Meditations on the abyss: American security, the global “war on terror,” and the rise of ISIS

American foreign policy has lacked a coherent strategic framework since the Cold War ended. This lack of vision is confirmed by the regional chaos that continues to plague the Middle East fifteen years after a bid to assert American hegemony in the Middle East failed in Iraq. This study contests reductionist interpretations of global insecurity in favor of what can best be understood as an ideological framework for understanding modern insecurity. It thus provides an immanent critique of American security thinking while offering suggestions for a soluble link between the theory and practice of modern security in an age mired by geostrategic challenges to state and regional powers and fractured international institutions and alliances. A critical historical and political approach is taken to determine the preconditions for today’s security failures. Unencumbered by cold war constraints from the Soviet Union, the US took on numerous unilateral and multilateral interventions throughout the world in the nineties and, in so doing, not only created new enemies but also set the preconditions for how America would respond when transnational terrorism touched her shores on 9/11. Operating under what I term “reified realism,” whereby power is exercised in the breach, American security practices have tended to be counterproductive: producing further insecurity through the original act of securitization—or what I deem an “in/security matrix.” This dynamic relationship becomes apparent from the standpoint of the “war on terror” presidents’ practices. Be it the unilateral preemption of Bush’s neo-conservatives or the multilateral engagement of Obama’s neo-liberals, these foreign policy models are ultimately distinguished by the means they employ to arrive at shared ends. In each instance, however, a similar phenomenon drives American security practices in this epoch of terror. “Post strategic warfare,” as I determine it, whereby ethically spurious isolated tactics replace and masquerade as strategy to fight a transnational enemy, has intensified attempts to quell security failures. Short-term exigency, which is often readily associated with security, is challenged not only in terms of ethics but also in terms of strategic utility and long-term stability—the cornerstone of the realist enterprise since its inception. Recovering realism from its usurpation will, as I argue, go a long way in reorienting American security practices today while also anticipating future ones as well. Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Edwin Daniel Jaco