Jack Holland - Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses After 9/11

This book uses a comparative analysis to examine foreign policy discourses and the dynamics of the War on Terror.

The book considers the three principal members of the Coalition of the Willing in Afghanistan and Iraq: the United States, Britain and Australia. Despite significant cultural, historical and political overlap among the three nations, the War on Terror was nevertheless rendered possible in these contexts in distinct ways, drawing on different discourses and narratives of foreign policy and identity.

This volume explores these differences and their origins, arguing that they have important implications for the way we understand foreign policy and political possibility. The author rejects prevalent interpretations of a War on Terror foreign policy discourse, in the singular, highlighting that coalition states both demonstrated and relied upon divergent policy framings to make the War on Terror possible. The book thus contributes to our understanding of political possibility, in the process correcting a tendency to view the War on Terror as a universal and monolithic political discourse.

This book will be of interest to students of foreign policy, critical security studies, terrorism studies, discourse analysis, and International Relations in general.

Jack Holland is Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of Politics at the University of Surrey, and has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Warwick.

Series Editors: Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning

University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK

This book series will publish rigorous and innovative studies on all aspects of terrorism, counter-terrorism and state terror. It seeks to advance a new generation of thinking on traditional subjects and investigate topics frequently overlooked in orthodox accounts of terrorism. Books in this series will typically adopt approaches informed by critical-normative theory, post-positivist methodologies and non-Western perspectives, as well as rigorous and reflective orthodox terrorism studies.

Terrorism and the Politics of Response

Edited by Angharad Closs Stephens and Nick Vaughan-Williams

Critical Terrorism Studies

Framing a New Research Agenda

Edited by Richard Jackson, Marie Breen Smyth and Jeroen Gunning

State Terrorism and Neoliberalism

The North in the South

Ruth Blakeley

Contemporary State Terrorism

Theory and Practice

Edited by Richard Jackson, Eamon Murphy and Scott Poynting

State Violence and Genocide in Latin America

The Cold War Years

Edited by Marcia Esparza, Henry R. Huttenbach and Daniel Feierstein

Discourses and Practices of Terrorism

Interrogating Terror

Edited by Bob Brecher, Mark Devenney and Aaron Winter

An Intellectual History of Terror

War, Violence and the State

Mikkel Thorup

Narratives of Violence

V.G. Julie Rajan

Terrorism, Talking and Transformation

A Critical Approach

Harmonie Toros

Counter-Terrorism and State Political Violence

The War on Terror as Terror

Edited by Scott Poynting and David Whyte

Selling the War on Terror

Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11

Jack Holland

Foreign policy discourses after 9/11

Jack Holland

First published 2013

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 Jack Holland

The right of Jack Holland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data

Holland, Jack, 1984-

Selling the war on terror : foreign policy discourses after 9/11 /

Jack Holland.

p. cm. (Critical terrorism studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Language and international relations. 2. War on Terrorism, 20012009Political aspects. 3. RhetoricPolitical aspects. 4. Discourse analysis. 5. United StatesForeign relations20012009. 6. Great BritainForeign relations. 7. AustraliaForeign relations. I. Title.

JZ1253.5.H65 2012

ISBN: 978-0-415-51975-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-09450-1 (ebk)

The list of people who have influenced the writing of this book is long and eclectic. The book was written as I undertook a considerable academic and geographical journey, with stints living in four countries and working or researching at six institutions. Whilst undertaking this journey and this project, I have accumulated a debt of gratitude to many inspirational scholars and supportive friends in the academic communities at Cambridge, Birmingham, Queensland, Warwick, the Library of Congress, Leeds and Surrey. First and foremost, I would like to gratefully acknowledge the academic support and guidance provided by Matt McDonald and Stuart Croft, without which this book would not have been written. At Cambridge, Stephen Legg helped me to refine the ideas that initiated this research. At Birmingham, the project would not have commenced without Thomas Diezs time and effort. And it might never have been finished without the support of such people as Olli Hellmann, Oz Hassan, Zoe Pflaeger, Urszula Huntemann and Dave Norman, as well as David Dunn and Andrew Neal. At Warwick, Andrew Walton, Owen Parker, Ted Svensson and Chris Browning all provided intellectual contributions, as well as support on the football pitch. At Queensland, Melissa Freeman, Dan Spacie and Peter Rees helped me to better understand Australian foreign policy and Aussie culture! At Leeds, the book benefitted enormously from the opportunity to try out some of its arguments. Jason Ralph and Clive Jones were central to making this happen. At Surrey, support has come from all colleagues and especially Laura Chappell.

Economic and Social Research Council funding initially enabled this research. It has also been greatly enhanced by two periods of overseas research. I would like to thank the staff and scholars at the Library of Congress John W. Kluge Center, particularly Ann Hoog in the Folklife Center for invaluable help in sharing her knowledge of the Witness and Response Collection. Funding for research in the United States and Australia also came from a joint ESRC/AHRC scholarship, the American Study and Student Exchange Committee and the Europe and Asia Nexus Partnership. I am also appreciative of the permission from John Wiley and Sons (2825921198301) to reproduce several sections of the article From .