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Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis

(Paperback)


Publishing Details

Full Title:

Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Contributors:

By (Author) Jutta Weldes

ISBN:

9780816631117

Publisher:

University of Minnesota Press

Imprint:

University of Minnesota Press

Publication Date:

1st August 1999

Country:

United States

Classifications

Readership:

Tertiary Education

Fiction/Non-fiction:

Non Fiction

Other Subjects:

International relations

Dewey:

327.7307291

Physical Properties

Physical Format:

Paperback

Number of Pages:

328

Dimensions:

Width 149mm, Height 229mm, Spine 18mm

Description

Not simply an event or merely an incident, the 1962 standoff between the U. S. and the Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba was a crisis, which subsequently has achieved almost mythic significance in the annals of United States foreign policy. Jutta Weldes asks why this occurrence in particular should be cast as a crisis, and how this so significantly affected the national interest. Here, Weldes analyzes the so-called Cuban missile crisis as a means to rethink the idea of national interest, a notion central to both the study and practice of international relations.

Why did the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba constitute a crisis for U.S. state officials and thus a dire threat to U.S. national interests It was, Weldes suggests, more a matter of discursive construction than of objective facts or circumstances. Drawing on social theory and on concepts from cultural studies, she exposes the realities of the crisis as social creations in the service of a particular and precarious U.S. state identity defined within the Cold War U.S. security imaginary.

Constructing National Interests shows how this process allowed for a redefining of the identities, interests, and likely actions of various states, so that it seemed to logically serve the U.S. national interest in removing the missiles from Cuba.

Author Bio

Jutta Weldes is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Kent State University.

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