“Alerting America”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the discursive efforts of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) to reposition the Soviet Union as the nation’s radical Other and, concomitantly, to sustain America’s global preeminence. The concept of securitization from critical security studies is used to examine the temporal resources used to resituate the Soviet Union as America’s radical Other. The analysis examines two aspects of the spatio-temporal dimension of CPD discourse: its projection of alternative futures to create relations of identity and difference and its management of temporal distance to render the Soviet Union as an imminent threat. It also examines the iterative nature of the CPD project by analyzing its antecedent articulation in National Security Council Resolution 68 (NSC 68) and its contemporaneous performance by Ronald Reagan. The chapter shows that the securitization of the Soviet Union drew on rhetorical strategies used to construe an imminent Soviet threat in the 1950s and how Reagan legitimated the re-securitization of the Soviet Union and, thereby, reaffirmed America’s claim on the global future.