ABSTRACT

This book uses a comparative analysis to examine foreign policy discourses and the dynamics of the ‘War on Terror'.

The book considers the three principal members of the Coalition of the Willing in Afghanistan and Iraq: the United States, Britain and Australia. Despite significant cultural, historical and political overlap, the War on Terror was nevertheless rendered possible in these contexts in distinct ways, drawing on different discourses and narratives of foreign policy and identity.

This volume explores these differences and their origins, arguing that they have important implications for the way we understand foreign policy and political possibility. The author rejects prevalent interpretations of a War on Terror foreign policy discourse, in the singular, highlighting that coalition states both demonstrated and relied upon divergent policy framings to make the War on Terror possible. The book thus contributes to our understanding of political possibility, in the process correcting a tendency to view the War on Terror as a universal and monolithic political discourse.

This book will be of much interest to students of foreign policy, critical security studies, terrorism studies, discourse analysis, and IR in general.


 

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

chapter |18 pages

Language and Legitimacy

Foreign Policy as Culturally Embedded Discourse

chapter |18 pages

Agency, Audience and Alternative

Foreign Policy and Political Possibility

chapter |30 pages

Before 9/11

chapter |22 pages

From Void to Crisis

From 11 September 2001 to 9/11

chapter |37 pages

Response

Afghanistan

chapter |35 pages

Translation

Iraq

chapter |8 pages

Conclusion