Representation, recognition and respect in world politics: The case of Iran-US relations

Preface

This book contributes to the ever-increasing volume of studies on recognition in world politics. It does so by exploring how representations are implicated in processes of recognition, which help us to make sense of our world and give meaning to events and experiences and the actions of others. The ideas of recognition and respect that drive this book first emerged through contemplation of what our reputation means for us as individuals in society. Our name – our reputation – is very important to us. When someone believes their reputation has been damaged, feelings of humiliation and anger can be overwhelming and sometimes may not dissipate even with a public apology. In some cases, these feelings can make violent actions seem like a reasonable response to such criticism. My desire to understand the wider impact of misrecognition impelled me to consider how representation and recognition unfold internationally, and to ask what implications these processes have for state behaviour. Such questions became the motivating force of this book – to discover how representations of one state by another influence foreign policymaking. In some ways these questions are still there. I hope this book provides a way through the difficult terrain of state identity and policymaking. More importantly, I hope that others can use these pages to develop their own insights into seemingly intractable conflict.

Acknowledgements

Many scholars and colleagues have helped transform this work into the book it is now. At Manchester University Press, Tony Mason, Robert Byron and the external reviewers provided invaluable feedback that was instrumental to the conceptual and empirical strengths of this book, for which I will always be grateful. Erik Ringmar and Simon Philpott read the early stages of the book, and their incisive feedback was critical to the development not only of this project but also how of I think of myself as a scholar. My great thanks must go to current and former scholars and colleagues in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland for their generosity, intellectual encouragement and friendship as this project developed: Tim Aistrope, Brooke Rogers Beeson, Helen Berents, Shannon Brincat, Richard Devetak, Jean-Louis Durand, Ellyse Fenton, Katherine Gelber, Suzanne Grant, Joseph Hongoh, Shahar Hamieri, George Karavas, Marianne Hanson, Sebastian Kaempf, Alissa Macoun, Frank Mols, Vanessa Newby, Lucie Newsome, Phil Orchard, Andrew Philips, Annie Pohlman, Lesley Pruitt, Pedram Rashidi, Christian Reus-Smit, Angela Setterlund, Caitlin Sparks, Elizabeth Strakosch, Barbara Sullivan, Emily Tannock, Sorcha Tormey, Rae Wear, Heloise Weber and Martin Weber.

A number of grants and awards have allowed me to conduct interviews for this book and engage with the wider international relations scholarly community, experiences of which have been both immensely challenging and rewarding. The University of Queensland Research Scholarship and Graduate School Travel Award provided the opportunity to conduct interviews and visit oral history archives in the United States, and the Australian Political Studies Association Postgraduate Travel Award allowed me to present the initial findings of this research at the annual APSA conference. In 2016 I was awarded the UQ Early Career Researcher Grant, affording me the opportunity to spend some time as a visiting research fellow at Copenhagen University, where I completed the first full draft of this manuscript. My immense thanks go to Lene Hansen, Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Simone Molin Friis, Dean Cooper-Cunningham and Alexei Tsinovoi for their generous support and intellectual encouragement during my time at KU.

I want to acknowledge four people in particular who have influenced my work for the better. Thank you to David Martin Jones for seeing the value of my work and challenging my often-idealistic views, as any good contrarian must do. I am thankful for the friendship and advice of Emma Hutchison, who has been a constant source of inspiration. Over the last two years I have been extremely fortunate to work with Tim Dunne, and I have benefited greatly from his guidance and critical engagement. And finally, my immense gratitude to Roland Bleiker, whose mentorship and unstinting encouragement provided the intellectual environment to develop as a scholar and human being.

It would have been impossible to complete this book without the participation of the interviewees. Thank you to the wonderful people with whom I conversed in person, over the phone, on Skype and via email – the window into your perspectives on Iran–US relations, and issues that were not always comfortable to discuss, will never be forgotten. I am immensely grateful for your time, patience, kindness and contributions to this study.

Parts of this book draw on material previously published elsewhere. Chapter 1 has been adapted from ‘Foreign policy and the politics of representation: The West and its others’, Global Change, Peace and Security 23 (2011), pp. 31–46, copyright Taylor & Francis. Chapters 5 and 6 include sections from ‘Representation, recognition and foreign policy in the Iran–US relationship’, European Journal of International Relations 22 (2016), pp. 642–655, copyright Sage. Chapter 7 includes sections from ‘Twitter and transformative diplomacy: Social media and Iran–US relations’, International Affairs 93 (2017), pp. 545–562, copyright Oxford University Press. My thanks to the publishers for permission to reproduce these texts in this book.

