Missiles in Athens and tanks at Heathrow: urban security and the materialisation of “global” threat

摘要

This paper uses two internationally mediated events to begin an enquiry into the character of contemporary political discourse, particularly those utterances that might be regarded as “acts of governance”. The two events are the appearance of Scimitar armoured vehicles at Heathrow Airport in February 2003 (described by the BBC as “a public relations disaster”, 14 March 2003), and the installation of US Patriot missiles around Athens in July 2004. The perspective taken in this study is that such occurrences represent armed demonstrations, a type of dramatised response produced by states that, although presented as measures designed to counter a “global” terrorist threat, may actually represent a calculated reaction to internal political dissent or other forms of domestic disorder. So, for example, the mobilisation of the Household Cavalry's armoured units took place four days before the United Kingdom's largest peace demonstration (called on 15 February 2003 to protest against the threat of a US-led attack on Iraq), while a series of minor explosions in the Athenian suburb of Kallithea on 4 May 2004 (G. Alexander, Independent, 5 August 2004) provided an important point of reference for those who argued for increased security during the Athens Olympics. The contention of this paper is that displays of military power in the United Kingdom and Greece were made in the name of security and were thus presented within the wider discursive context of the “war on terror”, depending for their political impact upon the attempt to create symbolic resonance through media forms. Such displays represented not only the determination of two sovereign states, but also the intentions of powerful external actors, most particularly NATO and the US Government, which provided the missiles to Greece on the basis of “invitation” (Agence France-Presse, 10 May 2004). This study argues that these acts constituted an intervention in the globalised representation of terrorism, imposing temporarily “militarised” zones within the cities concerned. It also contends that they represent the creation of an uncomfortable tension between the pursuit of state and human security. Parallel examples of reference to “threats” are used to reinforce the paper's perspective, including the use of “globalisation” as an important device in the delivery of the economic strand of the “neo-liberal” agenda.