(Sabre-rattling; 02-02; p.2)

The amount of propagandistic pressure on Iraqi leaders has been raised tremendously: apart from demands to allow western inspectors into the country for arms control, threats to invade the country could be heard.

Threats to use force are not new in this situation. As a matter of fact, British and American fighter-aeroplanes control the northern and southern no-fly zones in Iraq since 1998 and by doing so bombard - if regarded necessary - air defences. What is new, is discussing in public an invasion aiming at overthrowing the ruling Hussein-clan.
Not debating the questions of if and how plans to invade a country are adequate to resolve political problems, one can find some fundamentals about American foreign policy in the Iraq case. Whereas in accordance with the Monroe-doctrine during the Cold War interventions of the USA had been restricted to the American continent nowadays the superpower's area of interest has obviously been enlarged. Pax americana shall or even has to be guaranteed on a world-wide scale in the eyes of its supporters.

 

Different perspectives, new definitions

This shift became most obvious in the debate about the New World Order at the beginning of the nineties as well as in the development of specific terms to denote states with unwanted behaviour (cf. for this: Chauvistré, E.: Das atomare Dilemma, Berlin 2001, pp. 31-41). That way, the traditional category "rest of world" has been subdivided to acknowledge the special relevance of certain states to American foreign policy. (read on here)