Finally, I want to thank my family – the wonderful Lillian, Philip, Harold, Amelia and my partner George – and two beautiful friends M. and R., who all continually resist, overcome and reinvent the circumstances of their worlds. Any hope in this book is because of, and for, them all.

Abbreviations

Introduction: Representation, recognition and respect in world politics

Representations help us to make sense of our world by giving meaning to events and experiences and the actions of others. These representations are not stagnant, however, and we are not the only ones who use them to understand ourselves and things external to us. Our Others also use representations in the same way. Each of us feels differently about the representations ascribed to us, particularly when they consist of an image of ourselves that we do not like. When we are represented and recognised in a way we disagree with, it is sometimes experienced as disrespect and is framed in an emotional context of insult, humiliation, anger and betrayal. We might then act in a particular way that seeks to undo this form of recognition, or misrecognition, in order to regain a level of respect that we feel we deserve.

Representation plays a central role in the intersubjective dynamics of identity politics. When we think about who we are, we think about ourselves in a particular way. We think about other people in a similar fashion. We use representations – the production of meaning through language, symbols or signs, a conveyance of something – to imagine who we are and how we want to be recognised. These issues matter not just to individuals but to states as well: representation occurs at both the level of the individual and the state. States use representation to understand not only themselves and others but also to respond to externally constructed images of who they are.

The main objective of my book is to demonstrate how representation and recognition influence foreign policy. In order to do so, I explore the connection between representations and recognition and how these are informed by feelings of respect or disrespect that instigate the projection or protection of state identity.

The key argument of my book is that representations are important because they shape both the identity of a state and how it is recognised by others. Representational schemas are key to producing images of state Self and Other that act to reinforce or reimagine frameworks of national identity. Recognition plays a crucial role in the process because inadequate or failed recognition is tantamount to what quickly becomes perceived as disrespect. Disrespect acts as a trigger for foreign policy that is in itself an emotional reaction or response to particular representations. Emotions are linked to the constitution of a collective identity, which in turn has implications for the forms and types of representations that are used to talk about the Self and the Other. Such emotional division is part of a broader process of boundary-making that informs interstate engagement.

I advance my argument through an investigation of the relationship between Iran and the United States. The case study is indicative of how representation is not only evident within state-to-state communication but also plays a significant role in recognition and identity development. Both the US and Iran utilise particular representations to understand themselves, each other and their behaviour. These have had an impact on each state's foreign policy that further destabilises the relationship between Iran and the US.

This book further proposes that states respond or react to externally constructed representations of who they are. Being recognised in a way that is counter to how a state desires to be recognised produces an emotional response that frames a particular shift in, or continued maintenance of foreign policymaking through the ‘struggle for recognition’. However, the struggle for recognition largely remains an examination mostly undertaken only at the domestic level in terms of the distribution of social goods. The emotional context that arises through the struggle for recognition on the international stage is underdeveloped, primarily because it is considered to be apolitical or irrational and therefore not part of standard state decision-making capacity.

The contribution of my book to the study of global politics thus emerges through the observation that how states represent and recognise one another has implications for how states behave. Being recognised in a way that is counter to how a state desires to be recognised produces an emotional response that frames foreign policy through the struggle for recognition. Failed recognition produces disrespect, which is an emotional response to being represented in a certain way. Emotions are intricately related to the practices of power. Perceptions of identity of Self and Other, security and threat, status and treatment are founded within an emotional context that frames how states deal with these issues.

I empirically investigate the issue at stake through Iran–US engagement over Iran's rights under Article IV of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and what it allows. I analyse Iran–US engagement during the twentieth century, and then examine how this influences the post-2002 interactions and negotiations between Iran and the US (via the negotiating team of the United Nations Security Council and Germany [P5+1]) surrounding Iran's nuclear program. Feelings of disrespect relating to failed recognition can lead to serious policy crises, as exemplified by Iran–US nuclear tensions.

I was motivated to write this book at this time for two reasons: firstly, it is clear that representations are becoming increasingly acute in foreign policy. This has resulted in a number of complex crises that can be best explained and perhaps mediated through an acknowledgement that representation, recognition and emotions are key influences on interstate dynamics. For instance, the China–Japan territorial disputes over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands continue to exacerbate nationalist sentiments in each state, which in turn are key to the instigation and prolongation of the disputes themselves. How China and Japan are represented and recognised by each other has clear implications for how they will engage with each other in attempting to ameliorate, or perhaps exacerbate, these crises.

The Greek debt crisis threw representations of Greek and European identity into sharp relief, with Greece slowly emerging as Europe's significant Other in comparison to the oft-represented Turkey. The emotional frameworks that constitute a common European identity were challenged by how Greece desires recognition, which played out at an interstate level through unsuccessful attempts to resolve the debt emergency.

