Conspiracy and foreign policy

Abstract

Conspiracies play a significant role in world politics. States often engage in covert operations. They plot in secret, with and against each other. At the same time, conspiracies are often associated with irrational thinking and delusion. We address this puzzle and highlight the need to see conspiracies as more than just empirical phenomena. We argue that claims about conspiracies should be seen as narratives that are intrinsically linked to power relations and the production of foreign policy knowledge. We illustrate the links between conspiracies, legitimacy and power by examining multiple conspiracies associated with 9/11 and the War on Terror. Two trends are visible. On the one hand, US officials identified a range of conspiracies and presented them as legitimate and rational, even though some, such as the alleged covert development of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, are now widely considered false. On the other hand, conspiracies circulating in the Arab-Muslim world were dismissed as irrational and pathological, even though some, like those concerned with the covert operation of US power in the Middle East, were based on credible concerns.

Microanalysis as ideology critique

“…But this very attempt stands in an uncanny relationship to the conspiracy theories that proliferate today, which are equally based on the premise that the conspiratorial forces they identify are invisible to the naked eye, but nonetheless enormously powerful (Fluck 2016;Aistrope and Bleiker 2018). Understanding this kind of macro-theory which claims to know forces that nobody can see or perceive with her own senses, but that allegedly has enormous 'explanatory power' (Waltz 1979, 7), is a pressing political concern today.…”

Conspiracy theories, right-wing populism and foreign policy: the case of the Alternative for Germany

“…Against this backdrop, Aistrope and Bleiker have sought to overcome this linkage between pathology and CTs by adopting a Foucauldian perspective to examine why particular explanations are regarded as 'truth' and others as 'paranoid'. They view the label 'conspiracy theory' as a potential instrument of discrediting certain forms of knowledge that run counter to a dominant 'truth regime' (Aistrope 2016;Aistrope and Bleiker 2018). Aistrope and Bleiker offer a very compelling illustration of the power/knowledge nexus through their case study on CTs surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks.…”

“…This can arguably be attributed to the fact that CTs have typically been associated with paranoia and alienated individuals located at the fringe of society. The main exception is Aistrope's (2016) book Conspiracy Theory and American Foreign Policy and his co-authored piece with Bleiker on CTs surrounding 9/11 and the 'War on Terror' (Aistrope and Bleiker 2018). Drawing on Foucault, Aistrope and Bleiker contest this common reading of CTs and conceptualise them as narratives that are closely linked to power relations and the production of foreign policy knowledge.…”

Conspiratorial medievalism: History and hyperagency in the far-right Knights Templar security imaginary

“…This sense of transhistorical 'double suffering' (Hofstadter, 1964) points us towards the defining characteristic of the KT security imaginary vis-à-vis other medievalisms: its entanglement with logics of conspiracy. Following the resurgence of interest in conspiracy theory within Politics and International Relations as meaningfully political, rather than pathologically epiphenomenal (Aistrope, 2016;Aistrope and Bleiker, 2018;Greenhill and Oppenheim, 2017), we examine the way in which conspiratorial thought contributes to not only constitution of a particular, racialised historical imaginary, but also the conditions of possibility for exclusionary, often violent, action.…”