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Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has faced the challenge of reorienting its foreign policy to address post-Cold War conditions. In this new edition of a groundbreaking work -- one of the first to bring critical theory into dialogue with more traditional approaches to international relations -- David Campbell provides a fundamental reappraisal of American foreign policy, with a new epilogue to address current world affairs and the burgeoning focus on culture and identity in the study of international relations. Extending recent debates in international relations, Campbell shows how perceptions of danger and difference work to establish the identity of the United States. He demonstrates how foreign policy, far from being an expression of a given society, constitutes state identity through the interpretation of danger posed by others.
308 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1992
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144 people want to read
About the author
David Campbell
7 books1 followerDavid Campbell is an Australian political scientist. He is known for his writing on photography and post-realism.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 22, 2023
4.5. Could really do without the jargon, but it was a trailblazer for its time!
December 20, 2015
Campbell’s book was written right after the end of the Cold War, but it is still highly relevant today (perhaps, in the wake of recent issues, even more so). Campbell examines “the way in which the identity of ‘(the United States of) America’ has been written and rewritten through foreign policies operating in its name.” In other words, rather than viewing foreign policies as the enactment of a national interest, he analyzes the ways in which they inscribe the notion of the “foreign” and establish the boundaries of national identity. Identity is inseparable from this act of defining dangers and policing boundaries; it cannot exist other than in relation to difference.
How do we come to see something as a “threat”? Right now, ISIS is universally treated as a major “threat” to the US despite the fact that we are an ocean and a continent away, and the fact that ISIS has never killed an American on domestic soil. At the same time that ISIS, as well as “Islamic terrorism” more broadly, is universally deemed a “threat,” right-wing domestic terrorism—which kills far more people per year in the US—is not. Neither is climate change, which—despite its vast security implications—is often written out of public discourse. Neither right-wing terrorism (arising out of white supremacy, xenophobia, and lax gun laws) or climate change (arising out of an addiction to fossil fuels) is deemed to merit an immediate, comprehensive response. But combating “Islamic terrorism” is, and no expense can be too much. As Campbell notes, “[d]anger bears no essential, necessary, or unproblematic relation to the action or event from which it said to derive,” rather it is a matter of interpretation.
How and when does “national identity” arise? As Campbell notes, the state and its related institutions, at least in the Western context, have typically preceded the existence of a unifying identity. Foreign policy, which define the relationship between those within the state’s boundaries and those outside it—reifying those boundaries—thus offers a way to conceive and consolidate such an identity: “The constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is thus not a threat to a state’s identity or existence; it is its condition of possibility.” This identity-making power, for Campbell, marks a continuity between the Church and the state. The role of the Church in the medieval era was to secure identity amidst disorder. In the secular world, the state takes on this responsibility, still bearing many of the attributes of its predecessor: “In this way, the state project of security replicates the church project of salvation. The state grounds its legitimacy by offering the promise of security to its citizens who, it says, would otherwise face manifold dangers. The church justifies its role by guaranteeing to its followers who, it says, would otherwise be destined to an unredeemed death. Both the state and the church require thereby engage in an evangelism of fear to ward off internal and external threats, succumbing in the process to the temptation to threat difference as otherness.”
The metaphor for the boundary of the national self, as Campbell explains, is frequently one of the body (“the body politic”). Threats to this national self, then, are routinely discussed with metaphors taken from the world of medicine, particularly “disease.” And the difference between description and prescription in metaphors can often be blurry because how we talk about a problem influences how we conceptualize a solution (as well as how we conceptualize obstacles to it).
Campbell explains how this dynamic functioned throughout US history, noting that “America is the imagined community par excellence.” From the start, the US defined itself as against external forces. His discussion of the Cold War is very sharp and focuses on how the threat of the Soviet Union was always treated as far greater than any real military danger it posed could have been and how internal and external threats to the national identity of the US were routinely blurred. (Think of the conflation of homosexuality and communism, for instance.) And after tracing this dynamic throughout US history, he analyzes two contemporary examples: drug use and the rise of Japan as an economic competitor, showing the discursive creation and reproduction of their conceptualization as “threats.” In discussing which phenomena get transformed into “threats,” he points out how the environment, which can sometimes be interpreted as a threat, rarely gets treated with the same level of perceived threat as other phenomena because the ways to address environmental dangers threaten national identity: “As a discourse of danger which results in disciplinary strategies that are de-territorialized, involve communal cooperation, and refigure economic relationships, the environment can serve to enframe a different rendering of ‘reasoning man’ than that associated with the subjectivities of liberal capitalism.”
As the pundit class in the US keeps saying that the 2016 presidential election is going to be one about “national security,” returning often to early 2000s-style threat inflation and fear-mongering, this book is an indispensable read for anyone seeking to analyze and better understand the functioning of this discourse.
How do we come to see something as a “threat”? Right now, ISIS is universally treated as a major “threat” to the US despite the fact that we are an ocean and a continent away, and the fact that ISIS has never killed an American on domestic soil. At the same time that ISIS, as well as “Islamic terrorism” more broadly, is universally deemed a “threat,” right-wing domestic terrorism—which kills far more people per year in the US—is not. Neither is climate change, which—despite its vast security implications—is often written out of public discourse. Neither right-wing terrorism (arising out of white supremacy, xenophobia, and lax gun laws) or climate change (arising out of an addiction to fossil fuels) is deemed to merit an immediate, comprehensive response. But combating “Islamic terrorism” is, and no expense can be too much. As Campbell notes, “[d]anger bears no essential, necessary, or unproblematic relation to the action or event from which it said to derive,” rather it is a matter of interpretation.