Australia and Indonesia have continued to experience diplomatic issues following revelations of phone tapping by Australian authorities and the execution of two Australian drug smugglers. Diplomatic skirmishes often unfold in the public arena, with pejorative representations of both states imaged through cartoons, social media and attempts to boycott various products, in the latter case by both Australian and Indonesian lobby groups.

Secondly, Iran and the P5+1 – the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany – reached a historic deal regarding Iran's nuclear program in July 2015. In exchange for relief from sanctions, Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of centrifuges and enriched uranium, and significantly increase the levels of transparency surrounding its nuclear program by allowing greater access to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. This deal has been the culmination of a series of official proposals presented by both Iran and members of the international community since 2003, and Iran and the P5+1 since 2006.

However, concerns remain. While the Security Council and Germany want to phase out certain sanctions only with evidence of Iranian fulfilment of the new protocols, Iran wants these sanctions lifted regardless of its compliance with the deal. Although January 2016 saw the reduction of certain sanctions there are still concerns with Iranian hardliners and sections of the Iranian public, who may see the slow progress as another example of US and Western interference with and pressure against Iran. The inauguration of the Trump administration in 2017 has also led to increasing concerns about the viability of the nuclear deal, particularly as Trump publicly claimed on Twitter that Iran should ‘thank’ the US for the ‘bad deal’. After many months disparaging the deal, Trump officially withdrew the US from the agreement in May 2018 to international condemnation. Questions arise, then, regarding why this deal took so long to come to fruition, and whether it will continue to hold without the US. Given the strategic interests on the parts of Iran and the US to implement a successful nuclear deal, a key issue is how this deal was prevented for nearly fifteen years. A secondary issue is what may arise to prevent fulfilment of the agreement over time.

My book will provide insight into state reactions to externally constructed representations of themselves. In exploring the struggle for recognition through an examination of representation, it becomes clear that states act to defend representations of an identity, rather than accepting or rethinking alternative identity representations. Ensuing insights allow for the generation of understanding about how one state represents and recognises another has implications for how states engage with one another. Thus, my book provides scope for a greater understanding of the complexities that feed into foreign policy decision-making, contributing to a deeper comprehension of the difficult and multifaceted crises that continue to arise in interstate engagement.

The remainder of the introduction is structured as follows: firstly, I outline the puzzle driving this book. Secondly, I then advance my conceptual framework and methodology. We understand how representations inform state identity, and establish how the intersubjective nature of identity creation is not solely reliant on how we see ourselves but also on how others perceive us. In other words, how others represent us matters. Thirdly, I provide a brief overview of existing IR approaches to representation, recognition and the Iran–US relationship. I then outline the plan of the book before finally providing a summary of the history of the Iranian nuclear program and negotiations with the P5+1.

The argument

Visualising the puzzle

Visual representations provide a simple opening to the puzzle driving this book. Films, for example, are a common popular culture medium through which we encounter political identity and difference. Consider the film A Mighty Heart (2007), directed by Michael Winterbottom. The film is based on a memoir by Marianne Pearl and deals with the abduction and killing of her husband, Daniel, in Pakistan in 2002. The film is considered to be both a ‘precision-tooled Hollywood machine … meant to entertain as much as to instruct and enlighten’ and a ‘surprising, insistently political work of commercial art’.¹ Yet where it really excels is in its reproduction of the schemas of cultural representations. The images of Karachi – of bustling marketplaces, the meandering streets and the people – are presented as part of a ‘disorientating, alien and often frightening world’ where it is unthinkable to find ‘one man in all of this’.² Coupled with the trailer tagline of ‘an event that shocked the world’, the imagery speaks to the imagined dialectic of the enlightened West/Self and the subordinate non-West/Other.

Representations of life in the non-West are visualised via such Hollywood films very differently to that of the West – the latter is positioned as knowable, organised and accessible in comparison to the portrayal of the former on screen as unknowable, disorienting and unreachable. This disjuncture has evolved over time, which in turn suggests particular patterns of interstate engagement between West and non-West.

