Abstract
Under an absolutist security agenda (ASA), U.S. power, security policy, and interests are presented as munificent and indispensable for establishing the objective conditions requisite for perpetual global peace, freedom, and security. By arrogating to itself the exclusive right to define one of the most essential tasks of every state actor—that is, security—the United States perpetuates an epis temology of security to effectuate a “transubstantiation” between the U.S. order-combine—that is, the general political, social, moral, legal, cultural, ideological, and economic components of the U.S. state, the global states system, and international society. This transubstantiation is, at the very least, plausible because the specter of 9/11 provides a basis for articulating and implementing the U.S. ASA. Furthermore, although 9/11 can be traced to U.S. interference in the affairs of other states and polities, it has been effectively utilized by the United States to not only justify victim status but also legitimate U.S. exceptionalism in order to pursue an unhampered, aggressive ASA for the sake of global peace and justice. By manufacturing security needs based on the 9/11 event, the United States is able to posit an absolutist security policy as the only satisfactory response to fulfill all states’ needs. Under the U.S. ASA, the United States becomes the singular arbiter of what constitutes threats and what measures address such threats; U.S. policy becomes a requisite precondition for any discourse vis-à-vis global security. The event of 9/11, in and of itself, has enabled the United States to pursue an unfettered campaign to exercise plenary control over world affairs based on the ubiquitous threat of malevolent terror.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Fraser Cameron, U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War: Global Hegemon or Reluctant Sheriff 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2005) 183.
Charles Williams Maynes, “Principled Hegemony”, World Policy Journal 14.3 (Fall 1997): 31–37.
Stephen Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) 69.
Gill 67. Also, see Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996).
Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature (New York: New Press, 2006) 1–35.
E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crises, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Harper and Row, 1964) 52.
Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia Press, 2001) 10.
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2002) xi.
Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (New York: Oxford 1990) 83.
Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, ed. Carl Seelig, trans. Sonja Bargmann (New York: Random House, 1994) 51.
See Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”, trans. Stephen Heath, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch, William E. Cain, Laurie A. Fink, Barbara E. Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffery J. Williams (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001) 1472.
John W. Dietrich, ed., The George W. Bush Foreign Policy Reader: Presidential Speeches With Commentary (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2005) 10.
Thanh Duong, Hegemonic Globalization: U.S. Centrality and Global Strategy in the Emerging World Order (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2002) 10.
See Michael Klare, Rouge States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995)
Thomas H. Henriksen, “The Rise and Decline of Rogue States”, Journal of International Affairs 54.2 (Spring 2001): 349–73
Raymond Tanter, Rogue Regimes: Terrorism and Proliferation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998)
Robert S. Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment After the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000)
Noam Chomsky, Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000)
Clyde Prestowitz, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (New York: Basic Books, 2003)
T. D. Allman, Rogue State: America at War With the World (New York: Nation, 2004).
George W. Bush, “Speech, The Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina, 23 Sept. 1999”, The George W. Bush Foreign Policy Reader: Presidential Speeches With Commentary, ed. John W. Dietrich (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2005) 22.
See Parker T. Hart, Saudi Arabia and the United States: Birth of a Security Partnership (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998)
Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democratic Prospects in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany: State U of New York P, 1999).
See Bruce Cummings, Ervand Abrahamian, and Moshe Ma’oz, eds., Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran, and Syria (New York: New Press, 2004)
Hugh Brogan, The Penguin History of the United States of America (London: Penguin Books, 1990)
Graham Fuller, Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan: Its Character and Prospects (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1991), 31 May 2007 http://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/f/fuller_graham.html.
George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address 2002.” The George W. Bush Foreign Policy Reader: Presidential Speeches With Commentary, ed. John W. Dietrich (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2005)
William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000) 15.
Jean Francois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999) 14.
See Helen Milner and Jack Snyder, “Lost Hegemony?” International Organization 42.4 (Fall 1988): 749–50.
George W. Bush, “Speech, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California, 19 Nov. 1999”, The George W. Bush Foreign Policy Reader: Presidential Speeches With Commentary, ed. John W. Dietrich (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2005) 26–27.
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald NicholsonSmith (New York: Zone Books, 1995) 144.
See David C. Hendrickson, “Toward Universal Empire: The Dangerous Quest for Absolute Security”, World Policy Journal 19.3 (Fall 2002): 1–3.
E. H. Carr, “Realism and Idealism”, Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace, 2nd ed., ed. Richard K. Betts (New York: Pearson, 2005) 77
Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism and Requiem for the Twin Towers, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2002) 26–27.
Gill 68–73; Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72.3 (Summer 1993): 22–49.
See Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989): 14, April 2008 http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm#source
Robert J. Lieber, “Foreign Policy and American Primacy”, Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the 21st Century, ed. Robert J. Lieber (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002) 1–15.
Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, “Contingencies of Value”, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch, William E. Cain, Laurie A. Fink, Barbara E. Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffery J. Williams (New York: W W Norton, 2001) 1913.
Arnold Wolfers, “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol”, Political Science Quarterly 67 (Dec. 1952): 481–502
John A. Vasquez, ed. Classics in International Relations, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1986) 118.
Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J. M. Bernstein (New York: Routledge, 1991) 61.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000) 14
Howard K. Bloom, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995) 1–25.
Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works ofFoucault, 1954–1984, vol. 3, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: New Press, 1994) 27.
Mel Gurtov, “American Crusades: Unilateralism, Past & Present”, Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views From the Asia-Pacific, ed. Mel Gurtov and Peter Van Ness (London: Routledge-Cruzon, 2005) 1–20.
Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B. Leitch, William E. Cain, Laurie A. Fink, Barbara E. Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffery J. Williams (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001) 878.
Hans J. Morgenthau. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1966) 11.
Geoffrey Blainey, “Power, Culprits, and Arms”, Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace, 2nd ed., ed. Richard K. Betts (New York: Pearson-Longman, 2005) 112–13.
Slavoj Žižek. Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London/New York: Verso, 2002) 93.
Carl M. Von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Anatol Rapoport (New York: Penguin, 1982) 106.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2003) 54.
See William Blum, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2005)
John Feffer, North Korea/South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (New York: Seven Stories, 2003) 14.
See John Feffer, ed., Power Trip (New York: Seven Stories, 2003)
See Jack S. Levy, “The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Tech-nology”, Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace, 2nd ed., ed. Richard K. Betts (New York: Longman, 2002)
Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: Norton, 2003).
Albert Beveridge, quoted in William L. Shirer, 20th Century Journey: A Memoir of a Life and the Times: The Start, 1904–1930, vol. 1 (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1976) 68.
Copyright information
© 2010 Marvin L. Astrada
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Astrada, M.L. (2010). Absolutist Security. In: American Power after 9/11. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106383_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106383_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28619-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10638-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)