New Security Threats in the Era of Globalization

The article argues that external security threats are domestically produced through the dialectic process of contestation and legitimization of the domestic political order within nation states. This article suggests that in order to explain why the U.S. has defined ‘rogue states’ as the preeminent security threat after the end of the Cold War we need to look at the content the United States’ national identity. National identity provides the security lenses through which the country identifies potential friends and enemies abroad. It is further argued that the best way to capture the meaning of this national identity, which is not static, is to look at the constitution of the American liberal subject. The article shows that it is the way the American liberal subject has been constituted since the end of the Cold War that made it possible for rogue states to emerge as the ultimate security threat to the U.S.