The Theater of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror

by Joseph Masco

How did the most powerful nation on earth come to embrace terror as the organizing principle of its security policy? In "The Theater of Operations," Joseph Masco locates the origins of the present-day U.S. counterterrorism apparatus in the Cold War's "balance of terror." He shows how, after the attacks of 9/11, the U.S. global War on Terror mobilized a wide range of affective, conceptual, and institutional resources established during the Cold War to enable a new planetary theater of operations. Tracing how specific aspects of emotional management, existential danger, state secrecy, and threat awareness have evolved as core aspects of the American social contract, Masco draws on archival, media, and ethnographic resources to offer a new portrait of American national security culture. Undemocratic and unrelenting, this counterterror state prioritizes speculative practices over facts, and ignores everyday forms of violence across climate, capital, and health in an unprecedented effort to anticipate and eliminate terror threats--real, imagined, and emergent.

Genres: Anthropology, History, Nonfiction, Politics, School, Grad School, The United States Of America

280 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 2014

About the author

Joseph Masco is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Theater of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror and The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post–Cold War New Mexico, winner of the J. I. Staley Prize from the School for Advanced Research and the Rachel Carson Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science.

Reviews

[Sertac Sen · Rating 5 out of 5]

just a riveting account of the genealogy of the national security state in the US, and a great guide for comprehending the ever-increasing militarization of the global contemporary political landscape.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masco draws compelling, and terrifying, lineages from our post-9/11 world of terror fear to the Cold War nuclear fear.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read that leaves me wishing for more evidence to back his provocative claims.