Chapter One Outline

The first chapter of my dissertation will focus on U.S. foreign policy Identity. This will be heavily focused on qualitative content analysis of important policy documents and decision making processes. It will also possibly turn into a second shorter chapter on the organizational expansion of the State Department, since this is the personification of U.S. identity abroad through the medium of a government agency. Thus, bureaucratic politics, the organizational model, and process tracing as well as content analysis will aid my search for U.S. foreign policy identity.

This paper has so far served to show why the advent of religious fundamentalism has ushered in a new threat-advisory to the contemporary world order, and each decade that has passed since the Iranian revolution has lead to increased transformation. I propose in my dissertation to focus on a spectrum of the religion-in-IR debate by looking at the way that religion has informed US foreign policymaking since the 1970s, perhaps restricting my analysis to the Middle East if it proves to be a unique region.

In the first chapter, I will look at the way that US legislators have understood American identity as regards foreign policy in the post-Iranian revolution era. I hypothesize that American legislators increasingly view our nation as a religious nation—moreover, a Christian nation. At the very least, more talk of a sovereign God has colored the foreign policy rhetoric since the 1970s and the entrance of political Islam on the world-stage. As it has become increasingly visible, and had more of a voice due to technological advances, global telecommunications and the internet, U.S. identity rhetoric has become increasingly religious. Thus, American identity since the 1970s in foreign policy analysis has become increasingly religiously characterized.

To examine the identity to which the American legislature and related institutions ascribes, one must look closely at the changing foundational documents of contemporary foreign policy such as the Bush Doctrine. Additionally, one must consider the expansion of the U.S. State Department as an organization, focusing on the creation of the Bureau of Religious Freedom. One must also look at the dialog centering on the responsibility of America toward democratic countries with oppressive regimes. These include the Iranian revolution of 1979, when a U.S. backed regime was overthrown for a popular fundamentalist uprising, the election of Hamas into power in the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2004, Egypt in 2011, and rumblings elsewhere. Has the rhetoric of American diplomats and legislators changed? Additionally, is the legislator’s perspective of American foreign policy identity different than the mass public? Than the media and bureaucrats?

If U.S. legislators view American identity in foreign policy matters as part of a broader or religious identity, there are interesting implications about whether or not this religious “othering” is divisive or uniting. For example, there are global faith movements, in which the devout are set opposed to the secular, following the “culture wars” divide rather than an ethnoreligious divide. The “culture wars” divide denotes an arising dichotomy between individuals with an orthodox religious worldview and those with a secular worldview. This has led to movements of orthodox Jews, Muslims and Christians joining together in opposition to unorthodox programs within certain domestic and international issues like family planning programming and funding at home and abroad, among other concerns. This can be witnessed in social issues, but may apply more widely beyond issues of abortion, traditional marriage, and public prayer. I hypothesize also that the changes in foreign policy identity have gone from promoting democracy’s work to promoting God’s work in the eyes of U.S. Congressmen. Since the World Wars, these have been conflated, but in today’s world, the difference between functional, definitional democracy and “good” democracy has begun to emerge causing additional concerns for U.S. policymakers.

One last question within this first inquiry into broader U.S. Foreign Policy identity is whether the U.S. has a regional identity in one part of the globe that differs from another. Is U.S. identity as regards the Middle East a primarily “religious” identity, where religion is the salient matter, whereas U.S. foreign policy identity is a “liberal democratic” identity, such as in transitioning post-soviet regions and in China, Africa, India? What is the difference between these regions that would cause American identity to be segmented?