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John Quincy Adams warned Americans not to search abroad for monsters to destroy, yet such figures have frequently habituated the discourses of U.S. foreign policy. This collection of essays focuses on counter-identities in American consciousness to explain how foreign policies and the discourse surrounding them develop. Whether it is the seemingly ubiquitous evil of Hitler during World War II or the more complicated perceptions of communism throughout the Cold War, these essays illuminate the cultural contexts that constructed rival identities. The authors challenge our understanding of "others," looking at early applications of the concept in the eighteenth century to recent twenty-first century conflicts, establishing how this phenomenon is central to decision making through centuries of conflict.

Michael Patrick Cullinane is Reader in U.S. history at Northumbria University. He is the author of Liberty and American Anti-Imperialism, 1898-1909 (2012) and numerous articles on diplomatic history in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

David Ryan is Professor and Chair of Modern History at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of US Foreign Policy in World History (2000) and Frustrated Empire US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq (2007), and he has co-edited Vietnam in Iraq: Tactics, Lessons, Legacies and Ghosts (2007, with John Dumbrell) and America and Iraq: Policy-Making, Intervention, and Regional Politics (2009, with Patrick Kiely).