Crisis Rhetoric Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Rhetoric is the use of persuasive language or other symbols, while crisis is a type of rhetorical terminology that conveys a sense of urgency and suggests that a threatening event, different from routine events, has occurred.

Generative And Strategic Crisis Rhetoric

Crises may be rhetorical in two senses: generative and strategic. First, the language that policy makers use to talk and write about issues, whether intentional or not, influences their perceptions of reality. They then convey these depictions of reality to journalists and citizens, often unconsciously, through their messages. When government officials choose to speak about armed conflict in another country as a “crisis,” for instance, their language immediately heightens the importance of events there and generates perceptions of a particular political reality for themselves and others.

Crises also can be rhetorical in the strategic sense that Aristotle described in The Rhetoric as the ability to identify, in any situation, “the available means of persuasion.” Leaders may intentionally adopt a crisis terminology and construct messages in order to win public opinion in line with their view that a crisis exists and that their policy choice is the best means to resolve the crisis. In 1947, most Americans did not view the Soviet Union as a threat, but U.S. president Harry S. Truman and his State Department embarked on a campaign to convince them otherwise and to gain support for the Truman Doctrine. Conversely, leaders may use language strategically to downplay perceptions of crisis, as when the Sudanese government in 2009 attempted to avoid Western intervention with claims, quoted by Reuters’s news service, that the humanitarian crisis in Sudan was “absolutely under control.”

U.S. Presidents And Crisis Rhetoric

In the United States, since the end of World War II (1939– 1945), presidents have been particularly prone to employing rhetoric that encourages perceptions of foreign crisis, and their rhetoric tends to have a number of recurring characteristics. First, presidents depict dangerous scenes of crisis abroad that pose a threat to both American interests (e.g., American lives) and ideals (e.g., freedom). Presidents argue that these scenes, in turn, dictate particular actions and goals. The portrayal of crisis scenes serves to frighten listeners and usually represents the world in black-and-white terms that simplify complex issues. In so doing, presidents attempt to justify particular policies as the only options available by claiming that time is of the essence if devastating consequences are to be avoided.

A second aspect of presidential foreign crisis rhetoric is its depiction of the United States. In their messages, presidents usually portray a nation that is powerful and determined, yet also peaceful and patient. When presidents take military action, they describe the United States as reluctant to do so, but—in the face of grave threat—resolute. Presidents often draw upon the myths of mission (the idea that the United States should be a model for all the world) and manifest destiny (the idea that the United States is destined to spread American institutions and values) to depict the nation as a moral agent with sacred world responsibilities. Presidents also consistently depict crises as tests of character in which the United States must prove its credibility, often through acts of military intervention.

A third facet of presidential foreign crisis rhetoric is its treatment of the enemy. When presidents urge strong military action, they frequently depict an enemy that is too dangerous and too wicked to ignore. Conversely, presidents interested in diplomatic solutions choose to deemphasize enemy portrayals, for fear that such language will undermine public support for diplomacy or even lead to demands for a military response.

A fourth characteristic of presidential foreign crisis rhetoric is its reliance upon references to the president’s office, title, and responsibilities as a way to legitimize policy decisions. Since the Korean War (1950–1953), U.S. presidents have regularly used crisis rhetoric to justify military actions that they already have taken, thereby deepening the need to appeal to presidential authority.

When presidents choose to convince citizens that foreign crises exist, they also can depend on a number of advantages to help them do so: Americans’s limited knowledge of international relations, the institutional credibility of the presidency, and the rally around the president phenomenon in which citizens tend to support their presidents, at least in the short term, during crises.

In addition, presidents can rely upon a largely compliant mass media to convey their messages for two basic reasons. First, administrations have become adept at news management, an activity that began to accelerate during the latter half of the twentieth century and includes tactics to affect coverage positively, such as President John F. Kennedy’s use of exclusive interviews and the Ronald Reagan administration’s “line of the day.” Second, as media companies have come to treat the purpose of news as profit, rather than public service, they have cut resources from news gathering and encouraged coverage that is entertaining in order to appeal to a wider audience. Such changes, along with a compressed news cycle, have encouraged journalists to rely on official sources, rather than investigating issues themselves, to fulfill the constant demand for stories easily and inexpensively.

From another vantage point, presidents may seem less able to influence public opinion today since the number of media outlets, and hence choices, has proliferated; electronic news coverage tends to summarize presidential messages rather than airing them as spoken; and media coverage, while not questioning facts, discusses politicians’ motives cynically.

Nonetheless, when a foreign crisis appears to threaten the nation and citizens have rallied around the president as a representative of the nation, journalists still become especially deferential, thereby allowing presidents to convey their views readily, as President George W. Bush did after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Presidents find their persuasive task more difficult, however, when they cannot resolve a crisis or their personal credibility is badly damaged, as with Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam and Jimmy Carter and Iran.

Over time, the relationship between presidential power and foreign crisis rhetoric has tended to be symbiotic: presidents have used their power to support their rhetoric, and they have used their crisis rhetoric to expand their power. From 1990 to 1991, for example, George H.W. Bush sent 400,000 U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia without asking for congressional consent or invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Presidents have regularly used crisis rhetoric to legitimize unilateral actions and, most often, Congress has assented, thereby ceding the executive branch greater control over foreign policy. If critics oppose military action, they may be attacked for not “supporting the troops.” Foreign crisis rhetoric also discourages careful deliberation by arguing that danger leaves no time for delay, as in George W. Bush’s insistence that Congress complete any debate on Iraq prior to the November 2002 elections. Equally troubling, foreign crisis rhetoric may justify extreme measures that violate civil liberties to achieve security.

World Leaders And Crisis Rhetoric

While American presidents have been particularly prone to using crisis rhetoric, other world leaders have often been similarly inclined. Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, for example, engaged in crisis rhetoric before the Spanish parliament in 2003 to justify his support for an impending U.S.–led war against Iraq. According to Teun A. van Dijk in a 2005 article, Aznar depicted a crisis, created by Iraq, which threatened the entire international community, and portrayed his government’s actions as peaceful and defensive in nature. In 2004, Russian president Vladimir Putin likewise used crisis rhetoric to represent Chechen hostage takers as part of an international terrorist threat and to bolster perceptions of his own leadership, thereby obscuring Chechen grievances. International leaders have also learned from the example of American presidents that news management techniques can be instrumental in attaining positive media coverage for their crisis interventions. When Israeli military forces invaded Gaza in January 2009, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert gave Western journalists easy access to Israeli locations where Hamas rockets had landed, but prevented them from covering the bloodshed in Gaza.

In an era when so many issues vie for public attention, the allure of crisis rhetoric remains strong. The government of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il demonstrated this point quite well with its March 2009 accusation, quoted in The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal, that U.S. president Barack Obama’s administration “is now working hard to infringe upon the sovereignty” of North Korea “by force of arms in collusion with the South Korean puppet bellicose forces.” According to analysts, this crisis rhetoric was both a response to the new, more conservative South Korean government and a bid to gain U.S. attention.

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