Commissioned Book Review: Jack Holland, Selling War and Peace. Syria and the Anglosphere
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/14789299211030764 |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Author | Ben Wellings |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Review |
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(2) NP25 –NP26
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1030764PSW0010.1177/14789299211030764Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
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Commissioned Book Review
Selling War and Peace. Syria and the
Anglosphere by Jack Holland. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2020. 302 pp. $136.95
(hardback), ISBN 9781108489249
Jack Holland’s persuasive analysis of the
framing of the Syrian Civil War in the
United States, United Kingdom and
Australia has added a novel dimension to
our understanding of the construction and
operation of international relations.
Taking what he calls the ‘old Anglos-
phere’ as a starting point, the book argues
that the course and outcomes of the Syrian
Civil War hinged on the discursive ‘selling’
of the conflict within these three countries.
In sum, ‘the reality of the Syrian Civil War
has been constructed through the rhetoric,
narratives and discourses’ (p. 230).
Few would disagree that the Syrian
Civil War was the main international crisis
of the 2010s. This means that Holland
pitches his analysis on one of the main
areas of enquiry in international relations
in the past decade. Holland provides a
compelling (post)constructivist analysis,
enlivened with a dash of Gramsci, that
seeks out the rhetorical wars of position
and ‘representational force’ (p. 68) in the
struggle for ideational hegemony.
What is novel about Holland’s approach
is the way that the idea of the Anglosphere
is central to the analysis. Holland’s research
challenges us to look beyond the state and
national interests and asks what happens
analytically if we accept the Anglosphere
as a cohesive unit and apply that frame to
the construction of the Syrian conflict?
But what is the Anglosphere? Does it
exist in any meaningful way outside the
opinion pages of The Spectator and the
transatlantic think tank milieu? The
Anglosphere is usually described as
comprising five ‘core’ English-speaking
states. Its institutional expression is the
Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance,
but in its recent articulations, it is more an
ideological disposition focused on a
defence of the liberal, rule-based interna-
tional order as understood on the right of
politics in English-speaking democracies.
Holland rightly points out that despite
the emphasis on liberal values in Anglo-
sphere discourse, war is central to the dis-
cursive construction of what he argues has
been the world’s most successful military
alliance. Holland’s research therefore
underscores the neglected yet important
role of the Anglosphere and its forebears in
creating the contemporary world order. For
Holland, the Anglosphere ‘was and remains
far more than an alliance: it is a security
community bound by a shared identity
forged through racialized conflicts and
their subsequent retelling in national
mythology’ (p. 60).
Although the emphasis on warfare
might need to be softened with a consid-
eration of (free) trade, Holland makes his
argument about the bellicosity of the
Anglosphere well. In his view, what
makes the Anglosphere unique is its pro-
pensity to lead military operations and
the global ramifications of such actions,
now and in the past (p. 72). It is impor-
tant to make three points about the
English-speaking countries’ military vic-
tories of the twentieth century (and
before): they are naturalised and taken
for granted; they are of global signifi-
cance in shaping the post-War interna-
tional order; and they are co-constitutive
of the Anglosphere and play a mutually
reinforcing part in this coalition’s ‘thirst
for battle’ (p. 72).
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