This thesis offers a fresh interpretation of Anglo-American relations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the period 1941 to 1945. Historians of Anglo-American relations have characterized the bilateral relationship as one of rivalry and polarization. While examples of underlying national competition can be identified wherever the wartime alliance operated, whether on the battlefield or at the conference table, the commonalities which united the allies should, however, be given equal weight. My thesis departs from the traditional historiographical perspective, arguing that when closely examined, the allies were very aware of the strategic reciprocal benefits that would emanate from integrating their policies in Saudi Arabia. First and foremost, Britain and the United States’ relations in Saudi Arabia were shaped by the fact that the two countries were allies working side by side in the global struggle that was the Second World War. In this wartime context, the strategic influence of Saudi Arabia has tended to be overlooked. The Kingdom’s influence resided in its geographic location, its religious centrality within Islam, and most importantly, its rare political status as a sovereign Arab state. These attributes served as a unifying force for British and American wartime interests, encouraging the two allies to strive for an Anglo-American partnership in Saudi Arabia that was built on the concept of strategic interdependence. While collaboration between Britain and the United States ebbed and flowed, it is a testament to their continued pursuit of cooperation that the activities of the wartime alliance in Saudi Arabia between 1941 and 1945 were envisaged by policymakers as a template for achieving greater Anglo-American accord throughout the Middle East during and beyond the Second World War.

This thesis seeks to explain why the European Union ratcheted up restrictive measures on Myanmar from 1991 until 2010, despite divergent interests of EU member states and the apparent inability of sanctions to quickly achieve the primary objectives of EU policy. This empirical puzzle applies the ‘sanctions paradox’ to the issue of joint action in the EU. It also connects the assessment of policy effectiveness to EU foreign policy-making. The investigation unravels this conundrum through competitive theory testing. The study discovers that EU foreign policy was essentially decided by the largest member states. Since 1996, the UK has fostered a consensus among EU policymakers on a principled common policy, which would induce political reform in Myanmar mainly via the implementation of punitive measures. Hence, noncompliance by the target with EU demands offers a credible, but insufficient explanation of why the EU tightened its sanctions regime. US pressure on EU policy was marginal. The dissertation argues that a ‘normative’ interpretation of liberal intergovernmentalism best solves this puzzle. The EU met domestic pressures for action, although the measures adopted were clearly too inadequate to be effective. Feedback on policy effectiveness did not play a significant role in EU decision-making. EU policy was driven by a consensus to treat Myanmar as a ‘pariah’ state. Ideological motivations have largely outweighed material interests. Normative arguments were necessary to put proposals on the common agenda; yet, decisions ultimately involved ‘cooperative bargaining’ among the largest states. Consensus building was therefore a dynamic process. The policy entrepreneur defined its interests domestically; member states with lower preference intensity generally refrained from opposing its leadership. This thesis thus contributes to the liberal intergovernmental scholarship by proposing a more comprehensive explanation for the drivers and constraints that influence the making of European sanctions.

Under the Koizumi and Abe administrations, the deterioration of the Japan-China relationship and growing tension between Japan and North Korea were often interpreted as being caused by the rise of nationalism. This thesis aims to explore this question by looking at Japan’s foreign policy in the region and uncovering how political actors manipulated the concept of nationalism in foreign policy discourse. The methodology employs discourse analysis on five case studies. It will be explored how the two administrations both used nationalism but in the pursuit of contrasting policies: an uncompromising stance to China and a conciliatory approach toward North Korea under the Koizumi administration, a hard-line attitude against North Korea and the rapprochement with China by Abe, accompanied by a friendship-policy toward India. These case studies show how the nationalism is used in the competition between political leaders by articulating national identity in foreign policy. Whereas this often appears as a kind of assertiveness from outside China, in the domestic context leaders use nationalism to reconstruct Japan’s identity as a ‘peaceful nation’ through foreign policy by highlighting differences from ‘other’s or by achieving historic reconciliation. Such identity constructions are used to legitimize policy choices that are in themselves used to marginalize other policy options and political actors. In this way, nationalism is utilized as a kind of political capital in a domestic power relationship, as can be seen by Abe’s use of foreign policy to set an agenda of ‘departure from the postwar regime’. In a similar way, Koizumi’s unyielding stance against China was used to calm discontents among right-wing traditionalists who were opposed to his reconciliatory approach to Pyongyang. On the other hand, Abe also utilized a hard-line policy to the DPRK to offset his rapprochement with China whilst he sought to prevent the improved relationship from becoming a source of political capital for his rivals. The major insights of this thesis is thus to explain how Japan’s foreign policy is shaped by the attempts of its political leaders to manipulate nationalism so as articulating particular forms of national identity that enable them to achieve legitimacy for their policy agendas, boost domestic credentials and marginalize their political rivals.

