The thesis provides a new interpretation of Britain's policy towards German rearmament through an analysis of the views of government ministers, Foreign Office officials and military planners. It analyses the role of five key influences. British antipathy to the Germans was of seminal importance. Suspicion of the Germans among Labour ministers produced a backlash against a policy of German rearmament from September 1950. The Foreign Office feared a new German-Soviet, Rapallo-style pact and sought to prevent this by integrating the Federal Republic into the West. Once political and military integration were conjoined in the EDC-contract negotiations they became supportive of the EDC as a means of containing the German threat. The American role was crucial in persuading the British to accept German rearmament within the EDC. However, Washington consistently came into conflict with London over Germany's financial contribution to defence, the extent of German rearmament and British attempts to moderate German policy in order to conciliate the Soviets. The Anglo-Soviet relationship constitutes a third crucial factor. Initially, fear of Soviet reactions inhibited the British from supporting extensive German rearmament. The apparently less provocative nature of EDC was one reason for British acceptance of it. In 1951, 1953 and 1955 elements within the British government sought to promote detente through concessions to the Soviets on German rearmament. Though the British military put the German rearmament issue on to the government's agenda in spring 1950, subsequently the strategic rationale became less important than the diplomatic. From 1952 a German defence contribution was seen as a means of compensating for NATO deficiencies rather than as part of a wider force expansion. German rearmament involved substantial financial costs for Britain but a series of favourable financial agreements with the Federal Republic enabled policy-makers to discount this factor.

Since the Cold War, East Asia has been one of the most dynamic regions in the world. Among actors in East Asia, South Korea has been of less interest to researchers who anticipate that South Korea, as a long standing ally of the USA, is expected to be involved in the US-led containment policy of China and North Korea. In many ways, the strategic choices of South Korea since the Cold War were not as expected. Materialistic explanations such as Realism theory or Alliance theories could not provide a context for South Korea's strategic choices. This study exploits strategic culture to fill the lacunae, and the ROK strategic military doctrine is chosen in order to explain its strategic choices since the Cold War. By choosing military doctrine at the strategic level it is hoped to show clearly the path of change in the strategy of the ROK since the Cold War. Cultural explanations as a supplement theoretical concept of materialistic theories are helpful in understanding the ROK's behaviour since the Cold War. This study establishes the relationship between strategic culture and military doctrine, and also tries to build the connection between military doctrine and force structure. This study uses political culture, geography and history as the main sources of strategic culture, and explores how changes in these three factors affect changes in strategic culture; it also investigates how changed strategic culture leads to change in military doctrine and force structure. Strategic culture is certainly not the only factor driving the ROK military doctrine. However, it becomes a significant one in the post-Cold War era. This study shows that strategic culture is increasingly important in order to understand the strategic choices of South Korea.

In comparison to security relationships characterised by the centrality of the state and the use of force, better explained by the ‘traditional’ security perspective, the U.S.-Mexico security relationship in the 1990s is defined by non-state actors and trans-border concerns from the U.S. point of view. U.S. security concerns regarding Mexico are the result of growing interdependence between the two countries, and the paradox of the bilateral security relationship is that these concerns only intensified in the context of NAFTA. The kind of concerns Mexico indirectly generates for the United States requires for their explanation a non-traditional conception of security. This thesis relies thus on the combination of the ‘Copenhagen School’ and Risk Society theory perspectives to explaining security issues. While drug trafficking from Mexico has been seen as detrimental to the social fabric of the United States because of its impact on the U.S. society, Mexican undocumented immigration has been perceived as a U.S. concern because of the possibility for this flow to weaken the U.S. cultural identity. This thesis also includes the analysis of border environmental challenges, in particular the potential for an epidemic from contaminated water in the region, in order to emphasise that not all pressing border issues are security concerns, as well as the value of non-traditional perspectives to explain those issues that are addressed with far better results through cooperation.

