Contested intervention and the reinvention of instability: the phantasms of Vietnam and Foreign Policy Magazine

• Grant number: 12/24961-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2013
• End date: April 30, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Rossana Rocha Reis
• Grantee: Natália Nóbrega de Mello
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 15/02438-9 - The break-up of the American consensus and the Foreign Policy Magazine, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

More than once in the last fifty years, the debate about intervention in decaying states, or to use the more recent term, failed states, gained the limelight in political and intellectual circles. The subject of this research emerged based on the contrast between two moments in this discussion. On the one hand, we have the journal Foreign Policy lending great importance to the issue of instability in the poor countries, combined with a denial that a United States intervention was the principal means of confronting these problems. On the other hand, in the early years of the post-Cold War period, instability again became one of the main issues on the agenda and interventionist practices were increasingly propagated. The objective of this study is to map out - based on the journal Foreign Policy - the continuities and discontinuities of the discussion on intervention and the decay or failure of the state in the interim between these two periods. This starts with the hypothesis that the continuities and discontinuities in reflections on these issues can only be understood by means of apprehending the context and the political and academic debates in which those transformations take place. The methodological emphasis is the study of ideas as categories that interpret the social experience, and doing so, guide political actions. Based on other studies of the debate over ideas in the United States in the post-Viet Nam War era, the intent is to comprehend the specificity of the interpretations and proposals for intervention developed in Foreign Policy.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

NATÁLIA NÓBREGA DE MELLO. As Raízes de uma Agenda de Transformação Conservadora: Brzezinski e Huntington nos Anos 1960. Dados, v. 65, n. 1, 2021-12-20. (15/02438-9, 12/24961-7)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

MELLO, Natália Nóbrega de. The Intellectuals Leave the War: the Vietnam intervention, Foreign Policy Magazine and the political-intellectual construction of new paradigms and strategies. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.