Using film as a starting point, it becomes clear that viewers across the realm of high and low politics share and understand representations of race, gender and culture made visual on screen. The visual application of representations of dominant West/subordinate non-West project a power discourse that reinforces the ‘rightness’ of particular interstate engagements, as explored within certain films. Film provides a space within which the motivating factors of particular actions are played out in a way that is normalised as a logical sequence of events. Foreign policy and the decision-making processes linked to it are examples of such actions that become simplified and accepted as part of a common-sense narrative of events as they unfold over time. In the West the visualisation of foreign policy unfolds within the process of ‘Hollywoodization’. A number of scholars have acknowledged that in Hollywood filmmaking there is a projection of a hegemonic power discourse of the progressive West/Self and inferior non-West/Other.³ However, Hollywood is by no means the only site of film, as non-Western filmmaking also visualises representations of a Self/non-West Other/West binary. The accepted representations of issues/events in film are therefore still subject to different interpretations depending on the framework of identity at hand.

Consider the 2012 Ben Affleck-directed film Argo as a notable illustration of the ‘Hollywoodization’ of the hegemonic power discourse of dominant West/subordinate non-West. Billed as a historical thriller, Argo depicts the ‘true’ story of the 1980 rescue of six US diplomats from the Canadian embassy in Tehran in the wake of the Hostage Crisis. Despite being considered a gripping, suspenseful film, the movie has been critiqued because of its inversion of who has the greater responsibility for the successful rescue: former Canadian Ambassador to Iran Kenneth Taylor and his embassy staff, or the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The movie represents the CIA as the driving force behind the safe return of the US diplomats, which led Taylor to comment that ‘the amusing side is the script writer in Hollywood had no idea what he's talking about’.⁴

However, Iran is also producing its own film of the same crisis, The General Staff. The film focuses on the story of the twenty American hostages released by the Iranian revolutionaries to the US. By creating the film in response to the US version of events during the Hostage Crisis, Iran demonstrates that ‘we are not what Hollywood says we are’.⁵ Iran has labelled Argo as anti-Iranian and yet another film in a long list in which Iran believes it is represented in negative terms that includes Not Without My Daughter (1981), 300 (2007), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) and Unthinkable (2010). While Iran also believes that Argo has torn open the wound of the Hostage Crisis, the film is viewed in the broader context of the current international hostility towards the Iranian nuclear program.

Significant regarding Iran's response to Argo is that Iran actively attempts to counter US representations about what Iran is, or how it should be viewed as a state. Iranian films such as Persepolis (2007), My Tehran for Sale (2009), A Separation (2011), Circumstance (2011), A Respectable Family (2012) and Tehran Taxi (2015) are part of a broader attempt to explore and promote an Iranian sense of what it means to be Iranian that also challenges the dominant representations the US attributes to Iran. As Asghar Farhadi, the director of A Separation, maintained in his acceptance speech upon winning the 2012 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film:

Iranians all over the world are watching us and I imagine them to be very happy … because at the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics … a people who respect all cultures and civilisations and despise hostility and resentment.⁶

Iran's desire to be recognised in a particular way that contradicts US images of the state speaks to the intersubjective interplay of representation and identity. Iran and the US explain the contested interpretations of past events relating to the Hostage Crisis through different sets of representations, reflecting the particular identity frameworks employed by both states. These films and the images they project are also clearly representative of an underlying emotional context of disrespect that frames engagement between the US and Iran.

There is a puzzle here: how do representations of one state by another influence foreign policymaking behaviour? What is the emotional context of these representations, and how do they advance and possibly constitute strategic interests? This book addresses these questions by examining the relationship between representation, recognition and respect. In doing so I provide a conceptual framework for understanding how representations of one state by another influence foreign policymaking. As we shall see in the next section, which details this conceptual framework, analysing the emotional context of the struggle for recognition allows for an understanding of how feelings of disrespect more broadly, and humiliation and anger more specifically, influence state behaviour.

Conceptual framework

I have suggested that being represented in certain ways affects or acts to manipulate the behaviour and foreign policy choices of the Other. Intersubjective state relations, or, more specifically, how a state imagines itself and represents its Others, are important for understanding changes in foreign policy conduct. This particular concept requires definition before we go any further. Intersubjectivity refers to the construction of meaning produced by the interaction of different actors and spaces that exist within the social world. Interactions between actors are central to the practice of intersubjectivity, as the interpretations each actor has of the events and actions that constitute the social world influence how actors understand and behave towards multiple others and subjects.⁷

Recognition of the Other, and the identity of the Other state, is structured around intersubjective systems of representation that affect how foreign policy is made. The pursuit of such doctrines is merely another extension of the struggle for recognition within the international sphere. Although similar demands for recognition found at the individual level also occur at the interstate level, specifically within the foreign policy realm, recognition continues to be unexamined in its entirety. The entities of Self and Other evolve through the struggle for identity recognition. The West and non-West are engaged in a continuing cultural dialogue, and ‘are not merely interconnected, rather than separate and exclusive, but are intimately entwined’.⁸ Both West and non-West are not monolithic entities; rather, they are interweaving imaginaries that engage in the reductive practice of representation (West/orientalism, non-West/occidentalism) to make sense of their experiences.

