Constructing National Security: U.S. Relations with India and China

Jarrod Hayes explores why democracies tend not to use military force against each other. He argues that democratic identity – the shared understanding within democracies of who “we” are and what “we” expect from each other – makes it difficult for political leaders to construct external democracies as threats. At the same time, he finds that democratic identity enables political actors to construct external non-democracies as threats. To explore his argument, he looks at U.S. relations with...