O Destino manifesto nos discursos oficiais dos Estados Unidos: do 11 de setembro à invasão do Iraque (2003)

Abstract

The construction of national identity in the United States is related to the idea of Manifest Destiny. This myth holds that the American people were chosen by God to build the Promised Land. Thus, the United States, by divine predestination, would be a land of prosperity, freedom and democracy to the world. Interestingly, this ideology is perpetuated throughout U.S. history. Manifest Destiny is also present in the foreign policy of the United States. Moreover, this belief justified the change of the direction of U.S. foreign policy, as the expansion process of the nineteenth century or the engagement in the First World War. After the attacks of September 11, the U.S. authorities revived the ideology of Manifest Destiny to justify a new era of diplomacy in the White House. The objective of this work is to analyze the way that Manifest Destiny was used in official speeches of U.S. authorities, to justify the War on Terror, particularly the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003. Therefore, we opted for the use of inductive and deductive method. In this paper, the theoretical framework chosen was constructivism.