Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11

This books uses comparative analysis to examine foreign policy discourses and the dynamics of the 'War on Terror'. The book considers the three principal members of the Coalition of the Willing in Afghanistan and Iraq: the United States, Britain and Australia. Despite significant cultural, historical and political overlap, the War on Terror was rendered possible in these contexts in different ways, drawing on different discourses and narratives of foreign policy and identity. The author explores these differences and their origins, arguing that they have important implications for the way we understand foreign policy and political possibility. They illustrate that foreign policy discourse impacts on political possibility in rendering some policy responses conceivable while making others unthinkable, and some policy responses acceptable while others illegitimate. The book thus contributes to our understanding of political possibility, in the process correcting a tendency to view the War on Terror as a universal and monolithic political discourse.The book rejects prevalent interpretations of a War on Terror foreign policy discourse, in the singular, highlighting that coalition states both demonstrated and relied upon divergent policy framings to make the War on Terror possible. This book will be of much interest to students of foreign policy, critical security studies, discourse analysis, and IR in general.