Analyzing foreign policy through discourses

In this research discourse is the way social activity (decision making) presents itself in the context of the NSS through the use of language.²⁷⁰ A simplified example of this process is given by Hussein M. Adam. He argues that the president Clinton changed the U.S. policy on Somalia immediately after the death of 18 U.S. troops in Mogadishu on July 12^th 1993. A political solution was pushed forwards instead of intervention and confrontation. Thus, the discourse surrounding the humiliation of dead soldiers affected foreign policymakers.²⁷¹

265 Hansen (2006), p. 6. In Hansen’s view this is a Poststructuralist argument which “implies a conceptualization of identity existing insofar as it is continuously rearticulated and uncontested by competing discourses”.

266 For further discussion, see Wendt (1999) and Hansen (2006).

267 Interestingly, Hansen points out that ‘ontological questions cannot be answered at the level of empirical analysis’. If one uses discursive epistemology, it affects identity in way that it ‘makes pre–social corporate and intrinsic identity impossibility, and vice versa’. For a look at the entire argument, see Hansen (2006), p. 8.

268 Hansen (2006), pp. 25–26.

269 Wendt (1999), p. 210.

270 Sjöstedt (2013), p. 145. For Sjöstedt, the analytical focus in security studies is always related to national security. This is because of the role of the state as the foremost institution to ‘handle all types of threats’.

271Adam, in Zartman (1995), p. 85.

Therefore, it matters how language is used to securitize failing states and how social reality is being structured accordingly. The use of language affects the way a securitized discourse is amplified. It forms intertextual and intersubjective links to create and sustain itself as an existential threat.²⁷² This affects how FS are being perceived as a threat and thus affects foreign policy accordingly.

Moreover, it places the discourses of the primary material (the NSS) in political context. In the analysis the focus is on how policy texts try to create stable arguments of FS as a threat to the U.S. Additionally, there is interest in if the stability of these arguments can be upheld even with a change in the administration. Moreover, there are always constraints in the policy making which affect the content of the document. Hence, the importance of the effect of securitization is significant. Examining this effect is seen as way of looking at how once established discourses are remobilized and re–enforced to retain the dominant discourse, or modify it to suit specific needs.²⁷³ There are significant convergence in how key subjects and points of interests, such as Weapons of Mass Destruction (from here on referred to as WMD’s), rogue states, and terrorists, are connected to different discourses including failing states. This intersubjective link is visible in the chosen temporal span of 1990 to 2010 where certain themes carry on, while others wane and disappear only to resurface later.

This is done IOT ascertain sufficient empirical material and to look for how the discourses on FS surfaced, developed and evolved. Therefore, it covers the significant temporal nexus events such as the end of the Cold War, and the 9/11. These are focal points which are used to map the stability of the official discourse. Furthermore, these temporal nodes are used to analyze what happened to the discourse. How facts or events affected them either changing, amplifying or downplaying their importance. The temporal span specifically leaves out Arab Spring and the events after 2010 in an effort not to extend the research too much. There is significance in how facts are embedded and read into discourses as to have effect on the policy.

272 This research acknowledges the premises of the Securitization theory as presented by the CS but uses a slightly modified version of the basic theory modelled after Hansen (2006). For the complex roles of speech act and intersubjective practices and their relations, see Balzacq (2005).

273 To quote Hansen (2006)”, p. xvii: “That official foreign policy is always speaking to and from contemporary as well as historical discourses indicates the convergence between the Discourse analysis….and writings on identity and discourse from series of other fields..”

Official policy might use existing discursive framework to acknowledge facts (terrorists, rogue states and WMD’s are a threat) and combine them with a new situation (post–9/11 and the threat of failing states as harbors of terrorists). However, there are always counter discourses, criticism and failures. These might lead to further emphasis on the argumentations on behalf on the official discourse, or to complete silence.²⁷⁴

The purpose of the DA in this research is to show how facts and related events are ‘dependent upon a particular discursive framing of the issue and that this framing has political effects’.²⁷⁵ In the case of FS this is the securitization and creation of an existential threat. It also presents an interesting question of why certain categories, statistics and indicators are used in the definition of state failure, and others are not? This will be addressed in chapter 3. Some of the problems in DA are linked to the relational nature of Constructivism. If causality is abandoned, a conundrum of how to show the effects of discourse becomes evident. Therefore, it is a question of ‘how much discourse matters’ in the face of material and causal attack against it, and ‘what is the causal effect of identity on foreign policy’.²⁷⁶

Also, discourses are constantly in a flux in trying to assert themselves against counter–

discourses that are trying to weaken or supplement them. This leads to a situation where it can be said that discourses never reach complete stability. Hence, it is only possible to analyze

‘the relative ability of a discourse’.²⁷⁷ There are also several other points of attack against DA.

Most them come from the positivist side and are directed towards the ability of the DA to attain sufficient empiricism. How does one decide which DA is the best? Can you acclaim all readings of a text equally valid? This criticism can be seen as directed towards Poststructuralism more than Constructivism. It is due to the juxtaposition of the question of identity mentioned earlier and so it is more in the nature of theoretical debate than a methodological question.

274 Hansen (2006), pp. 32–33. Hansen presents an excellent example of how the failure of G.W. Bush’s administration to find any WMD’s in Iraq was conveniently sidestepped without a comment. It thus blocked some of the counter discourses raised against the war in Iraq. Moreover, according to her the ‘link between al–

Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was so preposterous’ that the concurrent discourse disappeared very quickly, as it had no factual weight behind it. On the other hand, she argues that the Taleban ruled Afghanistan and the al–Qaeda’s connection with it were ‘a more fertile ground’ for the securitizing discourse and threat creating. This made the military intervention more acceptable.

275 Ibid., pp. 22–23.

276 Ibid., pp. 25–26, p. 29.

277 Ibid., p. 29. Hansen argues on the effect of stability as a factor in how well an analysis can be performed. A highly unstable discourse is the product of internally inconsistent identity, thus making it difficult to analyze.

However, Lene Hansen points out this ‘attention to theoretical debate is misleading’. For her what really matters is the reading of the text and ‘the explicit discursive articulations of signs and identities’.²⁷⁸ Moreover, she argues that it is about the methodological rigor of the analyst and his or her ‘interpretation of the signs’ that matters.²⁷⁹ The stability of the discourse and the interpretation of the analyst affect how and in what way the link between identity and policy can be found. This is what makes the reading of a text a good one or a bad one. This reiterates the fact that there is no one reading to account for everything and that every text can be the subject of a multiple readings and interpretations.²⁸⁰