Constructing National Interests : The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Weldes, Jutta

ISBN 10: 0816631115 / ISBN 13: 9780816631117

Edité par Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1999

N° de réf. du vendeur 210309-n

Synopsis :

Not simply an "event" or merely an "incident," the 1962 standoff between the U. S. and the Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba was a crisis, which subsequently has achieved almost mythic significance in the annals of United States foreign policy. Jutta Weldes asks why this occurrence in particular should be cast as a crisis, and how this so significantly affected "the national interest." Here, Weldes analyzes the so-called Cuban missile crisis as a means to rethink the idea of national interest, a notion central to both the study and practice of international relations.

Why did the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba constitute a crisis for U.S. state officials and thus a dire threat to U.S. national interests? It was, Weldes suggests, more a matter of discursive construction than of objective facts or circumstances. Drawing on social theory and on concepts from cultural studies, she exposes the "realities" of the crisis as social creations in the service of a particular and precarious U.S. state identity defined within the Cold War U.S. "security imaginary."

Constructing National Interests shows how this process allowed for a redefining of the identities, interests, and likely actions of various states, so that it seemed to logically serve the U.S. national interest in removing the missiles from Cuba.

À propos de l'auteur:

Jutta Weldes is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Kent State University.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Constructing National Interests : The United...
Éditeur : Univ Of Minnesota Press
Date d'édition : 1999
Reliure : Couverture souple
Etat : New