US Rhetoric Research Articles

The European Union's Place in United States–China Strategic Competition: How Role Dynamics Drive Brussels Towards Washington

AbstractAgainst the backdrop of intensifying United States–China strategic competition, the European Union (EU) has recently changed course and moved closer to mirroring US rhetoric and action on China. Why has this happened, and how can it be best explained? In this article, it is argued that current role dynamics between the EU and the two rival great powers can help us understand the growing, albeit not full, EU–United States alignment on China. Role theory assumes that co‐operation between actors intensifies when their roles become more compatible. Accordingly, it is shown that the EU has recently adjusted its role to be more closely aligned with the United States' position. That is to say, the EU has reshaped its own role conception, whilst the bloc has likewise become more open to meeting US role expectations after EU–United States role‐playing turned positive once again under President Joe Biden.

UNVEILING DUALITIES: US RHETORIC AND REALITY IN GLOBAL NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION UNDER TRUMP AND BIDEN ADMINISTRATIONS

The image the United States has always projected of itself in the international community is that of a state that is nuclear responsible and bears the responsibility to keep nuclear proliferation in check. To this effect, it uses sanctions, international pressure, and harsh language with states it deems to be in violation of the obligations of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. On the other hand, however, there is doubt about the United States' own dedication to the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. This paper is an attempt to examine the role the US has played vis-à-vis nuclear proliferation. It deals with the question: what role US has played in promoting nuclear non-proliferation and what its probable effects are on the international nuclear non-proliferation landscape. It argues that the US has not only engaged in excessive nuclear proliferation since 1945 but has also damaged the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, thereby reduced restraints, and set dangerous precedence for other states. The paper recommends that US may lead the world towards nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament by example rather than unfair coercion. Bibliography Entry Rashid, Asma and Aiman Saif Ullah. 2023. "Unveiling Dualities: US Rhetoric and Realty in Global Nuclear Non-Proliferation under Trump and Biden Administrations." Margalla Papers 27 (2): 60-70.

Immigration Policing as Holey War: Rings of Connection, Deadly Gaps, and State Loopholes in the Struggle for Asylum

AbstractThis article uses the concept of holes rather than borders to articulate the space that US immigration policing engenders. In contradistinction to borders—lines or zones that can be mapped, walled, or policed to delimit sovereign bodies—holes are strategic exceptions to mappable sovereignties. Rather than fixed, mappable boundaries, holes are mutable and in flux, thriving on the shifting potential to appear or disappear and to make people disappear as legal subjects. If US immigration policing operates, to a large extent, through holes distributed across borders and long‐distance spaces, then any mapping of this power that centers national borders or bounded nation‐states alone is insufficient. I show how the policing of Venezuelan migration centers the distribution of holes from South and Central America to spaces within the US that are far from “the border.” Against a discursive focus on “the border” and the border wall in US rhetoric on immigration, I argue that the actual practices of impeding flows of immigration or channeling them through spaces of death have increasingly operated through holey space. If holy space has been defined in studies of religion as a sacred space set apart from mundane rules, then the hol(e)y spaces of immigration are set apart from fixed conceptions of “the rule of law.” A focus on holes shows how the legal order of immigration depends more on exceptions, personalized or arbitrary power, and the instability of interim extra‐legal executive orders than a dichotomy of legal/illegal. Despite their necropolitical power, holes do not create an entirely striated, hierarchical space. Holes are also rings of connection and passageways, highlighting the creativity and agency of asylum seekers in forging dignity under extremely difficult conditions.

An anticolonial future: reassembling the way we do rhetoric

ABSTRACT This essay is organized around four claims, which when taken together, demonstrate that it is time for the field of Communication Rhetoric in the United States to rethink the way it does rhetoric: (1) US American rhetoric is the way settler colonialism organizes, (2) assemblage theory can frame US rhetoric as an organizing logic of Settler Colonialism, (3) anti-colonial social movement knowledge production is akin to theory, and (4) rhetoric must find a better method to engage with these anti-colonial movements. I end the essay with a challenge to rhetorical scholars to learn, rather than try to teach.

Policy Determinants of Inequitable Exposure to the Criminal Legal System and Their Health Consequences Among Young People.

