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21. Geopolitics, the revolution in military affairs and the Bush doctrine

Author:
Simon Dalby
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 American geopolitical categories changed as the world was remapped into categories congruent with the prosecution of the global war on terror. The designation global was linked to the capabilities of the new military technologies of the revolution in military affairs in official documents that codified the Bush doctrine. The official US doctrine now explicitly states that ending tyranny on earth is the national security objective for which these new forces will be used. But a careful reading of the official 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, and Thomas Barnett's popular exposition of the logic of the war on terror in The Pentagon's New Map shows that both these geographical specification of contemporary geopolitics, and the high-technology forces planned to fight the war, offer little promise that it will be successfully prosecuted. Geopolitics remains much more complicated than either contemporary policy statements or popular cartographic justifications suggest.
Political Geography:
United States and America

22. Coming face to face with bloody reality: Liberal common sense and the ideological failure of the Bush doctrine in Iraq

Author:
Toby Dodge
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
A conventional technocratic wisdom has begun to form that blames the failure of the US led invasion of Iraq on the small number of American troops deployed and the ideological divisions at the centre of the Bush administration itself. This paper argues that both these accounts are at best simply descriptive. A much more sustained explanation has to be based on a close examination of the ideological assumptions that shaped the drafting of policies and planning for the aftermath of the war. The point of departure for such an analysis is that all agency, whether individual or collective, is socially mediated. The paper deploys Antonio Gramsci's notion of 'Common Sense' to examine the Bush administration's policy towards Iraq. It argues that the Common Sense at work in the White House, Defence Department and Green Zone was primarily responsible for America's failure. It examines the relationship between the 'higher philosophies' of both Neoconservatism and Neo-Liberalism and Common Sense. It concludes that although Neoconservatism was influential in justifying the invasion itself, it was Neo-Liberalism that shaped the policy agenda for the aftermath of war. It takes as its example the pre-war planning for Iraq, then the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the de-Ba'athification of the Iraqi state. The planning and these two decisions, responsible for driving Iraq into civil war, can only be fully explained by studying the ideology that shaped them. From this perspective, the United States intervention in Iraq was not the product of an outlandish ideology but was instead the high water mark of post-Cold War Liberal interventionism. As such, it highlights the ideological and empirical shortcomings associated with 'Kinetic Liberalism'.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States and America

23. The North–South divide and security in the Western Hemisphere: United States–South American relations after September 11 and the Iraq war

Author:
Mario E Carranza
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
This paper examines the economics-security nexus in US policy toward South America, and the implications for South America of the 'securitization' of US foreign economic policy during the Bush administration. There has always been a tight linkage between the US foreign economic and security agendas but the real issue is the degree of 'tightness' at a given point in time. After the Alliance for Progress lost its way the United States tended to pursue its economic and security interests in South America in separate tracks, even if preventing Soviet intrusions in the region remained in the background. Yet after the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations in 2004 a US strategy of 'divide and conquer' through bilateral trade deals has been accompanied by a 'securitization' discourse and there are some indications that it may 'securitize' as a new threat the social movements and neopopulist regimes that oppose neoliberal economic policies. The paper discusses the limits of the securitization thesis. The conclusion examines the future of US-South American relations and argues that the United States needs to renew its commitment to genuine multilateralism and re-engage the region to establish an effective and lasting partnership for dealing with common economic and security challenges in the twenty-first century.
Topic:
Security and War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, America, and South America

24. Neoconservative democratization in theory and practice: Developing democrats or raising radical Islamists?

Author:
Matthew Crosston
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Politics
Institution:
Palgrave Macmillan
Abstract:
Neoconservative democratization took on new life after 9/11: the United States should be a global guarantor of liberty, even if coercing this freedom. The justification was a hybrid of liberal democratic peace and realist national security. However, this aggressive democratization is contradictory: the philosophical foundation is insincerely decorated by liberal language that overlooks damaging compromises when ideology is put into practice. Uzbekistan, with whom a close partnership in the war against terror was developed and then was further deepened along supposedly democratic development lines, is used as a critical case study. In short, the contradictions in neoconservative ideology create flaws in policy implementation that do not create smoother paths to development, prevent democratic consolidation and weaken American security interests.
Topic:
Democratization
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Uzbekistan