American Vision Research Articles

Regionalism under test: justifying initial regional responses to the global Covid-19 crisis in Latin America

ABSTRACT This article explores the distinctive features of Latin American regionalism by examining its rhetorical justifications during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic offered an exceptional opportunity to witness the professed role of regional organizations in the Global South as bridges between national and international systems: how this role is discursively constructed and the practical limitations it faces in times of disruption. We address different attempts to (self-)justify the relevance of regionalist visions, analyzing how three (inter-)regional organizations of the Americas reacted discursively to the global public health crisis: the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Ibero-American Summits (SEGIB). We examine three features that have traditionally shaped Latin American visions of regionalism: coping with world hegemony; striving for regional autonomy; and expressing transnational solidarity. The findings provide insights for further understanding the legitimation of regional and global governance under conditions of uncertainty.

From Inculcation to Liberation: Pop Culture-Addled Snipers in Clint Eastwood's American Sniper and Alba Sotorra's Game Over

Clint Eastwood's American Sniper (2014) and Alba Sotorra's Game Over (2015) explore the inculcating pull of pop myths on soldiers. Eastwood's biopic focuses on Chris Kyle, American military history’s most lethal sniper. Sotorra's documentary Game Over considers Djalal, an Iranian Catalan youth who moves from being an America-idolizing gamer to a sniper in Afghanistan. Initially, they see themselves as Western cowboys and perfect soldiers. War, however, leaves them disillusioned and traumatized. Via distinct generic formats (documentary v. feature film) and nationally determined political frameworks (US v. Spain), they ask: can mythologies fueling the post-9/11 war machine empty it of its force? Mobilizing postcolonial, disability, and trauma studies, this comparative analysis theorizes how objects of soft power can both harden a soldier’s mind and liberate it from the battlefield’s thrall. Ultimately, the article reveals contrasting, potentially limited strategies subjects across cultures deploy to break the hold of American visions of power.

An Intervention That Launched a “New World Order”

The political era that has come to an end lasted for about three decades. Formally, its beginning can be attributed to the international crisis brought about by Kuwait’s invasion by Iraq in 1990 It shaped the American vision of the new world.

ЗОВНІШНЯ ПОЛІТИКА США: МІЖ ПОЛІТИЧНИМ РЕАЛІЗМОМ І ЛІБЕРАЛЬНИМИ ЦІННОСТЯМИ

The author of the reviewed monograph showed the mutual influence of the domestic and foreign policy of the United States. The reviewed book is interesting for its conceptual generalizations and establishment of causal relationships between different stages of the political history of the United States in the context of the history of Americanforeign policy. The independence of the United States marked the emergence of a potential world power. The North’s victory in the Civil War eliminated external threats to the United States. The author considers the period of the two world wars to be a continuation of the process of the United States entering the forefront of the world. During World War I, the United States turned from a debtor country into the world’s largest creditor. The author indirectly considers isolationism to be relevant to that time in the history of U.S. foreign policy. The policy of neutrality was based on American public sentiment. The author of the monograph considers the lack of a common vision of the post-war world, insufficient understanding of the culture of the USSR and the USA, the loss of hopes for the liberalization of the Stalinist regime, and the politics of fear for one’s security to be the prerequisites of the Cold War. After World War II, the United States supported the independence of former European colonies. The Korean War and the Vietnam War were attempts to defend the American vision of international relations. The collapse of the USSR created the prerequisites for the rise of a new world power, communist China. The author of the monograph criticizes Trump’s imperial isolationism. The balance between political realism and liberal values is the key to effective U.S. foreign policy. On the ideological scale between liberal, revisionist, and conservative paradigms of conceptual understanding of the history of U.S. foreign policy, Warren Cohen’s monograph takes a position on the left of the liberal flank with its anti-colonial discourse, criticism of interventionism, hopes for a balance between realism and idealism.

American approaches to the post-crisis world order

The article attempts to analyze American approaches to building a world order that would meet the interests of Washington in the post-crisis era. According to the current US National Security Strategy (2022), the modern world order is characterized by a sharp escalation of contradictions between the US and countries such as Russia, China and Iran, while each of these centers of power has its own vision of a just international order, which generates the energy of conflict and leads to the use of force below the level of open hostilities. After a brief historical digression about the causes of the current crisis, the author proceeds to the study of the American vision of the international system, then analyzes the strategy by which the United States will seek to ensure a post-crisis settlement on its own terms. The article substantiates the conclusions about the causes of the current crisis; about the US strategy that will allow Washington to solve the tasks facing it at the present stage; about American approaches to the post-crisis world order.

