The following dissertation is an attempt of analysis and understanding of the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East region and its evolution through time. Considering the fact that the Middle East region is or at least used to be a vital region for the United States national interests, the dissertation presents an exhaustive list of major events that have been major shifts in the US foreign policy in the region. The more or less chronological timeline allows the reader to have a better understanding of the evolution of the US foreign policy. The result of the dissertation is the identification of different patterns of foreign policy and to put the spot on the reasons of the changes of these patterns. Nevertheless, the history of the Middle East region and the incredible number of major events through the 2Oth century and the early 21st century make impossible to deal with all of them. Moreover, analysis and comments are based on academic research, but the dissertation remains subjective and may lead to discussions and debates.

This thesis shows that despite the rhetoric of universalism and internationalism used by the Royal Society, especially after the onset of Cold War, its policies and actions in the period 1945-75 remained closely allied to the interests of the British state. More specifically, in its foreign relations the Society mainly operated within a network of Western intergovernmental organisations that were a response to, and operated in similar ways, to Eastern Bloc organisations. While financially dependent on a Parliamentary grant-in-aid, they effectively carved out a role in the sphere of international scientific relations which was built upon an image of independence from the state. Thus, Society Officers and staff were able to mobilise a double-sided discourse of utility to, and independence from, the state. The association between the government of the day and the Society was at its most effective when a consensus existed between like-minded government administrators and Officers of the Society. A culture of collaboration and informal networks allowed them to build relationships and share ideas. The Society was perfectly designed to facilitate this culture, as its Fellows permeated government networks as individuals as much as they did as direct representatives of the Society. The status of Fellows conferred on them eligibility for a variety of positions, both formal and informal, within the elite infrastructure of national life. The thesis also shows that party political and ideological motivations often prefaced associations between Fellows and like-minded politicians or civil servants, but these associations were principally between economic liberals to the exclusion of far left scientists. However, the Society’s connections with the government were also motivated by reasons beyond party politics. The Society had an overarching aim to preserve the United Kingdom’s position as a scientific ‘Mecca’. In the shifting post-war landscape, in which the country became more dependent on outside help and conscious of its relative decline in economic and political power, the Society looked beyond national borders to stay in the competition. The thesis shows that Officers of the Society responded creatively to the changing geopolitical landscape as old spheres of influence waned, such as the Empire-Commonwealth, and new ones opened up, such as the European Community and the special relationship with America. The Society pursued these new opportunities with patriotic ambition, often prioritising relations that promised scientific rather than political gains, but always within a Western framework.

To what extent was German unification (1989-90) a turning point (Wende) for the Sorbian national minority? Although a majority of scholars and commentators understand the period as one of ‘revolution’, there are grounds to query how radical or widespread were the changes which the collapse of communism promised to bring. In the case of the Sorbs – a national minority in Germany which was persecuted under the National Socialist regime, which became a protected minority under the German Democratic Republic, and which remains a protected minority under the Federal Republic of Germany – many difficulties persist in the relationship between the Sorbs, the German government, and wider German society, as well as amongst the Sorbs themselves. There have been extensive policy, legal, and constitutional changes since unification, but these have often led to similar outcomes as would have been expected under the GDR. The economy is one of the biggest challenges in the post-unification era, as the government and broader society seek to balance the legally recognised rights of national minorities with the economic interests of the state and society at large. This conflict is most evident in the continuation of brown coal mining in the Sorbian area of settlement, as well as in the privatisation of the GDR’s agricultural collectives after unification. Sorbian cultural institutions and organisations have remained relatively unreformed, which means that traditionalists have retained the upper hand in successive institutional debates. The case study of Horno, a village in south Brandenburg, illustrates these issues well, as it was destroyed in 2004 to make way for brown coal mining, and was the first village after unification to be relocated in this manner. These factors lead to the conclusion that German unification was not quite the turning point that it is commonly believed to be, as in many areas of Sorbian life, the continuities seem to outweigh the changes.

You Don’t Have to Be a Bad Girl to Love Crime uses archival research, textual analysis, and industrial and cultural studies frameworks to re-evaluate women’s representation in post-World War II American radio and television crime dramas. It complicates popular and scholarly understandings that postwar broadcasters simply responded to audience desires by marginalizing women across their schedules and removing recurring female characters from crime dramas altogether. Rather, the three major networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) that dominated the broadcast industry’s transition from radio to television joined conservative religious and anti-communist groups to silence public debate over women’s roles. While late-1940s network radio programming incorporated varied opinions about postwar women’s desire and potential to expand their influence in the workplace and politics, postwar television naturalized a vision of passive housewives embracing husbands’ patriarchal authority. Women who chose to fight crime challenged this authority by claiming the right to enforce the law and judge their fellow citizens. This dissertation is organized into two parts: The first explores the industrial and cultural discourses that set the stage for postwar restrictions on women in crime. Network executives and anti-communist conservatives did not see each other as natural allies, but they mobilized complementary gender discourses emphasizing women as passive consumers rather than public actors. Archival industry research shows network executives ignored evidence female audiences liked crime programming, especially series featuring active, sympathetic women. Instead, executives and vocal conservatives framed such women as a sexualized threat to men, children, and themselves. Networks tolerated crime-curious women on radio and early television, when they struggled to retain and build a female audience. However, by the mid-1950s, executives feared such women would undermine their commercial emphasis on domestic consumption and attract regulation or censorship. Part two explores three major types of crime-curious women who appeared on postwar radio and television programming. Investigative wives and detectives’ secretaries investigated crimes with male husbands or employers. Female detectives, however, directly challenged men’s control over criminal justice, the most overt sign of patriarchal social power. All three types gave female audiences a powerful model of feminine agency within patriarchal society. They also established representational norms that endure in modern crime dramas.