Criminalizing young people, particularly Black- and Brown-identified young people, has increasingly been a feature of US rhetoric, policies, and practices. Thus, the domains in which young people are exposed to the legal system have continued to expand, encompassing their communities, schools, and homes. Importantly, public health researchers have begun exploring links between legal system exposure and health, although this literature is primarily focused at the interpersonal level and assesses associations within a single domain or in adulthood.Using critical race theory and ecosocial theory of disease distribution, we identified potential policy-level determinants of criminalization and briefly summarized the literature on downstream health outcomes among young people. Our analysis suggests that policy decisions may facilitate the targeting of structurally marginalized young people across domains.Future research should (1) position these legislative decisions as primary exposures of interest to understand their association with health among young people and inform institutional-level intervention, (2) measure the totality of exposure to the criminal legal system across domains, and (3) use theory to examine the complex ways racism operates institutionally to shape inequitable distributions of associated health outcomes.

Outer space and neo-colonial injustice

PurposeRecent developments in US rhetoric and policy advocating the militarisation and marketisation of outer space challenge the global commons values and regimes that developed partly in response to decolonisation. These regimes embodied aspirations to post-colonial distributive justice, as well as to international management for peaceful purposes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that global commons values should be defended against these challenges in order to avoid the risk of exporting colonial legacies of injustice into outer space.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is an exercise in normative International Political Theory and so develops normative arguments by drawing on approaches in political theory and international law.FindingsThis paper demonstrates that the commons values endorsed in the aftermath of colonialism retain their relevance in a global politics that remains structured by post-colonial power relations. This paper also demonstrates that these commons values have evolved and found expression in central elements of international law, persisting as resources to be drawn on in normative argument.Originality/valueThis study places recent moves to assert US hegemony in space in the context of persistent post-colonial power relations and develops novel arguments in renewed support of commons values.

Droning Discourse

How is gendered language utilised to position the United States in relation to target states to morally justify Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) strikes? State discourse of the US during the George W. Bush and Barrack Obama administrations projected an image of remotely piloted systems as mechanisms of masculine protection. US officials assert that RPAs not only protected Americans at home, they protected populations vulnerable to terrorist attack abroad. While the RPA itself was coded as masculine, RPA pilots are feminised because they are protected from battle while using the RPA. The RPA takes the position of the ultimate masculine protector and its operators become feminised in US rhetoric. The surveillant assemblage of pilot, RPA, and sensor-analytics systems sustaining the RPA, is examined through a rigorous discourse analysis of state officials’ statements during the Bush and Obama administrations. Statements are taken from a number of reputable publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, CNN, and BCC, among others. Statements are also taken from the report “Living Under Drones,” from the law schools of Stanford and New York University. This research begins to answer the question of how technology is gendered in relation to RPAs and RPA strikes.

