Thinking Critically About Security Studies

The Geopolitics of American Insecurity: Terror, Power, and Foreign Policy is the inaugural volume in the New Security Studies series sponsored by PRIO and edited by J. Peter Burgess. The series promises state-of-the-art theoretical and empirical work that addresses the “new challenges to security scholarship.” The first volume in the series gathers together 11 essays, which are introduced by the book's editors, François Debrix and Mark J. Lacy. In their introduction, the editors claim that the essays “all seek to provide warnings about the future of US foreign policy” (p. 8). However, the book is not a work of foreign policy analysis. Rather, the chapters are written by an eclectic and interdisciplinary group of critical theorists who seek to contribute to security studies. Interestingly, only two of the 13 contributors are women scholars. The unifying theme is a critique of US foreign policy, specifically (but not exclusively) directed at the George W. Bush administration. This critique largely takes shape through the conviction that government (with the aid of business and media) manipulates citizens into submission.