This thesis applies the Security Dilemma concept to explain the deterioration in U.S.-China military and defence relations in the Asia Pacific region between 2009 and 2013. It builds upon the existing empirical base that has used the security dilemma to explain contemporary U.S-China security relations. The thesis concludes that this condition has in important ways influenced Washington’s strategic calculations and military responses vis-à-vis China, which in turn perceptibly worsened U.S.-China military and defence relations. The central contribution of this thesis is a much needed addition to the existing scholarly understanding of the presence of the security dilemma in Washington’s strategic thinking and military policy formulation vis-à-vis Beijing. It also proffers a compelling case for the continued relevance of this concept to elucidate contemporary U.S.-China security relations. The thesis develops a robust theoretical framework of analysis to validate the existence of a genuine U.S.-China security dilemma. The case study chapters apply this framework to highlight and explain incidences of Washington’s misunderstandings of Beijing’s strategic intentions, caused by misinterpretations and misperceptions - worsening U.S-China military and defence relations. The case studies also address several conceptual and analytical gaps in the existing literature that have used the security dilemma concept to explain contemporary U.S.-China security relations: the importance being able to clearly distinguish between states’ military capabilities and intentions; a more integrative approach in the application of the security dilemma to view military domains; elaborating on some of the issues related to the ‘ambiguity of weapons’ in IR and worsening security dilemma dynamics; and extending the under-theorised discourse related to the U.S.-China ‘asymmetric’ military balance of power in the Asia Pacific. While the primary purpose of this thesis is to extend the existing empirical literature, it also generates several conclusions and implications for security dilemma theorising itself.

The last two decades have seen the emergence of discourses that depict climate change as a major threat to security. This thesis seeks to explore the consequences of using security narratives to speak about climate change. Focusing on the EU as a case study, the thesis aims to answer two central questions. First, has the climate change and international security discourse become dominant in the way climate change is conceptualised in the EU? Second, has this discourse solidified in concrete policies or institutional arrangements? To this end, I use Maarten Hajer’s framework for discourse analysis, which enables the uncovering of the narratives, metaphors and storylines through which climate change is being constructed as a security problem, but also the institutional consequences following from such discourse. I argue that, in the EU, the storyline that depicts climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ has managed to gain considerable influence in the EU climate change, and security discursive spaces. While other conceptualisations of the climate problem co-exist, EU climate actors now accept that climate change should be viewed as a security issue. At the same time, EU security actors now include climate change in their comprehensive definition of security. Regarding the policy consequences of the discourse, I contend that these are mainly visible in the context of external climate policies, as the security dimension of climate change is now part of EU climate diplomacy strategies. In addition, climate change considerations have been increasingly included in the EU’s comprehensive approach to external conflicts and crises. These findings, I argue, can shed some light on the normative debate over the securitisation of climate change as a positive or negative concept.

The security literature has witnessed growing attempts to re-conceptualize security outside of the traditional concern with interstate military conflict. However, the existing literature offers only limited explanations of this tendency and only focusses on new challenges and largely neglects to rethink how the new border security issues are actually governed in practice. These endeavours have brought about the need to re-conceptualise border security which was once taken as ‘a sub-set of national security’, an isolated phenomenon. The research was carried out from an interpretive perspective and used qualitative methods - including semi-structured interviews with a range of key actors in this context in Turkey and a case study conducted in Turkey’s capital Ankara and in Kilis, a province at Turkey’s Syrian border - to collect the research data. The data were analysed thematically using sector standard software. The research found that Turkey’s compartmental and archaic national security architecture and the national security approach built around it, currently pose the main threat to the state and society as the organizations and practices of security were shaped by the particular geopolitical and technical requirements of the Cold War. The need for transformation emerges as an outcome of conflicts between the key actors (state and society) and the resistance to each other’s claims for control. There is a compelling case for the reconceptualization of border security as a comprehensive approach that leads all the relevant public and private capabilities, organises all departments, transforms national security understanding and shapes the future security architecture; not simply as the discursive identification of new threats. The research also found that the most salient feature of the politics of a non-traditional border security concept lies in the willingness of the state to challenge the conception that security issues can be resolved only at the national level. It is recognised that would be an explicitly political act that has the potential to transform traditional understandings of state-hood.

