U.S. Foreign Policy and the Other

Foreign policy necessarily needs an object on which to concentrate its attention, and that object is necessarily not here but elsewhere, of another ilk. Foreign policy is thus the policies dealing with the foreign—how to deal with territories, cultures, and threats other than oneself. In the Realist (Rankean) tradition, the processes involved can be relegated to the painstaking reconstruction of reality through relevant documents. Questions of identity rarely enter the scene. Constructivism identifies and explores this lacuna in the field of International Relations, and the so-called cultural turn did the same for diplomatic history, opening up new layers for consideration when examining and interpreting the interactions of states. Taking the units of investigation for granted was no longer sufficient. Marxist-inspired critiques might have done this for decades by claiming to find the underlying economic interests behind all policy (and behind those who made the policy), but the notion that...