In times of crisis

Middle East policy between the counterterror state and the marketplace of ideas

Bibliographic Data

ID5682335
AuthorsN Razavi (0000-0003-0334-4610, University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume7
Issue1
Pages1-17
Publication date2019-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Studies on Security (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2162-4887 • E-ISSN: 2162-4909
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/21624887.2018.1500053
OpenAlexW2887580006
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited31

In this article, I examine how the notion of ‘crisis’ has developed as a dominant framework through which the U.S. foreign policy establishment understands and ultimately legitimates security interventions into the Middle East. Specifically, I locate the emergence of this framework in the converging demands of a post-9/11 security state—or what has been called the U.S. ‘counterterror state’ (Masco 2014)—and a growing think tank expert industry in Washington DC positioned to provide ‘outside’ regional analysis and policy recommendations to government officials. Relying on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among foreign policy elites in Washington, I trace how such think tank experts emerged as one of the few ‘credible’ sources of expertise for the U.S. government after other regional scholars and analysts were largely dismissed. I then examine why this crisis framing has become so central to the work of these experts and the market-driven logics and forces that have increasingly implicated the U.S. counterterror state

Economic system · Economics · Foreign policy · Middle East · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Computer Science · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

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