Authors: Laura Roselle
ISBN-13: 9781403975256, ISBN-10: 1403975256
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Date Published: September 2006
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Laura Roselle is Professor of Political Science at Elon University.
Great powers are not supposed to lose wars, so how do leaders explain military defeat when it happens? Media and the Politics of Failure analyzes the American experience in Vietnam and the Soviet experience in Afghanistan to draw larger conclusions about how and why political leaders explain the end of military involvement. In spite of differences in political and media systems, there are remarkable similarities between American and Soviet leaders' communication strategies. Great power identity and domestic politics shape an explanation of withdrawal that emphasizes success and invokes prestige. The factors that shape the construction of the story did not disappear with the end of the Cold War, thus this work offers important insights for current American and Russian military efforts.
1 | Political communication and policy legitimacy : explaining failure | 1 |
2 | War waging and reassessment : Vietnam | 49 |
3 | Withdrawal and aftermath : Vietnam | 49 |
4 | War waging and reassessment : Afghanistan | 79 |
5 | Withdrawal and aftermath : Afghanistan | 103 |
6 | Conclusions and a post-Cold War assessment | 123 |