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91. American power and the racial dimensions of US foreign policy

Author:
Mark Ledwidge
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article consists of a critical discourse that examines the meteoric rise of Barack Obama within the context of international and domestic race relations. The article explores the impact of American racism on domestic and foreign affairs, in addition to providing contrasting viewpoints on the significance of Obama's election to the presidency. The article utilises the Obama phenomenon to assess US perceptions of the North–South divide, race, ethnicity, religion and anti-Americanism, in addition to unpacking the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright's characterisations of American power. The Obama campaign's post-9/11 context will be used to ascertain whether conservative efforts to associate Obama with Islam represent a conservative backlash that represents an ethnocentric re-articulation related to race, religion and the War on Terror, followed by an assessment of whether the Obama phenomenon is indicative of the perfectibility of US democracy, which would justify the exportation of American values. The article will engage in an interdisciplinary discourse grounded in political science, history and IR to provide the depth of knowledge and theoretical competency to frame the discussion in a historical and contemporary context that acknowledges Obama's relevance to domestic and international politics.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
America

92. Religion, identity and American power in the age of Obama

Author:
Lee Marsden
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
US foreign policy owes much to a malleable religious identity, shaped by foundational myths, and that this religious dimension has, until recently, been largely neglected in the US foreign policy literature to the detriment of our understanding of how America's status as global hegemon is formed, sustained and expanded. This article explores the role of the foundational myths of manifest destiny, exceptionalism and innocent nation. These foundational myths are explored as they develop into a civil religion espoused by successive presidents from George to the present day. The article considers how Barack Obama has utilised civil religion to maximise domestic support for a foreign policy agenda, which seeks to maintain US hegemony through a more conciliatory and multilateral approach than his predecessor in the White House. Examples of the use of soft power through missionary endeavour and the evangelicalisation of military hard power beginning during the George W. Bush presidency are detailed in order to reveal an Obama presidency that continues to define itself in religious terms while providing opportunities for religious actors to continue to play a role in representing US interests beyond its shores.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Washington

93. 'Change we can believe in?' Barack Obama, race and the 2008 US presidential election

Author:
Kevern Verney
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article addresses two questions. It begins by comparing the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination contest with the 1980s campaigns of Jesse Jackson. It examines the different background and personalities of Obama and Jackson, together with an analysis of what has changed in US political life in the intervening decades, in an attempt to understand why Obama succeeded where the earlier Jackson campaigns failed. The second part of the article analyses the subsequent general election with a view to determining whether Obama's defeat of John McCain should be seen as a result of a unique set of political circumstances, or evidence of the increasing irrelevance of race in US electoral politics. In particular, this discussion assesses the validity of the claims made by some commentators that Obama's victory marks the beginning of a new 'post-racial' era in American political life.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
United States and America

94. 'War in countries we are not at war with': The 'war on terror' on the periphery from Bush to Obama

Author:
Maria Ryan
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article examines the origins of the 'Global War on Terror' (GWoT) in peripheral locations; in other words, in countries and regions beyond Iraq and beyond Afghanistan. Although those two countries have remained the 'core' regions of the GWoT, the Bush administration also undertook many other military interventions in countries and regions in ostensibly peripheral locations under the auspices of the 'war on terror'; operations which it referred to in its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review as 'war in countries we are not at war with'. These include operations in the Horn of Africa, Georgia and the Caspian region, the Philippines and the countries across the Sahara region including Mali, Niger, Chad and Mauritania. This article examines these peripheral theatres in the GWoT and argues that, by its second term, the Bush administration had moved beyond a state-based worldview vis-à-vis terrorism and had truly come to understand it as a transnational problem; a protean network that should be tackled through using Special Operations Forces and unconventional warfare to wage 'war in countries we are not at war with'. The article also considers the extent to which these operations on the 'periphery' were expedient in other ways that often transcended the war on terror because they coincided with the existence of long-standing or newly identified US strategic interests. Finally, the article considers the Obama administration's continuation – and in some cases escalation – of many of the Bush administration's operations in peripheral regions, even as Obama looks to wind down the war in Iraq.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Africa, Iraq, and Georgia

95. Culture, identity and hegemony: Continuity and (the lack of) change in US counterterrorism policy from Bush to Obama

Author:
Richard Jackson
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article explores the social and political construction of US counterterrorism policy since the onset of the war on terrorism. The first part of the article focuses on the period of the Bush administration. It explores the cultural grammar expressed in the language of the war on terror, as well as administration attempts to 'sell' the policy to the American public. In addition, it explores the ways in which the war on terror has been institutionalised in counterterrorism practices and institutions, and how it has been normalised and embedded in American popular culture and linked by the national identity narratives surrounding '9/11' and the negative ideograph of 'terrorism', to American identity. Section two of the article explores the discourse and practice of the war on terrorism in the initial period of the Obama administration. It questions the extent to which counterterrorism policy can be rewritten, given the degree to which it accords with the deep cultural grammar of American identity and is now a well-established ideograph, the extent to which it has been institutionalised in American political practice and embedded in American culture and the ways in which it is rooted in the political-economic interests of the American polity and empire. Finally, the article briefly reflects on questions of change and identity in the construction of US foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States and America

