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America and the Misshaping of a New World Order Edited by Giles Gunn and Carl Gutiérrez-Jones Published in association with the University of California Press “An important and telling critique of the myth and rhetoric of con- temporary American expansionism and grand strategy. What is par- ticularly original about these essays—and unusually rare in studies of American foreign policy—is their provocative combination of cultural and literary analysis with a subtle appreciation of the historical trans- formation of political forms and principles of world order.” STEPHEN GILL, author of Power and Resistance in the New World Order The attempt by the George W. Bush administration to reshape world order, especially but not exclusively after September 11, 2001, increasingly appears to have resulted in a catastrophic “misshaping” of geo- politics in the wake of bungled campaigns in the Middle East and their many reverberations worldwide. Journalists and scholars are now trying to understand what happened, and this volume explores the role of culture and rhetoric in this process of geopolitical transformation. What difference do cultural con- cepts and values make to the cognitive and emotional weather of which, at various levels, international politics is both consequence and perceived corrective? The distinguished scholars in this multidisci- plinary volume bring the tools of cultural analysis to the profound ongoing debate about how geopolitics is mapped and what determines its governance. GILES GuNN is Professor and Chair of Global and International Studies and Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. cArL GuTIérrEz-JONES is Professor of English and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. ContrIbutorS: Eileen Boris, Richard Falk, Giles Gunn, Mark Juergensmeyer, Lisa Lowe, Simon Ortiz, David Palumbo-Liu, Lisa Parks, Donald Pease, Wade Clark Roof, John Carlos Rowe, Gabriele Schwab, Ronald Steel Cover illustration: elin o’Hara slavick, World Map: Places the United States Has Bombed (detail), 2000. Ink, gouache, graph- ite, watercolor, and flag pins on paper. The pins mark places the United States has bombed, for which there is a correspond- ing drawing. Used by permission of the artist. America and the Misshaping of a New World Order UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd i 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:12:14:12 AAMM UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd iiii 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM America and the Misshaping of a New World Order edited by Giles Gunn and Carl Gutiérrez-Jones Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd iiiiii 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the UC system. GAIA volumes, which are published in both print and open- access digital editions, represent the best traditions of regional studies, reconfigured through fresh global, transnational, and thematic perspectives. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data America and the misshaping of a new world order / edited by Giles Gunn and Carl Gutiérrez-Jones. p. cm. (Global, area, and international archive) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn: 978-0-520-09870-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. United States— Foreign relations — 2001 – 2009. 2. War on Terrorism, 2001 – — Political aspects — United States. 3. Terrorism — Government policy — United States. I. Gunn, Giles B. II. Gutiérrez-Jones, Carl Scott. e902.a46 2010 973.93 — dc22 2009023257 © Manufactured in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48 – 1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd iivv 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM Contents Acknowledgments vii 1. Introduction: The Place of Culture in the Play of International Politics 1 Giles Gunn 2. America’s Mission 28 Ronald Steel 3. From Virgin Land to Ground Zero: The Mythological Foundations of the Homeland Security State 39 Donald Pease 4. Pre-Emption, the Future, and the Imagination 59 David Palumbo-Liu 5. Imaginary Homeland Security: The Internationalization of Terror 79 Simon Ortiz and Gabriele Schwab 6. From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush: What Happened to American Civil Religion? 96 Wade Clark Roof 7. Why America Has Been the Target for Religious Terror 115 Mark Juergensmeyer UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd v 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM 8. Gendered Tropes and the New World Order: Cowboys, Welfare Queens, and Presidential Politics at Home and Abroad 131 Eileen Boris 9. Air Raids: Television and the War on Terror 152 Lisa Parks 10. Culture, U.S. Imperialism, and Globalization 169 John Carlos Rowe 11. Metaphors of Sovereignty 191 Lisa Lowe 12. On Humanitarian Intervention: A New World Order Dilemma 215 Richard Falk Contributors 231 UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd vvii 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM Acknowledgments The editors gratefully acknowledge a “Critical Issues in America” grant from the College of Letters and Science of the University of California, Santa Barbara, which supported the yearlong set of activities, culminating in a national conference, that inspired this volume. We dedicate this book to our wives, Barbra and Leslie, who, like our contributors, have borne the wait for its appearance with patience and good cheer, and to all the students who become more sensitive every day to the impact of culture and cultural values on the formation of international policy and global governance. vii UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd vviiii 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd vviiiiii 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM 1. Introduction The Place of Culture in the Play of International Politics Giles Gunn This book is organized around the belief that cultural assumptions, prin- ciples, and aspirations have played a much larger role in international politics than is often conceded. In the American academy as well as the public arena, there has until fairly recently been considerable skepticism about, if not resistance to, such an idea. Not that anyone has considered international affairs immune to the infl uence of ideologies, values, or even symbols, but only that the conventional orthodoxy in international rela- tions has tended either to downplay the effects of such factors or, more likely, to presume that the best way of understanding their importance is by determining how they have been expressed within the terms and constraints of the state system. In much of the scholarship devoted to the study of international relations, “culture talk” has often been held to be at best a diversion or distraction, at worst a distortion or even a delusion, and given some of its recurrent exaggerations one can rather easily see why. It is scarcely necessary to cite the notoriety of something like Samuel Huntington’s “clash of cultures” thesis, much less the more widespread obsession in the United States and elsewhere with “culture wars,” to real- ize that the term culture has been as susceptible to misrepresentation and deformation as the word politics. Where culture is held to explain everything, it illumines almost nothing. And yet the cultural component has worked its way back into the discourse of international politics not simply as a necessary way of accounting for the temper, tension, and force of particular policies and practices but also as a way of comprehending the political itself. One can no more divorce political interests from cultural prejudices than one can separate the history of institutions, diplomacy, and war from the history of consciousness. Such elemental linkages have, of course, long been acknowledged in the 1 UUC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.inddC-Gunn-CS4-ToPress.indd 1 33/22/2010/22/2010 99:14:14:14:14 AAMM 2 / Giles Gunn writings of everyone from Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx to Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Karl Polanyi, and Immanuel Wallerstein, but they have been given new applications in the work of, among many others, Judith Sklar, Robert Cox, and, now, Samantha Power. Culture in their work is not simply a tool kit but a template, a blueprint and road map for how people think and act and, above all, interpret their world to them- selves and to others. In this sense, cultural systems as they operate in the international sphere are neither simply framed nor delimited by politics; as Edmund Burke knew as well as Antonio Gramsci, not to mention Sayyid Qutb, they generate the emotional and cognitive weather of which at vari- ous levels politics is both the consequence and sometimes the corrective. This assumption has not been lost on a series of scholars who are partic- ularly interested in which cultural system or set of values is to be preferred if one wants to promote “human progress.” By “progress” they mean such things as democratic participation and economic development.