Creating insecurity: Realism, constructivism, and United States security policy

This project is intended to bring together a rhetorical form of realism and a political form of constructivism in an effort to better analyze U.S. security concerns. Traditional security studies, espousing realist principles, insist on a military and strategic emphasis. Conversely, studies drawing on a broadly-defined constructivism often eschew state security concerns in favor of an emphasis on culture and identity. This work seeks to employ both schools under an epistemological constructivism that allows realism and political constructivism to be seen as rhetorical tools for influencing the state. The first half of the text investigates previous works in realism and constructivism. This investigation is intended to demonstrate how a rhetorical realism and a political constructivism can be brought together to provide a better understanding of the sources of insecurity. The second half of the text contains applications of this approach to security studies. The first application demonstrates how realism and constructivism might be used to critique the decision to deploy a ballistic missile defense system. It is shown that a BMD system leads to a diminished state of security. The second application demonstrates how realism and constructivism might be used to critique U.S. policy towards Colombia. It is shown that the tactics of the Drug War lead to a diminished state of national security for the United States. Both applications suggest that a more robust understanding of the sources of insecurity that balances the requirements of realism with the cultural insights of constructivism can lead to a state of enhanced national security.