Creating the Second Cold War: The Discourse of Politics

Description

The Cold War is over, yet many attitudes and analyses typical of the period persisted in the strategic thinking of the Great Powers. In this brilliantly original study, Simon Dalby uses the conceptual tools of geopolitical analysis to uncover the essence of American strategic discourse. Focussing on the period of the late 1970s, he shows how Washington pressure groups, political organisations and, in particular, the Committee on the Present Danger, recreated a language of confrontation that deeply influenced Western attitudes towards the Soviet Union in ways that continue to shape foreign policy. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Dedication Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Preface Part One: Context Introduction Chapter 1: Social theory and security discourse 'Postmodernism' and global crisis Social theory: discourse Social theory: ideology and hegemony The hegemony of security discourse Reading security discourse Chapter 2: Discourse and otherness The Other: identity, difference The Other: time, space, geopolitics The Other and world order Europeans and others Otherness and US geopolitical discourse Chapter 3: Security and geopolitics Political theory, states and security Geopolitics, space and power Classical geopolitics Geopolitics and containment Geopolitical discourse Chapter 4: Threat discourse Containment militarism and the 'Soviet threat' 'Common Sense and the Common Danger' 'What is the Soviet Union Up To?' CPD discourse Part Two: Text Introduction Chapter 5: Sovietology Sovietology and totalitarianism CPD Sovietology Soviet-US differences Geography and patrimonialism Militarism and Soviet foreign policy Totalitarianism rehabilitated Chapter 6: Power politics International relations and realism Detente and appeasement The rationale for realism Realism and geopolitics Realism as geopolitics Chapter 7: Geopolitics Containment and geopolitics Geopolitics and superpower rivalry Mackinder updated The geopolitics of Soviet Empire The ideology of geopolitics Chapter 8: Nuclear strategy Strategy and deterrence The CPD against SALT Soviet war-fighting strategy 1. Pre-emption 2. Quantitative superiority 3. Counterforce targeting 4. Combined-arms operations 5. Defence Sovietology and strategy SALT, geopolitics and strategy The theory of victory Nuclear war-fighting strategies: NUTS to DEAD Part Three: Contra-text Introduction Chapter 9: The geopolitics of security discourse CPD geographs The CPD and the Reagan administration Space, security, hegemony Chapter 10: Critical geopolitics Discourses of war and peace Political space and dissent discourse Challenging hegemony: dealignment Challenging hegemony: security and development Critical geopolitics Bibliography Index