Focusing on transborder travel narratives by two German authors and one Polish author, “Cold War Crossings” investigates how their writing responds to the postwar demarcation of separate Eastern and Western spheres of influences. Central to each of their oeuvres is the topos of the border broadly conceived, from the material, ideological, and psychic boundaries of the Iron Curtain to the Saussurean bar of the linguistic sign. By presenting border-crossing as an act of both political and aesthetic transgression, these writers advance uniquely literary alternatives to the rigid geopolitical divisions of their age. This dissertation analyzes the way in which each author’s poetics of the border informs, among other things, their manipulation of narrative structure, their unique employment of figurative language, and their shared proclivity for intertextuality, all of which address and reorient different kinds of textual boundaries. In this way, it is a contribution to the ever-expanding field of border studies and other scholarly investigations of the discursive production of mental maps. At the same time, however, the dissertation argues by way of its three case studies for a closer examination of the formal elements of literary texts that often go overlooked in such analyses. Conceived as an interdisciplinary and comparative study, “Cold War Crossings” seeks to overstep barriers between national literatures as well as disciplines by combining cultural studies, literary criticism, and historical analysis. Furthermore, the dissertation’s joint study of German and Polish literatures also contributes to recent debates on Europe as it counteracts traditional Eurocentric approaches that disregard Eastern Europe.

The aim of this work will be to analyze the final phase of the Cold War. The 1980s was an extraordinary period for anyone interested in the history of the Cold War. Not only did the Cold War end or bring their final stages, but even before the 1980s, with a similarly almost unprecedented limitation of tensions between the two major players in the East-West conflict, the US and the Soviet Union. In my diploma thesis I will analyze the basic premises of the "triumphalistic" and "revisionist" schools of the Cold War. Diploma thesis from the concept of "national security approach". The conclusion of the work is that Ronal Reagan has had an impact on the end of the study wars and thus does not apply the conclusions of the "revisionist" school. However, there are no conclusions that apply only to cases where only diplomatic and compromise measures are involved.

The purpose of this thesis is to review and revise all historical evidence hitherto available concerning the international aspects of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Its scope includes several layers, including how the peoples in the West, as well as their leaders, behaved during the crisis. It will look at the international arena in 1956 from the Hungarian perspective, as well as attempt to come to a historical explanation for Western, and specifically American actions during the uprising, and the precepts which led to them. In doing so, it shall in particular take a careful revision of the long-standing charges levelled against the West, concerning its alleged passivity, hypocrisy, or willingness to escalate the crisis via the controversial broadcasts of Radio Free Europe.

The postwar Soviet Union remained militarized and failed to reform itself because of its ideological concerns against the West and its new satellite states, all at the cost of the Soviet people. This analysis will compare the Soviet government’s external focus and the Soviet people’s domestic problems in the aftermath of the Second World War. The country’s ideological, military, and imperial concerns abroad emphasized militarization over domestic revitalization. The Soviet people widely expected significant action from their government to remedy economic and political issues. The Soviet government nevertheless committed itself in focusing on outside concerns regardless of the harsh reality of everyday postwar society.

Thesis advisor: Jennifer Erickson / Policymakers are faced with filtering, understanding, and assessing an overwhelming, and often conflicting, amount of information on a constant basis. States signal resolve over issues, such as during a crisis, or to demonstrate intentions by sending reassurance signals of benign or defensive intentions. But states also have incentives to keep some information private or manipulate the information it sends. Whether or not policymakers believe an adversary’s signals influences, and often determines, the prospect of cooperation or competition. This dissertation examines how policymakers believe the reassurance signals of an adversary. Costly signaling theory argues states can cut through these issues by attaching costs to their signals. Only a sincere state would attach and accept these costs, thus demonstrating the sender is sincere and credible. I argue costly signaling theory is unable to explain variation in why policymakers believe signals in certain situations and not others, despite having costs attached. In this dissertation, I argue policymakers look to see whether sender policymakers risk their own political position to send signals. To risk political vulnerability, sender policymakers must demonstrate they have reduced their control over domestic political processes to send reassurance signals. This is done by sending signals which go against the interests of important domestic constituencies, such as the military or members of the elite. In doing so, sender policymakers demonstrate they are committed to the success of the signal, and will not deflect the costs imposed by signaling failure onto the population or state itself. When sender policymakers demonstrate political vulnerability, target policymakers will believe the signal is genuine. If sender policymakers do not demonstrate political vulnerability, target policymakers will not believe the signal is genuine. I test the domestic political vulnerability thesis by examining how U.S. policymakers believed Soviet reassurance signals during the Cold War. Studying cases of reassurance signaling also allows me to examine for the ability, or inability, of U.S. policymakers to update assessments of Soviet intentions. I select nine cases of Soviet reassurance signaling across three signaling strategies identified by costly signaling theory: strategic arms control (tying hands); conventional troop reductions (sinking costs); and de-escalation signaling. The cases were chosen to test the explanatory power of my theory against the alternative explanations. I use extensive archival research and process tracing to study these cases and find support for the theory of domestic political vulnerability. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Magister Artium - MA / This mini-thesis engages with the period of the Cold War between 1979 and 1989 to examine the shifts and contradictions that emerged around the figure of the “terrorist” and the “freedom fighter with a focus on the Afghan Mujahedeen. From 1979 to 1989, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan. This period was witness to the formation of the Mujahedeen who fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and also against the political ideologies of communism. In so doing, the Mujahedeen became political allies for the South African apartheid government as well as others fighting against the communist agenda