Relational Constructivism and 9.11

After reading Jackson’s Relational Constructivism: A War of Words, I thought about using relational constructivism to approach the actions taken by the U.S. government following September 11, 2001. This theory emphasizes the activities devoted to legitimizing actions; the actors give public reasons for their course of action, actors criticize all other options, and also place blame and responsibility on those with opposing views.

In hindsight, it is easy to apply this theory to the actions undertaken by the Bush administration in the post-9/11 world. Bush’s team gave reasons for attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan- they allowed a terrorist regime to hide in the mountains and prepare their next unprovoked attack against “Western” nations. The administration stressed that this military action was not an attack against Muslims but on Islamic Extremists who sought to invoke terror on the free world. News media became a pulpit; it was extensively used to convey the necessity of action. They garnered international support in order to demonstrate the international community’s support against terrorism . The administration criticized other options- if you did not support the war effort in Afghanistan, you were viewed as unpatriotic and weak for not wanting to stop extremism. Blame was placed on other regimes; it did not matter that U.S. intelligence, the FAA, the Clinton Administration, the military etc. had failed to protect American lives by preventing the attack.

Although I do not believe this theory has all the answers, I do believe that relational constructivism sheds an interesting light on IR theory. I believe that the legitimacy aspect of this perspective does play a large role in state actions.