Confederal Union and Empire: Placing the Albany Plan (1754) in Imperial Context

AbstractWhy did British politicians on both sides of the Atlantic propose a confederal rather than incorporating union in 1754? This question has been difficult to answer because most scholars have focused on the Albany Plan of Union outside of its imperial context, seeing in the plan either evidence of nascent American nationalism, a point of divergence between American and British conceptions of empire, or a missed moment to establish parliamentary supremacy over America. I show instead that the British and American plans for confederal union in 1754 formed part of an intensely partisan and pan-imperial debate about the nature of the British imperial constitution. The failure to adopt a confederal imperial constitution in 1754 had more to do with the contingency of the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War than with diverging British and American visions of empire or nascent American nationalism.

Clinical Features Distinguishing Diabetic Retinopathy Severity Using Artificial Intelligence

Background and Hypothesis:1 in 29 American diabetics suffer from diabetic retinopathy (DR), the weakening of blood vessels in the retina. DR goes undetected in nearly 50% of diabetics, allowing DR to steal the vision of many Americans. We hypothesize that increasing the rate and ease of diagnosing DR by introducing artificial intelligence-based methods in primary medical clinics will increase the long-term preservation of ocular health in diabetic patients.
 Project Methods:This retrospective cohort study was conducted under approval from the Institutional Review Board of Indiana University School of Medicine. Images were deidentified and no consent was taken due to the nature of this retrospective study. We categorized 676 patient files based upon HbA1c, severity of non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR), and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). Retinal images were annotated to identify common features of DR: microaneurysms, hemorrhages, cotton wool spots, exudates, and neovascularization. The VGG Image Annotator application used for annotations allowed us to save structure coordinates into a separate database for future training of the artificial intelligence system.
 Results:228 (33.7%) of patients were diagnosed with diabetes, and 143 (62.7%) of those were diagnosed with DR. Two-sample t tests found significant differences between the HbA1c values of all diabetics compared to diabetics without retinopathy (p<0.007) and between all severities of DR versus diabetics without retinopathy (p<0.002). 283 eyes were diagnosed with a form of DR in this study: 37 mild NPDR, 42 moderate NPDR, 56 severe NPDR, and 148 PDR eyes.
 Potential Impact:With the dataset of coordinates and HbA1c values from this experiment, we aim to train an artificial intelligence system to diagnose DR through retinal imaging. The goal of this system is to be conveniently used in primary medical clinics to increase the detection rate of DR to preserve the ocular health of millions of future Americans.

Bootstrap Liberalism: Texas Political Culture in the Age of FDR by Sean P. Cunningham

