Have You Won the War on Terror? Military Videogames and the State of American Exceptionalism
| Author | Nick Robinson |
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829814557557 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2015, Vol. 43(2) 450 –470
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829814557557
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MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies
Have You Won the War
on Terror? Military
Videogames and the
State of American
Exceptionalism
Nick Robinson
University of Leeds, UK
Abstract
Videogames matter and they matter for international politics. With popular culture increasingly
acknowledged as a valuable site for opening up new ways of interrogating theory, this article
argues that important insights for the critical understanding of American exceptionalism can be
developed through the study of military videogames. At one level, military videogames illustrate
a number of prominent themes within American exceptionalism: they offer the perception that
a threatening and hostile environment confronts the USA, thus situating America as an innocent
victim, justified in using force in response; they allow exploration of the link between American
exceptionalism and debates on the competence of political leadership, and they open up space
to analyse the temporal dimension of international relations. Yet videogames also help expose
the foundations (what Weber terms ‘the myths’) upon which American exceptionalism is based,
here shown to be centred on the importance of the military industrial complex as a source of
exceptionalism.
Keywords
American exceptionalism, US foreign policy, videogames, popular culture and world politics,
war on terror
Corresponding author:
Nick Robinson, Associate Professor in Politics, School of Politics and International Studies, University of
Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Email: N.Robinson@leeds.ac.uk
557557MIL0010.1177/0305829814557557Millennium: Journal of International StudiesRobinson
research-article2014
Article
Robinson 451
1. General Shepherd (mission S.S.D.D.), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
2. K.J. Holsti, ‘Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy: Is it Exceptional?’, European
Journal of International Relations 17, no. 3 (2011): 381–404, 381.
3. The literature here is vast but see, for example, Trevor B. McCrisken, American Exceptionalism
and the Legacy of Vietnam: US Foreign Policy Since 1974 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003);
Paul T. McCartney, ‘American Nationalism and U.S. Foreign Policy from September 11 to
the Iraq War’, Political Science Quarterly 119, no. 3 (2004): 399–423; Andrew J. Bacevich,
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books,
2008); Holsti, ‘Exceptionalism’; Jason Ralph, America’s War on Terror: The State of the
9/11 Exception from Bush to Obama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). On the latter
point see, for example, Harold H. Koh, ‘On American Exceptionalism’, Stanford Law Review
55, no. 5 (2003): 1479–527; Michael Ignatieff, ‘Introduction: American Exceptionalism
and Human Rights’, in American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, ed. Michael Ignatieff
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–26.
4. See, for example, Jutta Weldes, ‘Going Cultural: Star Trek, State Action, and Popular
Culture’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28, no. 1 (1999): 117–34; Kyle
Grayson, Matt Davies and Simon Philpott, ‘Pop Goes IR? Researching the Popular Culture-
World Politics Continuum’, Politics 29, no. 3 (2009): 155–63; Anni Kangas, ‘From Interfaces
to Interpretants: A Pragmatist Exploration into Popular Culture as International Relations’,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 38, no. 2 (2009): 317–43; Michael J. Shapiro,
Cinematic Geopolitics (London: Routledge, 2009); Cynthia Weber, International Relations
Theory: A Critical Introduction, 4th edn (London: Routledge, 2014).
Introduction
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Boundaries shift, new players step in, but
power always finds a place to rest its head … here I am thinking we’d won. But you bring down
one enemy and they find someone even worse to replace him. Locations change, the rationale,
the objective. Yesterday’s enemies are today’s recruits. Train them to fight alongside you, and
pray they don’t eventually decide to hate you for it too.1
The post 9/11 period has seen growing interest in the theme of exceptionalism in US
foreign policy, prompted in part by the policies of the American ‘neo-cons’ that were
often enacted by George W. Bush’s administration during its first term.2 These policies
and associated actions have resulted in debates about whether the USA is uniquely
vulnerable and threatened, so justifying an exceptional response that should not be
constrained by the rules that govern ‘normal states’. Consequently, there has been
considerable academic interest in seeking to understand why the USA is reacting in the
way that it is; in debating whether or not the USA is uniquely threatened, and in reflect-
ing on whether those actions are normatively justified.3 This article takes a different
tack, offering instead a critical analysis of the theoretical underpinnings of exception-
alism in US foreign policy, which have not received anything like the same level of
engagement to date.
Concurrent with, yet independent of, these events has been an increasing acknowl-
edgement of the importance of popular culture for world politics and, in particular, of its
potential to open up new ways of thinking.4 As Grayson argues, ‘a popular artefact may
reveal key dynamics underpinning contemporary politics that might not normally
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