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The Iraq Inquiries: Publicity, Secrecy and Liberal Security

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The Iraq Inquiries: Publicity, Secrecy and Liberal Security The Iraq Inquiries: Publicity, Secrecy and Liberal Security Submitted by Owen David Thomas to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Politics in April 2014 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: …………………………………………………………………………………… 2 For Margaret and Elsie 3 Abstract The Iraq Inquiries: Publicity, Secrecy and Liberal Security The Iraq ‘Chilcot’ Inquiry is the last in a string of public inquiries tasked with understanding how the British state went to war with Iraq. In so doing, the inquiries have become defined by the problem of striking a balance between publicity and secrecy. While exposing foreign policy decision-making to public scrutiny should be the norm in a liberal democracy, this must be balanced by state secrecy, which is justified in exceptional circumstances when there is a threat to national security. Striking the right balance acts to maintain and legitimise a distinction between liberal and illiberal regimes by justifying exceptions as the mitigation of existential threats to liberal values. In contrast to the balance metaphor, this thesis shows how the inquiries are a site of contestation between two technologies of government: the public gaze and official secrecy. Drawing on Foucault, I demonstrate how both technologies support the liberal ‘security dispositif’: the exercise of freedom without too little or too much government. Each technology secures this liberal governmentality in a different but mutually supportive way. The public gaze seeks constitutes security of the liberal subject by exposing, criticising and disciplining statesmen and statecraft. Official secrecy, meanwhile, constitutes security of the state by protecting the value of privileged information used to support a necessary minimum of government. In this context, the balance metaphor may be recognized as the discursive framework that, in any moment, legitimises either the exercise of publicity in response to insecurity engendered by secrecy or vice versa. The balance metaphor thereby supports a further distinction between the responsible liberal self and the illiberal other. I show how the Iraq Inquiry legitimizes British official secrecy while re-inscribing the conditions of possibility for waging liberal war. 4 List of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 4 List of Contents ........................................................................................................... 5 List of Illustrations ...................................................................................................... 7 List of Tables ............................................................................................................... 7 List of Appendices ....................................................................................................... 8 Preface ......................................................................................................................... 9 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................10 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 11 Upsetting the Balance of Publicity versus Security in the Iraq Inquiries ......................... 11 Contribution to Literature ................................................................................................. 17 Beyond the Academy, engaging with ‘Bliar’ ..................................................................... 18 Research Question and Summary of Argument ............................................................... 24 Methods and Methodology ............................................................................................... 28 Chapter One .............................................................................................................. 30 Balancing Actual Publicity Versus Security: The Story of the Iraq Inquiries .......... 30 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 30 Actual Publicity, Hypothetical Publicity and the Liberal Way of War ............................. 32 Actual Publicity and Liberal IR ................................................................................................................32 Hypothetical Publicity ................................................................................................................................35 Liberal Justifications of Secrecy with Hypothetical Publicity.........................................................................40 Mad, Bad or Had? ............................................................................................................. 44 The September and February Dossiers ........................................................................................................46 Why Now? Divided Opinion on the Case for War .....................................................................................50 Mad, Bad or Had: Pathologies of Publicity ................................................................................................55 Britain’s Season of Inquiry ................................................................................................ 58 The Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee ...............................................61 The Hutton Inquiry ...................................................................................................................................65 The Butler Inquiry .....................................................................................................................................70 The Iraq ‘Chilcot’ Inquiry ..........................................................................................................................74 Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................ 78 Chapter Two .............................................................................................................. 79 Understanding Publicity and Secrecy as Co-constitutive of Liberal Security .......... 79 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 79 The Meaning of ‘Security’ ................................................................................................. 82 Securing Knowledge; Mediating Uncertainty; Governing Insecurities ............................................................82 Method: Tracing the Problematisation of Secrecy and Publicity ....................................................................85 Raison d’État and the Arcana Imperii .............................................................................. 89 The Problem of Preserving the State from the Public ....................................................................................90 ‘Arcana Imperii’ as Security, Actual Publicity as Insecurity .......................................................................94 Uncertainty Returns: Exceptionalism and the Common Good ....................................................................97 Liberal Governmentality and the Public Gaze .................................................................. 99 The ‘Secrecy Effect’ and the Problem of ‘Too Much Government’ ................................................................99 Bentham’s Public Gaze as Security, Political Secrecy as Insecurity ........................................................... 104 Uncertainty Returns: The Insatiable Appetite .......................................................................................... 107 The Norm of Publicity and the Harm of Publicity: a Contest of (In)Securities ............. 109 Concluding Remarks ....................................................................................................... 112 Chapter Three ........................................................................................................... 115 Securitising Iraq: The Threat of Uncertainty and the Production of Secrecy ......... 115 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 115 The British Government’s Case for War .......................................................................... 117 Securitising Iraq (1): Speech Acts and the Felicity Conditions of Secrecy ..................... 120 Understanding the British Case for War through the Insecurity of Iraqi Secrecy ....................................... 122 The Speech Act Securitisation of Iraq and the Felicity Conditions of Secrecy ............................................ 131 Securitising Iraq (2): The Dispositif of Security and the Production of the Felicity Condition of Iraqi Secrecy............................................................................................... 133 Making the Case for War Possible: The Problematisation
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