Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has faced the challenge of reorienting its foreign policy to address post-Cold War conditions. In this new edition of a groundbreaking work — one of the first to bring critical theory into dialogue with more traditional approaches to international relations — David Campbell provides a fundamental reappraisal of American foreign policy, with a new epilogue to address current world affairs and the burgeoning focus on culture and identity in the study of international relations. Extending recent debates in international relations, Campbell shows how perceptions of danger and difference work to establish the identity of the United States. He demonstrates how foreign policy, far from being an expression of a given society, constitutes state identity through the interpretation of danger posed by others.