Description
In May 2018, then U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross made what was perceived by many as a revolutionary statement in American politics. ‘Economic security’, he noted, ‘is military security. And without economic security, you can't have military security.’ While the entwining of economic and security concerns has enjoyed significant popularity in contemporary U.S. political discourse, with tropes on trade ‘wars’, ‘winning’ the future, or ‘beating’ rival states, linking the two issue areas is not a new phenomenon in U.S. politics. This paper shows that over the last century four main strands of strategic narratives on the economy-security nexus have emerged to express entanglement of economic issues with security concerns, and that these are intimately linked to American exceptionalism. As the paper argues, the discursive linkage of economy and security goes beyond stories solely centered on the physical safety of referent objects and taps into everyday ontological perceptions of the American Dream. It thereby makes the case for greater engagement in the study of International Relations with the economy-security nexus, defined as something that exists through interpretation and representation in the everyday while moving away from statism, survival, and rational action.
Keywords: economic security; political narratives; United States; ontological security.
