United States' policy towards Indonesia (the Netherlands East Indies) during the Truman and Eisenhower Presidencies involved many of the major issues of the time, including decolonisation, access to economic resources, Cold War strategy and Washington's involvement with Asian nationalism. Throughout the period, the emphasis of American policy was on the integration of Indonesia into world capitalism, an objective which became intertwined with Indonesia's growing strategic value to the US, from 1948 onwards, and its subsequent importance as a scene of confrontation with the Soviets and Communist China. By 1961, Washington's policies had failed in all their major aims and it seemed possible that Indonesia would become a communist state. The Eurocentric bias of American policy consistently dominated US relations with Indonesia. During the independence struggle, between 1945 and 1949, Washington's support for The Netherlands ended only when it became a greater threat to stability than the nationalists. However, after independence, its pro-Dutch inclinations were revived over the West Irian question. The militant anti-communism of John Foster Dulles, the Americans' inability to come to terms with Asian nationalism, exemplified by its handling of the Bandung Conference, in 1955, and the deep personal dislike of Sukarno by senior Administration officials combined to cause a deterioration in relations which culminated in a CIA-sponsored rebellion, in 1957/58. The determination and execution of American policy was influenced by Australia, which favoured Indonesian independence, and which, in the 1950's, exerted great influence in Washington, especially over West Irian. Along with the United Kingdom, whose forces had liberated the Netherlands East Indies in 1945, Australia had a central role in the CIA-backed rebellion. American policy minimised the role of the United Nations in the Indonesian independence struggle and over West Irian in order to inhibit the Soviet's ability to intervene.

This thesis explores the US mediation strategies applied during the management of the Egyptian-Israeli dispute in the period of 1973-1975. More specifically, it focuses on the crucial US role in bringing Egypt and Israel towards a settlement from the 1973 October War to the brink of the Camp David settlement, realised under President Jimmy Carter. The centrepiece of the thesis is the mediation efforts during the Republican Presidencies of Richard Nixon (1969-74) and Gerald Ford (1974-77). This thesis examines how diverse contextual variables change and interact with the mediator’s methods of sequencing and packaging of the issues in conflict management. The key analysis emerges from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s mediation, especially by looking at his ‘concession-hunting’ procedure and its accompanying ‘hard bargaining’ tactics after the 1973 October War. The analysis incorporates specific case studies of Kissinger’s mediation efforts, which led to the signature of the Sinai I and Sinai II disengagement agreements, but also resulted in the reassessment of the US foreign policy towards Israel in March 1975. In this thesis it will be seen that concession-hunting processes differed in their processes and outcomes This thesis concludes that in a protracted conflict, the concession-hunting is a method preferable for bridging the gap between the disputants, as compared to the holistic approach. If performed by a mediator with concrete ‘powers’, it extracts concessions in a gradual manner and allows for third party implementation of various methods to ‘soften up’ the hard negotiating positions of the disputants.

This thesis charts British and American policy-making towards Burma between the country's independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 and the military coup that ended civilian government in 1962. In particular, it examines the role aid played in Burma's relations with the West and China and the Soviet Union: what it was offered, by whom, when and why, and how its leaders responded. Aid from the West began immediately after independence, when the British furnished the Burmese government with military aid against the communist insurgency that broke out in March 1948. Financial assistance was offered, but refused, in 1950. American help began under Harry Truman's administration, also in 1950, and continued under Dwight D. Eisenhower. Further proposals were developed by John F. Kennedy's administration, although these plans were thwarted by the military coup in 1962. In giving aid to Burma, British and American planners shared the same basic underlying aim - keeping the government in power and maintaining its independence from the communist bloc. Both believed that the provision of aid gave them some measure of influence over the government in Rangoon - that, in other words, their aid had some degree of coercive potential, somehow independent of the intentions or interests of the recipient state. However, rather than passive and appropriately grateful recipients of external aid, and the policy prescriptions that tended to come with it, the Burmese are revealed as surprisingly active and autonomous agents, prepared to manipulate their aid relationships to suit their own ends, rather than the objectives of their superpower partners in Washington and Moscow.