Why have the major post 9/11 U.S. military interventions turned into quagmires? Despite huge power imbalances, major capacity-building efforts, and repeated tactical victories, the wars in Afghanistan (2001-present) and Iraq (2003-2011; 2014-present) turned bloody and intractable. The inability to design and manage war termination is an important part of the explanation why successful military operations to overthrow two third-world regimes failed to achieve favorable and durable outcomes. This thesis uses the abductive research method to develop three hypotheses to investigate these problems. Hypothesis #1: The failure to consider war termination heightens the risk of selecting a myopic strategy that has a low probability of success. Hypothesis #2: Cognitive obstacles, political frictions, and patron-client problems can impede the ability to recognize and abandon an ineffective or losing strategy. Hypothesis #3. When the United States tires of the war and decides to withdraw, bargaining asymmetries can undermine the prospects of a favorable outcome. These hypotheses are examined in the case studies and used to draw conclusions. Three main findings emerge. First, the United States government has no organized way to consider war termination and thus selected strategies that overestimated the prospects of decisive military victory. Second, the United States was slow to recognize and modify or abandon losing strategies. In both cases, U.S. officials believed their strategies were working even as the situations deteriorated. Third, once the United States decided to withdraw, bargaining asymmetries and disconnects in strategy undermined the prospects for a successful transition or negotiated outcome.

The thesis investigates the link between development and security - the ‘development-security nexus’- which emerged during the 1990s, facilitated by the formulation of human development and human security. It examines how this development-security nexus has evolved over time and has influenced the interrelated significance of development and security for international relations. The thesis questions this interdependence and analyses the theory and practice that see development and security issues as reciprocally reinforcing each other, in particular through a set of policies called Security Sector Reform (SSR). The research includes three main areas of interest related to the different meanings of development and security focusing in particular on human development and human security; the various interpretations of the development-security nexus since the 1990s; and the analysis of how Security Sector Reform, publicised as development-security nexus policies, are designed to translate it into practice. The thesis argues that the nexus between development and security is under-theorised, and the originality of this research is to investigate the link between its theories and practices. The critical view of this thesis towards current dominant theoretical and operational orientations of the development-security nexus is based on an analysis of literature on Critical Security Studies, Post- Development, and Non-mainstream International Relations approaches. The thesis contributes to existing scholarship by unpacking the different meanings of development and security embedded in Security Sector Reform policies and reveals the need to contextualise the significance of their interlinkages within each policy scenario. In particular the three case studies on Defence Reform of Armenia, SSR Afghanistan and SSR Guinea-Bissau highlight respectively: 1) the novelty of concerns raised by SSR and the complexity to categorise concerns on security within a single, even if inclusive, policy discourse. 2) the need to go beyond the narrow view of a militarised view of security and its inadequacy to support the implementation of development objectives and 3) that the link between development and security is still very much dependent on a vision of security linked to the state’s armed forces, and of development which is focused on state security governance capacity.

The politics of aid and the effect aid strategies have on recipient populations has been a significant interest area in international politics and economics. While studies of this behaviour have tended to focus on economic or developmental impacts, the security implications of military based aid have enjoyed less attention. It is an important area as the transfer of military capacity from states to allies or allied non-state actors is having resurgence in the midst of new, intersecting proxy conflicts in the Middle East and Europe. This article questions whether military aid strategies can contribute to the conditions of political violence and terrorism that they are ostensibly intended to address. The study uses a structured within-case comparative analysis of two periods of recent Pakistani history in which the state has been both the recipient of massive influxes of US military aid, and a target for embargo from such programs. A modified human security framework is used to assess changes in the security environment for the recipient population in these two time periods with a focus on the frequency and intensity of political violence. It finds that in this particular case, military aid has correlated with the entrenchment of military power and increasing political violence within the recipient state.

