Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The Seventh Global Conference of WISC: International Relations in a World of Flux: Understanding Continuity, Change and Contestation, Warszawa, Polonya, 24 - 27 Temmuz 2024
An Unconventional Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy Discourses:
The Constitution of American Self in Relation to Venezuelan Others (2001-2019)
This study focuses on the construction of U.S. foreign policy towards Venezuela after the elections of leftist presidents in Venezuela, Hugo Chávez in 1998 and Nicolás Maduro in 2013. It analyzes the official discourses (statements, speeches, interviews, memoirs) of U.S. Presidents like George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, and Donald J. Trump and their foreign policymakers concerning Venezuela to elaborate the three key ‘representations of identity’ within these texts (2008, 2015, and 2019). This study is not about U.S. foreign policy actions toward Venezuela. On the contrary, this study's main objective is the constitution of a particular reality through foreign relations, discourses of danger, and identity formation through difference. Therefore, the constitution of the Chávez and Maduro administrations as dangerous others by the U.S. foreign policy discourses was necessary to reproduce the American identity. Linking danger to American identity has been a pivotal part of its constitution since portraying danger through foreign policy helps secure its national identity's limits. Within this framework, it is possible to view the constitution of the Chávez and Maduro administrations as dangerous Others in a new light, as another instance of the continuous production and reproduction of American identity through foreign policy actions rather than solely as a crisis caused by external factors. Furthermore, in order to establish American identity, it was crucial for exclusionary practices to convincingly connect dissenting elements to a secure identity on the "inside" by employing a narrative of danger, where the identified threats were attributed to the "outside".