The Disastrous and Politically Debased Subject of Resilience

Abstract

In recent years development and security have come to be conceived in the words of the former British Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn, as something of a ‘shared challenge’(Benn 2004). Development is said to make ‘a critical contribution to global security by reducing poverty, inequality and the root causes of conflict’ while ‘global prosperity, everyone’s prosperity, depends on security against threats to human development’ (Benn 2004). ‘The truth is’, as Benn declared in a now classic speech, that ‘development without security is not possible; security without development is only temporary’ (Benn 2004). At least three different axioms can be found embedded in Benn’s formulation of the interrelation between development and security; what is now referred to in International Relations as the ‘development-security nexus’ (Duffield 2008; Duffield 2001; Chandler 2007). Firstly, the development of the developing world is now said to to depend on its security; security is conceived as a prerequisite of development. Secondly, development of the developing world is conceptualised itself as a means towards the security of developing societies; security conceived also, therefore, as the end towards which development is aimed. And thirdly no security of the developed world is said to be possible without increasing the development of undeveloped states and societies; thus the ultimate subject of both development and security is not the developing world at all, but the developed. This trinity of axioms underlies not just British development policy, but those of most western national governments as well as international organizations concerned with development, significantly the United Nations, as well as a wide range of NGOs, and their academic proxies. In the United States, Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently called for development to ‘rank alongside defense at the heart of America's foreign policy’ (Staats 2009).