The domestic content of international desire

Abstract

Yes, a grotesque mediocrity reigns within our generally depoliticized professional life. So why aren't the complacencies of the orthodox even more embarrassing? Why does the overall agenda of research and conceptualization still tilt-either reflectively or unreflectively-toward the reproduction of a deplorable status quo? Certainly we should play havoc with neorealist orthodoxy-and also with the flashy timidity of its self-appointed successors. But what is actually being articulated in the discipline? An unexpected obituary for the structuralists, the cocksure neorealists and aficionados of old-fashioned Realpolitik? Titillating revisionism for the respected ghosts of classical realism? Or merely corrective mechanisms in the self-reproduction of a certain kind of white-gloved theoretical discourse? There is another agenda to which even the most rarefied conceptualizing can bend its efforts. What makes a nation's attachment to its expansive global (or regional) position so obsessive? Why is a particular state leadership so anxious to flex its particular muscles in a particular way? Why does an imperial power consider its ability to exert control over the social relations that constitute an open world political economy so important? Why are a nation's commitments to the international status quo wrapped up so tightly in the flag, and sanctified accordingly? Do any of the analytical moves at hand, however trumpeted, help us comprehend the grounds on which the key acts of government foreign policy are erected, or the grounds on which they might be confronted or opposed? I am thinking, for example, of the brutal American intervention in Vietnam and, most immediately, the attempted subversion and violent harassment of Nicaragua. Those matters, those sorts of questions, are likely to ambush our little self-important academic scuffles. The balance-of-power scheme seems to have little to say about them.