Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis: 12 (Borderlines) - Softcover

Weldes, Jutta

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816631115 ISBN 13: 9780816631117

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1999

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.

About this title

About the Author

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

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816631115
• ISBN 13: 9780816631117
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328