A Study Of The American Government’s Narrative Strategies Towards The Russia-Ukraine Conflict

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has lasted more than a year.In addition to the anxiety on the military battlefield,the "war of narration" and "war of values" in the public opinion field are also in full swing.Although the United States did not directly participate in the war,it provided significant military assistance to Ukraine and attempted to occupy a moral high ground in international public opinion.After Biden took office,the US government implemented "value diplomacy" under the slogan of"America is back",attempting to reshape the leadership of the United States by promoting Western liberalism.The US government’s comments on the Russia-Ukraine conflict are a window to observe the propaganda strategy of the Biden administration.This paper mainly takes the tweets and speeches about the Russia-Ukraine conflict issued by American government officials as the main research object,based on the strategic narrative theory in international relations research,and with narratology and Lasswell’s propaganda theory as reference,analyzes the narrative content and narrative strategies of the three aspects of problem narrative,identity narrative and system narrative.Research has found that narrative is an extension of strategy,and the strategic narratives constructed by the US government revolve around the strategic goal of"Weaken Russia".At the level of problem definition,the US government achieves the goal of "controlling opinions" through "political public relations" and "attribution bias" strategies.At the level of identity narrative,it is achieved by fabricating "binary opposition" narratives such as "security vs.threat","democracy vs.dictatorship","unity vs.division",and "anti false information and anti propaganda" to achieve the"threat construction" of hostile others.At the level of systematic narrative,the US government achieves the goal of consolidating the "Global Alliance for Democracy"by using "evoking common fears" and "victory fantasies" narrative.The Russia-Ukraine conflict has given us this enlightenment:in the near future,the ideological and narrative wars may become more and more common and intense,and we should be more alert to the stories told by the West.To clear ideological barriers,we should dissect the core of Western discourse like surgery,especially focusing on dissecting and subverting the ideology and binary narrative advocated by the United States and the West for a long time.In this way or another,it may provide assistance in promoting Chinese narrative and telling Chinese stories well.