In 1979 Britain committed almost 120,000 ground troops and almost the entire Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to NATO’s defence of Western Europe. 100,000 troops were assigned to Home Defence, and Britain would acts as a staging post for foreign troops on their way to the front. Did Britain really have the means to mobilise, transport and supply these forces, and defend itself, in the event of war? This is an analysis of the conventional defence planning of the UK, its relationship to the policy, and their possible and actual execution. Deterrent plans were aimed at the perceived threat: planning for the manifestation of that threat, and implementing those plans, is analysed in detail. These plans relate intimately to NATO's "Flexible Response" strategy and the desire to raise the nuclear threshold enabling NATO to stop a WTO attack by conventional means. Analysing the plans for mobilisation, and comparing them to the forces and facilities available, this thesis seeks to understand if the UK fulfilled its obligation, not only to NATO, but also to the Armed Forces and British public. Following the end of the Cold War, the idea the ‘teeth’ could be sharpened at the expense of the ‘tail’ persisted, and has now grown to dangerous proportions. Pursuing the ‘efficiency’ thread the Armed Forces have been cut to the smallest level for 100 years, yet asked to do more. There is a large group, both military and political, who believe the policy worked and caused the fall of the Soviet Union. This thinking persists in policy even after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With the increasing tensions in Eastern Europe and the Pacific, and the British Armed Forces at their smallest for over a century, this post hoc analysis is dangerous.

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Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran has continued to pose a serious security threat to Israel. The US initially occupied Iraq, ultimately overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime, in the belief that it would be able to replace that government with a pro-American administration which would counteract the threat from Iran. Instead, the balance of power in the Gulf region was radically altered and Iran, which saw Iraq as its first line of defence against the increasing threat from Israel, sought ways to prevent the US from taking control of Iraq. This failure by the US to stabilise Iraq paved the way for Iran to expand its influence over the region and altered the ‘balance of threat’ making it an actual threat to Israeli national security. This led Iran, as part of its deterrence and forward-deployment strategy, to initiate a cold war with Israel by accelerating its nuclear programme and its support, both financial and military, of Hezbollah In order to explain any changes to Israel’s stance on security since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this study examines that country’s national security policy since the invasion, looking at the perceived threat from Iran, in the form of its nuclear capabilities, and its forward defence strategy. This study suggests that the US was so focussed on implementing regime change in Iraq, in the belief that this would instigate the introduction of democracy to the region, that it failed to foresee the wider geopolitical implications of the power vacuum which would occur. The result was that the way was left clear for Iran to exercise its influence over the region and to alter the balance of threat against Israel. This study argues that, in order to better understand Israel’s new security status, it is essential to explore the Iranian threat, which is characterised by its development of nuclear capabilities and the forward defence structure which can be seen in Tehran’s alliance with Syria and Hezbollah.

In 2003, ASEAN issued the Bali Concord II. In this declaration, ASEAN set the goal of creating the people-oriented ASEAN Community (AC) by 2015. The ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) is a pillar of the AC. The APSC’s blueprint addressed several security issues that are central to ASEAN’s own objectives, which are prominent in the ASEAN Charter and which play no less an important role in the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). However, although ASEAN has pledged to address these security issues, many Southeast Asians continue to suffer from significant security threats. This study will explore why ASEAN has not brought adequate security to the region’s peoples despite ASEAN’s decision to create the people-oriented APSC. The research question guiding this study is simple, but no comprehensive answer is readily forthcoming because so diverse a population of actors and security issues has been involved in the creation of the APSC. Hence, rather than adopt a traditional state-centric approach, this study starts from the human-security concept to explore the creation of the APSC. I argue that traditional state-centric approaches have failed to rigorously explore security issues in Southeast Asia, owing to discrepancies between the state-centric approaches and Southeast Asian security culture. The human-security concept discursively embraces both the diversity of threats in the world and the wisdom of having diverse actors address these diverse threats. Because the human-security concept is not a theoretical approach, I endeavour in this study to transform the concept into a theory before embarking on an exploration of the ongoing effort to create the APSC.