Thesis advisor: Robert Ross / This paper discusses the Linebacker II bombing campaign of the United States in North Vietnam, more famously known as the "Christmas Bombings." It examines the campaign as an attempt to compel North Vietnam to accept changes to the peace agreement being negotiated in Paris by Henry Kissinger and others. Specifically, it looks at three aspects of compellence—capability, credibility, and clarity of goals—and analyzes how the United States did in each of these three areas, concluding that the United States ultimately failed to adequately compel North Vietnam. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

Richard Nixon’s trip to China in February 1972 marked a diplomatic breakthrough for Sino-American relations after two decades of mutual animosity since the Korean War. Nevertheless, the bilateral relations underwent a long stalemate in the mid-1970s, before the United States and China finally reached normalization of relations in December 1978. The scholarship on Sino-American relations in the 1970s tends to focus on Nixon’s visit or normalization of relations, without paying adequate attention to how Washington and Beijing dealt with the mid-decade deadlock. My report addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing the changing dynamism of Sino-American relations, determined first by Henry Kissinger and Mao Zedong, and later by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Deng Xiaoping. Kissinger sought to establish a triangular relationship with the Soviet Union and China, where the United States could manipulate the Sino-Soviet antagonism to improve its relations with both communist giants. With the failure of his initial idea of creating an anti-Soviet united front with Washington, Mao, through his Three World theory, championed the Third World struggle against both superpowers in competition for global hegemony in the disguise of détente. With Kissinger clinging to superpower détente and Mao determined to maintain a revolutionary China, their strategies were doomed to a stalemate. Unlike Kissinger, Brzezinski tried to create a bilateral structure, where the United States cooperated with China to confront the Soviet Union, which expanded its influence globally despite ongoing détente. Unlike Mao, Deng sought to replace revolution with development as China’s national agenda, by emphasizing modernization, instead of the Three World theory, in Chinese foreign policy. Their global strategies necessitated mutual cooperation, creating momentum for normalization negotiations, especially after Brzezinski’s trip to China in May 1978. The shifting dynamism in Sino-American relations from the Kissinger-Mao years to Brzezinski-Deng years, therefore, precipitated normalization of relations in the late 1970s. / text

This dissertation “To Balance the World: The Development of the U.S. National Interest, 1935 – 1963” traces the transfer of American geopolitical thinking from military intellectuals inside the War Department in the 1930s to university defense intellectuals who began to set strategic agendas in the 1950s and 1960s. I study the concept of balance of power not as an idea or a theory but as an ideology in the Cold War through the twin rise of the military intellectual and the defense intellectual as policymakers. I argue the balance of power ideology animated the thinking of international lawyer Frederick Sherwood Dunn and U.S. geostrategist Nicholas Spykman in the 1920s and 1930s; political scientist Arnold Wolfers in the 1940s; career U.S. Army officer and strategic planner George A. Lincoln in the 1950s; and defense intellectual Henry Kissinger in the 1950s/1960s as they crafted national security policy. I work against the presumption that grand strategy serves as an intellectual architecture for policymaking. Rather, I argue grand strategy is a closed ideological circuit determined by a “strategic field” of planners and practitioners consisting of individuals like Dunn, Spykman, Wolfers, Lincoln, and Kissinger. Retired general disarmament activist Tasker A. Bliss served as an important and early voice of dissent to the balance of power ideology in the interwar period. The balance of power ideology, the belief that a single powerful state maintained the balance between states, guided their discussions as they agreed on the U.S. assuming responsibilities to guarantee international order and stability from the British Empire. Over the decades, balance of power colored their perceptions of any changes or transformations within the international system. “Order” and “stability” were their watchwords. Grand strategy subsequently serves as the “laboratory” for national interest. The balance of power ideology led to the strategic field’s adoption of survival as the U.S. national interest. The strategic field subsequently employed limited war as the policy of choice to “preserve” the United States’ survival. My findings highlight the antidemocratic principles within the design of grand strategy, particularly as they relate to the unequal power dynamic between the military-academic nexus and the U.S. public. / 2026-03-26T00:00:00Z

