Fear, identity and security in post-9/11 American foreign policy

芝加哥全球事务委员会2016年8月的一项民意调查发现，42%的美国人认为他们的国家比9/11袭击前更不安全。恐惧和安全在美国外交政策中是当代最重要的问题，但恐惧的作用尚未得到系统的探讨。“9·11”恐怖袭击和特朗普的选举成功，带来了一个动荡和不确定的时代；其政治和军事后果影响到全球各个角落。学者们探讨了乔治•W•布什（George W Bush）在后9/11时代的言论是如何创造并延续了一种围绕恐怖主义的恐惧文化的。动员恐惧也是特朗普排外和煽动性移民政策的核心：对暴力的集体恐惧和美国身份的衰落是“让美国再次伟大”的核心原则。恐怖主义和移民之间的交集围绕着恐惧与身份之间不可分割的关系；尤其是“他人”（恐怖分子和移民）是如何与美国人的“自我”相对立的。“这项研究的目的是评估恐惧的话语是如何被乔治·W·布什和特朗普政府唤起和引用的，以及这些话语如何被用来证明对恐怖主义和移民的证券化反应是合理的。”在此过程中，我将确定集体恐惧在9/11后美国国家认同中的作用方式，并探讨这是如何基于“自我/他者”二元论的。最近，国际关系学者呼吁在分析世界政治时更系统地融入情感。911事件给人们带来的强烈情绪冲击，与随后美国领导的对阿富汗和伊拉克的入侵之间的联系是显而易见的，但缺乏理论依据。后9/11话语的文本解构求助于恐惧、仇恨、仇恨和邪恶的概念，但从本体论上讲，这些概念既没有被捕获，也没有被审问。这一繁盛的文献恰逢人们呼吁在安全研究中建立更广泛、更具实验性的议程，而本研究将为此做出贡献。情感和证券化之间的理论关系为IR学科提供了一个创新而丰富的研究议程：通过赋予情感在证券化中的本体论力量，我将为IR研究开辟一条新的途径，寻求认识情感（尤其是恐惧）对威胁和身份建构的中心地位。

A poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in August 2016 found that 42% of Americans felt that their country is less safe than it was before the 9/11 attacks. Fear and security in US foreign policy is of fundamental contemporary concern, yet the role of fear has not been systematically interrogated. The 9/11 attacks and Trump's electoral success have given rise to an era of volatility and uncertainty; the political and military consequences of which reach all corners of the globe. Scholars have explored how George W Bush's post-9/11 discourse created and perpetuated a culture of fear around terrorism. Mobilising fear has also been central to Trump's exclusionary and inflammatory immigration policy: the collective fear of violence and a decay of American identity are central tenets of "making America great again." The intersection between terrorism and migration revolves around the inextricable relationship between fear and identity; particularly how 'others' (terrorists and migrants) are presented in opposition to an American 'self.'The aim of this research is to assess how discourses of fear are evoked and invoked by the George W Bush and Trump administrations, and how these are used to justify securitised responses to terrorism and migration. In doing so, I will identify ways in which collective fear plays in to post-9/11 US national identity, and explore how this is predicated upon 'self/other' binaries. Recently, IR scholars have called for a more systematic engagement with emotion in the analysis of world politics. The link between the highly emotional impact of 9/11 and the subsequent US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq is clear, but undertheorised. Textual deconstruction of post-9/11 discourse make recourse to notions of fear, hatred, emnity and evil, yet ontologically these concepts are neither captured nor interrogated. This flourishing body of literature has coincided with calls for a wider and more experimental agenda for security studies, to which this research will contribute. The theoretical affinity between emotion and securitisation offers an innovative and rich research agenda within the IR discipline: by giving emotions ontological power within securitisation, I will contribute to a fresh avenue of research in IR which seeks to recognise the centrality of emotion, particularly fear, to threat and identity construction.