ABSTRACT

Rhetoric, Media, and the Narratives of US Foreign Policy: Making Enemies studies the process of communicating threats to the US public and explores when and why the American public believes another country or regime is a threat.

Through a comparative and historical study, the author focuses on how the media environment enables and constrains rhetorical strategies deployed to construct, reproduce, and change narratives about a threat. Recent literature on threat inflation, securitization, and critical security studies returned to the concept of "threat." Building on this renewed conceptual attention, this book examines why and how policy makers and other public figures, in particular the President, convince the public about a threat and will be of interest to students and academics in the disciplines of political science, international relations, foreign policy, security studies, and contemporary history.

chapter 1|25 pages

Threats as social facts

chapter 2|16 pages

Toward a theory of threat legitimation

chapter 3|49 pages

“Sister” Chile and “saving” Cuba

Newspaper and logos

chapter 4|51 pages

Democracy and dictatorship

Threats of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the radio age

chapter 5|39 pages

Freedom fighters and the drug lord

Threats of Nicaragua and Noriega during television media ecology

chapter 6|13 pages

Conclusion