Multilateral trade negotiations within the World Trade Organization have reached a stalemate but there are new trade agreements being currently negotiated, either on bilateral or multinational basis. This thesis deals with two current major trade initiatives, the Trans-Pacific Partnership between the United States and eleven Pacific countries and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which includes the United States and the European Union. The thesis uses a comparative analysis to assess economic as well as geopolitical implications of the two trade agreements for the United States. The most apparent geopolitical aspect is the effort of the United States to write the rules of trade for the 21st century before China does so. In regards to economic implications, the thesis works with a concept of intra-industry trade and based on it assesses the possible economic effects on the United States economy, especially in regards to productivity and transactional costs on labor market. Both of the agreements have many critics and their future is not clear. This thesis argues that in certain economic and geopolitical aspects, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is more beneficial and strategic for the United States.

The aim of this thesis it to offer a complex overview of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This international agreement is being negotiated between the United States and the European Union. The main goal of this agreement is to create the largest free trade area to date. I wish to claim that the TTIP does not merely concern trade, but there is a clear geopolitical underlining for it too. When the communist world collapsed, the United States became the sole remaining superpower. Nowadays, the West is facing a different world that fosters new challenges as well as opportunities. The rise of China and Russia puts pressure on the West again. The TTIP seeks to reflect new challenges in world politics. A successful agreement would clearly demonstrate that countries across the Atlantic are still the closest partners. In this thesis I aim to find a causal link between this agreement and the current situation ushering in a shifting balance of power in world politics. I intend to employ two main branches of theories of international relations to verify my hypotheses. The first theory, realism, is equipped to answer questions about power and national interests. The second branch of theories, liberalism, is well applicable so as to indicate different actors and their participation in...

How does a view from the ground reshape the analytics of US drone warfare? Through an ethnographic exploration of drone warfare from one of its sites of destruction—Pakistan and its borderlands known as the Tribal Areas—this dissertation troubles the notion of war-at-a-distance. Far from being at a remove, the war for many Pakistanis is in their neighborhoods, their fields, and their homes. Especially for ethnic Pashtuns who live amidst the drone war in the borderlands, attack drones are one element among a violent network—from Pakistani military helicopters to ground operations to armed guerrilla movements—that create radical disruptions. It is this dialectic between U.S. attacks and Pakistani state machinations that both produces ‘drone warfare’ and informs the analytics of Pashtuns and Pakistanis more generally vis-à-vis drone bombardment. By interrogating the relationship between drone attacks and the pluriverse of differentially distributed violence in the border zone, this dissertation traces the multi-scalar entanglements of the US imperial formation and the Pakistani state through which drone warfare and the ‘war on terror’ take shape in the Tribal Areas. Through an ethnographically situated account of the material, embodied geographies and conditions of the war zone, I show how these entanglements shape the geopolitics of the Pakistani state and position ethnic Pashtuns as multiply inflected: tribal-ized marginals, ethnic-ized citizens, and racialized transnational-ized targets of the ‘war on terror.’ In so doing, Grounding Drone Warfare shows that the remoteness of drone warfare is less an empirical reality than an authorizing self-narration of an imperial formation that prefers to frame itself as temporary and limited.

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The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the ways in which the core-periphery relationships of English and Dutch colonial ventures in North America were impacted by local events in New Amsterdam-New York, a Dutch colony that was lost to the English following the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1664. Increased peripheralization of New Amsterdam-New York negated centralizing efforts of the Dutch and effectively ended the potential for Dutch geopolitical power in North America. While the Atlantic World has traditionally been understood as a framework for understanding international phenomenon and global processes, this thesis suggests that it was impacted by multiple geopolitical scales simultaneously. Placing New Amsterdam-New York’s colonial history in a framework of evolving core-periphery relationships and highlighting the central role of local social, political, and spatial processes provides a foundation for understanding the outbreak of ethnic hostilities in the late 1680s. I argue that the increasing importance of the local is demonstrated by the attention given to social, political, and spatial ordinances that sought not to control “the English” or “the Dutch”, but to control the actions and actors of individual streets, wards, and districts.

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The work briefly summarizes, the analysis emerged by studying two particular moments in Mexican history with regards to its energy policies: with principal focus on the years of oil expropriation in 1938 and the promulgation of the Energy Reform of December of 2013 with the addition of exploring how the seek for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), appears as a factor of international economics that has influenced these processes. Since Enrique Peña Nieto arrived to power, the energy model of the Mexican Republic have experimented its biggest transformations after seventy-five years of protectionism. This last reform took to an end the monopoly in industry of the national oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). México belongs now to the North American Free Trade Agreement, previously non-existent when in the 30s president Lázaro Cardenas Del Rio elicited support of the population to expropriate the oil and gas industry. The purpose of this study is to analyze how historical driving forces on a geopolitical perspective, can influence the process of policy-making on the Mexican energy sector. Oil has been known as the blood of the political and economic system of Mexico. To this end, the thesis relies on Classical Geopolitics that combines the Realist Theory of International relations to explore the historical driving forces affecting the outcome of energy policies. With the classification of the geopolitical drivers, identified adopting the model of analysis of the international system proposed by Mark E. Williams, it is possible to reveal implications on the undergone changes in policymaking, especially on energy and foreign affairs. This work is the product of the insights on the impacts of the oil industry in energy policy making, and the repercussions this activity has on foreign policy.

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American Geopolitical Culture strongly rejects the concept of spheres of influence, but great power competition often dictates a tacit acceptance of rival powers' privileged zones of control. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to maintain a sphere of influence along its border, and on multiple occasions resorted to the use of force to maintain control over foreign states. How did the United States react to the Soviet use of force in sovereign territory that fell within the Soviet privileged spheres of influence? This paper looks at three case studies, the Hungarian Revolution, the Prague Spring, and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and provides an analysis of the American foreign policy response, and the geopolitical and cultural values that informed policymakers' decision-making. Despite the limited interventions pursued by the United States, the United States constantly sought to undermine Soviet efforts to maintain a sphere of influence. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the United States prioritized long-term strategies on a global scale to weaken the Soviet Union in lieu of tactical interventions in opposition to the Soviet use of force. In Afghanistan, the United States continued to maintain its long-term strategies, while taking advantage of unique local factors to place additional strain on the Soviet Union. Across all three case studies the United States consistently pursued strategies that sought to weaken the Soviet Union as a whole, rather than just target individual spheres of influence. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation examines the American response to the Soviet use of force within its spheres of influence during the Cold War. American politicians have strongly rejected the validity of spheres of influence and consider them to be a form of imperialism that undermines a state's sovereign right to govern its own affairs. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used military force to exert control over spheres of influence in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan. The American response to each of these case studies varied. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the United States actively avoided intervening against the Soviet invasion, while in Afghanistan the United States provided extensive aid in the form of weapons, training, and intelligence. What explains the difference in the American approach to each of these case studies? This dissertation argues Soviet sphere of influence dynamics were stronger in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which acted as a deterrent to any American intervention. Rather than engaging the USSR in its established spheres of influence, the United States prioritized opposing Soviet expansion elsewhere while propagandizing Soviet brutality to sway world opinion away from the Soviet Block. In Afghanistan, Soviet influence was considerably weaker, allowing the United States greater opportunities to contest the Soviet invasion directly.