Cold War counterinsurgency logic fused foreign and domestic Arab threats

Evidence

But modern Orientalists—or area experts, to give them their new name—have not passively sequestered themselves in language departments. On the contrary, they have profited from Gibb’s advice. Most of them today are indistinguishable from other “experts” and “advisers” in what Harold Lasswell has called the policy sciences. Thus the military–national-security possibilities of an alliance, say, between a specialist in “national character analysis” and an expert in Islamic institutions were soon recognized, for expediency’s sake if for nothing else. After all, the “West” since World War II had faced a clever totalitarian enemy who collected allies for itself among gullible Oriental (African, Asian, undeveloped) nations. What better way of outflanking that enemy than by playing to the Oriental’s illogical mind in ways only an Orientalist could devise? Thus emerged such masterful ploys as the stick-and-carrot technique, the Alliance for Progress, SEATO, and so forth, all of them based on traditional “knowledge” retooled for better manipulation of its supposed object. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 301 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: US counterinsurgency logic fused foreign and domestic Arabs into one terrorist threat; Orientalist knowledge became enlisted in Cold War counterinsurgency and national-security manipulation; Cold War policy sciences retooled Orientalist stereotypes for national-security manipulation — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 301 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• US counterinsurgency logic fused foreign and domestic Arabs into one terrorist threat #corroborates (1.00)
• Orientalist knowledge became enlisted in Cold War counterinsurgency and national-security manipulation #expands (0.85)
• Cold War policy sciences retooled Orientalist stereotypes for national-security manipulation #expands (0.70) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 301
• Truman-era aid policy racialized Arabs as irresponsible extremists by nature #qualifies (0.70)