How and when does “national identity” arise? As Campbell notes, the state and its related institutions, at least in the Western context, have typically preceded the existence of a unifying identity. Foreign policy, which define the relationship between those within the state’s boundaries and those outside it—reifying those boundaries—thus offers a way to conceive and consolidate such an identity: “The constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is thus not a threat to a state’s identity or existence; it is its condition of possibility.” This identity-making power, for Campbell, marks a continuity between the Church and the state. The role of the Church in the medieval era was to secure identity amidst disorder. In the secular world, the state takes on this responsibility, still bearing many of the attributes of its predecessor: “In this way, the state project of security replicates the church project of salvation. The state grounds its legitimacy by offering the promise of security to its citizens who, it says, would otherwise face manifold dangers. The church justifies its role by guaranteeing to its followers who, it says, would otherwise be destined to an unredeemed death. Both the state and the church require thereby engage in an evangelism of fear to ward off internal and external threats, succumbing in the process to the temptation to threat difference as otherness.”
The metaphor for the boundary of the national self, as Campbell explains, is frequently one of the body (“the body politic”). Threats to this national self, then, are routinely discussed with metaphors taken from the world of medicine, particularly “disease.” And the difference between description and prescription in metaphors can often be blurry because how we talk about a problem influences how we conceptualize a solution (as well as how we conceptualize obstacles to it).
Campbell explains how this dynamic functioned throughout US history, noting that “America is the imagined community par excellence.” From the start, the US defined itself as against external forces. His discussion of the Cold War is very sharp and focuses on how the threat of the Soviet Union was always treated as far greater than any real military danger it posed could have been and how internal and external threats to the national identity of the US were routinely blurred. (Think of the conflation of homosexuality and communism, for instance.) And after tracing this dynamic throughout US history, he analyzes two contemporary examples: drug use and the rise of Japan as an economic competitor, showing the discursive creation and reproduction of their conceptualization as “threats.” In discussing which phenomena get transformed into “threats,” he points out how the environment, which can sometimes be interpreted as a threat, rarely gets treated with the same level of perceived threat as other phenomena because the ways to address environmental dangers threaten national identity: “As a discourse of danger which results in disciplinary strategies that are de-territorialized, involve communal cooperation, and refigure economic relationships, the environment can serve to enframe a different rendering of ‘reasoning man’ than that associated with the subjectivities of liberal capitalism.”
As the pundit class in the US keeps saying that the 2016 presidential election is going to be one about “national security,” returning often to early 2000s-style threat inflation and fear-mongering, this book is an indispensable read for anyone seeking to analyze and better understand the functioning of this discourse.
November 21, 2019
Campbell, I share your same detest for the label “postmodernist”, but I hold an even greater detest of works labelled postmodern because I find that the works do not get to the point, are attempts to say nothing in as much words as possible, that its conclusions are banal and that the evidence provided to support their conclusion is incredibly lacking.
I think that you ultimately spent this book waffling on about philosophy, IR and political theory (I think that your discussion on these topics needs to be greatly reduced as you need to realise that you can make your point in a whole lot less words), while completely forgetting to make a highly developed case for your main thesis.
I think that you ultimately spent this book waffling on about philosophy, IR and political theory (I think that your discussion on these topics needs to be greatly reduced as you need to realise that you can make your point in a whole lot less words), while completely forgetting to make a highly developed case for your main thesis.
November 12, 2023
This book has great insights and I plan on coming back to it after my first read through for a class. I just wish the language was a little more accessible, as I severely struggled, especially with the earlier chapters. I think everything will click once I make it through a second time.
March 15, 2025
So excited to see that a political theorist actually knows how to organize his argument!!! Well done David
Read
August 21, 2025adding books I read for my dissertation!
February 21, 2015
It has been such a long time since a read such a book as this. In-depth, philosophical, and good review of constructivist works that have to do with discourse, American foreign policy, and security. Such a book needs to be written for the recent American politics. Unfortunately the books that have been recently written lack the in-depth that this book has.
Similar to this book is the Ole Waever, Barry Buzan, and Jaap de Wilde "Security: a new framework for analysis" (1997).
A must read!
Similar to this book is the Ole Waever, Barry Buzan, and Jaap de Wilde "Security: a new framework for analysis" (1997).
A must read!
October 3, 2008
Campbell is more of critic of most mainstream politics and international relations theory. I really enjoyed his aspect on epistemic realism, meaning that there are material causes behind all events and actions are based around. It was useful for my essay on power, but my professor didn't like my using a critic to support my stance that he tries to destroy.
February 1, 2014
Loved the bit about the US always in search of a new "other" (read: enemy) in order to define ourselves (by who we are not). The writing made my head pound. As in, my head kept punching my body and asking why it was being made to process this. I like constructivism. It's fun. Maybe gimme a bit more accessible writing to work with, though.
June 13, 2018
While Campbell uses somewhat inaccessible/unnecessary language to describe his argument, this book has changed the way I view International Relations, the history of the Cold War, and the repercussions of forming identity (and changed for the better). Excellent book.
August 17, 2007
I come back to this over and over again- such a concise and clear argument, with a deep + rich bibliography.
Want to read
October 24, 2009recommended by Garnet re: the development of the fear of socialism in the US
January 30, 2016
This book adopts a post-modern approach to studying security, asserting that the security of the self is defined alongside an external 'other' creating those threats.
April 3, 2022
rereading the classics
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews