The U.S. Intelligence Community is undergoing an "Analytic Transformation" designed to improve the quality of intelligence analysis. Information foraging theory, a human analogue to foraging theory that finds humans to be time- and risk-sensitive information seekers, is particularly relevant to this effort because it addresses two basic challenges that continually confront intelligence analysts: information overload and severe time constraints. The present investigation marks the first empirical foray into testing a theory of intelligence foraging. Two experiments using computer simulations tested the effects of temporal barriers on expert (intelligence analysts) and novice (undergraduates) search, consumption, and patch residence behaviors across three fictional databases (i.e., patch) containing information on the cause of a battleship explosion. The original hypotheses were not confirmed; handling time and travel time manipulations (in the form of different download delays associated with each database) did not significantly affect their database navigation patterns or their assessment of the battleship explosion. Unexpectedly, the specific content of each patch appeared to control their search and consumption behavior rather than the handling or travel time associated with each patch; the content effect mimicked the delay effect that was initially predicted. In the face of high stakes and realistic information constraints, the present study hints at an evolved information forager - one who is still content-driven in spite of severe time constraints. In light of the present findings and in service to our national security interests, future research would benefit from a deeper dive into information foraging situations with these new types of constraints. / Psychology

This dissertation investigates the emergence and evolution of United States' national interests in the Arctic region, as well as examines the factors that influence how the U.S. engages in cooperative endeavors in the region with other Arctic states. Though geographically located on the periphery of broader global politics, the region nevertheless is geopolitically situated at the convergence of three continents—North America, Asia, and Europe—in an area historically significant to, but often underappreciated by, the U.S. Government. Two research questions frame this study. The primary research question asks: How have U.S. national interests in the Arctic region evolved over time, and what factors help explain the evolution of U.S. engagement in the region? U.S. perceptions of the region's geopolitical significance gives rise to a subsidiary question: To what degree has the U.S viewed the Arctic region as a zone of competition or a zone of cooperation? Drawing on a range of archival sources, academic literature, historical and contemporary U.S. Government documents—including several declassified documents, as well as personal interviews of key Arctic experts, this study analyzes the development of U.S. interests in the Arctic over four distinct time periods, collectively spanning over a hundred years. These time periods are pre-World War I to the end of World War II (1906-1945); the first half of the four-decade-long Cold War (1945-1967); the second half of the Cold War (1968-1989); and the post-Cold War period (1990-2017). The study produces three major findings. First, U.S. overall interest in the Arctic region increased and decreased in conjunction with how the U.S. perceived the region's overall geopolitical significance. This waxing and waning of U.S. involvement in the polar north generally aligned with the U.S. viewing the Arctic as either a zone of insignificance, competition, or cooperation at different phases over the study's time period. The study's second major finding is that U.S. security interests in the Arctic singularly dominated and shaped America's overall set of national interests that emerged in the region, particularly since World War II. While constituting a number of issues, the most important U.S. security interest in the Arctic has been ensuring freedom of navigation in and through the Arctic. The region's overwhelming maritime composition, along with freedom of navigation's centrality to America's broader global power and interests, ensures the security-driven focus of America's overall Arctic national interests. The final key finding reveals that U.S. Arctic cooperative engagement is conditional. Geopolitical perceptions of the Arctic as either a zone of competition or a zone of cooperation conditions America's willingness to engage with other Arctic states in the region. Since the end of the Cold War and the ensuing period of circumpolar cooperation, U.S. participation in Arctic cooperative arrangements has been conditioned on how much it perceives such arrangements intrude on U.S. autonomy and freedom to act in and through the region. / Doctor of Philosophy / The Arctic is a vast and sparsely populated region that historically has been viewed geographically and geopolitically peripheral to the rest of the world. The United States has not always considered the region important, even though it has territory there. This study asks two questions. First: How have U.S. national interests in the Arctic region evolved over time, and what factors help explain the evolution of U.S. engagement in the region? Second: To what degree has the U.S viewed the Arctic region as a zone of competition or a zone of cooperation? Three major findings emerge from this study, which covers the early 20th century to the second decade of the 21st century—more than a hundred years. First, the evolution of U.S. interests in the Arctic region have waxed and waned in concert with how important the U.S. perceives the region. Second, America's security interests in the Arctic region dominate and drive its overall approach to the region. Finally, U.S.'s willingness to cooperatively engage with other Arctic states in the region depends on how the U.S. believes such engagements effect its ability to act in and through the Arctic region. The Arctic region is becoming more geopolitically important than at any time since at least the Cold War. Rapid global warming could potentially make the region's historically inaccessible shipping routes and vast natural resources accessible by 2050. With Russia already the largest Arctic presence, and China's increased focus on the Arctic, the region could become a space for strategic competition that could threaten U.S. national interests. This study provides the policy community the background and context to navigate the geopolitical challenges and opportunities being unleashed in the Arctic region.

