The end of the Cold War has brought both uncertainty and opportunity for states interested in designing their own security policies. Alternative methods, other than military solutions, should be exploited to prevent insecurity and instability. This study is concerned with South Korea's security approach towards North Korea in the post-Cold War era and in particular how South Korea can use non-military tools to prevent military conflict in the Korean Peninsula and to build mutual confidence between the two Koreas in the long-run. This thesis also presents an analysis of both the need and the opportunity for South Korea to adopt a comprehensive economic engagement strategy towards North Korea in the post-Cold War era in order to achieve these goals. It argues that South Korea's implementation of economic engagement with North Korea requires its policy-makers' strong policy-making will for an active and consistent engagement posture. Then, this study demonstrates the important role of President Kim Dae-jung's strong causal beliefs about the necessity of engagement measures to address the post-Cold War North Korean security problems on the Kim Dae-jung government's policy-making in favour of comprehensive engagement with North Korea. This study presents the model of 'business-track diplomacy' to test a state's utilisation of economic engagement strategy as security policy. This model provides ways to think around security issues and alternative security options which go beyond the traditional military containment approach to security in international relations (IR). Moreover, this study presents a new belief perspective that illuminates the South Korea's North Korea policy-making process, which had previously been dominated by military issues and essentially required an international structure perspective, centred on US influence. Thus, the belief approach contributes to the field of foreign policy analysis (FPA) for South Korea by proving the importance of its decision-makers' policy beliefs and by going beyond the conventional international structure approach.

Since 1949 China has been politically divided into two: the People's Republic (PRC) on the mainland, and the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and the Pescadores. Each regime claims to be the sole legitimate government of the whole of China, and this continuing struggle has posed for both of them serious problems of international recognition as well as of domestic political legitimacy. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the evolution of the foreign policy strategies of the ROC in coping with this national crisis. It is a historical account of the foreign policies and external relations of the ROC between 1949 and the end of 1979. Chapter One reviews the historical background to the division of China in 1949 and which led to the survival crisis of the ROC. Chapter Two describes the state ideology of the ROC and its place in the ROC's foreign policy formulation. Chapter Three, dealing with the strategy of military counterattack, dating from the end of 1949 until the end of 1958, describes the ROC's dependence upon the United States. Chapter Four, dealing with the strategy of political counterattack, dating from the end of 1958 until October 1971, discusses the ROC's other foreign policy options, such as the Russian option, and the ROC's efforts to achieve close relations with neighbouring countries. Chapter Five focuses on the ROC's agricultural assistance programme directed towards the newly independent countries in Africa, from 1960 to October 1971. Chapter Six analyzes the ROC's post-UN foreign policy strategy of economics- and trade- first diplomacy, from October 1971 until the end of 1979. Finally, a conclusion will be presented which summarizes the evolution of the ROC's post-1949 foreign policy strategies for the purpose of national survival. It also pays particular attention to some of the reasons for the limited success of these strategies.

This thesis explores native resistance to settler colonialism through its focus on the ’48 Palestinians (also known as the Palestinian citizens of Israel). It innovatively brings together postcolonial theory and settler colonial studies to explore the racialised, ethnicised, gendered and sexualised dimensions of settler colonial violence, how these shape native modalities of resistance and subordination, and the ways in which the transnational is imbricated within these processes. The thesis undertakes two case studies – on the Palestinian Bedouin struggle for land rights and on the Palestinian queer movement – drawing upon archival research, other primary texts and ethnographic exploration. The case studies are interrogated in relation to the liberal-nationalist framework that dominates ’48 Palestinian discourse and resistance. The thesis radically critiques the frameworks of ethnocracy, ethnonationalism and minority studies that have been most prevalent in earlier research on ’48 Palestinians. Instead, this study builds on an understanding of resistance as diagnostic of power (Abu-Lughod 1990). It argues that the resistance of Palestinians in Israel is diagnostic of the structure of Israel as a liberal settler state, and unfolds in relation to the liminal positionality of ’48 Palestinians between (semi)liberal citizenship and colonial subjecthood. It further argues that the subjectivities and modalities of resistance of ’48 Palestinians are shaped through the racialising logics of settler colonialism, and the intersectionalities of these logics with ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Through the focus in the two case studies on indigeneity (and the fetishisation of the indigenous subject as premodern) and LGBT rights (and the folding of queer subjects into modernity), the thesis further suggests that the resistance of ’48 Palestinians is also shaped in complex and ambivalent ways by their ongoing encounters with the liberal frameworks of multiculturalism and human rights. The case studies illuminate that while these frameworks can serve as vehicles for empowerment, they can also reproduce the racialising logics of settler colonialism and further its entrenchment. This means that ’48 Palestinians constantly (re)negotiate their identities, their struggles and their political agendas within multiple circuits of power. The ambivalence of the encounter with the liberal settler state, as inclusionary and exclusionary, and human rights, as empowering and oppressive, produces native resistance to settler colonialism to be shaped and reshaped by competing political projects and hybrid modalities of resistance that include practices of self-essentialising, Bhabian notions of resistance as subversion, and a Fanonian politics of rejection as both pedagogy and a political imperative. The thesis concludes that the mobilisation of a more radical vision of decolonisation requires transcendence of both liberal settler colonialism and the liberal politics of human rights.

