We live in uncertain times. Economic shocks, technological changes, pandemics, the climate emergency and conflict after conflict have combined to create a widespread mood of insecurity.
This might seem to be the natural realm of the political right: a politics oriented around the protection of the status quo and rooted in the appeal of hierarchy and tradition. In recent years we have seen how it can fuel the populist right in particular, with its politics of stratification, coercion and isolation. The European parliament elections and the prospect of a far-right prime minister in France are just the latest demonstration of the appeal of “build the wall” messaging in an age of insecurity.
For progressives whose political project draws on optimism about the future, and faith in the power of common endeavour, it makes for a challenging political environment. We might assume it is necessarily barren ground for progressives. But should we?
Progressive political traditions also have answers to insecurity, albeit ones different in emphasis from conservative ones. They tend to locate the sources of fragility less in the connections between individuals, classes and nations than in the failings of (or the failings in managing) those connections. They concentrate on the root causes of insecurity, rather than merely on its most immediate manifestations. Progressive answers to those root causes – greater cooperation across sectarian and national divides, more cohesive and thus resilient economies and societies, and greater capacity for collective responses – deserve a hearing. As German chancellor Olaf Scholz has put it – most recently in his statement to the Bundestag on 6 June, and echoing Willy Brandt, “Ohne Sicherheit ist alles nichts” (Without security, there is nothing).
Around the world, policymakers, politicians and thinkers are grappling with elements of that same sentiment, adding up to something larger: something we might call “progressive security”. This can be seen as a double-sided effort, asserting that progressives can be trusted with national security and the security people seek in their everyday lives by challenging the status quo to address the root causes of economic and social insecurity. This aligns more naturally with the different traditions – liberal, social democratic and green – of progressive politics.
In an age of intensifying conflict, progressive leaders have been at the forefront of the new politics of geopolitical security. The two states that contribute most to Ukraine’s self-defence against Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion, the US and Germany, are led by centre-left governments. In a number of countries, it falls to progressives to rebuild military and intelligence-gathering capacity dismantled by budget-cutting, isolationist, conservative governments over the years. Yet, as a new paper produced for the Progressive Governance Summit in Berlin this week argues, progressive security goes beyond security in the military sense. It is both protective and emancipatory, rather than a wall shutting out threats; it is also a hill on which capabilities can converge in the interests of reducing those threats in the long run. Fundamentally, progressive security imagines security fundamentally as a function of three things: cooperation, cohesion and capacity.
First, cooperation. Naturally, national governments must focus on their national interests. But in an age where the causes of global insecurity range from destabilising financial flows and dirty money to threats of terrorism, viruses, disruptive technology and the climate crisis, which all operate on a global scale, national governments must also work together ambitiously to reconcile steely awareness of the threats with inclusive, democratic values. The British Labour party’s shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has captured this pillar of progressive security well with his call for a “progressive realism”.
Second, security demands cohesion. A politics of “them and us” contributes to worsening polarisation and inequalities that contribute to security threats. Extensive research has shown, for instance, a close link between material inequality and increases in violence and crime. Cohesion also contributes to people’s subjective sense of security, which is bound up with their sense of belonging and self-esteem. That in turn depends on social inclusivity. All of this is the natural realm of progressives.
And last, our societies cannot deliver security if they starve themselves of the institutional and financial capacity to do so. The crises of recent years – the pandemic, climate shocks, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – have been an education in the value of capable and resilient states, supply chains and civil societies in ways that defy old, laissez-faire assumptions about the overweening value of small-state and short-term efficiency. So progressive security also involves building this resilience, by, for instance, revisiting policies like Germany’s debt brake, or the EU’s stability and growth pact, in order to attract more investment.
Most importantly, progressive security is about hope. The hope of building a more equal, greener and resilient society even in these dark days of human civilisation; a hope that it falls to progressives to restore and renew. In the next few months the governments of major western democracies in Washington, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Kyiv and Madrid and beyond may be united in a shared commitment to the principles of cooperation, cohesion and capacity. But this period may be brief, so we had better act today, not wait for tomorrow.
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Florian Ranft is a member of the management board at Das Progressive Zentrum, a thinktank, which is hosting the Progressive Governance Summit in Berlin, 21-22 June. The summit’s keynote event is Freedom, Peace and Progress in Europe, a conversation between the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the Albanian-British academic Lea Ypi, chaired by the Guardian’s editor in chief Katharine Viner. It will be free to view from 1500 CET on Friday 21 June, via live stream at the web link above.