This thesis examines the nature and dynamics of U.S.-Iran relations during the Cold War under the leadership of U.S. President Richard Nixon, his adviser Henry Kissinger, and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran. This revisionist account critically examines the popular view of Mohammad Reza Shah as a mere instrument of American strategies of containment during the Cold War. Relying on recently declassified American documents, British government papers, and the diaries, memoirs and oral histories of Iranian actors, this thesis restores agency to the shah as an autonomous Cold War actor and suggests that Iran evolved from a client to a partner of the United States under the Nixon Doctrine. This partnership was forged during Nixon’s first term in office between 1969 and 1972, as the United States embraced a policy of Iranian primacy in the Persian Gulf region. Thanks to a long-standing friendship with the president, the shah was able to exercise extraordinary influence in the Nixon White House. This partnership reached its peak during Nixon’s second term as the United States supported Iran’s regional primacy against the challenge from Iraq. The shah drew Nixon and Kissinger into Iran’s secret war against Iraq in Kurdistan in 1972, by portraying Iran’s long-standing regional conflict with Iraq as a Cold War confrontation with the Soviet-backed Ba’th regime in Baghdad. When the shah unilaterally decided to abandon the Kurds in a deal with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 1975, Kissinger had little choice but to acquiesce, despite the personal embarrassment and domestic recriminations that followed. The U.S.-Iran partnership declined following Watergate and Nixon’s resignation in 1974. In spite of the best efforts of the shah and Kissinger, between 1974 and 1976 the United States and Iran were unable to reach an agreement on U.S. nuclear exports to Iran. President Gerald Ford tried to impose a discriminatory nuclear agreement on Iran that was rejected by the shah because it violated Iran’s national sovereignty. Under Ford, the United States reverted to treating Iran as a client rather a partner of the United States.

This thesis is a study of national security decision making in the Ford Administration. The subject for study is the Kissinger- Schlesinger controversy in the Ford Administration. The thesis will attempt to prove that the differences that emerged over issues of national policy were due to deep theoretical disagreements as to the nature of the international system, the utility of power in the nuclear age and the means by which to preserve detente. An examination of the substantive policy differences will be preceded by an examination of the conceptual disagreements between the Secretaries on topics that are fundamental to any study of international politics. Studies on decision making in intemational politics will be used to show that each man had a different perception of the role that the United States should have in the international system and the usefulness of America's strategic arsenal for the preservation of peace. After having defined the theoretical differences between Kissinger and Schlesinger on issues in international politics, an analysis of the substantive policy disagreements between the two Secretaries will show that they can be directly related to each man's conception of the international system. Policy differences between the two will be shown to have evolved out of disagreements over policy goals, and not policy implementation. Any study of individual decision making in defense and foreign affairs stresses the importance of individual policy makers and of issues. Foreign nations perceive changes in foreign and defense policy goals when new leadership emerges with which they are uncomfortable. It will be shown, through an analysis of the foreign reaction to the Kissinger-Schlesinger controversy, that foreign nations expressed concern for the outcome of this policy split. In particular, it will be shown that the matter was of great interest to the Soviet Union. In conclusion the thesis will reiterate the point that national security decision making in the Ford Administration was unab1e to reach a compromise on issues of policy because of funamental differences between the Secretaries of State and Defense on detente, the definition of the national security in the nuclear age and the negotiating strategy that America should follow with the Soviets on arms limitations. These differences on policy were made inevitable due to differing models that each Secretary had on the nature of the international system. The study of their individual perceptions will help to give one an understanding as to why the policy disagreements made compromise impossible.

No description available.

