Understanding Foreign Policy Commentary

Drawing on original research, this book introduces the concept of the Foreign Policy Commentariat and explains the significance of the foreign policy commentary articulated in the pages of Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs magazines. This commentary, presented as distinct from academic analyses, is conceptualized as a discourse that reproduces certain unproblematized understandings of how foreign policy and international relations function.
Using intersectional gender and postcolonial approaches, the book examines commentary about the Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations. Applying these critical approaches reveals the particular forms of knowledge and relationships of power reproduced through foreign policy commentary. Through challenging supposedly universal foreign policy concepts, these intersecting theories highlight how foreign policy commentary perpetuates a vaguely realist worldview which, we argue, employs theoretical concepts as facts rather than analytical tools.
As its empirical analysis concludes at the end of the Biden administration, the book also documents the seeming retreat of a post-WWII US foreign policy consensus.

List of contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.-Chapter 2: Wild Realism: A Methodological and Conceptual Approach.-Chapter 3: US Foreign Policy Commentary in the Obama Era (2009-2017).-Chapter 4: US Foreign Policy Commentary in the Trump Era (2017-2021).-Chapter 5: US Foreign Policy Commentary in the Biden Era (2021-2024).-Chapter 6: Conclusion

Product details

• Authors: Joe Gazeley, Daniel Mobley
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 16.07.2025
• EAN: 9783031954726
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3195472-6
• No. of pages: 91
• Illustrations: II, 91 p. 3 illus., 2 illus. in color.
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Comparative and international political science; Diplomatie, Politik und Staat, International Relations, foreign policy, Diplomacy, Postcolonial Theory, International Relations Theory, Politics and International Studies, Gender Theory, policymakers, wild realism, intersectional IR approaches, Foreign Policy Commentariat