Mockingbird, Watchman, and the Adolescent

Mockingbird, Watchman, and the Adolescent Karly Eaton In 2012, bowker Market Research released the results of a two-year study on reading trends in the young adult literature (YAL) market (McLean and Kulo).1 While the number of teen readers of YAL continues to rise, the study did not anticipate the growing number of adult readers (ages eighteen to fifty-four) of YAL. In fact, around seventy-three percent of YAL readers belong to the adult reader category,2 buying YAL for personal enjoyment about seventy-eight to ninety-four percent of the time (McLean and Kulo, slides 36, 37).3 YAL can be defined as literature about, written for, written by, or marketed to adolescent readers.4 Similarly, YAL often incorporates literature of adolescence, or literature that may feature an adolescent protagonist although the work was not originally written as YAL.5 Often, literature for adolescents is marketed to adolescents within libraries or the secondary education classroom, regardless of the author's original intent or the character's age. For example, in March of 2017, The Balance assured readers that "the Young Adult market is thriving" while simultaneously listing Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird as an exemplar of YAL, though historically it is considered southern or American literature. Leslie Fiedler claims that literature about adolescence is fundamental to American literature [End Page 335] more broadly. In fact, Fiedler insists that American literature is marked by male protagonists' "retreat to nature and childhood which makes our literature (and life!) so charmingly and infuriatingly 'boyish'" (xxi).6 Ironically, Lee's 2015 novel Go Set a Watchman prompted critics to turn to questions of adolescence and childhood in To Kill a Mockingbird.7 Until recently, most criticism of Mockingbird involved readings of Lee's work that focus on race and race theory; gender and sexuality; historical authenticity and ideologies; pedagogical implications of the novel; or legal analyses of Atticus Finch, all to the exclusion of childhood or adolescent studies.8 The coalescence of literature of adolescence with YAL is a noteworthy literary development for two reasons: (1) the high adult readership of YAL suggests that adolescence is no longer an easily identifiable category of age, and (2) the blended classification of YAL with literature of adolescence suggests that Mockingbird no longer qualifies as merely southern literature. Instead, Mockingbird helps position adolescence and childhood as the connecting bridge between southern literature and YAL genres. Additionally, reading southern canonical texts, like Mockingbird, in terms of YAL or adolescence(ts) provides a new point of orientation for southern literary studies more broadly.9 Petrone et al. propose using a "Youth Lens" (YL) to interrogate constructions of adolescence(ts) in YAL particularly and in literature generally. The YL is "the idea that adolescence is a construct, that adolescence does not represent a universal experience for all youth, that conceptions of adolescence have material consequences, and that [End Page 336] adolescence often functions metaphorically in ideological ways" (508).10 Using the YL equips readers to witness the ramifications and "material consequences" of assuming an adult-normative perspective about adolescence(ts) in works of YAL or southern literature (509).11 Additionally, traditional discourse has overlooked how the figure of the child "works to establish race as a central shaping element of ostensibly raceless Western ideals" in US rhetoric (Levander 3). The child stabilizes racial hierarchy, defines belonging, and merges the notion of the self with the culture so that the nation appropriates the idea of the child to regulate racialized conceptions of the self and community (4-5). Racism becomes naturalized through the represented child, who "links slavery to black bodies and liberty to white ones in order to found the nation and then reinforce its organizing racial ideals as it eradicates slavery" (33). In discourse theory, James Paul Gee dubs this naturalized representation of ideas, concepts, or images as a "figured world," or internalized cultural model that is deployed to navigate, experience, and order social situations and give meaning to those social interactions (95). For Gee, "figured worlds" help deconstruct, naturalize, and order social situations in ways that work for or against internalized cultural models. Katherine Henninger contends that Mockingbird...

Troubling Nationhood in U.S Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging MayaSocolovsky. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013.

Troubling Nationhood in U.S Latina Literature: Explorations of Place and Belonging Maya Socolovsky. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013.During 1990s and 2000s US Latinas produced a surge of literary narratives that explore intersection of place and identity within reimagined borders. In Troubling Nationhood in U.S. Latina Literature, Maya Socolovsky analyzes texts of six feminist Latina writers, writing from liminal zones, whose narratives act as sites of cultural resistance against xenophobic US rhetoric of nationhood which positions Latinos/as as outsiders. Socolovsky argues that Latino/a literary narratives imagine collective geographical, political, and cultural presence, where Latina America becomes part of, not apart from, political and national identity of United States (3). These texts reconceptualize Latina identity through a rhetoric of belonging-one that challenges hegemonic US national identification which defines porous national and cultural borders between US and Latin America as an insidious threat to US cultural and political identity while it simultaneously ignores West's history of hemispheric transnationalism and Latino/s presence in United States. In her literary and rhetorical analysis, Socolovsky urges textual readings that reveal process whereby geographical landscapes, cultural practices, and narrative spaces all become intersecting aspects of national identification and experience (5).Taking into consideration panethnic commonalities, Socolovsky divides her book in various ways to promote a remapping of Americas: through geopolitical histories of national-origin groups (Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American), geographic regions (Southwest, Midwest, Puerto Rican and Cuban island and mainland experiences), and racial identities (Native American, African, and mestizaje). Rooted in Borderland and Hispanic Studies, Socolovsky's study emphasizes interconnectedness of regional landscape and women's sense of survival and maintains that the literature creates, suggests, or reveals radical social change (6). Through storytelling, writers of US Latina boom expose physical and psychological trauma of 'othering' while asserting their belonging to/in same nation that denies them agency and autonomy.Socolovsky begins with Denise Chavez's portrayal of female body as site of cultural ills in The Last of Menu Girls (1986) and Face of an Angel (1994). In these texts, generations of abuse represent (and are a consequence of) violent national histories in Southwestern region of US. Chavez provides a metaphor for cultural healing in her portrayal of Latinas overcoming familial and institutional cruelty, specifically through writing process, while redefining American to include indigenous identities of Americas. …

Exporting Democracy and Liberating Women: An Examination of a Debilitating Rhetoric

Democracy and freedom are valuable principles and main constituents of the American “way of life” which many countries aspire to. This may be true, but when such a freeing democracy is exported in a standardized western style and imposed on other nations, it becomes oppressive, debilitating, and uninspiring. This paper examines the double standards used in relation to issues of democracy and veiling within US rhetoric and hegemonic discourses. It also highlights what US democracy means to nations like Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iraq. It aims to underline the impact of the rhetoric of freedom and democracy on the Muslim world. This argument has important implications for theory and practice directed at disturbing dominant discourses of democracy and veiling.

