National security


The Dead Metaphors of National Security


When the U.S. national security community thinks about language, often the first things—not surprisingly—that come to mind are foreign languages. Much less often it thinks about its own language (for example, its habitually sloppy use of terms such as “strategic” and “complexity.”) Rarer yet is any deeper consideration of its common metaphors, those linguistic devices that can illuminate one thing by framing it in terms of another.

Consider a few examples: the Iron Curtain, the Cold War, containment, nation-building, and the War on Drugs. Even this short list demonstrates what a central and powerful role metaphors play in the national security discourse. Indeed, many are now so widely accepted and used that they are no longer even recognized as metaphors. These “dead metaphors” are often so deeply ingrained (like the term “ingrained” here) that they tend to rise above scrutiny. Moreover—and worse—they too easily get repurposed and misapplied to new and fundamentally different issues.