Each year the Department of Defense (DoD) prepares and submits a budget request through the President to Congress. Not only does Defense believe they need the resources that they ask for in the budget, but they also request a certain level flexibility in spending in order to meet the challenges of an uncertain future with a changing threat environment. When Congress increases their control over spending, the DoD's flexibility in spending directly decreases. So understanding Congressional control over Defense through the budget is important for Defense management. Levels and trends in Congressional control over Defense spending have been studied in the past. The goal of this thesis is to determine if the levels and trends in Congressional control of Defense spending within the post-Cold War era are consistent with those observed in the Cold War era. Comparative analysis through the use of graphs and statistics is the methodology used to determine the degree on consistency between time periods. Results show that the increasing trends of Congressional control over Defense spending observed in the Cold War era have significantly leveled off. It seems as if Congress has reached maximum capacity to control Defense spending.

This dissertation is an inquiry into the naturalization of war. It examines forms of life in a rural borderland that is also a battlefield through an ethnographic exploration of the intertwining of war and everyday living on Lebanon's southern border with Israel. Life in these parts, for the most part, revolves around tobacco farming, olive cropping, goat herding and other forms of agricultural practice generating subsistence and income and underpinning an ongoing presence in place. The southern borderland is also entangled in an ongoing war condition that cyclically erupts, disrupts, destructs, (re)constructs, and has done for generations now. War in South Lebanon has come to be inhabited as "natural"; it is by now a part of southern life, or better yet, insistently generative of a kind of life that continues - in whichever ways and outside of moral judgments - to be viable here. My inquiry unfolds as a journey through landscape as a place of simultaneous dwelling and warring and concerns itself with what constitutes ordinary living in a rural borderland that is also a battlefield. In what follows I explore how the tobacco-farming village communities of South Lebanon inhabit a long-term and ongoing condition of war in its ordinary, everyday and also violent guises. How do the pathways and rhythms of living in a rural-agricultural margin mesh with the materials and space-times of war? How are military conflicts past, recent and expected recognized, resisted, claimed, encountered, nurtured, inhabited as tabi'i, natural and `adi, habitual, normal? I conceive of this work as an attempt to place war in life; that is to think of war as a condition as generative and constructive (of life) as it is also destructive. What follows then is an ethnographic attempt to give breathing space to the life that goes on in a place of enduring war.

acase@tulane.edu / --- / 1 / Mira Kohl

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Cataloged from OhioLink's Electronic Theses and Dissertations website. Includes abstract and vita.

During the Cold War, war by proxy was a key strategy of indirect conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The purpose of these proxy wars was to either maintain or change the balance of power between the superpowers/great powers in conflict areas outside the central front in Europe. Within the condition of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), both the United States and the Soviet Union sought to avoid direct confrontation between their conventional military forces in regional conflicts out of a fear that it would escalate to an all out nuclear war.

During the Cold War, war by proxy was a key strategy of indirect conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The purpose of these proxy wars was to either maintain or change the balance of power between the superpowers/great powers in conflict areas outside the central front in Europe. Within the condition of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), both the United States and the Soviet Union sought to avoid direct confrontation between their conventional military forces in regional conflicts out of a fear that it would escalate to an all out nuclear war.

In April 1915 a journalist named Malcolm Ross was appointed New Zealand’s official war correspondent to cover the actions of the country’s troops wherever they might be fighting during World War I. Few today appear to have heard of this man so the task of this research was to discover who he was, why he was chosen and how effective he was as a correspondent. The fact he had not been remembered hinted at two possibilities; the first was that as little attention has been given to New Zealand’s media history so he had become one of the forgotten and just awaited some eager historian to rediscover him or, secondly, he had been forgotten because he had not left a lasting legacy or tradition worthy of remembrance. It was a conundrum waiting to be solved and that was the purpose of the research. What was uncovered was a man, born of Scottish working class parents who by 52, when he was selected as official war correspondent, had reached what appeared to be the pinnacle of his career. He was successful, both financially and socially. He had been an exceptional mountaineer and sportsman. His journalism and photographic skills had made him one of the leading journalists of his day. Few were surprised when he was appointed as the country’s first official war correspondent. It is the contention of this thesis that from the time of his appointment, Ross’s reputation and status eroded to the extent that his final years after the war appeared to have been spent in relative obscurity. The reason for this will be explored and largely hinges on the almost overwhelming criticism Ross received for his efforts as war correspondent. A major part of the research was devoted to determining whether this criticism was fair and whether Ross warranted elevation into the ranks of the undeserved forgotten of our country’s media heroes.

Inaug.-Diss.--Leipzig. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [5]-6).

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Europe, Eurasia))--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2008. / Thesis Advisor(s): Siegel, Scott. "December 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 29, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-74). Also available in print.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Erlangen.