Conspiracy theory and American foreign policy

Tim Aistrope

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781526139382
  9780719099199
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784997816
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Conspiracy theory and American foreign policy examines the relationship between secrecy, power and interpretation around international controversy, where foreign policy orthodoxy comes up hard against alternative interpretations. It does so in the context of US foreign policy during the War on Terror, a conflict that was covert and conspiratorial to its core.

Offering a new dimension to debates on post-truth politics, this book critically examines the 'Arab-Muslim paranoia narrative': the view that Arab-Muslim resentment towards America is motivated to some degree by a paranoid perception of American power in the Middle East. This narrative is traced from its roots in a post-War liberal understanding of populism through to foreign policy debates about the origins of 9/11, to the strategic heart of the Bush Administration's War of Ideas. Balancing conceptual innovation with detailed case analysis, Aistrope provides a window into the ideological commitments of the US War on Terror.

Offering a fascinating insight into conspiracy and paranoia, this book is essential reading for those interested in the relationship between secrecy, power, and contemporary politics.

Part I
Conceptualising conspiracy theory

1
The paranoid style in international politics

WHILE PARANOID politics has received significant attention as a characteristic of American popular culture, only a handful of scholars have examined its international political dimensions. This gap is particularly notable since the paranoid psychology of enemy leaders and the conspiracy mindedness of regional cultures are regular subjects of foreign policy commentary in the American media. In these accounts irrational views feed into political instability and stoke anti-Western sentiment. This excerpt from a New York Times forum about the possibility of democracy in the Middle East gives a sense of the view:

When Americans visit the Middle East, or the broader Islamic world, they are often struck by the vitality of the public interest and discussion about world affairs. Less comfortably, they often find the public to be cynical about Western interests, and quick to believe that shadowy groups control the world: that a cabal of Jews was responsible for 9/11 or that the CIA instigated the Arab Spring for oil access.¹

While Arab-Muslim paranoia gained prominence after 9/11 as an explanation for resentment towards America, it is important to recognise that the identification of the same social-psychological tendencies in other cultures is a recurring theme in the American political imaginary and media landscape. Take, for instance, an account of popular paranoia in Pakistan about bombings that followed the death of Osama bin Laden:

Lawmakers, media pundits, retired generals, and even government officials often hint at suspicions of a ‘foreign hand’ in the violence … Aired on television talk shows and in the newspapers, conspiracy theories are everywhere – underscoring the challenge facing the United States as it seeks to convince Pakistan's overwhelmingly anti-American population that it faces a shared enemy in the Taliban.²

This excerpt fits comfortably within a genre of foreign affairs commentary that situates conspiracy thinking as endemic not just in Pakistan or the Arab-Muslim world, but also in a range of different cultural settings like, for instance, Iran,³ Turkey⁴ and Russia.⁵

This chapter aims to situate the Arab-Muslim paranoia narrative in relation to a common-sense understanding of conspiracy theory pervasive in American culture. A crucial starting point here is Richard Hofstadter's paradigmatic account of ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’, which locates conspiracy theories on the periphery of pluralistic American democracy as the irrational pathology of angry extremists, and contrasts it with a rational political centre where sensible politics occurs. Although Hofstadter wrote this seminal piece in 1964, it is difficult to overestimate its traction and influence on both popular and scholarly perspectives. Indeed, the ‘paranoid style’ is still deployed by political commentators of all stripes to frame, for instance, the 9/11 Truth Movement,⁶ Tea Party Republicans,⁷ resurgent right-wing extremists,⁸ the Occupy Wall Street movement⁹ and the anti-war left.¹⁰ Similarly, in political science Hofstadter has regularly provided the key conceptual materials for considerations of the issue.¹¹

This resonance is in large part due to the fact that Hofstadter's account taps into, and deploys, many of the most common conceptual features of post-war liberal pluralism, the pervasive ideology of America's political class, which abhorred populism and focused on the mediation of competing interests through bargain and compromise.¹² Indeed, it is important to understand that post-war liberalism was involved in the production of a particular political order and the management of dissent in that context. In this same vein, post-war liberals situated America as a moderate democracy – pragmatic, centrist and non-ideological – in contrast to the radical politics sweeping the post-war world. The crucial point here is that the paranoid style can be understood as part of a broader liberal discourse involved in dampening down populism and buttressing the political status quo.

When foreign affairs commentators identify paranoid conspiracy theories in the international context, they regularly locate them not just on the political fringes of liberal democracies, but also on the periphery of international power and legitimacy in a western geopolitical world-view. Paranoia moves to the heart of political life in the mentality of rogue leaders, as well as the everyday political cultures of unstable regions. This reflects the extrapolation of Hofstadter's framework on to the world at large. Like populism on the margins of Western democracy, conspiracy theory is thought to be a potent force on the international periphery from the point of view of these commentators.

This underlying structure, I argue, indicates a powerful dynamic of ideological reproduction embedded in the Arab-Muslim paranoia narrative, which delegitimises Arab-Muslims and affirms a particular Western liberal identity. I show how the paranoid style framework is reinforced by an influential orientalist narrative prominently forwarded by Bernard Lewis and likeminded Arabist scholars, which situates Arab-Muslim culture as fundamentally anti-modernist and points to a culture of bitterness, self-denial and blame as an explanation for resentment towards the West. Like post-war liberal orthodoxy secured by contrast with the irrational views of alienated extremists, here the image of liberal modernity is secured by contrast with the irrational views of backwards Arab-Muslims. The Arab-Muslim paranoia narrative, then, can be understood in terms of a powerful liberal discourse in American political culture, rather than a simple description of the way Arab-Muslim people think about the world.

The chapter begins by examining the intellectual origins and cultural resonance of paranoia in American political culture. It focuses on Hofstadter's paranoid style paradigm, connecting it with a specific historical and intellectual context, then pointing to its ideological function in that setting.¹³ The second section shows how this common-sense account has been extrapolated in interpretations of international politics, emphasising the persistence of a centre/periphery structure. The third section connects the paranoid style paradigm to an orientalist narrative, showing how together they draw out and reinforce negative connotations around populism embedded in the liberal imaginary. The chapter ends by focusing on the way this narrative carries connotations of psychological dysfunction that overlap and work in tandem with the broader theme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Conceptualising conspiracy theory
• Part II Conspiracy discourse in the War on Terror
• Conclusion
• Select Bibliography
• Index