Creating the Second Cold War: The Discourse of Politics (History and Politics in the 20th Century: Bloomsbury Academic)

"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."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Cover 1 Half-title 3 Title 5 Copyright 6 Contents 11 Dedication 12 Acknowledgements 13 List of Abbreviations 14 Preface 15 Part One: Context 19 Introduction 21 Chapter 1: Social theory and security discourse 22 'Postmodernism' and global crisis 22 Social theory: discourse 23 Social theory: ideology and hegemony 26 The hegemony of security discourse 28 Reading security discourse 31 Chapter 2: Discourse and otherness 35 The Other: identity, difference 35 The Other: time, space, geopolitics 37 The Other and world order 40 Europeans and others 42 Otherness and US geopolitical discourse 45 Chapter 3: Security and geopolitics 48 Political theory, states and security 48 Geopolitics, space and power 51 Classical geopolitics 53 Geopolitics and containment 55 Geopolitical discourse 57 Chapter 4: Threat discourse 60 Containment militarism and the 'Soviet threat' 60 'Common Sense and the Common Danger' 65 'What is the Soviet Union Up To?' 72 CPD discourse 77 Part Two: Text 79 Introduction 81 Chapter 5: Sovietology 83 Sovietology and totalitarianism 83 CPD Sovietology 86 Soviet-US differences 87 Geography and patrimonialism 92 Militarism and Soviet foreign policy 95 Totalitarianism rehabilitated 100 Chapter 6: Power politics 104 International relations and realism 104 Detente and appeasement 108 The rationale for realism 112 Realism and geopolitics 113 Realism as geopolitics 118 Chapter 7: Geopolitics 123 Containment and geopolitics 123 Geopolitics and superpower rivalry 125 Mackinder updated 128 The geopolitics of Soviet Empire 132 The ideology of geopolitics 135 Chapter 8: Nuclear strategy 140 Strategy and deterrence 140 The CPD against SALT 143 Soviet war-fighting strategy 145 1. Pre-emption 149 2. Quantitative superiority 149 3. Counterforce targeting 150 4. Combined-arms operations 150 5. Defence 150 Sovietology and strategy 151 SALT, geopolitics and strategy 153 The theory of victory 159 Nuclear war-fighting strategies: NUTS to DEAD 165 Part Three: Contra-text 171 Introduction 173 Chapter 9: The geopolitics of security discourse 174 CPD geographs 174 The CPD and the Reagan administration 179 Space, security, hegemony 182 Chapter 10: Critical geopolitics 186 Discourses of war and peace 186 Political space and dissent discourse 189 Challenging hegemony: dealignment 192 Challenging hegemony: security and development 195 Critical geopolitics 197 Bibliography 200 Index 223