96. Between freedom and fear: Explaining the consensus on terrorism and democracy in US foreign policy

Author:
Michael J. Boyle
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Why have two successive US administrations concluded that fighting terrorism must involve democracy promotion? This assumption became prevalent in US political discourse following the events of September 11 despite the fact that the empirical evidence linking democracy and terrorism is weak or ambiguous. More strikingly, it has persisted even after the missions to establish democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq have led to increasing violence, including a worldwide increase in terrorist attacks. This article argues that the link between democracy and terrorism was established by the combined effect of three factors: (a) the framing of the September 11 attacks in a way that increased the receptivity to this conceptual opposition between freedom and fear; (b) the ideological influence of the Wilsonian tradition, as manifested today in an unusual consensus between modern neo-conservatives and liberal internationalists on the desirability of democratic reform as a means of changing foreign policy behaviour; and (c) a powerful bipartisan domestic constituency in favour of democracy promotion. Owing to these three factors, the contraposition of democracy and terrorism in American political discourse is effectively over-determined because it mirrors the dominant ideological and political preferences of American elites. This fixed preference for democracy promotion explains why the Obama Administration has remained wedded to the binary distinction between freedom and fear in its public statements despite its efforts to break in style and substance with the policies of its predecessor.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, and America

97. European and Asian regionalism: Form and function

Author:
Philomena Murray and Nicholas Rees
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In investigating the relationship of the European Union (EU) and the East Asian region, and the comparisons of these two regions, this special issue on European and Asian Regionalism: Function and Form brings together a collection of articles that contributes to an understanding of these regions – and regional bodies – in an interdisciplinary and comprehensive manner. They contribute to our understanding of the EU as a political, economic! and security actor with civil society dimensions, and a clear regional integration agenda and that agenda's influence on East Asia. They further deepen our understanding of East Asian developments in regionalism. Much more than a simple examination of EU–Asia relations, this special edition critically examines the proposal that the EU may constitute a paradigm for East Asian regionalism. Among other things, it looks at EU–Asia links in the Asia Europe Meetings (ASEM) and role of formal and informal integration and networks within the East Asian region; the new wave of regionalism in Asia in the aftermath of the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997–1998; and the role of institutions and of state and non-state actors.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

98. The geopolitics of Asia – What role for the European Union?

Author:
Fraser Cameron
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This article reviews the European Union's policy towards Asia since 2001, when an ambitious Communication from the European Commission suggested that the EU should play a political and security role in the region commensurate with its economic strength. After assessing a number of political and security issues in Asia, the article concludes that the EU has had little or no impact on the major geopolitical issues but that it is making some impact on security issues of lesser importance. The article also touches on integration as a contribution to security. It reviews the limited progress in Asian integration and suggests that the basic criteria for integration are missing in Asia. Some aspects of the EU model, however, might be useful for Asian countries wishing to move forward towards closer integration.
Topic:
Security and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

99. Asian perspectives on the European experience of regionalism

Author:
Ralph Pettman
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
How have European state-makers managed to coordinate various key activities to the point where many of them see the European Union as providing a model for the rest of the world in general and Asia in particular? For example, most of Europe now shares a common market and a common currency. This was originally considered unthinkable. However, most European state-makers did surrender significant aspects of their sovereign power to make this happen. State-makers in the Asian region have not yet followed suit. This tells us something about their competing politico-strategic, economic and social concerns. Asian state-makers are nonetheless capable of sustaining their own form of regionalism. This tells us something about the different politico-cultural context in which they live. This context makes it possible to promote distinctly 'Asian' perspectives. It provides an Asian alternative to European regionalism and a way of compensating for the limits and distortions of the European Union.
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

100. Comparative regional integration in the EU and East Asia: Moving beyond integration snobbery

Author:
Philomena Murray
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In comparative regional integration (RI) analysis, the European Union's (EU) advancing of its own experience as a model is a significant problem. This article explores this problem by focusing on comparative aspects of RI in the EU and East Asia. It argues that there are important and valid aspects of comparison, such as the origins and objectives of these two regions, but fewer points of comparison between the two when it comes to achieving their objectives. It suggests that historical differences between the two regions constitute the major reason that a direct comparison is neither useful nor productive. It analyses the centrality and the exceptionalism of the EU in much of the comparative RI literature. It agues that the promotion of the EU experience as a form of model or paradigm is far from analytically helpful – the method of comparative analysis needs be the focus of our study as much as the objects of comparison. The article examines how the centrality of the EU in some analysis can amount to a form of de facto snobbery in the positioning of the EU on a rather unsteady pedestal. This 'integration snobbery' – to coin a phrase utilized by an EU official – is not constructive for comparative analysis of the EU and East Asia.
Political Geography:
Europe and East Asia