This thesis offers a concrete and practically applicable answer to the question of how to increase the legitimacy of the UN’s decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and security. In order to provide this answer, it connects the minutia of institutional design with the abstract principals of democratic theory in a systematic and reproducible method, thereby enabling a clear normative evaluation of even the smallest technical detail of reform. The thesis elaborates criteria for the evaluation of both the normative desirability as well as the political feasibility of individual reform proposals and applies these to a compilation of all the relevant proposals in four issue- areas: Security Council (SC) membership and voting, SC working methods, relations between the SC and the General Assembly, and relations between the SC and civil society. This evaluation demonstrates that there is a range of feasible proposals for reform that could improve the SC’s accountability both to the GA and to the general public, that could increase the opportunities for effective input from the UN membership and NGOs, and that would thereby promote the UN’s decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and security as a more inclusive, coherent and decisive deliberative system.

This thesis analyses the decision-making within the European Community on opening to the People’s Republic of China between 1969 and 1979. The three main research themes, which this thesis will make a contribution to, are the EC’s decision-making in foreign policy, European integration in the 1970s, and the intersection of European integration and the Cold War. Neither the historiography of the Cold War nor of European integration have dealt with the EC-PRC relationship. This research addresses that deficiency. This is the first detailed, systematic historical study of the origins of the Community’s response to China that bases on archival sources released according to the 30-year rule. The study takes a Community-centred perspective, focusing on how the interests of the EC member states, those of the EC intergovernmental and supranational actors came together in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg to shape the EC’s response to the PRC. It is based on extensive multi-archival and multinational research, including records of the Community institutions, the French, British and German governments, personal papers, and interviews. The thesis argues that the Commission was the principal architect and motor behind the EC’s opening to China. Sir Christopher Soames, the first British vice-president and commissioner for external relations, was primarily responsible for establishing official relations. Personal beliefs and ambitions were at the root of his decision-making. Geopolitics were key. However the principal factor behind his and the Commission’s subsequent decisions was inter-institutional jockeying for power. The main implications of the opening were a furthering and deepening of European integration, and an acceleration of European détente and détente in Europe. This thesis therefore shows that the wrangle for competencies within the EC institutional system intertwined with broader trends of history, the end of the PRC’s isolation from international affairs and détente.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how American power is adapting to a changing post- Cold War global landscape. It is commonly accepted that many of the most visible cultural expressions of globalisation are American. However, contemporary accounts have proven inadequate in assessing how such forces have helped provide the infrastructure for America’s global dominance. With growing debate over the decline of American influence, the thesis intends to address how American statecraft is attempting to redefine itself for a digital age. With the accelerated transmission of information, images and sounds, nation-states are gradually losing the ability to either dictate their official narrative or control their global image. The new info-war that lies at the heart of contemporary American statecraft thus involves the wholesale integration of struggles over information, technology, communication and culture into the conflict itself. The thesis, therefore, investigates how American military and diplomatic efforts are both shaping and being reshaped by modern techno-culture. The thesis pieces together a contemporary genealogy of American cultural diplomacy in the Middle East from the Cold War through to the “war on terror”. This genealogy pays particular attention to both the continued hold of civilisationist discourses and the shifting question of race in American foreign policy – from the instrumentalisation of jazz at the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, to rap music as a soundtrack to American Empire. The attention paid to African American culture aims to highlight the ways in which the radical traditions of struggle for freedom from the underside of the American Empire are transforming our world today for both better and worse. The thesis concludes by contextualising the evolving relationship between consumption, technology, communication and (national) security, and situating the Occupied Palestinian Territories within these global capital and cultural flows. This takes the form of an analysis of the multiple local and international socio-economic initiatives taking hold in the West Bank – from governmental institutions and NGOs, to the business sector and consumer industries – and their particular attempts at reshaping Palestinian public spheres.

