Securing the Prize

How presidential metaphors have shaped US discourse on the Persian Gulf

From the 1970s to the 1990s American presidents and their advisers introduced four metaphors into foreign-policy discourse that taught Americans to view the Persian Gulf as a vulnerable region and site of US responsibility on the world stage. In Securing the Prize: Presidential Metaphor and US Intervention in the Persian Gulf, Randall Fowler argues that, for half a century, metaphor has been central to defining America's role in the Middle East. Metaphors served as shorthand for presidents to promote their policies, filtering through the judgments of officials, journalists, experts, and critics to mediate American perceptions of the Gulf War. Tracing the use of security metaphors from President Richard Nixon to President George W. Bush, Fowler revises mainstream understandings regarding the origins of the War on Terror and explains the disconnect between skeptical public attitudes toward US involvement in the Gulf War and the heavy American military footprint in the region.

Randall Fowler is assistant professor of communication at Abilene Christian University. A former Fulbright scholar, he is author of More Than a Doctrine: The Eisenhower Era in the Middle East and coauthor of Something to Fear: FDR and the Foundations of American Insecurity, 1912–1945.