Absolute despair would be the wrong response [to the current situation in Iraq]. Instead the disaster that is the West's current strategy in Iraq must be used as a constructive call to the international community to reconfi gure its foreign policy around human security rather than national security. Jan Egeland, UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Aff airs 1Human security refers to the security of individuals and communities, expressed as both 'freedom from fear' and 'freedom from want'. Severe threats to human security range from genocide and slavery to natural disasters such as hurricanes or fl oods to massive violations of the right to food, health and housing. In this article, we argue that the adoption of a human security concept represents a qualitative change in the conduct of foreign and security policy. This step-change is particularly relevant for the European Union as it seeks to improve its eff ectiveness and visibility as a collective global actor. Terms matter, and human security is not simply a leitmotif for EU security policies, 2 or an analytical label which categorizes the EU's international role in the way that concepts such as normative power or civilian power have done. 3 Rather, it provides an enduring and dynamic organizing frame for security action, a frame which European foreign policy texts and practices currently lack. Thus human security can be seen as a proactive strategic narrative with the potential to further EU foreign policy integration. To elaborate this organizing frame, we examine two distinct aspects of a human security doctrine: lexis, or what is said and written about it; and praxis, or what it means in terms of everyday actions, from policies to tactics on the ground.The lexis of human security matters because it deals with how policy-makers and the European public view and articulate issues of external security. This is not just the stuff of academic discussions; we need to know what we mean when we talk about the ideas, values, interests and goals of EU external relations. Even practitioners who regard concepts with suspicion as abstract and unhelpful use
'problematising' it. Through a critical and active debate on politics, Europe may regain its potential as a political space for the re-imagination of democracy. Secondly, it is important to monitor, research and understand the evolution of subterranean politics. Specific proposals include supporting the European Citizens' Initiative and establishing an online constitutional assembly.
Under US President Obama, the words resilience and resilient have been applied beyond the odd occasion in the National Security Strategy (NSS) document. Through a systematic analysis of the NSS 2010, the research behind this article sought to determine if there was anything in this linguistic phenomenon of interest to scholars in political studies. The article argues that what makes the appearance of the two words in the NSS 2010 relevant is not what these words do but what is done to them in the text. It shows how the document constructs resilience and resilient in a distinct way as symbolic tools with a high degree of semantic openness, a particular positive connotation and deontic meaning. The article argues that the use of the two words in the NSS 2010 can be seen as an exercise in 'occupying' them with ideologically loaded meanings, which can be interpreted as the actualisation of both words as 'political keywords'. The article demonstrates the relevance of this insight for political scholars as the ground for future explorations of the popular discourse of 'resilience' through the concept of 'political keywords'.
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