American identity

The book questions conventional wisdom about national identity.

FOREIGN policy is intimately linked to the countrys political culture, ours included, with its distinctive brand of self-righteousness. This book is about the cultural production of national identity and its relation to U.S. foreign policy. I argue that national identity is both culturally constructed and hegemonic. I argue, moreover, that national identity drives U.S. foreign policy and reinforces domestic hierarchies.

Foreign policy flows from cultural hegemony affirming America as a manly, racially superior, and providentially destined beacon of liberty, a country which possesses special right to exert power in the world.

Hegemonic national identity drives a continuous militant foreign policy including the regular resort to war a majority, or at least a critical mass, of Americans have granted spontaneous consent to foreign policy militancy over the sweep of U.S. history. While specific foreign policies often provoke criticism, to be sure, national identity contains such criticism within secure cultural boundaries.

This is a reflective work the kind of which never appears in India. Hixson is aware that the product of his labours will receive a stereotyped label, radical or revisionists, because it questions conventional wisdom about national identity and foreign policy.

The scholars Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease note in Cultures of U.S. Imperialism (page 11) that the study of American culture has traditionally been cut off from the study of foreign relations.

Unfortunately, archival disclosures, while correcting some notions about specific policies, deflected attention from analysis of foreign policy rooted in domestic cultural identity.

This book should prod introspection in India. Jawaharlal Nehrus yearning for great power status got obscured in myths about his appeasement, though he was a unilateralist. This has bred a political clime in which conciliation has become a dirty word.

The BJP gave it a communal nuance and yet held itself out as a conciliator whose patriotism cannot be impugned, while it impugned the patriotism of others who favoured conciliation. L.K. Advani said as much in 2004 Hindus will accept only the BJP as a reliable custodian of the national interest. We cannot hope for a sound foreign policy unless we discard the excesses of our political culture. In such an exercise this work will be indispensable.

Critiques of American mythology remind us of our own myths. U.S. foreign policy bolstered by a usable past, encompasses a vast realm of representation and linguistic discourse that has served to create, affirm, and maintain cultural hegemony. Masses of citizens consciously consent to the Myth of America identity as they repeatedly engage in such rituals as pledging allegiance to the flag, singing the national anthem and God Bless America and celebrating Memorial Day, Independence Day and Thanksgiving . Patriotic representation and marginalisation of dissent ensure maintenance of a hegemonic, usable past rooted in national mythology. Myths are stories with high moral purpose pointing to some transcendent destiny. As the public internalises national mythology conveyed through representation, culturally constructed narratives assume an aura of truth.

The thesis is based on a survey of U.S. policies since the Union was formed. Sanctioning of Indian conquest and slavery underscored that racialised violence remained at the core of American identity.

9/11 fortified old myths and created new ones good Muslim, bad Muslim. Two Muslim states have been ruined, Afghanistan and Iraq. The end of U.S. intervention in the region is not in sight.

The connection between war and corporate profits well established since the Great War and the subject of the Nye Committee investigation became especially transparent during the war on terror. Access to oil reserves allowed for future profits for multinational oil companies while at the same time fending off the long-deferred call for a viable federal energy policy. By fighting a global war on terror, the nation ensured that corporate suppliers of military provisions, hardware and infrastructure profited handsomely from the conflict.

Although corporate hegemony and elite profiteering comprised a critical element of national identity, they were not, as many suspect, the tail that wagged the dog. Americans did not rally for war behind the oil companies or corporate profits but rather behind the flag and the broadly internalised notion that America had the prerogative, indeed the mission, to lead the world.

This is the America we have to reckon with. Indians who gloss over its excesses do grave disservice.