Subjects of Security ─ Domestic Effects of Foreign Policy in the War on Terror

Why has the war on terror been so pervasive in Western democracies? How is it that the war on terror became such a potent organising principle after September 11, 2001? The answers to these questions go beyond the nature of 9/11 as an event and the subsequent counter-terrorism responses. A vital part of the answer is the embedding of norms and stereotypes of foreign policy in everyday practices of security and social regulation. Mass media communication and popular culture representations of 9/11 have given rise to the social redeployment of foreign policy against domestic identities that are deemed a threat to Western nations.

This book argues that the war on terror is a paradigmatic foreign policy that has had profound effects on domestic social order. Cameron develops an original framework that inverts the traditional analysis of foreign policy in order to interpret its impact on domestic subject formation. Foreign policy facilitates the regulation of domestic populations by linking individual and group identity to issues of national security. Since September 11, 2001 there has been a wholesale reorganisation of foreign policy priorities, resulting in the valorisation of certain social stereotypes and the criminalisation of others.

Robin Cameron is Program Manager of Human Security Research and a Research Fellow at the Global Cities Institute, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. He has previously held teaching positions at the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, The University of Queensland, Latrobe University and Deakin University.