Reviewed by: Bootstrap Liberalism: Texas Political Culture in the Age of FDR by Sean P. Cunningham Keith Volanto Bootstrap Liberalism: Texas Political Culture in the Age of FDR. By Sean P. Cunningham. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2022. Pp. 328. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) While researching the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) many years ago, I was intrigued by the extent to which so many traditionally conservative Texas politicians enthusiastically supported Franklin Roosevelt and his domestic agenda. One of these representatives, Marvin Jones of Amarillo, defended the plan to use a system of government subsidies to help the nation’s farmers from critics accusing the administration of promoting dangerous collectivism. While he supported individual liberty as much as the next American, Jones said, he believed the times dictated an interventionist approach by the federal government to facilitate what he termed an “ordered liberty.” I was so struck by the phrase that I used it as the title of the dissertation I was then researching. In this fine book on Texas political culture during the Roosevelt years, Sean P. Cunningham cites Jones’s use of the same phrase while describing the support that the New Deal received from Jones and similar fiscally conservative Democrats from the Lone Star State. [End Page 405] Cunningham also covers FDR’s backing from dedicated liberals such as Maury Maverick, Wright Patman, and Lyndon Johnson, as well as the rabid opposition of hard right-wingers such as the Jeffersonian Democrats and Texas Regulars who, while ineffective at the time, set the stage for future anti-liberal activism. The author’s main focus, however, is clearly on those Texas politicians (and voters) who were conservative at heart but threw their support solidly behind the president. Using a chronological approach, Cunningham analyzes the speeches, writings, and correspondence of such political leaders as Jones, James Buchanan, and George Mahon in order to answer the general question of why most of the state’s politicians and voters embraced the interventionist New Deal so strongly, concluding that a combination of strong messaging coupled with pragmatic economic policies ensured FDR’s loyal following in Texas. Pro-New Deal rhetoric frequently called for Democratic unity in the state, along with consistent portrayals of the rival Republican Party as the tool of Wall Street whose irresponsible policies led to the economic ruin of the country. With respect to the unprecedented interventions of the New Deal, such actions were depicted as necessary, commonsense corrections to the mess that the GOP had created to restore the foundations of the American economy and freedom for the “forgotten man” (for Whites primarily, as the New Deal did not challenge the racial status quo in Texas, yet another reason why FDR maintained the level of support that he enjoyed among most White Texas voters.) Cunningham’s title phrase, “bootstrap liberalism,” explains how most Depression-Era Texans reconciled their traditional beliefs with support for the New Deal. While still buying into the virtue of rugged individualism and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, most Texas Democrats nevertheless realized by the early 1930s that they needed government help to set things right from the Depression that had either broken their bootstraps or taken them away entirely. Rather than being revolutionary, the New Deal would restore life following the proper Jeffersonian American vision in which Texans were raised. Such rhetoric resonated strongly with the Texas public (who supported FDR with at least 71 percent of the vote in his four presidential runs) not to mention so many of the state’s politicians who rode Roosevelt’s coattails into office through their unabashed support for him. This book is recommended for anyone interested in Texas New Deal-era political history, serving as a good complement to Norman Brown’s recently published Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys (University of Texas Press, 2019), which covers state-level politics during these same crucial years. [End Page 406] Keith Volanto Collin College Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

Ku Klux Klan Robe and Hood, Circa 1925, and: Clare West Designs, and: Hydra

Ku Klux Klan Robe and Hood, Circa 1925, and: Clare West Designs, and: Hydra Tommye Blount (bio) Keywords poetry, Tommye Blount, Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith The Henry Ford Museum Held behind the dustless glassI turned into it it was hard to breathemy Black face drowned in white sateenthrough the eye holes I stared outback toward what was me a pleading glancethen accusatory because of what wasn’tsaid when the white man his hands hiddenin his pockets without knowing what to saysaid I’ve seen many of these in my lifeand what would you have had me doI could only stand there in my hood and robesmiling not breathing shut upinside the glass he slips outfrees himselffrom my old trappings pastthe hooked metal collar pastthe bear trap pried open and ready moves on [End Page 483] Clare West Designs I was no wizard. There was nothing under the hood. Griffith wanted my visioneven when the page didn’t want to hold the sketched crosses— the unaddressed skeletons leaningover my shoulder, ready to be fitted for posterity this motion picture offers, but there was no picturein my head. Now, Griffith leans forward on the crossed legs of his chair; shouts into the black megaphone for action, the movementof the dolly, a vehicle propelled by an American vision—with its clear division between light and shadow, which means allthe difference for the white caped heroes looking through the white sheets of their scripts for the linesno one in the audience will hear. And here, just over Griffith’s shoulder, with needle and thread in hand,I wait for the call to mend any loose stitches. [End Page 484] Hydra Made of sateen, embroidered in silk. Silk cord and tassels. Price, each $10.00 This robe also furnished in satin at $20.00 [Specify material desired with order] — from Catalogue of Official Robes and Banners Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Garnet like the edges of Bible pages—no, not that dark, think brighter, more sacred, less symbol of hatred, moreof the revered called to repair this land’s flag bothered ragged by thosecured with the devil’s mark, their tongues too arid to speak in tongues, those sunderedfrom our white robed father above, those easily lured by the red cloven-hoofedking. Let us king our heads in hoods as red as battlefield crosses. Raise your torchesto cauterize their flesh coppered in blackness. [End Page 485] Tommye Blount A Cave Canem alum, tommye blount is the author of the chapbook What Are We Not For—published by Bull City Press in 2016. His debut full-length collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue, published by Four Way Books in 2020, was finalist for numerous awards, among them the National Book Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry, and others. Born and raised in Detroit, Tommye now lives in Michigan. Copyright © 2022 The Massachusetts Review, Inc

Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska's New Deal Totem Parks by Emily L. Moore (review)

