Traditionalists in the field of security studies tend to restrict the subject to politico–military issues; while wideners want to extend it to the economic, societal, and environmental sectors. This book sets out a comprehensive statement of the new security studies, establishing the case for the broader agenda.
The U.S. invasion of Haiti in July 1915 marked the start of a military occupation that lasted for nineteen years—and fed an American fascination with Haiti that flourished even longer. Exploring the cultural dimensions of U.S. contact with Haiti during the occupation and its aftermath, Mary Renda shows that what Americans thought and wrote about Haiti during those years contributed in crucial and unexpected ways to an emerging culture of U.S. imperialism. At the heart of this emerging culture, Renda argues, was American paternalism, which saw Haitians as wards of the United States.
As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote, "The United States was founded on the proclamation of 'unalienable' rights, and human rights ever since have had a peculiar resonance in the American tradition." But the American fondness for human rights rhetoric has presented two fundamental problems in foreign policy. As first a reluctant great power and then a more willing superpower, the United States has faced the traditional conflict between commitment to human values and exercise of power for other interests.
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