes military strategy and social governance beyond finance #expands (0.90) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 481
• Financialization treats risk as probabilisable, displacing close knowledge of the object valued #expands (0.82) — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 35
• Neoliberal anti-regulation ideology and the war on terror jointly sheltered surveillance capitalism from scrutiny #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1079
• Walmart’s power operates through securitization linking financial risk management to surveillance #epitomizes (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 558