My interpretation of Professor Kennedy's rankings (Emeline Lemoine)

Anybody taking a look at Professor David Kennedy's global security matrix will notice that the spectrum of his rankings is very wide. Professor Kennedy gave a lot of high and low rankings.
He ranked the different threats of the matrix on the basis of what he calls “tolerated levels of insecurity.” This expression means that each society – and all the more so the international society, accepts and tolerates a certain amount of damage. For example, few people argue that because cars cause traffic accidents, legislators should prevent people from owning cars. An overwhelming majority accepts the fact that cars can cause damage because freedom of movement is considered as a valuable thing. Now, if it is proven that you have 50% chance of dying in a car accident if you own car, it is likely that the legislators change their mind. So, according to Professor Kennedy, there is a line between the damage that a society can accept and the damage it cannot tolerate. I think that the idea of this line can help us understand Professor Kennedy’s ranking and his focus on whether the line was crossed or not. For example, if we think about terrorism, Professor Kennedy considers it a low threat for individuals, probably because society is still able to sustain the damage of terrorism. But he gives terrorism a higher ranking for the State System because if terrorism is not yet able to strike at the foundation of the societies of individuals, it can probably destabilize the System of States in challenging their sovereignty.

I found it interesting to see that, to give his rankings, Professor Kennedy literally put himself in the shoes of the different actors. For example, he asked himself: “If I were a State, would I consider terrorism as a threat?” I think that this way of thinking has a substantial impact on his rankings. When I gave my own rankings to the matrix, I proceeded in a different way. I wondered: “Do I (as a student of International Relations) think that terrorism is a major threat for a State or not?” As a result I gave a medium ranking to terrorism (between 4 and 5 probably) because I thought that, indeed, as a surprise attack, terrorism can destabilize the State. Professor Kennedy had a different and interesting approach. Embodying the State, Professor Kennedy asked himself a different question: “Do I (as a State) fear terrorism or do I want it?” In other words, he wondered if terrorism is only a bad thing or if the States can take advantage of it as well. As a consequence, his answer was that even though terrorism can destabilize the State, States can take great advantage of it as well, through a renewed legitimacy, a new sense of unity among the population, a new enemy to unite against… In short, Professor Kennedy reflected in terms of a balance between the advantage and the inconvenient. He wondered if, as a State, he would consider terrorism as weakening or strengthening his power. As his answer tended towards the latter, he gave terrorism a quite low ranking. In the same way, Professor Kennedy considered that war is not an important threat to the State System because war is a constitutive element of the State system. For example, war can be used to maintain the balance of power.

One of the lowest ranking Professor Kennedy attributed was the threat of failed states (states at risk). I think that it can be understood by the statistical method that Professor Kennedy used for his rankings. While he was thinking about the threat represented by failed states over individual human beings for instance, Professor Kennedy said that it obviously constituted an important threat for the people that are living in such states but that the threat was almost non-existent for the inhabitants of other states. On this basis, Professor Kennedy logically argued that, failed states representing a very small fraction of all states, the threat of states at risk over individuals was low. If we follow his argument, Professor Kennedy’s ranking makes sense. However, I am not convinced by Professor Kennedy’s hypothesis that states at risk only constitute a threat to individuals living in them. I personally think that through the spread of war from a failed state to another state or the development of terrorism, crime, drugs and other international traffics in failed states, states at risk can constitute a threat to individuals all around the world. Also, unlike Professor Kennedy, I do not think that because failed states do not belong to the state system, they do not represent any threat to it. I think that the simple risk of contagion from a failed state to another state is a threat to the state system.

According to Professor Kennedy, Information Warfare is not an important threat in the international society. If he invented the matrix himself, I do not think that he would have mentioned infowar among the threats. I think that even when Professor Kennedy gave a medium/high ranking to infowar – as a threat to states, he did so under the pressure of the class. His first reaction was to say that information warfare was not an important threat because states use it on a daily basis (through propaganda or spying for example). I think that Professor Kennedy might have underestimated information warfare as a threat, especially to networks. Also, Professor Kennedy had a different approach towards the State system than Professor Der Derian notably, considering that such a system does not actually exist since states live in anarchy.
Professor Kennedy’s highest rankings go to resource conflicts and environment. On this point, he seems to be quite coherent with the collective ranking of the class. Resource conflicts and environment are commonly seen as the most critical challenges to international society nowadays.

In conclusion, I would like to say that I found it interesting to see that the rankings in the matrix can be very different not only from one person to another but also according to the method one chooses to reflect on the threats. For example, there are several different approaches to the relevance of every threat: the damage that the threat can cause, the likelihood of the threat to actually happen, the perception of the threat etc. According to what approach you give more attention, the matrix can be really different. Today, after looking at Professor Kennedy’s rankings, but also at the rankings of the other students of the class, I realize that if I had to rate the threats again, I would probably give a different ranking because I might favor a different approach.

Posted by Emeline Lemoine on October 16, 2006 03:29 PM | Permalink

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