When ends Trump means: continuity versus change in US counterterrorism policy

This article utilizes a historical materialist informed framework to analyse change and continuity in US counterterrorism policy. Although Donald Trump’s “America First” discourse conveyed a “new” approach to counterterrorism, in practice his administration has largely reinforced pre-existing tendencies, expanding the military campaigns against ISIS and al-Qaeda. In accordance with America’s longstanding objectives in the global south, which centre on stabilizing existing patterns of capitalist political-economic relations, the US continues to police transnational security challenges “from below”. The article calls for increased sensitivity to the means-ends calculus in American statecraft. It argues that tactical shifts at the policy level (the means) should be situated in relation to historical considerations and the structural and material factors (the ends) that impact US foreign policymaking across presidential administrations

Un-nation branding: the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Israeli soft power

This chapter presents a theory of ‘un-nation branding’. We define this as the practice of promoting a nation-state with minimal or even no reference to the nation-state. In contrast to nation branding, un-nation branding involves states symbolising themselves as/through cities (or regions) in order to make themselves attractive to others. In articulating this theory, we focus on the case study of Israel’s ‘Two Cities. One Break’ advertising campaign. We highlight how this campaign serves to visually represent Israel as the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. As a practice of un-nation branding, we argue that the ‘Two Cities. One Break’ campaign silences contentious aspects of the Israeli state, such as questions about borders, settlements and conflict. As such, this campaign is demonstrative of the importance of un-nation branding for states in the twenty-first century, and we suggest several implications of un-nation branding as well as future directions for research into the role of cities in contemporary accounts of soft power