No / In a marked departure from previous national governments, those led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sought to address national security issues both proactively and strategically in line with the party¿s philosophy of achieving a strong India. This paper begins by examining the strategic vision of the BJP. It then analyses how this vision led the BJP to make India an overt nuclear weapons state in 1998, and how this status affected the government¿s actions in the Kargil Conflict of 1999. This is followed by an closer examination of national security strategy under the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), particularly as outlined in the seminal Reforming the National Security System: Recommendations of the Group of Ministers of 2001, and how this administration responded to the near-war situation which developed between India and Pakistan in the spring-summer of 2002. The paper then will conceptualise NDA national security policy as ¿strong at home, engaged abroad¿ as evidenced by defence spending on external and internal security, the military¿s deployment on peacekeeping duties, and defence cooperation with other countries. It will conclude with an examination as to whether this national security policy as conceptualised here will remain effective and/or viable in the future.

no / Wars, armed violence and insecurity continue to blight Sub-Saharan Africa. Preventing and reducing such conflict has become a key priority not only for African governments and peoples, but also for Europe and the rest of the world. But successes have been limited, and important lessons have not been properly learned. This timely and important book examines the continuing sources and dynamics of violent conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa, and critically analyses policies and programmes to help to prevent, manage and reduce such conflicts

This thesis examines the decision to invade Iraq and the failed planning for the occupation of Iraq. Since Janis introduced groupthink in 1972, the groupthink perspective has been used to explain foreign policy disasters such as the failure to anticipate the Pearl Harbor attack and the Bay of Pigs. However, the groupthink perspective is not universally useful for explaining foreign policy mishaps. While some have attributed the Iraq war to groupthink, the groupthink perspective has not been systematically applied to these events. This thesis will examine Janis's original groupthink theory, and subsequent research that tested the effectiveness of the groupthink perspective. It will apply the groupthink perspective to the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq. It will also examine the failed planning for the occupation of Iraq. The application of the groupthink perspective to both the invasion decision and occupation planning suggests that groupthink was not the primary cause of either event. The thesis will conclude by describing alternative explanations for the decision to invade Iraq, such as ideological agenda setting, and other cognitive errors besides groupthink. / Master of Arts

As relations deteriorated between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II, the Truman administration faced increased pressure to preserve United States national security. One of its most important responses to this expanding Cold War was the National Security Act. Passed by Congress in July 1947, this legislation established a new, potentially revolutionary, presidential advisory body--the National Security Council. The primary role of the National Security Council was advising the president concerning matters involving United States national security. It was not until the outbreak of the Korean War and the development of NSC 68 that Truman began to place more than minimal emphasis on the new organization’s recommendations. The implementation of NSC 68 in 1950 revolutionized how United States national security policy was to be conducted. However, besides its role in the development of this one national security paper, the National Security Council wallowed in relative obscurity throughout the Truman administration. It was not until the inauguration of the Eisenhower presidency that the National Security Council began to fulfill the role envisioned by the 1947 National Security Act. This thesis examines the role played by the National Security Council in the development and implementation of United States national security policy during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. It focuses specifically on the importance of the National Security Council’s basic national security papers in determining policy. It concludes that from a relatively unimportant position in the Truman administration, the National Security Council developed under Eisenhower into an instrumental advisory body where national security problems were discussed, debated, and acted upon. / Master of Arts

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis argues that the building of the democratic institutions in new democracies was and still is a painstaking task. It shows that the new institutions are fragile and at times unable to cope with powerful organized criminal syndicates, rampant corruption, illegalism, elite bureaucratic cartels, and weak judicial systems still in the process of post communist reconstruction. This thesis proceeds from the premise that organized crime constitutes a threat to democracy, in particular a serious threat to new democracies and subsequently to the national security of the country. The first section defines organized crime as phenomena corroding the democratic institutions. It deals in particular with the fragility of the new democratic institutions focusing mainly on the organized crime activities that threaten the national security. It tackles problems of corruption in government and law enforcing agencies. Secondly, it considers issues of merging of crime and legal business and their impact on the institutions and society at large. Thirdly and most importantly it focuses on the fact that organized crime merges with the State machinery, thus undermining the very existence of democratic institutions. Fourthly, it looks into some forms of criminal activities such as drug business, weapons trade, money laundering, and white-slave trade. Finally it provides some policy recommendations for tackling the organized crime in Albania. / MP, Parliament of the Republic of Albania

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-174).

In a more complex and interdependent world, nations face new challenges that threaten their national security. National security should not be understood exclusively in the way of military threats by adversarial states but in a broader way: how old and new sectoral threats affect not only a state and its institutions but a nation as a whole, physically and economically. This dissertation looks into how the nature of security threats and risks has evolved in recent years. This dissertation then explores how different nations have decided to publish national security strategy documents and analyzes the way in which they include this broadened understanding of security: it finds that there is evidence of international policy diffusion related to the publication of such security strategies and that nations are evolving towards a broader understanding of security that includes models like whole-of-government, and whole-of-society. In the second half, this dissertation analyzes the route through which Mexico has reformed its national security framework since the year 2000 through a policy streams approach. After looking at the path that led to the creation of Mexico’s modern national security institutions, it analyzes the way in which Mexico national interests can be determined and how these interests inform the way in which Mexico understands national security threats and risks in the 21st Century. / text

The Soviet-U.S. rapprochement in the late 1980s ended one of the bitterest rivalries of modern history. Before this landmark event, the study of accommodation as a security strategy hardly received its fair share of attention in international relations theories. This thesis attempts to add to the growing body of work on the dynamics of accommodation. Specifically, it analyzes accommodative moves of Pakistan vis-a-vis India, thereby studying the dynamics of accommodation in the context of developing states. Four cases are studied in depth: first, the Indus Waters Treaty (1960); second, the Tashkent Declaration (1966); third, Post-Brasstacks Accommodative Moves (1987); and finally, Post-1990 Accommodative Moves. This thesis argues that three factors are particularly important in the initiation of accommodation in the developing world, namely, (1) decision-makers' desire to minimize losses (in the external politico-military sphere, the internal economic sphere and the internal political sphere), (2) their commitment to serious domestic reforms and (3) the involvement of a powerful third party that exercises leverage over both adversaries.