Masculinity manifests itself through a set of attributes, values, beliefs, meanings, and behaviors associated with men, the product of a social construct rooted in a particular society. Masculinity finds expression in multiple spheres, including foreign policy. At the same time, political leaders of different ideological persuasions and historical contexts invoke it in the conduct of their countries’ international relations. In this sense, masculinity encompasses both a rhetoric and a practice. At its core, it operates through a binary logic: it reflects and affirms aggression, dominance, and assertiveness in opposition to understanding, compassion, and empathy. It emphasizes a dual condition: on the one hand, a relationship of opposites that can evolve into enmity; on the other, a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority. Within this framework, the exaltation of polarization – both domestically and internationally – becomes paramount and is promoted with unusual zeal.

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In the 1980s, Ashis Nandy introduced the notion of hypermasculinity as an extreme form of machismo. More recently, Xiaoting Han and Chenjun Yin have developed the concept of reactionary masculinity to explain a heightened form of masculinity that reinforces anti-feminist discourse while emphasizing the traits of an increasingly misogynistic male subculture. In both cases, the underlying premise is the perceived need to exaggerate masculine identity because it is supposedly threatened by the feminine, which challenges male dominance. This, in turn, is an attempt to restore an order and authority allegedly undermined by advances in social justice, gender equality, minority rights, sexual diversity, identity pluralism, multiculturalism, and related developments.

The purpose is to recover a form of masculine hegemony perceived to be under siege. Bombast and hyperbole become defining features of a narrative that calls for nothing less than a crusade to defend a supposedly endangered – perhaps even pre-modern – West that claims to........

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