In the study of international relations (IR), there tends to be little discussion of the fact that different theoretical camps have deeply contrasting assumptions about the relationships between Western cultures and states. One commonly unstated assumption of neorealism is that states are able to manage their nations’ discourses about foreign affairs in such a way as to assure that officials enjoy considerable autonomy from their societies in making foreign policy decisions (eg Waltz 2000). Conversely, liberals and mainstream constructivists assume that the cultural identities and discourses of a Western society are largely independent of the state and therefore exert great pressure on the state to abide by its professedly liberal norms, even where strict adherence to a liberal foreign policy course could impede the state's ability to achieve its immediate strategic objectives (Doyle 1983; Owen 1994; Kahl 1998; Russett and Oneal 2001; Hayes 2012).

However, this study posits that the external behaviours of the preeminent Western power are much more ambiguous than mainstream IR theories predict because none of the mainstream camps have an accurate conception of the relations between Western cultures and states. On the one hand, neorealists fail to explain how the culture of a Western power will tend to discourage the state from behaving in ways that are openly dissonant with the core symbols of its professed liberalism. On the other hand, contrary to Doyle's liberal postulate that the cultures of liberal republics help ‘ensure that the officials of republics act according to the principles they profess to be just’, it is fairly commonplace for Western media to facilitate their states’ casual deviations from a liberal foreign policy course by obfuscating the existence of such deviations (Doyle 2005, p. 464). For the purposes of this study, casual deviations from a Western power's professed liberalism will be defined as actions that are at least partially illiberal but do not readily appear to be incongruent with the minimal trappings of democracy promotion.