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This article seeks to explain both the continuity and the changes in US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War by adopting a critical political economy approach that focuses on the social origins of grand strategy-making. Systematically seeking to link agency and structure, we analyse how grand strategy-makers operate within given social contexts, which we define in terms of, on the one hand, elite networks within which these actors are embedded, and, on the other hand, the international structural context in which the US is positioned. After reviewing the grand strategies as pursued by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, and relating them to the structural context in which they evolved, we proceed by offering a Social Network Analysis in which we compare the networks of key officials of the three administrations in terms of: (1) their corporate affiliations, and (2) their affiliations to so-called policy-planning institutions. On this basis we argue that the continuities of post-Cold War US grand strategy — which we interpret as reproducing America’s long-standing ‘Open Door’ imperialism — can be explained in terms of the continuing dominance of the most transnationally oriented sections of US capital. Second, we show that, this continuity notwithstanding, there is significant variation in terms of the means by which this grand strategy is reproduced, and argue that we must explain these variations not only in terms of the continuously changing global context, but also as related to some significant differences in affiliation with the policy-planning network. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how the foundations of the ‘rogue states’ security narrative in the United States developed prior to the declaration of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘Global War on Terror’ and President Bush’s representation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’. The article argues that the puzzle of how US post-Cold War foreign and defence policy came to be focused on ‘irrational’ — but militarily inferior — adversaries can be understood through analysing how actors within the US defence community discursively constructed discrete international crises as the trigger for a major shift in US threat scenarios. This is developed through an examination of two crucial episodes in the construction of post-Cold War US national security interests: the crisis in the Persian Gulf in 1990–1 and the North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993–4. The article suggests the importance of historicizing contests over the interpretation of international crises in order to both better understand the process through which a country’s national security interests are defined and to gain greater analytical purchase on how security narratives are reconstructed during processes of systemic change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The UN has been accused of hypocrisy — failing to act in accordance with the ideals it espouses — in post-Cold War peacekeeping missions. This article argues that such inconsistency can arise from ‘organized hypocrisy’, a phenomenon identified by organization theorists in which organizations respond to conflicting pressures in external environments through contradictory actions and statements. Organized hypocrisy may have both positive and negative effects on peacekeeping. On the one hand, it may produce or exacerbate gaps between commitments and resources, undermine reforms if they are decoupled from practice, and impede efforts to mitigate harmful peacekeeping externalities. On the other hand, organized hypocrisy may enable the UN, or regional organizations, to manage irreconcilable pressures that might otherwise render the organization incapable of effective action and threaten its survival. This article explains and develops the concept of organized hypocrisy, and apples it to post-Cold War peace operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]