This dissertation examines the impacts of the 1973 Arab petrostate oil embargo on U.S. energy politics. I argue that the embargo was the moment that transformed oil from a domestic and highly regulated commodity into a matter of national security and competitive geopolitics. While its likelihood was foreseen by the Nixon Administration, the embargo did exacerbate an existing energy crisis that was caused by pre-embargo federal energy policies. Following the embargo, a dominant narrative emerged that viewed dependence on foreign oil supplies as an existential threat that merited extraordinary government measures. The securitization of the energy crisis allowed the Nixon Administration to implement many of its pre-embargo energy policies, including the launch of a national energy program to bring the U.S. to energy self-sufficiency by 1980. The embargo was the trigger for the creation of new governmental entities, such as the Department of Energy and U.S. Central Command, that endure to this day. It also shaped the U.S.'s close relationship with Saudi Arabia as an essential oil supplier and a key ally in the Arab world. The dissertation contests the revisionist accounts that argue that the embargo was a non-event, arguing that its impacts on U.S. domestic and foreign policies are still tangible and relevant. / Doctor of Philosophy / For most countries, ensuring energy security and uninterrupted oil supplies is a matter of national security and economic survival. However, for the U.S., long a major oil exporter, access to energy resources only rose to the status of a national security issue in the early 1970s. This dissertation examines the impacts of the 1973 Arab petrostate oil embargo on U.S. energy politics. I argue that the embargo was the moment that transformed oil from a domestic and highly regulated commodity into a matter of national security and competitive geopolitics. Pre-embargo rising domestic demand for oil, insufficient domestic supplies, and misdirected federal regulations had already weakened the resilience of the U.S. oil market and caused shortages. Following the embargo, the Nixon Administration launched a national program to achieve energy self-sufficiency by 1980. I argue that the value of committing the U.S. to energy autarky was essential for conveying to foes and allies that the Nixon Administration was willing to invest in a very costly national program so that it can maintain the autonomy of both its foreign policy and of the economy. I also argue that racial and cultural prejudices influenced the Nixon Administration's reaction to the embargo, in that throughout the ramp-up and during the post-embargo period, both the media and the Nixon Administration expressed disbelief at the effrontery of underdeveloped countries that were until recently Western possessions to challenge a global superpower. Following the embargo, a dominant narrative emerged that viewed dependence on foreign oil supplies as an existential threat that merited extraordinary government measures. The securitization of the energy crisis allowed the Nixon Administration to implement many of its pre-embargo energy policies. The embargo was the trigger for the creation of new governmental entities, such as the Department of Energy and U.S. Central Command, that endure to this day. It also shaped the U.S.'s close relationship with Saudi Arabia as an essential oil supplier and a key ally in the Arab world.

No description available.

This thesis reviews the significance of the 1969 Japan-US Summit between Prime Minister Satii Eisaku and President Richard Nixon in light of official documents that have been disclosed in Japan since 2010 and in the United States since the 1990s. Based on newly available sources, this thesis shows that the 1969 Summit should be considered a Japanese-led initiative with two aims: firstly, to announce a deadline for Okinawa's return with all nuclear weapons removed; and secondly, to reform the Japan-US security treaty system without repeating the kind of outright revision concluded in 1960. The Japanese plan to reform the security treaty system involved simplifying the prior consultation formula by making a public commitment to the security of South Korea of sufficient strength that the United States would agree to the dissolution of the 1960 secret 'Korea Minute'. The Japanese Government achieved its first aim but only partially succeeded in its second. Whilst the return of Okinawa was announced, the status of US bases in Okinawa and mainland Japan continued to be governed by an elaborate web of agreements, public and secret, which damaged public confidence and hampered an improvement in relations between Japan and its neighbouring countries. This thesis shows that commonly held academic opinions about the 1969 Summit are incorrect. Firstly, there was no quid pro quo in which Japan linked its security to South Korea in exchange for Okinawa: both these outcomes were in fact Japanese objectives at the beginning of the summit preparations. Secondly, the success of the summit did not depend on 'backchannel' negotiations between Wakaizumi Kei and Henry Kissinger: it is likely that an announcement on Okinawa's reversion would have been achieved in 1969 even if preparations for the summit had been left to the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the US State Department. Word Limit: Approx. 98,000 words, excluding Bibliography

While few would deny America is the most powerful nation on earth, there is considerable debate, and controversy, over how America uses its foreign policy power. This is even truer since the “unipolar moment,” when America gained sole superpower status with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In the Cold War Reinhold Niebuhr was the main theological voice speaking to American power. In the Unipolar world, the Religious right emerged as the main theological voice, but instead of seeking to curb American power the Religious right embraced Neoconservatism in what I will call “Totemic Conservatism” to support use of America's power in the world and to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy, which is the notion that America is a chosen nation, and this legitimizes its use of power and underpins its moral claims. I critique the Niebuhrian and Religious right legacies, and offer a classical realist strategy for theology to speak to America power and foreign policy, which avoids the neoconservative and religious conservative error of totemism, while avoiding the jettisoning of Niebuhr's theology by political liberals, and, the political ghettoizing of theology by his chief critics. This strategy is based on embracing the understanding of classical realism, but not taking the next step, which both Niebuhr and neoconservativism ultimately do, of moving from a prescriptive to a predictive strategy for American foreign policy. In this thesis, I argue that in the wake of the unipolar moment the embrace of the Religious right of Neoconservatism to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy is a problematic commingling of faith and politics, and what is needed instead is a strategy of speaking to power rooted in classical realism but one which refines Niebuhrian realism to avoid the risk of progressing a Constantinian theology.