Closing the Neoliberal Gap: Risk and Regulation in the Long War of Securitization John Morrissey Department of Geography, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland; john.morrissey@nuigalway.ie Abstract: When US military commanders refer today to the “long war”, they could more instructively refer to the “long war of securitization”, involving both practices of war and reconstruction that have always been based on a therapeutic logic of preemption and an endgame of protection from global economic risk. Since the early 1980s, the centrepiece of US foreign policy has been the securitization of the Persian Gulf region, with the newly created United States Central Command (CENTCOM) given the task of effecting a grand strategy that has subsequently been consistently based on two interrelated tactics: first, the discursive identification and positing of the Persian Gulf as a precarious yet pivotal geoeconomic space, essential to US and global economic health; and second, the enactment of a dual military– economic securitization strategy to secure, patrol and regulate designated “vital interests” in the region. With the rhetorical power of “risk management” perhaps more palpable today than ever, this paper reflects on the neoliberal discourses of “risk” and “regulation” that sustain a “long war” in which the perennial potentiality of a volatile global political economy necessitates securitization by US military force. Keywords: geopolitics, geoeconomics, risk, securitization, United States Central Command A policeman keeps the peace by applying the minimum of force. He does not seek to expose himself unnecessarily ... It is enough that he regulates matters (Pelletiere and Johnson II, Oil and the New World System. CENTCOM rethinks its Mission, 1992). Protect, promote and preserve U.S. interests in the Central Region to include the free flow of energy resources, access to regional states, freedom of navigation, and maintenance of regional stability (US Central Command, Shaping the Central Region for the 21st Century, 1999). Introduction In 1981, Joshua Epstein, a RAND Corporation consultant and research fellow in International Relations at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, reflected that it was “difficult to imagine a region at once so vital economically and so volatile politically as the Persian Gulf today” (Epstein 1981:126). Epstein was not alone Antipode Vol. 43 No. 3 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 874–900 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00823.x C  2010 The Author Journal compilation C  2010 Editorial Board of Antipode.