Browsing by Subject "International relations"
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Item American military presence abroad: trends and analsysis(2015-12-04) Stravers, Andrew Joel; McDonald, Patrick J., 1973-; Findley, MichaelThis paper examines one basic question: what explains trends in American military deployments abroad? In other words, why does the U.S. military establish a non- combat presence in particular countries and at particular times? Scholars have posited two main answers to this question. First, many authors consider basing a purely strategic consideration rooted in Great Power rivalries, weapons technology, and polarity. Second, research since the Cold War has mainly considered basing within the context of the regime structure of the host country, with some regime types (democracies) better suited as basing partners than others. This paper examines time series cross-sectional statistical evidence for each, and it concludes that while each strain of thought provides valuable contributions to our understanding of basing trends, none fully explain American basing outcomes. I propose a theory in which the main driver of basing trends comes from within the United States. In other words, domestic political considerations within the American system of government best explain variations in American basing abroad. Presidential incentives, for instance, arise from a national constituency that judges him on how effectively he carries out the U.S. military’s missions. However, congressional incentives are such that individual representatives prefer to bring American forces back onto U.S. soil so that they may take advantage of the economic benefits that the troops provide to their home districts and to constrain the president’s power. As such, the long-term trend since 1950 is toward less overseas basing and more basing within the United States. Previous studies provided insights into the international determinants of American foreign basing. This study adds domestic American politics to the overall puzzle, leading to a more complete understanding of the intersection between foreign and domestic dynamics as regards the international deployment of American forces.Item Anarchy, uncertainty, and dispute settlement : an endogenous-war model(2002-05) Kim, Dong-won; Wagner, R. Harrison (Robert Harrison)Belligerents are usually bargainers–they negotiate to reach an agreement and they fight to affect the negotiations. In general, a government at war considers a compromise peace when it has become sufficiently skeptical of its ability to subdue the adversary on the battlefield at tolerable costs. Thus even disputants that have started a war due to the collapse of prewar bargaining may not have to fight to the finish. The dissertation examines how dispute outcomes vary because even at war disputants can negotiate for a compromise settlement, and how treating war as a simple matter of military strategy can be misleading about the causes of war. If diplomacy does not stop despite the initiation of hostilities, then a belligerent can employ its forces more efficiently for conflict resolution by improving its bargaining strategy whenever it gains new information about the true state of affairs, and by holding out for the adversary’s concession until its assessment of the future development on the battlefield becomes sufficiently pessimistic. Thus an ironical situation can arise with two antagonists acting strategically against each other: a disputant which would not go to war if it should fight to the finish can decide to risk a war and a disputant which is actually resolved to fight long enough to coerce its terms on the adversary may not be able to demonstrate its determination without fighting long indeed. As a result, a monotonic relationship hardly arises between disputants’ expected war costs, their relative military strength, the scope of the stake at issue, or the status quo distribution of that stake on one hand and the probability of war initiation or dispute settlement on the other. The dissertation uses deduction to derive the main arguments and induction to test their empirical relevance. For deduction, it develops and analyzes a gamble engaging horse races and a two-person asymmetric bargaining game that encompasses prewar bargaining and the process of negotiating while fighting on the assumption that the conflict terminates whenever the players reach an agreement. For induction, it statistically analyzes the battles fought at the initial stages of the First World War and the militarized interstate dispute data (1996) and the Correlates of War interstate war data (1992).Item Artful education : the role of Art in Embassies in 21st century diplomacy(2012-05) Wilson, Kathryn Elizabeth; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Ostrower, FrancieThis case study focuses on the current purpose of the Art in Embassies (AIE) program that is run by the U.S. Department of State. More specifically, it examines how the temporary exhibition of art placed in Reykjavik, Iceland by AIE aids in fulfilling that purpose. I sought to determine how the U.S. Embassy in Iceland uses the exhibition and accompanying catalogue produced by Art in Embassies to educate visitors about American culture and aid in the embassy's cultural diplomacy efforts. I accomplished this by conducting interviews with the ambassador and Public Affairs staff in Reykjavik, members of the AIE staff, artists whose work was included in the exhibition, and Icelanders who had the opportunity to view the art in the ambassador's residence. My goal in researching this topic was to contribute to our understanding of the role visual art can play in cultural diplomacy. Initially, it was unclear to me how education factors into Art in Embassies, given that access to the art is limited. It is now my belief that there are certain posts around the world that are working to utilize their AIE exhibition to its fullest potential, and they should be commended for their