In this thesis, I examine the Euro-Atlantic security policies of Russian presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev from 2000-2012 and argue that there are differences in the policies of the two men. Understanding the differences and why they exist, while also recognising the points of continuity between the two presidencies, is particularly important in light of Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 and the implications that his return has for the direction of Russia’s security policy towards the Euro-Atlantic region during his current term in office. By acknowledging the differences between the policies of the two men, greater insight into the Medvedev period and his contributions to Russian policy in an area of great strategic importance to Russia can be gained. This thesis uses discourse analysis and elite interviews to provide a comparative analysis of the two presidencies. By examining the leaders’ actions towards Russia’s security interests in the region, the frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space, the Euro-Atlantic organizations addressing security issues (the OSCE and NATO), the regional security framework, and the issue of nuclear weapons and missile defence in Russian security policy, points of continuity and change in the policies of the two men can be seen. There are several key differences that can be seen between the policies of the two men. During the Medvedev period, Russian engagement with the frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet Republics increased, particularly in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh. Medvedev also chose to highlight areas of cooperation with the region’s security organizations, while never completely abandoning Putin’s negativism towards them. Most importantly, Medvedev introduced his European Security Treaty proposal, a major initiative which although building on existing ideas, includes some unique elements and stands as an example of Russian agenda-setting on the issue of Euro-Atlantic security.

The thesis of the present work is that throughout the modern era the dominant corpus of scientific ideas, as articulated around key machine technologies, has been reflected in the contemporary theories and practices of warfare in the Western world. Over the period covered by this thesis - from the ascendancy of the scientific worldview in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to present day - an ever more intimate symbiosis between science and warfare has established itself with the increasing reliance on the development and integration of technology within complex social assemblages of war. This extensive deployment of scientific ideas and methodologies in the military realm allows us to speak of the constitution and perpetuation of a scientific way of warfare. There are however within the scientific way of warfare significant variations in the theories and practices of warfare according to the prevalence of certain scientific ideas and technological apparatuses in given periods of the modern era. The four distinctive regimes I thereupon distinguish are those of mechanistic, thermodynamic, cybernetic, and chaoplexic warfare. Each of these regimes is characterised by a differing approach to the central question of order and chaos in war, on which hinge the related issues of centralisation and decentralisation, predictability and control.

Although many works exist on the role of ethnicity in the domestic securitisation processes in Malaysia, far less attention has been given to the significance ethnicity has in shaping the country's external security outlook. The central aim of this thesis is to analyse the relationship between national security and ethnic kinship. More specifically, it analyses whether ethnicity has had a major impact on Malaysia's external security practices in Southeast Asia. In geographic terms, the thesis asks how the Malaysian government has approached the ethnic conflicts in (1) southern Thailand, (2) Aceh, Indonesia, and (3) the Moro Region in the Philippines. In substantive terms, the thesis explores in particular to what extent the Malaysian government has been concerned about the societal security of the Malay's ethnic kin. Societal security includes the protection of physical survival, economic well-being and in some instances their political rights in their homeland. The argument of this thesis is that Malaysia's approach towards the ethnic conflicts in southern Thailand, Aceh and the Moro region is best understood with reference to the role that shared ethnicity has played for Malaysian policy-makers. This thesis concludes that the Malaysian government has not only promoted the Malays' ethnic interests within its own territorial boundaries, but also sought to protect the distinct identity of ethnic kin groups in cases where the latter have been caught up in conflict in Malaysia's immediate regional neighbourhood. However, contrary to arguments by many scholars - whereby involvement in ethnic conflicts by third parties being of the same ethnicity as one of the conflict parties tends to both make such conflicts more intense and create tensions that are likely to increase the probability of interstate conflict - Malaysia's "involvement" has neither led these conflicts to deteriorate nor fomented major interstate tensions, let alone war.