‘Security’ has been undergoing a process of re-conceptualisation since the Cold War. Realism’s dominance meant that security concerned the survival of the nation-state in the face of military aggression. This clear-cut ‘traditional security’ has been contested since the 1970s, when ‘non-traditional security’ (NTS) covering non-military threats began to be discussed. Security Studies now encompasses varying approaches and interpretations. The concept of security is evolving substantially, but the debate is mostly limited to Western voices. Yet NTS has sparked a lively discourse in the PRC. The thesis establishes Chinese International Relations (IR) scholars’ understanding of NTS, based on the close textual analysis of academic publications and on interviews conducted with authors and other IR-specialists in China. It enquires into what these scholars mean when discussing NTS, and whether their conceptions differ from the mainstream, mainly Western, IR discourse. It then investigates the ten issues generally deemed NTS in the Chinese debate: culture and information security; terrorism and transnational crime; economic security and migration; energy and environmental security; and health and food security, analysing their conceptualisations, assigned importance, causes for variance within the debate, emerging political meanings and implications, and possible normative implications. The study shows that the scholarly NTS debate in China is diverse, ranging from a more statist expansion of national security to non-military threats to a theoretically deeper discourse which embraces individual security. Although the debate encompasses political purposes of vindicating state securitisation and advocating state management, some scholars’ arguments have normative implications of moving towards a people-centric view of security encouraging a change in global politics. The debate in China is still in flux, without universally accepted definitions, but a normative turn is evident which means that Chinese IR theory overall moves beyond descriptive theory. The study contributes to the wider research by adding to our understanding of how China ‘sees’ the world, and to the debate on NTS by critically examining the Chinese thought vis-à-vis the mainstream literature.

With or without global consent, China and India are the rising powers in Asia. After 1962, these two states have experienced enduring rivalries with historical and intricate hostility over the issues of territory, the sanctuary of Tibetan refugees on Indian territory, polarized relations with Pakistan, and geopolitical and resources competition. However, these disagreements have evolved from confrontation to the mixed elements of competition and cooperation to date. Sino-Indian relations have undergone a transformation with momentum toward cooperation on a number of regional and global issues over the last two decades. This thesis aims at exploring why Sino-Indian relations have been transformed from enmity to amity. To do so, I apply the peace and war theory of an international relations theorist, Benjamin Miller, as a main theoretical framework to analyse the transformations of Sino-Indian relations between 1950s and 2013. Thus, this thesis finds alternative explanations of the regional orders to account for why rivals states tend to peacefully coexist, contributing to peace studies. This thesis argues that the transformations of Sino-Indian relations from hot war to cold war, then to cold peace can be contributed to two factors: firstly, the end of superpower competition and the presence of the great powers – Russia, between 1990 and 1999, and the US, after 2000 –imposing regional stability. Secondly, China and India suffered from the problems of a “state-to-nation imbalance”, causing the 1962 war. Moreover, the Sino-Indian relations were characterized by the challenges to the unresolved border disputes associated with China’s Tibet issue, making peace reversible and a high level of warm peace more difficult.