Reviewed by: Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska's New Deal Totem Parks by Emily L. Moore John R. Legg (bio) Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska's New Deal Totem Parks by Emily L. Moore University of Washington Press, 2019 HOW DID SIX TOTEM POLE PARKS come to be in southeast Alaska during and after the New Deal era? In precise detail, Emily L. Moore's masterfully written study, Proud Raven, Panting Wolf, answers this question. Planned during the years of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and developed between 1938 and 1942, six totem pole parks (also known as "crest poles") were constructed on the traditional homelands of the Tlingit and Haida people, and in many cases, reworked by the very Indigenous people who had previously been barred from practicing these culturally important ceremonies of constructing and carving totem poles. These Indigenous communities held the poles in sacred regard, as Moore describes, as the poles ranged in meaning: some represented mortuary poles and some told "stories of clan history of origins of world phenomena," while others visualized influential people or the public shaming of others in their home community (6). The story of their re-creation during the New Deal era comes from America's quest to build tourism in Alaska and redefine an "American heritage." Overall, Moore's book shows us the binary of American visions of the authentic performance of indigeneity. At the same time, Indigenous people used this moment of negotiation and redevelopment to deploy their sovereignty. Through eight chapters, Moore tells a story ranging from the thought process of engineering these parks to boost American tourism to the lasting legacy the parks have today. Chapter 1, "Archival Claims," demonstrates how non-Native peoples viewed the totem poles as relics of the past even though Tlingit and Haida people actively used the poles to recount clan histories and stories. Chapter 2, "Exacting Copies," shows how the U.S. Forest Service's decision to develop exact replicas of the totem poles clashed with how Indigenous people perceived the process and meaning of their construction. In "French and English Totems," chapter 3, Moore recounts how Linne A. Forrest Sr., the architect of the U.S. Forest Service, imagined the totem parks through the lens of French and English parks; a jarring vision that differed from Indigenous perceptions of their homelands. Chapters 4 and 5 look at specific totem poles and their carvers to explore how Indigenous carving skills challenged federal expectations that the poles look similar. Chapter 5 [End Page 169] offers a unique story of the "Lincoln Pole," a totem pole that visually looks like President Abraham Lincoln but represents the region's first white settler. This book's point could have offered more profound insights into the perception of Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator," which is antithetical to his relationship with Indigenous people. Chapter 6 explores the rise of American tourism in the parks and the presentation of totem poles to the American public. On the flip side of chapter 6's exploration, Moore writes in chapter 7 about Indigenous carvers who sought to make money after the CCC ended the totem pole restoration project. Moore finishes the book with a story of the 1940 Wrangell Potlatch commemorative celebration of the totem park on Shakes Island (in chapter 8) and an epilogue that describes the enduring legacy of these totem pole parks to Tlingit and Haida people today. The narrative arc centers on how Indigenous people perceived, produced, and preserved these totem poles as culturally significant monuments, and in so doing, reinforced their claims of sovereignty and self-determination. As a resource for those interested in Native American and Indigenous studies, Moore's book centers Indigenous voices and perspectives surrounding the totem pole parks. By using their perspective and reading against the grain of colonial-produced documents, Proud Raven, Panting Wolf shows the ways in which Indigenous people actively worked to preserve their cultures and survive colonial expansion onto their lands. In this regard, Moore's book would pair well with two similar works: with Jean Dennison's Colonial Entanglement (2012) to show how deeply entrenched settler colonialism works inside Indigenous communities and with Cathleen Cahill...

Into Russia’s Cauldron: An American Vision, Undone. The Newly Revealed Century-Old Eyewitness Journal of Leighton W. Rogers by Steven Fisher

Into Russia’s Cauldron: An American Vision, Undone. The Newly Revealed Century-Old Eyewitness Journal of Leighton W. Rogers by Steven Fisher

The Godfather and Sicily: Power, Honor, Family, and Evil

The Godfather and Sicily: Power, Honor, Family, and Evil

American Visions of Omnipotence (1945-1965)

The United States of 1945-1965 can truly be considered the omnipotent country, or superpower, having reached unbelievable boostingin every area domestically and abroad. Never were America’s dreams more potent and amusing than at the end of World War II. Thecountry had defeated the despair and poverty of the Great Depression, it had conquered the organized evil of militant fascism. Thedepression taught Americans of that generation resilience and bravery; the war consolidated them in a common purpose. Americansin 1945 stood confident at the top of global power; before them lay more wealth and happiness than any large group had ever dreamtof.Keywords: American dream, isolationism, resilience, consolidation

