Between Rules and Rituals: U.S. Ontological Security and the Civilizational Turn in the 2023–24 Gaza War
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper develops the analytical framework by integrating ontological security theory with realist constructivism to explain the United States’ dual identity in foreign policy — its Type C liberal–internationalist commitments in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and its Type B civilizational solidarity in the Middle East. Focusing on the Biden administration’s handling of the 2023–2024 Gaza War, the study demonstrates how powerful domestic incentives — lobbying by AIPAC and Christian Zionist groups, pro-Israel media framing, tech-platform censorship, and academic repression — combined with a long-standing security pact with Gulf monarchies, to constrained the U.S. policy options. These forces compelled the Biden administration’s attempt to project a coherent rules-based narrative in the Middle East. This “ontological retreat” eroded American soft power and provided space for China’s civilizational-state model — offering development, non-interference and rise of all. The paper argues that only by acknowledging and reconciling its domestic and regional ontological imperatives can the U. S. hope to restore moral authority.
Author: Mumtaz Ahmad Shah
Institution: Presidency University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4413435830