Transformational Diplomacy: US Tactics for Change in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2004-2006

Transformational diplomacy aims to alter — in whole or in part — elements of a foreign government’s structure, policies or laws, while traditional methods of diplomacy have more concrete political aims. Transformational diplomacy no longer works merely for the sake of bettering international relations through practical cooperative aims. Although coercion and diplomacy do not appear to be logically related, transformational diplomacy is essentially synonymous with coercive diplomacy. Without coercion, at least to some degree, the policies that aim for transformation would not succeed. The primary goal of transformational diplomacy is the enactment of change in a target country. However, the actual implementation methods may vary considerably, leading to divergent and varying consequences. A transformational strategy may cover an entire spectrum — from methods relating to cultural diplomacy to the violent overthrow of governments. Arguing that US policy towards Iran from 2004-2006 was an example of transformational diplomacy, this article presents an analysis of the general policy formulation that existed behind the US rhetoric during those years — with specific analysis of the role of the US Congress in contrast to the President. This article is based on US analyses, standpoints and perceptions of the Iranian government and political system.

The rise and fall of the NPT: an opportunity for Britain

Long seen as an unexpectedly successful example of international cooperation, the NPT is now like a wisdom tooth that is rotten at its root and the abscess is poisoning the international body politic. The price for agreement to the substance of the treaty was the inclusion of Article 6, which committed the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. With the strategic arms race underway, in 1968 the NWS saw Article 6 as an empty aspiration; 25 years later it had acquired a whole new significance. The first half of the 1990s was a period of constructive optimism as non-signatories hastened to sign the treaty and the non-nuclear weapon states were persuaded to agree to its indefinite extension. The second half brought disillusionment as it became increasingly clear that the NWS had no intention of meeting their Article 6 obligations or the promises made at the five-yearly review conferences (1995, 2000, 2005), and that Washington was set on developing useable nukes for pre-emptive prevention. The bad faith and double standards fuelled wide-spread resentment (particularly in the Non-Aligned Movement) and contributed to the post-9/11 image of the 'The West against the Rest', a corrosive concept that is reinforced by US rhetoric. Rather than 'cooperative security', America is explicitly set on global military supremacy, which will evoke countervailing power and inevitably lead to nuclear arms racing and the renewed danger of inadvertent nuclear war. The likely long- and short-term consequences of the present situation require a fundamental response involving a major policy initiative. Only Britain is in a position to take such an initiative, but it will require us to withdraw from our self-appointed role of 'loyal vassal' to America and to adopt a role that has the potential of being not only more important and influential, but also more appropriate to our history, capabilities and talents.

UK Assessment: War in Iraq: Implications for the UK Economy

The ‘central’ forecasts presented in this report assume that a diplomatic solution is found to the situation in Iraq and so a war is avoided. The Foreign Secretary recently put the odds of such an outcome at 60/40. However, given the build-up of troops in the Middle East and recent hardening of US rhetoric, the probability of a military conflict appears to be increasing. Oxford Economic Forecasting played a key role in the recent Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Conference on the possible economic implications of a war in Iraq, using the OEF Global Macroeconomic Model to develop different scenarios about how any war might proceed and updating our earlier analysis of the possible economic consequences of a war. Much has been made of the possible impact on the US, but little so far of the impact on the UK – the US’s likely ally. The first round effect on the UK could be substantial – nearly as large as on the US. But the UK has extra scope for monetary and fiscal policy loosening, which will act to offset the negative economic impact of any war. And, in spite of the concern over weaker Christmas sales, demand in the UK is currently more buoyant than in most of its peers. So – even in the event of a prolonged and disruptive war – the UK is likely to avoid a severe recession. The same cannot be said for other European economies.