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution

In the early republic, a potent mix of commercial aspirations and ideological naivete characterized US diplomatic relations with South America. Tyson Reeder's book explores how North American visions of inevitable republicanism and free trade across the Western Hemisphere came to naught in Brazil. Surveying the give-and-take of state and merchant power emanating from North America, Brazil, Portugal, and Britain between 1760 and 1830, Reeder argues that experiences with international trade in the early republic disproved US revolutionary assumptions about the incompatibility of monarchy and commercial freedom.The monograph is divided into four parts. Part 1 establishes the context of trading and state relationships between the British and Portuguese empires in the eighteenth century's latter half. Portugal, Madeira, and Brazil bought North American grain, North Americans consumed Madeira wine, and Brazilian gold powered credit relationships with the British Atlantic and the slave trade from Angola. Unlike the British, who enforced illicit trading prohibitions in the North American colonies (a flash point for eventual revolutionary turmoil), the Portuguese never took a hard line on smuggling and mercantilism within their empire. Portuguese subjects in Brazil rarely perceived unlicensed trade as incompatible with fealty to the monarchy.Part 2 examines how the shifting political terrain of British imperial crisis and the American War of Independence altered trading priorities and commercial relationships. Independence from Britain meant that North Americans no longer enjoyed the trading privileges resulting from long-term British naval protection of the Portuguese. Portuguese bans on direct trade with the nascent United States deepened North American convictions that empires and monarchies could not be trusted trading partners.In part 3, Reeder explores how the hopes of US free traders for open trade with an independent Brazil aligned with neither that colony's late eighteenth-century fate nor US lawmakers' early nineteenth-century commercial policies. Early republic luminaries like Thomas Jefferson thought revolution, independence, and free trade inevitable for Brazil. Meanwhile, the Portuguese feared the US republican example in Brazilian uprisings like the 1789–90 Minas conspiracy. Nevertheless, the Portuguese court's movement to Brazil further liberalized Brazilian trade. As Reeder argues, the United States, not trade liberalization, was the problem for Portugal. Compounding the challenges for US merchants, the 1807 Embargo Act forbade the export of US products until foreign powers ceased interfering with US neutral trade. To North American merchants, this disastrous act “seemed to betray liberal ideologies to garner respect from European powers—a betrayal magnified as the Portuguese monarchy liberalized imperial commerce” (p. 134).Reeder examines the deeper dimensions of this disenchantment in part 4's discussion of the nineteenth century's first decades. Initially, North American observers prefigured rebels against Portuguese control in 1817 Pernambuco as latter-day versions of the 1776 patriots in Boston. North American seafarers accepted privateering commissions from José Gervasio Artigas, caudillo of the disputed Banda Oriental of present-day Uruguay and Brazil, to raid Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the pursuit of the region's independence. To maintain future trading opportunities and good standing in the community of nations, US politicians passed the 1817 Neutrality Act, which denied privateers safe harbor in US ports. Ultimately, Brazil's 1822 transition to an imperial monarchy engendered US prejudices about how Brazil's suspect racial composition made republicanism impossible and new conceptualizations of Brazil as a slaveholding paradise.Reeder offers a compelling investigation of trade mentalities and ideological projection. As Brazil delayed independence and then formed into an independent monarchy that liberalized trade, this unique course of decolonization “exposed the fragility of North Americans' commitment to hemispheric republicanism and its tepid attachment to free trade” (p. 237). Reeder's comparative commercial psychoanalysis illuminates deep connections between Brazil and the early United States that scholars have often overlooked. His research is deeply grounded in archival material from Brazil, Portugal, the United States, and Britain. At times, the book can be a bit repetitive and reductionist in its restatement of the paradoxical relationship between imperialism and free trade. Its single-minded focus on the Luso-Atlantic world also left me wondering about where else US beliefs in republican commercial liberalism were being put to the test. This lack of wider context notwithstanding, the book adds a wonderful case study to works such as Caitlin Fitz's Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions (2016), on the ideological aspirations of US political thought toward Spanish American independence movements, and Eliga Gould's Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (2012), on the US struggle for legitimacy in the nineteenth-century community of nations. It will be an important book for historians of Atlantic commerce and early US–Latin American relations.