When scholars explore these intersubjective dynamics, however, the West is most often positioned as the dominant Self in considerations of power dynamics, and the non-West inhabits the role of subordinate Other. Recognition of difference between the West and its Others is structured in unmoving stereotypical terms. The process acts to create a boundary, a constant demarcation that acts as a reference point for every interaction. Representation is important because it is constitutive of and constituted by relationships of power in the social world. However, while we may disregard the Other and see ourselves as better or more powerful by comparison, how the Other sees us matters in terms of how our identity is formed.

As a result, the concept of identity (who I am, who you are, are you/can you be a friend/foe) plays a central role in foreign policy. That is not to suggest that states do not have material interests, or that these are entirely absent from any foreign policy consideration; rather, these interests are informed by the identity a state has, and as such guide the state in its foreign policymaking in terms of which interests are more important to consider at any given time. Once a state identity is constructed, particular practices and foreign policy decisions are made possible. How a state recognises itself and others is the key to understanding interactions between states within the international system.

Methodology

Having outlined my core conceptual framework and the overall argument, a brief note on methodology is necessary before I canvass existing approaches to representation, recognition and foreign policy in terms of the Iran–US relationship. I utilise a three-step method: Part I provides a map for the project; Part II constructs a framework for state identity; and Part III generates an analysis of the research gathered.

The mapping process in Part I involves examining the connections between representation and foreign policy (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 creates a conceptual framework linking representation with recognition, exploring the emotional context of the struggle for recognition. The second step, Part II, generates a structure for understanding the elements that feed into national identity, using US state identity as an illustrative case (Chapter 3). It also involves an in-depth case study of Iranian state identities (Chapter 4). Part III then studies representational schemas evident in Iran–US discourse, firstly from a US perspective and then from an Iranian perspective (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, respectively). The data for these research findings consists of semi-structured interviews, archival documents and interviews, public speeches and addresses, policy documents and statements, and news articles. These are followed by an examination of the emotional and recognitive processes inherent within the discourse and how these interact with state behaviour (Chapter 7).

I employ discourse analysis as my central research method. Discourse analysis refers to the examination of language and text undertaken to discover social and political phenomena that extend beyond the individual. I understand discourse to be constitutive of and constituted by the language that we use to communicate. Meanings and understandings generated by discourse emerge within historical, social, political and cultural contexts that change over time. The literal and figurative expressions that emerge within broader representative schemas are indicative of particular collective views shared across the private/public and low/high politics divides. Linguistic patterns can be illuminated through discourse analysis to discover these collective views and what they suggest about understandings of particular elements in the social world. Discourse analysis explores the connection between language and power. In doing so, discourse analysis allows for an understanding of the identity framework shared by the collectivity, namely the state, and how it might influence its behaviour towards others.

I use discourse analysis to discover how reality is socially performed on the part of Iran and the United States. In doing so, I pinpoint key representations that emerge from talk and text. The representations discovered in the discourse analysis (outlined in chapters 6 and 7) are key to understanding the connection between language and power in Iran–US relations. Representations have an inclusive and exclusive capacity in that they clearly demarcate who we are and who our Others are. Focusing on representations allows a linguistic space to emerge wherein the meanings behind these expressions, and the experiences they are related to, are made clear. In turn, representation provides a scope for comprehending how intersubjective interactions between Iran and the US, and vice versa, have been experienced by one another and understood. The examination of representations also illuminates which narrative(s) Iran and the US accept and draw on to justify particular foreign policy responses. Such acceptance legitimises actions through a belief that they are part of a natural sequence of events.

The data for the discourse analysis was drawn from a combination of semi-structured interviews, Iranian and American policy documents and statements, news articles, public speeches and interviews made by members of the Islamic Republic of Iran's government and various US administrations. In addition, I examined a number of oral history archives from the US within the Iranian-American Oral History Project at Columbia University, Harvard University and the Library of Congress in Washington. For the final chapter, I analysed Iranian and US tweets about the nuclear negotiations between 2013 and 2015.

Interviews are a suitable way to understand representational processes because they allow for an awareness of the interpretative frameworks employed by individuals to understand the social. Interviews provide the interviewer with a greater comprehension of the emotional context of particular issues through meaning-in-use, rather than through a single analysis of linguistic forms that may not reveal the entirety of the feelings connected to these issues. Forty-five individual in-depth semi-structured interviews comprise my interview data.⁹ I personally conducted these interviews in Australia and the US, and by telephone and Skype to the US, the UK and Lebanon between