Utopianism and just war: The invasion of Iraq in 2003
This article examines one of the major foreign policy disasters of recent times: the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It explores American policy in terms of the utopian attempt to create a perfect society in Iraq based on the American model. It will locate origins for American policy in Thomas Mo...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2018 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid |
| Repositorio: | Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/682782 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10486/682782 https://dx.doi.org/10.15366/ldc2018.10.16.012 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Iraq War Neoconservatism Utopia American Foreign Policy Neoliberalism Historia |
| Sumario: | This article examines one of the major foreign policy disasters of recent times: the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It explores American policy in terms of the utopian attempt to create a perfect society in Iraq based on the American model. It will locate origins for American policy in Thomas More’s text and argue that, 500 years after the original publication, utopianism plays a vital role in global politics. American neoconservatism originates in two waves of reaction against the authoritarian utopianism of the revolutionary left, the first one in the 1930s and the second one –that founded neoconservatism proper – in the 1960s. Turning to standard American imagery, the neoconservatives concluded that moral renewal was the only way to return to the utopian vision of America’s founding fathers. It was thought that moral renewal within the USA could be encouraged by a strong foreign policy. The paper concludes is that utopias cannot be established through external force |
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