Narrative and the Making of US National Security

Ronald R. Krebs is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Fighting for Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship (2006) and co-editor of In War's Wake: International Conflict and the Fate of Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2011). His articles on a wide range of topics in international relations have appeared in leading scholarly journals, including International Organization, International Security, the European Journal of International Relations, and Security Studies, as well as in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, ForeignPolicy.com, Slate, and the Washington Post.

• 1. Narrating national security; Part I. Crisis, Authority, and Rhetorical Mode: The Fate of Narrative Projects, from the Battle against Isolationism to the War on Terror: 2. Domination and the art of storytelling; 3. Narrative lost: missed and mistaken opportunities; 4. Narrative won: opportunities seized; Part II. Narrative at War: Politics and Rhetorical Strategy in the Military Crucible, from Korea to Iraq: 5. The narrative politics of the battlefield; 6. Tracking the Cold War consensus; 7. Tracing the Cold War consensus; 8. Puzzles of the Cold War, lessons for the War on Terror; 9. Narrative in an age of fracture; Appendices.

'Narrative and the Making of US National Security is an impressive accomplishment. For realists and rationalists, it provides compelling theoretical and empirical evidence for what they have intuitively known, but refused to acknowledge - that language, discourse and rhetoric are more than cheap talk. For constructivists and critical theorists, it provides a careful, systematic roadmap for how to demonstrate the open-ended but structured interplay between language and foreign policy. An original, and exceptionally well-written, book that should be the talk among international relations scholars.' Michael Barnett, George Washington University