ABSTRACT
Thus far we have concentrated on political discourse within the domestic arena, taking the UK as our example. We have also looked at how the ‘foreign’ world beyond the border might look to insiders, whether elites or not. We now turn to the world in which sovereign states interact with one another. This global arena involves types of interaction that are ever increasing in kind and complexity, to the point where state sovereignty, in the view of some thinkers, is diminishing (e.g., Camilleri and Falk 1992; Walker 1988). The increased flow of information, of people, money and goods – all of these dimensions are reflected in, or are constituted by, enormous changes in language and discourse. It is impossible to deal with all dimensions, so Part III of the book looks at the most salient aspect of globalisation in the late twentieth-and early twenty-first century – the spread of wars, terrorism and military interventions. In this domain, too, one has to be selective. We therefore concentrate on the world’s post-cold-war superpower, the United States of America in its relations with the rest of the world.
