At this point it is worth noting that centralising discourse to foreign policy analysis is not to deny the existence of an external world, reduce reality to the domain of language or dismiss the importance of material properties. It is to say that the material world exists within, and as a function of, discourse, since this is our primary means of making sense of it. The meanings we draw from actors are filtered through lenses coloured by the biases, expectations and experiences identities bring. Contemporary China is more physically able than before to exert harm. However the China ‘threat’ to US security is traced as clearly to the fears and sensitivities of American identity as to Beijing’s physical attributes. The US rebalance to the Asia Pacific, like the world around it, does not exist outside of discourse but is constituted by it. Rituals of discursive power still operate today, as evidenced by tracing the rebalance not to the beginnings of a realpolitik saga when the US physically established itself across the region, but through the constitution of knowledges of foreign Others and the ontological security-seeking practices of the American self. At the centre of these practices remain the (subjectively defined) values of democracy, freedom and liberty, and their securitisation for national survival. To demonstrate these assertions, this conceptual framework provides escape from the kinds of problems highlighted in the introduction which emanate from a traditional faith in the explanatory value of shifts in material power in a seemingly self-evident world. It presents the opportunity instead to explore the geopolitical claims to power which continue to frame and regulate the potentialities of policy. As Ó Tuathail explains, the act of geo-graphing defined the colonial period, but “the struggle between centralizing states and authoritative centers, on the one hand, and rebellious margins and dissident cultures, on the other hand, is still with us”.46 The contemporary discursive logic of these claims to power is now examined through a systemic analysis of US government statements on the rebalance, to address the key silences of the literature identified at the outset.
centralising discourse to foreign policy analysis is not to deny the existence of an external world, reduce reality to the domain of language or dismiss the importance of material properties. the material world exists within, and as a function of, discourse, since this is our primary means of making sense of it. The meanings we draw from actors are filtered through lenses coloured by the biases, expectations and experiences identities bring. The US rebalance to the Asia Pacific, like the world around it, does not exist outside of discourse but is constituted by it. this conceptual framework provides escape from the kinds of problems which emanate from a traditional faith in the explanatory value of shifts in material power in a seemingly self-evident world. It presents the opportunity instead to explore the geopolitical claims to power which continue to frame and regulate the potentialities of policy. The contemporary discursive logic of these claims to power is now examined through a systemic analysis of US government statements on the rebalance,