Introduction

Abstract

Since 1990 much has been written about the practical challenges — military, political, diplomatic and economic — faced by a state released from an armed stand-off by the collapse of its opponent. However, discussion and analysis of the United States’ post-Cold War foreign policy has largely ignored an important body of data — the documentary evidence of the United States’ official response to the ending of the Cold War as found in the speeches, statements and interviews of key members of the Bush Administration and later in those of the Clinton campaign and Administration. Focusing on the challenges of role-setting and consensus-building that the end of the Cold War produced for the United States foreign policy elites, this study offers a systematic examination of this transitional public diplomacy. In doing so this book examines the history of a specific and crucial time and place in recent world history, more generally provides insight into the workings of political administrations and how political actions are conditioned by a dynamic created between the attracting call of historical memory and the demands of immediate experience, and finally provides a model, and an illustration of a model, for how rhetoric may be utilized to enhance our understanding of American foreign policy.