Recent problematic military interventions, as part of the Global War on Terror, have led to widespread criticism that British policy-makers have failed to learn lessons from history. At the same time as the accusations of not learning, the British government has repeatedly claimed that lessons have been learned, particularly from the disastrous war in Iraq. This thesis investigates these contradicting claims by analysing learning from the past in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Ministry of Defence and the Intelligence Community across four case studies of British military intervention in the Middle East; 1958 in Jordan, 1961 in Kuwait, the 1990-1991 Gulf War and 2003-2009 Iraq War. It provides a fresh analysis of these highly significant events, using previously undisclosed documents, offers an assessment of learning processes and concludes by recommending practical suggestions for the improvement of learning from history in the future.

The object of this study is to assess the extent to which the Turkic people of Kazakhstan and Sinkiang have been aligned politically and socially with the socialist societies of their respective countries. It is not intended to consider this question in the light of success or failure. There are several reasons for not doing so. It would be realistic to consider the question in this light only if a definite goel was to be achieved within a specified period of time. This was not the case in either Kazakhstan or Sinkiang. There was and is no definable period of time within which Communism is to be I I achieved. Equally important, Communism remains a hazy expression for a state of existence that yet has to be defined in a manner that is universally accepted. In this study the various political, cultural, religious and educational aspects of the Turkic people will be considered. The intention is to discover to what extent these traditions have been replaced by the social institutions of the socialist societies. This in turn should allow some insight into the advances made by both the Russian and Chinese Communists in their attempts to transform their respective Turkic people. At the same time the study deals with specific difficulties that the Governments had to overcome in the course of the transformation process. These include getting the Turkic people to participate in the various socialist institutions. From this there arise new questions and problems. The Islamic society of the Turkic people had not prepared the latter to participate in a modern, industrial society. They lacked the required educational background to be usefully employable in the bureaucracy on any but a superficial level. As a result non-Turkic cadres had to be used in many leading positions. This raised the question of great Russian and Han-Chinese chauvinism. Another problem was that of attacking the traditional Turkic way of life without alienating the Turkic people. The direct attack on Islam was complex. In general both Governments demonstrated a lack of understanding for the Islamic way of life. As a consequence they launched an attack on an Islamic orthodoxy that did not exist. Also, the Soviet policy of an outright attack forced the Soviet Government to define a new way of life for the Kazakh and other Muslim people. In China the need for this was avoided because of the less antagonistic attitude towards Islam. To a great extent this study compares the policies of the Soviet and Chinese Governments. This in itself raises some questions. The Russian revolution preceded the Chinese by nearly 32 years. This gave the Chinese a considerable advantage. They did not have to make the same mistakes that ha~ been made by the Soviet Union, particularly the collectivisation drive in Kazakhstan. But the Chinese not only benefitted from the Soviet mistakes. They'were able also to make use of the advanced experience of the Soviet Union in advancing their economic development programme. In addition the more industrially advanced Soviet Union could and did assist the Chinese in their industrialisation. From the discussion of the connection between the two countries their logically follows an assessment of the inter-state relationship. The intention is to discover to what extent the Turkic people influenced the Sino-Soviet relationship. But the economic question hardly can be excluded from the discussion. This in turn leads to the analysis of some of the historical)-political, ideological and economic causes of the Sino-Soviet rift.

India’s North-West Frontier was the one area where the British Raj could suffer a knockout blow from either external Russian invasion or internal revolt. Frontier defence was amongst the greatest burdens during India’s inter-War financial austerity. Despite the RAF’s operational and financial efficacy in 1920s Iraq, air control was never implemented on the Frontier and air power’s potential was never fully exploited. Instead, aircraft were employed to enhance the Army’s traditional battlefield capabilities, resulting in efficient tactical co-ordination during the 1930s Waziristan campaign - the RAF’s most operationally-active pre-War theatre. To address why air power was constrained on the Frontier, the Thesis examines the inter-War relationship between the Armies of India and the RAF and its impact on the development and application of RAF doctrine. It concludes that the conservatively-natured Indian Armies were slow to recognise the conceptual shift required to fully exploit air power. This entrenchment was reinforced by inter-Service rivalry and the threat of aircraft replacing land forces with a concomitant loss of political standing. The enduring high-level internecine conflict resulted in the squandering of both resources and the opportunity to test independent, ‘strategic’ air power theory prior to WWII. Its legacy impacted on Army-RAF relations into WWII.