efforts. However, much more needs to be done to encourage all ambassadors to use art as a tool for diplomacy. The lack of current research on Art in Embassies was a chief motivator for conducting this study. In recent years, the number of people researching the field of cultural diplomacy and writing on why the U.S. government should better engage in it has steadily increased (Cummings, 2003; Hurlburt & Ivey, n.d.; Sablosky, 2003; Schneider, 2002/2009). Despite this fact, little has been done to address this issue. As a well-established government program focused on art and culture, Art in Embassies is uniquely positioned to engage audiences around the world by harnessing the power of art to foster goodwill and mutual understanding.Item Capitalizing on Castro : Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States, 1959-1969(2012-05) Keller, Renata Nicole; Brown, Jonathan C. (Jonathan Charles), 1942-This dissertation explores the central paradox of Mexico's foreign relations with Cuba and the United States in the decade following the Cuban Revolution--why did a government that cooperated with the CIA and practiced conservative domestic policies defend Castro's communist regime? It uses new sources to prove that historians' previous focus on the foreign and ideological influences on Mexico's relations with Cuba was misplaced, and that the most important factor was fear of the domestic Left. It argues that Mexican leaders capitalized upon their country's "special relationship" with Castro as part of their efforts to maintain control over restive leftist sectors of the Mexican population. This project uses new sources to illuminate how perceptions of threat shaped Mexico's foreign and domestic politics. In 2002, the Mexican government declassified the records of the two most important intelligence organizations--the Department of Federal Security and the Department of Political and Social Investigations. The files contain the information that Mexico's presidents received about potential dangers to their regime. They reveal that Mexican leaders overestimated the centralization, organization, and coordination of leftist groups, and in so doing gave them more influence over policy than their actual numbers or resources logically should have afforded. The dissertation uses the concept of threat perception as an analytic and organizational tool. Each chapter considers a different potential source of danger to the Mexican regime in the context of the Cold War and the country's relations with Cuba. For the sake of clarity, it breaks the threats into the categories of individual, national, and international, even though these subjective categories may blend into one another throughout the course of the analysis. The first chapter begins with an individual threat: Lázaro Cárdenas, a powerful former president who became one of Fidel Castro's most dedicated supporters. The next three chapters analyze threats on the national level by looking at the domestic groups that Mexican leaders perceived to be the greatest dangers to their regime. The final two chapters move to the international level and examine the roles of Cuba and the United States. As a whole, this study of the connections between Mexico's foreign and domestic politics makes a significant and timely contribution to the historiographies of modern Mexico, U.S.-Latin American relations, and the Cold War.Item Compliance gaining in the United Nations Security Council(Texas Tech University, 1996-05) Thornton, Karen A.Perhaps the most basic and most prevalent purpose of all human interaction is to satisfy some desire. In such a case, "social behavior becomes the manipulation of other people to achieve the goals of the actor, and the study of interaction becomes the study of social control" (Marwell & Schmitt, 1967, p. 350). One of these forms of social control is called compliancegaining. This concept describes a person's (the agent's) attempt to cause another (the target) to act as the agent wishes. The target does not necessarily have to share the same beliefs or attitudes as the agent; it is the actual change in behavior that is of consequence. The concept of power also enters into this conception, since compliance-gaining "is the very reason for the existence of power" (Wheeless, Barraclough, & Stewart, 1983, p. 121). In order to be successful in his or her compliance-gaining attempt, the agent must evoke some sort of power over the target, such as the ability to reward proper behavior or punish undesirable action. It would be reasonable to make the assumption that since power and compliance-gaining function together, one could make judgments and predictions of the actors' interactions based on knowledge of their relative powers and methods of compliance-gaining. Indeed, several studies have shown that differences on power status between the actors greatly affect what methods the agent will use to persuade the target and how the agent will phrase the request (Fung, 1991; Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson, 1980; Richmond, Davis, Saylor, & McCroskey, 1984; Rim & Erez, 1980). What these definitions of human interaction have in common is that they study these interactions at the level of the individual. On a larger, more global scale, these definitions of social interaction might apply to the interactions of nations as well. How do nations attempt to influence other nations? Do they use strategies similar to those encountered in interpersonal relationships? It is the purpose of this study to examine the concepts of power and compliance-gaining at the international level to discover how nations attempt to influence and control the behavior of other nations. The effects of differences in power or status between the nations on these interactions will also be examined. Do states treat other states equally, as Clay's quote suggests; or do power differences lead to unequal rules of conduct, as Twain implies?Item The domestic consequences of hierarchy in international relations(2012-05) McCormack, Daniel