The decision to mount an armed foreign intervention is one of the most consequential that a US president can take. This book sets out to explain why and when presidents choose to use force. The book examines decisions to use force throughout the post-Cold War period, via flashpoints including the Balkans, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Middle East. It develops new explanations for variation in the use of force in US foreign policy by theorizing and demonstrating the effects of the displacement and repression of ideas within and across different US presidential administrations, from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump. For students, scholars and anyone with an interest in international relations and global security, this book is an original perspective on a defining issue of recent decades.

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Rees, Morgan T.

Policy Press

Policy Press scholarship online, Bristol, 2022

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Policy Press, Bristol, UK, 2022

Bristol, 2021

First, 2021

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Front Cover
Ideas and the Use of Force in American Foreign Policy: Presidential Decision- Making in a Post- Cold War World
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part I Disaggregating Ideas in American Foreign Policy
1 Ideas and the Use of Force in American Foreign Policy
Introduction
Why ideas?
The debate so far ...
Rationalist limitations
Constructivism
Ontological security
Discursive institutionalism
Theoretical framework: uncertainty, weaponization and interpretation
Ideas reduce uncertainty: principled and cognitive interpretations
Ideas as weapons: mechanisms
Normative displacement
Cognitive repression
Interpretive leadership
Method
Plan of the book
Part II US Foreign Policy and Mass Atrocities in the Balkans
2 ‘We Don’t Have a Dog in the Fight’: Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia
Introduction
Cognitive repression in Bosnia: ‘We do deserts, not mountains or jungles’
Bosnia
The Bush administration’s response
Renewed cognitive repression: early optimism to repression in the Clinton administration
Conclusion
3 ‘What Should I Tell My Daughter?’: The Massacre at Srebrenica
Introduction
Normative displacement: principled reinterpretations of Srebrenica
The fall of Srebrenica
Operation Deliberate Force
Conclusion
Part III US Foreign Policy and Terrorism
4 ‘Wag the Dog’: Terrorism in the 1990s
Introduction
Cognitive repression: terrorism as a second-tier threat
Bombing of the World Trade Centre (1993)
1998 Embassy bombings and the Iraqi threat
USS Cole and the 2000 presidential election
Early Bush repression: promises of campaign restraint
Conclusion
5 ‘America Is Under Attack’: From the War on Terror to Iraq
Introduction
Normative displacement: 11 September 2001
Constructing the War on Terror
Constructing the war in Iraq
Conclusion
Part IV Obama and Mass Atrocities in the Middle East
6 ‘This Is Like Rwanda’: How the Road to Libya Ran Through Rwanda
Introduction
Early cognitive repression: a call for restraint
Normative displacement: principled intervention in Libya
Obama’s principled response
Conclusion
7 Syria: ‘There Was No Benghazi To Be Saved’
Introduction
Seeds of intervention and the promise of ‘red lines’
Obama’s response and the promise of intervention
Cognitive repression, chemical weapons and shifting ‘red lines’
Conclusion
Part V ‘America First’ and the Use of Force
8 From ‘America First’ to Saving ‘Beautiful Babies’ in Syria
Introduction
Early cognitive repression: a turn to ‘America First’
Obama, Syria and ISIS
Cognitive repression and Trump’s ‘America First’
Normative displacement: saving the ‘beautiful babies’ in Syria
Back to repression
Conclusion
Part VI Conclusions
10 Ideas and Foreign Policy Variation
Introduction
Taking ideas seriously: theoretical summary and scope for future dialogues
The cases
Findings
Notes
References
Index
Back Cover

The decision to mount an armed foreign intervention is one of the most consequential that a US president can take. This book sets out to explain why and when presidents choose to use force. The book examines decisions to use force throughout the post-Cold War period, via flashpoints including the Balkans, the 'War on Terror' and the Middle East. It develops new explanations for variation in the use of force in US foreign policy by theorising and demonstrating the effects of the displacement and repression of ideas within and across different US presidential administrations, from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump

Examining the post-Cold War period, this book sets out to explain why and when US presidents choose to use force. It develops new explanations for variation in the use of force in US foreign policy by theorizing and demonstrating the effects of the displacement and repression of ideas within and across different US Presidential administrations.

2022-01-18