The changing place of globalism in the American post-Cold War foreign policy debate : a perspective in the neo-Gramscian approach.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism the very paradigm of US foreign policy - globalism - has fallen apart, at the level of intellectual utility (analysing the world adequately) and ideological appeal (at the level of policymakers and the public). This thesis attempts to provide an account of the position of globalism in post-Cold War US foreign policy, at the level of actual policy and policy discourse, as understood and conceptualised from a neo-Gramscian perspective. Adopting the neo-Gramscian approach, we elaborate on such central Gramscian concepts as hegemony, organic intellectuals, historic blocs, etc. We also adapt such concepts as `globalism' and `world order' - which are not Gramscian in origin - to our methodology and produce our own understanding and definition of them, in addition to reinterpreting the history of US foreign policy based on our re- conceptualisation. We do examine the various economic and military policies pursued by America in the new era, but we primarily focus on the legitimating strategies adopted by the government to justify these policies, and the social basis of these legitimising strategies. Of particular concern is the wider foreign policy debate in post-Cold War America, and the differing legitimising strategies that constitute this debate as America's foreign policymakers, their attendant intellectuals, and the various power centres in the country adapt to the new world. All these different strands of analysis are pursued in tandem throughout the thesis, with all these strands pulled together by the end of this thesis.