Mark; McDonald, Patrick J., 1973-; Chapman, Terrence L.Recent explorations of hierarchy in international relations have restricted their domain of inquiry to states as aggregate units. Although this has greatly enhanced our understanding of international politics, we know less about what the implications of hierarchy are for domestic politics in subordinate states. Because of the varieties of domestic political control - including violence - employed by great powers, opening up the black box of subordinate state politics can yield new insights into the operations and limits of international hierarchy. Here I outline a theory of political incentivization and link it to a discussion of foreign-imposed regime change, arguing that great powers stabilize politics in subordinate states directly by bolstering preferred regimes and indirectly by threatening to intervene and remove leaders who challenge the status quo.Item Dropping the baton: decisions in United States policy on Indochina, 1943-1945(Texas Tech University, 2004-05) Hunt, Sanford BNot availableItem Global gatekeeping : domestic politics, grand strategy, and power transition theory(2013-05) Harris, Peter; Trubowitz, PeterWhich grand strategies do Great Powers adopt towards rising challengers? When do Great Powers conciliate their potential rivals, and when do they opt for strategies of containment? In this master’s report, I outline an argument to answer these and related questions. I add to the existing literatures on grand strategy and power transitions in several key respects. First, I model power shifts between Great Powers as contests over access to externally located benefits rather than as contests over power for its own sake. Second, I emphasize the weight of domestic politics in shaping states’ preferences over the apportionment of these benefits. Third, I highlight the role of diplomacy in determining whether established Great Powers choose to conciliate or else contain potential rivals. Empirically, I provide four vignettes of Great Power responses to rising states: the United States’ strategy towards Japan during the Cold War; Britain’s appeasement of the United States, 1890-1914; the United States’ containment of the Soviet Union under Ronald Reagan; and Britain’s containment of Wilhelmine Germany.Item Global gatekeeping : how Great Powers respond to rising states(2015-05) Harris, Peter, Ph. D.; Buchanan, Bruce, 1945-; Trubowitz, Peter; Boone, Catherine; Chapman, Terrence; McDonald, Patrick; Suri, JeremiWhy do some shifts in power between states pass off peacefully while others result in conflict? Scholars have debated the implications of international power transitions at least since Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War documented the rise of Athens and the fear that this aroused in Sparta. Must the rise in power of a potential challenger lead to jealousy, enmity and conflict as Thucydides claims was the case in antiquity? Or can established and rising powers find common ground on the world stage? Most attempts to answer these questions have focused on the decision-making calculus of rising states or else have modeled abstract dyadic relations between two rational actors under conditions of shifting power. In this dissertation, I shift the analytic focus onto the decision-making of established Great Powers, examining the international and domestic-political circumstances under which states will acquiesce to or promote the rise of another state and when they will instead seek to stymie the rise of a potential rival. The dissertation advances the notion that established Great Powers act as critical “gatekeepers” of world order. In the context of shifting power, established Great Powers are by definition materially stronger than their rising challengers—at least during the initial phases of a power transition. As such, established Great Powers are able to apply their preponderant power—military, economic, political and diplomatic—in ways that shape the opportunity structures available to would-be challengers. I provide an argument to explain when and why an established state will see discharge this gatekeeping function in a way that is conciliatory towards a rising state and when its leaders will, instead, opt for a strategy of containment. The model has implications for reading international history; International Relations theory on grand strategy, security studies and international order; and for contemporary public policy debates surrounding the rise of China and the other so-called BRICS nations. Evidence is drawn from a comparative historical analysis of British and American responses to rising states, 1890-1990.Item Item The intersection of migration and state power(2011-12) Rottas, Andrew Steven; Government; Freeman, Gary P.; Givens, TerriThis project attempts to identify the various ways in which the projection of state power on the international scene can be affected by global migration patterns. It begins by examining some key aspects of state power that might be influenced by migration, and then assessing the impact that migration might have on those aspects. It closes by analyzing the ways in which these changes might alter state power and behavior, and proposing some areas for future research in this topic.Item Maintaining the empire: diplomacy and education in U.S.-Ecuadorian relations, 1933-1963(2009-05) Epps, William Thayer; Lawrence, Mark AtwoodHistorians today continue to explore the maintenance of the U.S. Empire in the Third World. Some argue that coercion was the driving force. Others suggest that consent played a role. Settling this debate is difficult given the unbalanced state of the historiography, which is overloaded with analyses of interventions. Analyzing U.S.