The thesis examines the concept of security that states and other actors in Southern Africa have acted upon. It argues that Southern Africa, due to its peculiar colonial history and apartheid, and the regions' links with great powers, embraced the traditional concept of security, a concept that was unsustainable and inappropriate for its specific conditions. The traditional concept seeks to protect states and domestic societies from outside threats. This concept was inherently militaristic, nationally focused, state-centric and narrow in scope. The emphasis is on immediate problem-solving rather than on a sustained attempt to identify the underlying causes of insecurity. Its application to Southern Africa led to regional confrontation and produced more insecurity than security. Southern Africa needs a new concept which is broader and long term in its outlook in order to restore stability and prosperity. The new concept should essentially be people centred, because people are the only object of security. The new concept should take into account the diverse factors, military and non-military impinging on the security of people. Placing people at the centre, when conceptualising security, requires focusing on making the environment secure rather than on the threats to and the vulnerabilities of the state. The environment of security is defined by the coexistence of three pillars: order, justice and peace. Thus the task of building security in Southern Africa should be orientated towards the strengthening of these pillars. In the final analysis the pillars need to be supported and reinforced by a political process which seeks to promote the good of all members of society as the final goal of all policy. This cannot be achieved without building legitimate states, i.e. states regarded as protectors of their citizens interests and strengthen social agents other than those merely around the state. The task of building a legitimate state and strengthening civil society then become primary steps in the process of building the desired security community in Southern Africa. National integration of different political communities within the states and regional co-operation are essential. This implies strengthening domestic and regional institutions. While domestic institutions are necessary to reduce internal conflicts, regional institutions are essential to allow the predictability of peace in relations among states. The economic and social inequalities between the states and the military asymmetries, will hamper states quick integration, hence the building of the security community. Regional institutions will tend to drain the resources of the relatively richer states, even though there is a strong will to avoid the confrontations of the past. This thesis suggests that a security system, defined as a pattern of relations aimed at assuring the sharing of common values and interests, should be followed in the process of building security in Southern Africa.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine European international politics towards the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) from 1969 to 1973. The importance of the CSCE is widely recognised by historians and political scientists, but the pre-diplomacy of the Conference is poorly understood. Based on the British, French and West German archive documents, and focusing on international political dynamics, this study explores how multilateral European detente represented by the CSCE was realised in the early 1970s. The four-year period leading up to the opening of the CSCE was also highly significant, because these four years saw the crucial transformation of the nature of European detente. When the Soviets proposed the European Security Conference in 1969, their aim was to consolidate the status quo in Europe. However, the West Europeans were the leading actors in convening the Conference, and between 1969 and 1973, they made the CSCE meaningful and substantial in two ways: its procedure and its content. The idea of a three-stage Conference, which was developed by the Europeans during the pre-conference diplomacy, made it possible to negotiate thoroughly on the text of the Helsinki Final Act and steer it in the direction the West wanted. More significantly, the West succeeded in incorporating the human rights and human contact agenda into the Conference. This study will thus examine how the ideas of the constructive procedure and humanitarian subjects were developed. It will further argue that multilateral European detente was uncontrollable by the superpowers, and a transformation of detente was possible in the context of multilateral diplomacy. Britain, France and West Germany respectively played an important role in the opening up and development of the CSCE. As a result, multilateral European detente went beyond the status quo.

