'Once upon a time …' fiascos as narratives in foreign policy

Despite the agreement among many scholars that fiascos in foreign policy are not objectively observable facts but that they lie in the eye of the beholder or in other words are discursively constructed, there is very little use of discourse analytical methods when investigating such “fiascos”. This contribution therefore illustrates a method of narrative analysis and demonstrations how foreign policy fiascos are discursively constructed in the media. Based on insights from Literary Studies and Narratology it shows that stories about Mistakes consist of three fundamental elements: the setting of the story which guides appropriate behavior, the characterization of the actors involved as well as the emplotment of the event as a “fiasco” and the attribution of cause and blame.