-Ecuadorian relations offers an instructive addition to the literature. Negotiation and compromise, not coercion, were central to these interactions. The Ecuadorians who shaped these relations the most typically shared some core assumptions with their U.S. counterparts. Policymakers in Washington therefore developed educational exchange programs to expand this pool of pro-U.S. Latin Americans. Using documents from archives in the United States and Ecuador, this study explores how policymakers used diplomacy and education to maintain the U.S. Empire in the Third World from 1933 to 1963. This process began with the Roosevelt Administration’s Good Neighbor Policy. Ecuadorian threats to nationalize U.S. businesses operating in Ecuador, however, challenged the rhetoric of cooperation championed by Roosevelt. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor halted these challenges. Two days after the attack, policymakers in Washington accepted Ecuadorian offers to establish bases in Ecuador. This marked the solidification of hemispheric solidarity, and a more robust U.S. hegemony in Latin America. A growing number of Ecuadorian students and intellectuals studying in the United States under scholarships awarded by their government strengthened this solidarity. The U.S. government soon began funding both these exchanges as well as American Schools throughout Latin America in the hopes of maintaining this unity in the future. Beginning in 1950, disputes over fisheries threatened the wartime cohesion. Ecuador attempted to force Washington to accept a 200-mile limit on territorial waters. Negotiations failed to resolve the issue. The discontent evident throughout Latin America continued to build, until, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy discovered that the government of Ecuador would not support his administration’s plan to exclude Cuba from the Organization of American States. Despite these setbacks, policymakers continued to promote educational exchange through the Foreign Leader Program and the Fulbright Program. They hoped above all else to expand consent to U.S. hegemony.Item Powerplays in a de facto state : Russian hard and soft power in Abkhazia(2011-08) Johnston, Andrew Michael; Garza, Thomas J.; Moser, Robert G.The conceptual divide between “hard power” and “soft power,” and the resources that constitute the basis of each, remain hotly debated topics among International Relations theorists as well as foreign policy advisors and analysts. Two developments in the last decade that have greatly influenced the study of the hard-power/soft-power dichotomy are: (1) the pursuit by many single-state actors of foreign policy strategies identifying and actively incorporating soft-power instruments, and (2) the realization by political theorists that individual policy instruments often exhibit unexpected hard and soft-power characteristics and effects, sometimes resulting in hard power acting soft and soft power acting hard. Exploring this dichotomy further, I examine the Russian Federation’s use of its hard and soft power with respect to the de facto independent Georgian separatist region of Abkhazia from 1999-2009 by identifying specific Russian foreign policy instruments employed in the bilateral relationship and analyzing how these instruments draw upon and project Russian hard and soft power. My findings support research addressing instances when traditionally defined hard-power instruments display soft-power effects, and vice versa, and highlight examples of individual policy instruments producing both hard and soft-power effects simultaneously; coercing a subject while they co-opt its interests. In addition, I find that the Russian Federation is actively employing soft-power methods of engagement in its contemporary foreign policy strategy, having substantially increased this employment between 1999-2009— particularly with respect to Abkhazia. Concerning the Russia-Abkhazia relationship specifically, I conclude that, based on Russia’s engagement of the region from 1999- 2009, ties between the country and the de facto state will continue to strengthen, however, with Abkhazia in an increasingly supplicant position.Item Protection from themselves : the domestic consequences of international hierarchy(2015-05) McCormack, Daniel Mark; McDonald, Patrick J., 1973-; Chapman, Terrence; Findley, Michael; Lawrence, Mark; Wolford, MichaelIn recent years, international relations scholarship has begun to take seriously the role that hierarchy plays in shaping international order. The conclusion of this research program is that hierarchical ordering principles primarily work to structure relations among states in the international system. This dissertation offers an alternative view of international hierarchy. More specifically, this project explores the implications that international hierarchy has for political developments within -- rather than between -- states. I first argue that international hierarchy is oriented around the securing of favorable leadership within other states. I find that "dominant states" can alter the willingness of groups within "subordinate states" to compete for domestic political power by shaping the value these groups place on holding office. This argument has three empirical implications. First, I show that by conditionally promising resources like foreign aid to groups within subordinate states, dominant states can bring new, friendly leaders to power, in effect "purchasing" regime change. Second, I find that dominant states are able to deter challenges to their preferred regimes within subordinate states by providing foreign aid and by threatening unfriendly groups with coercion. Finally, I show that the disappearance of hierarchy -- and its attendant regime security -- generate incentives for civil conflict.Item Sign of contradiction? religious cultural heritage and the nuclear paradox of Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan(2013-08) Muzas, Brian Keenan; Gavin, Francis J.; Inboden, William, 1972-Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald W. Reagan embody a paradox. All three presidents made nuclear decisions ranging from hawkish and belligerent to dovish and restrained. How can such marked differences be explained? I argue that