Rethinking the Regional Security Complex Theory: A South American view between 2008-2016

With this article, we propose to reformulate the Regional Security Complex Theory, by Buzan and Waever, through a South American vision, with the time frame 2008-2016. To this end, we will analyse South America through Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, and their forms of intra and extra-regional interaction, highlighting the Colombia-United States relations, and the South American Defence Council, of the Union of South American Nations. This article is divided into a first section marked by an understanding of the Regional Complex Theory, in which we present and discuss its theoretical elements and weaknesses, and propose theoretical changes that will guide our analysis. The second section contains information about the South American Complex in the academic view, focusing on the arguments of Buzan and Waever. In the third section, we present the South American Regional Security Complex restructured, as well as the analysis of its dynamics. The central argument of the article is the need to reformulate the Theory in question for a better understanding of the complexities and unique characteristics of South America.

Editor's Column

Editor's Column

Edith Wharton and Genre: Beyond Fiction

Edith Wharton and Genre: Beyond Fiction

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ПРАВОВОГО ТА МІЛІТАРНОГО ВИМІРУ ЗОВНІШНЬОЇ ПОЛІТИКИ США

The role of the United States in the security system of the global international space is difficult to overestimate. At the same time, the question of the degree to which America’s national security strategies are consistent with the requirements of international security is increasingly being questioned. On the one hand, the shift in emphasis to humanitarian values has made it more logical to use modern force to address issues such as the spread of WMD or genocide. On the other hand, the practice of American action in the Middle East and Central Asia has demonstrated the limits of power policy through the use of high technology in the use of traditional structures and strategies. The aim of the article is to analyze the transformational aspect of US security and defense policy, the impact of which becomes more significant than technological innovation. The study, based on the methods of political analysis, identified the main characteristics of American world leadership, which includes military power, economic competitiveness, moral authority, active participation in international political processes on a global scale and efforts to streamline the international system. Conclusions. Responding to change must begin with an analysis of the social foundations of threats and, above all, the role of the social factor in modern wars. In case of unsuccessful application, technological power not only does not solve the problem, but also strengthens its social roots. Such a scenario creates a very dangerous situation for the United States, where counteraction can be crystallized or cover conflict sectors that are unusual for Americans. It is important to keep in mind that today’s security threats extend to specific citizens and communities more than to the state as a whole. That is why the world community’s acceptance of the American vision of international development in areas such as human rights and development is so important to America. While security is based on military capabilities in today’s world, its new forms and configurations require the embodiment of types of forceful intervention that are not always consistent with classical doctrines and strategic approaches.

Gênese das hostilidades entre o Irã e os Estados Unidos.

Este trabalho procura entender o que levou o Irã a passar de um papel de “aliado” ao de um “inimigo” dos Estados Unidos. Busca entender como as hostilidades que passaram a existir somente entre Irã e Estados Unidos foram produzidas como uma “ameaça” para toda “comunidade internacional”. O ponto de ruptura entre estas nações ocorreu, segundo a visão norte-americana, no ano de 1979 com a chamada Revolução Iraniana – e, por conseguinte, com o sequestro da embaixada americana no Irã-, em contrapartida o momento de ruptura desta relação na visão iraniana se deu em 1953 com o Golpe de Estado que depôs o primeiro-ministro Muhammad Mossadeq. Este trabalho tenta desnaturalizar essa imagem “ameaçadora” que o Irã tem na “comunidade internacional”, que, cria as condições de possibilidade para práticas violentas dirigidas a esse Estado. Para isso, será utilizada a teoria pós-colonial, uma vez que os autores pós-coloniais acreditam que a dominação econômica do Ocidente sobre o Oriente, viabilizada principalmente pelo colonialismo, foi capaz de abarcar também a dominação cultural destes povos.

New deals for the past: the Cold War, American archaeology, and UNESCO in Egypt and Syria

ABSTRACT From the 1930s to the late 1970s, American archaeologists pursued a paired agenda of science and salvage such that their focus on logical positivism converged with US foreign policy towards international technical assistance. River basin salvage archaeology, pioneered in the US by the Tennessee Valley Authority and exported to the Middle East in the 1950s, was a prime example of American Cold War techno-politics that accompanied other international aid and technical assistance programmes. Amphitheaters of archaeology along the Nile and Euphrates were fertile testing grounds for the development of what became known as the ‘New Archaeology’, but also new deals, new science, infrastructure, and agriculture within a Cold War setting, so that monumental heritage and dam projects became flashpoints between American visions for the Middle East and attempts by UNESCO to maintain the spirit of internationalism.