To browse Academia. History is usually written by the victors. With the fall of the Berlin Wall followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the whole communist bloc, even the KGB had little doubt about who had won the fight between the two systems. However, this time the losers went on to write their history of the spy wars - and the winners didn't even notice.
What is more - many were duped That theory expects stasis until a substantial unexpected failure in this domain, military defeat discredits dominant ideas and unsettles dominant coalitions.
However, system- atic data reveal the standard history of this important case to be wrong. To make sense of this puzzle, I develop an alternative theory of the rise and fall of the narratives that underpin and struc- ture debate over national security.
Rooted in the dynamics of public narrative and the domestic politics of the battlefield, the theory argues that military failure impedes change in the narrative in whose terms government officials had legitimated the mission, whereas victory creates the opportunity for departures from the dominant nar- rative.
This hard and important case suggests the need to rethink the relationship between success, failure, and change in dominant narratives of national securityβand perhaps in other policy domains as well. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
