American identity, which significantly informs US foreign policy, has been defined through a sense of exceptionalism, endangerment and paranoia that issues the need to maintain eternal vigilance against the non-Western Other. Notably, while American and British identities in their respective hegemonic phases have shared many similarities, the American differs in that its fear of the Other is yet more pronounced which, in turn – in an ever-moving show – constantly feeds the US desire for manufacturing new enemies and then containing them in order to maintain American identity. The racist double standards of the US civilising mission abound, whether these be in its uneven-handed free trade policy (as the recent breakdown of the Doha Round talks reveals); or through its wielding of the IMF as a vehicle to help indebted countries but in fact imposing cultural conversion and containment of the East in the debt crisis after 1982 and the Asian financial crisis of 1997; or again in its policies that were imposed on Japan in the 1980s. Moreover, the War on Terror opens up a Pandora’s box of racist double standards where, inter alia, indiscriminate American bombing and the killing of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of non-Whites differentiates US foreign policy from ‘Islamic terrorism’ only in terms of the many more innocent lives that are taken by the former. When will this global nightmare end?
John M. Hobson (‘Is critical theory always for the white West and for Western imperialism? Beyond Westphilian towards a post-racist critical IR’, Review of International Studies (33), 2007)
citizenalien posted this
