Gender Anxiety and Imperialism

I've tried in the past to draw attention to the substantial continuities between the "neoconservative" foreign policy of George W. Bush and the classical imperialism of the late-19th and early twentieth centuries. "D" at Lawyers, Guns, and Money notes some linkages in terms of the rhetoric of gender anxiety as a motivating factor in foreign policy adventurism. And I think there's something to do. This sort of consideration doesn't drive strategic thinking, but it does help create a mentality wherein the destructiveness of war counts as a benefit rather than a cost of a war policy (see also "suck on this"). That skewed approach to accounting obviously sends the whole debate off-kilter in very bad ways.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/11/gender-anxiety-and-imperialism/46817/