U.S. Foreign Policy and the Other ed. by Michael Patrick Cullinane, David Ryan (review)

Foreign policy necessarily needs an object on which to concentrate its attention, and that object is necessarily not here but elsewhere, of another ilk. Foreign policy is thus the policies dealing with the foreign—how to deal with territories, cultures, and threats other than oneself. In the Realist (Rankean) tradition, the processes involved can be relegated to the painstaking reconstruction of reality through relevant documents. Questions of identity rarely enter the scene. Constructivism identifies and explores this lacuna in the field of International Relations, and the so-called cultural turn did the same for diplomatic history, opening up new layers for consideration when examining and interpreting the interactions of states. Taking the units of investigation for granted was no longer sufficient. Marxist-inspired critiques might have done this for decades by claiming to find the underlying economic interests behind all policy (and behind those who made the policy), but the notion that culture—identity—was itself fundamental for understanding international politics is a relatively novel development.

The collection edited by Michael Patrick Cullinane and David Ryan follows on from this tradition by focusing on the constructed “others” of the United States and how they have helped to shape the foundation of the country and its subsequent missionary causes in the world. Drawing on the work of Edward Said, the editors lead the reader into the subject with a lite poststructuralist introduction that provides various pointers for what is to come: alterity and the construction of a negative other to secure the self; the inherent assumption of superiority of self over other; the fabrication of the other’s qualities in order to suit the needs of the self. The most interesting aspects of this approach concern the identification of major contradictions in the narrative of U.S. power and its justification. Through the twentieth century, the cultural affinity with colonial Europeans—on the right side of the dualism—caused unsolvable problems for interactions between the United States and the “undeveloped peoples.” The best the United States could do was cloak its prejudicial sense of superiority in the well-intentioned rhetoric of self-determination, democratization, and modernization. European colonialism was not wrong per se; it was simply pursued in the wrong way.

Yet even—or especially—sentinels of this missionary zeal such as Woodrow Wilson expressed deep-seated reservations about the other’s ability to take up the mantle and rise to the demands of progress and civilization. Michaela Hoenicke Moore notes that at the high point of U.S. internationalist intent and multilateral generosity at the end of World War II, “this triumph of internationalism paved the way for an increasing militarization of American foreign policy in subsequent decades” (p. 158). Thus, the security of the “land of the free” could be guaranteed only through the relentless global search for monsters to destroy.

In this context, Walter Hixson’s chapter provides an ideal opener for the rest of the book, emphasizing the violence involved in the demonization of different cultures. In recounting the savagery against American Indians (what we now call a form of “hybrid warfare”), Hixson concludes that the North American plains were “a vast arena of ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate warfare . . . where Americans acted out the violent desires that would propel their national identity” (p. 36). What is more, “only the unconditional surrender of the enemy could stem the tide of violence” (p. 36). Hixson focuses on the key element at work here—the way the demonization and degradation of the other create a moral vacuum for which extreme violence is the solution. For American Indians, the result was deliberate eradication. As a result, Hixson leads us to reflect on the subsequent use of urban firebombing, nuclear explosions, napalm, and white phosphorous in the twentieth century.

This link between the depiction/denunciation of the other and the legitimacy of the use of violence to subjugate/eradicate is at the center of the book. The epilogue (only ten...