religious cultural heritage (RCH) can provide a parsimonious link which unifies the seemingly disparate nuclear choices of these presidents. I propose a theory to connect religious cultural heritage, decision-making frameworks, and nuclear choices. I apply this theory to Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan at the individual level of analysis. Since these three presidents were immersed in a Christian cultural milieu, I move beyond the simplistic treatment of religion as a proxy for morality to explore both Christian thought on war and the philosophical ethics, philosophy of government, and philosophy of human nature which underlie Christian thought. Using secondary and primary sources including archival research, I analyze each president and his nuclear decisions. Each presidential chapter presents the RCH of each president, pieces together each worldview, establishes patterns of thought and patterns of action, and analyzes a number of salient nuclear decisions ranging from choices in the midst of crises to programs for nuclear sharing and cooperation. In the final chapter I discuss and integrate my findings through the lenses of history and policy science, present avenues for future work, and draw policy lessons which can be applied today.Item Signaling intentions through narrative persuasion : an examination of the Berlin Crisis(2016-05) Tomasz, David Anthony; McDonald, Patrick J., 1973-; Wolford, ScottThis paper evaluates the criteria for persuasive international signaling in the context of an incentive to deceive. National-level heuristics interact with observable indices of behavior to condition the effects of intuitively-plausible narratives on persuasion. States use their heuristic understanding of their rival and observed indices of their behavior to make conclusions about the credibility of narrative explanations offered in support of attempts at persuasion. I examine communications between foreign policy decision makers in the Berlin Crisis to evaluate these attempts at persuasion, both deceptive and sincere.Item A structural theory of Olympic governance(2014-08) Jedlicka, Scott Ryan; Hunt, Thomas M.This study investigates the suitability of applying international relations theory, specifically international regime theory, to Olympic sport governance. The reliance of the Olympic governance system upon its conception of sport as a politically transcendent source of moral inspiration and the importance of this ideology to political actors can be used to accurately classify it as an international regime or institution. Two outcomes derive from this argument. First, the Olympic regime acknowledges states as free riders and allows them to accrue benefits from association with Olympic sport without bearing any of the costs of providing it. This makes the Olympics an especially appealing target for state political manipulation. Second, the regime is relatively unable to enforce any of its rules for state behavior not because it is weak or lacking in legitimacy, but because its ideological principles make enforcement impossible. The arguments advanced in the first section of the dissertation are supported by empirical case studies in the second. Historical process tracing methods are used to synthesize historical narrative with causal analysis. The decision to ban South Africa at the 1968 Summer Olympics, the 1980 U.S.-led boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow, and the development of the International Convention against Doping in Sport are all instances in which the Olympic movement and international politics intersected, and thus represent useful illustrations of the relationship between the Olympic regime and international politics.Item War and peace in contemporary international relations: an empirical study of the concept of intermediacy in international law and politics(Texas Tech University, 1991-05) Aikhionbare, Edoisiagbon VictorThe conventional understanding of war and peace in international relations is that nation A is either at "war" or at "peace" with nation B. War as a legal condition is usually viewed as an aberration from the norm, a malfunction of an organism whose normal condition is one of peace. Recent theoretical developments question the rigid adherence to this old dichotomous approach of defining contemporary relations between nations. This study, therefore, raises a general question as to the juxtapositioning of the legal and political nature of war and peace since the end of World War II. Three dyadic relations--U.S. and U.S.S.R. from a global perspective, Israel and some selected Arab neighbors from a regional perspective, and Algeria and France from a national perspective--were used as case studies. With data from the Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB) and using a simple frequency distribution, the researcher analyzed dyadic events that may have led to cooperation and conflict from 1948 to 1978 on a 15-point conflict and cooperation scale. Findings suggested that the either-war-or-peace paradigm does not apply to the characterization of the behavior of the selected actors in the period the data covered. It was found that the conventional use of the terms "war" and "peace" gives an unrealistic image of the characterization of how nations behave in contemporary international relations because these conditions were found to be in a state of flux and constantly evolving. Therefore, the conclusion was that nations are neither at war nor at peace. Their affairs are conducted in a state of intermediacy. These findings further suggested that the conditions of war and peace in today's international relations should be seen from a holistic point of view in which war and peace are interdependent, interconnected, and interrelated, and simply different aspects of the same phenomenon. The difference between them is relative within an all-embracing unity. Such pair of opposites constitute a polar relationship where each of the two poles is dynamically linked to the other.