The idea for this thesis arose from my previous research on liberal state motivations for conducting military humanitarian intervention1. Learning about the reluctance of liberal states to commit wholeheartedly to the protection of strangers overseas, I started asking the question of how to ensure that liberal states commit to their responsibility to protect individuals comprehensibly and resolutely. From this thought stems the core ambition of this research: To explore different ideas that might help the liberal state to provide security as a global good effectively and ethically in humanitarian intervention. This ambition marks the beginning of this exploratory research. In this research I approached the underlying problem of the liberal state’s reluctance to commit its soldier wholeheartedly to humanitarian intervention by trying to conceptualize the relationship between society, state and soldier using liberal Social Contract theory. Through the normative conceptualization of civil-military relations I identified a normative explanation for the empirical observation that soldiers when employed on humanitarian interventions, provide security often ineffectively and unethically. Hence, an exploratory conceptualization of the relationship between society, state and soldier provided me with a theoretical explanation of the link between the particular nature of liberal civil-military relations and the conduct of the soldier in the specific context of humanitarian intervention. It was this conceptualization that inspired the idea of exploring the hypothetical possibility of employing the private armed contractor as an alternative agent of the liberal state to provide security as a global good in humanitarian intervention. Combining two timely topics, namely the future of the responsibility to protect and the commercialization of security, I arrived at an interesting normative question, which was to lie at the heart of this research: Should the contractor become the liberal state’s cosmopolitan agent to provide security as a global good in humanitarian intervention? In a grounded theory approach, I intended to develop a conceptualization of civil-military and civil-contractor relations. This conceptualization was to constitute the foundation of a theory about the impact of the particular nature of civil-combatant relations on the combatant’s conduct in humanitarian intervention. Although informed by a diverse body of empirical data, this research develops a theory that is inherently normative in nature. This normative theory advances the core argument that the contractor should become the liberal state’s cosmopolitan agent. The reason is that his abstract relationship to society and state allows him to provide security as a global good effectively and ethically in humanitarian intervention. This argument is based on my developed theory that the nature of the relationship of society and state to the soldier and the contractor, determines how each type of combatant can apply his skills virtuously in humanitarian intervention. The soldier’s conduct in humanitarian intervention is the result of the soldier’s embedment within social contractarian civil-military relations, which causes friction with the liberal state’s cosmopolitan duty to protect strangers overseas. As a result of the liberal state’s normative predicament between its social contractarian and cosmopolitan obligations, the liberal state cannot employ the soldier to the most virtuous of his abilities. Conceptualizing the contractor’s raison d’être outside social contractarian civil-military relations, the liberal state does not face a similar normative predicament when employing the contractor in humanitarian intervention to provide security as a global good. As a consequence, I argue that the liberal state can employ the contractor to the most virtuous of his abilities in humanitarian intervention. My theory thereby contributes to the understanding of the contractor’s particular relationship to society and state on the one hand and the private military company on the other. It is this relationship that enables the contractor to maximize his virtuosity as a security service provider within the context of humanitarian intervention.

Dominant paradigms of causal explanation for why and how Western liberal-democracies go to war in the post-Cold War era remain versions of the 'liberal peace' or 'democratic peace' thesis. Yet such explanations have been shown to rest upon deeply problematic epistemological and methodological assumptions. Of equal importance, however, is the failure of these dominant paradigms to account for the 'neoliberal revolution' that has gripped Western liberal-democracies since the 1970s. The transition from liberalism to neoliberalism remains neglected in analyses of the contemporary Western security constellation. Arguing that neoliberalism can be understood simultaneously through the Marxian concept of ideology and the Foucauldian concept of governmentality – that is, as a complementary set of 'ways of seeing' and 'ways of being' – the thesis goes on to analyse British security in policy and practice, considering it as an instantiation of a wider neoliberal way of war. In so doing, the thesis draws upon, but also challenges and develops, established critical discourse analytic methods, incorporating within its purview not only the textual data that is usually considered by discourse analysts, but also material practices of security. This analysis finds that contemporary British security policy is predicated on a neoliberal social ontology, morphology and morality – an ideology or 'way of seeing' – focused on the notion of a globalised 'network-market', and is aimed at rendering circulations through this network-market amenable to neoliberal techniques of government. It is further argued that security practices shaped by this ideology imperfectly and unevenly achieve the realisation of neoliberal 'ways of being' – especially modes of governing self and other or the 'conduct of conduct' – and the re-articulation of subjectivities in line with neoliberal principles of individualism, risk, responsibility and flexibility. The policy and practice of contemporary British 'security' is thus recontextualised as a component of a broader 'neoliberal way of war'.