When Tony Blair took Britain to war in Iraq in 2003, he overruled vociferous opposition from both the wider public and members of his own governing party. Public opinion was exercised by the issue on a vast scale. Over one million marched in London against the war. Opinion polls uniformly showed majority opposition to the use of force. Newspapers, the engine of media debate in this country, mostly attacked the government line, and encouraged their readers to protest or even, in one case, to rebel. The story of Iraq, however, is not simply one of an ideological or misguided premier dragging the entire nation to battle against its will. It is not simply one of ‘spin’, dossiers, Alastair Campbell, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Much of the debate, and much of the hostility it generated, focused on areas that foreign policy analysts would consider peripheral; the domestic political consequences of war, the role of ‘spin doctors’ in the assessment of intelligence, and the question of whether the Prime Minister’s (successful) efforts to build a strong alliance with the world’s last superpower had transformed him into the President’s ‘poodle’. Interactions between ministers and the media were conditioned on both sides by an intimidating array of structural pressures. Diplomatic and journalistic calculations often clashed, trapping the government in the middle of an immensely complex ‘multi-level game’. News management influenced substantive foreign policy just as policy influenced news management, and the media arguably affected both, albeit often indirectly. The substance and the communication of the decision to go to war proved to be inseparable, both in the course of decision-making, and in their later retrospective assessment. Public Opinion, broadly defined, had a significant impact on British foreign policy at this time. Crucially, however, this impact operated through political communication mechanisms usually ignored by FPA.

This thesis is an exploration into the consequential interrelation of official British discourse, identity, securitization, and counterterrorism from 1968 to 2011. Through a relational-securitization approach, the thesis narrative explains how discourse is both constitutive and causal for outcomes in a particular case. It is a relational mechanism based analysis that investigates how observed rhetorical commonplaces came together to influence intersubjective understanding and security practice. The ways that identities were temporarily stabilized across discourse through particular configurations was essential to how British counterterrorism emerged, was maintained, and became normalized. The thesis does not argue that possible insecurities categorized as “terrorism” do not exist, or that a security response is in itself surprising. However, how this response unfolded was not predetermined, and instead depended upon a securitization of terrorism along distinctive patterns of us/them construction. These patterns influenced the trajectory of counterterrorism by enabling certain outcomes to arise over others. Collective understandings of identity shape the conditions of possibility for political action. As such, discourses of securitization have a causal impact over intersubjective understanding and counterterrorism ractice. Historical moments, such as the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings or 11 September 2001 attacks, can facilitate a more rapid passage of exceptional measures. But the maintenance and normalization of these powers depends upon us/them and inside/outside boundary markers. Violent acts may thus influence outcomes, but they do not determine their substance or direction. Reasserted and/or reconfigured perceptions of distance and danger stabilizing the threat and referent in particular ways played a key role in counterterrorism’s transition from emergency response to permanent practice. Through a relational-securitization approach, analysis can better map out how processes of identity construction were essential to the securitization of terrorism, and contributed to the emergence, legitimation, and normalization of British counterterrorism from 1968 to 2011.

The goal of this thesis is to analyse the impact of Arctic ecology on the development of international systems in the circumpolar world. It is a goal pursued in two steps: (i) by developing an analytical approach capable of tracing the mutual constitution of international and ecological systems in world history; and (ii) by using the resulting toolkit to establish a baseline understanding of the international systems of the polar basin. Part One adapts the analytical approach pioneered by Barry Buzan and Richard Little to study international systems in world history, adding a contextual axis to their analytical matrix in order to escape the anthropocentric cul-de-sac that has heretofore limited IR’s ability to consider ecology’s role in the constitution of international units, processes, and structures. The resulting approach – defined in terms of SocioEcological Coevolution – describes this relationship in terms of three sources of explanation: coevolutionary process, ecological capacity and biogeographical structure. Part Two uses the toolkit to analyse the past four hundred years of Arctic history, charting the impact of ecological systems on the principles of membership and behaviour that define international systems in circumpolar world. Through discussions of socio-ecological coevolution, ecological capacity and biogeographical structure, the project identifies the Arctic as a region defined by competing sets of Westphalian and imperial principles. The balance between the Arctic’s anarchic states system and its hierarchic imperial systems has its fulcrum on a socio-ecological ecotone – a transitional gradient that divides its neo-European and non-European biomes and marks a shift from Westphalian to imperial social principles. Though designed to answer specific questions about the constitution of international systems in the circumpolar North, Coevolution proves itself to be a promising tool for ecological analysis in IR with potential applicability to regions outside of the Arctic Basin.

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) along with other agreements was concluded in the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations in 1994. However, negotiations continued within the WTO framework and are still a work in progress on some specific issues under the GATS including the question of Emergency Safeguard Measures, which has been raised in Article X of the GATS as part of its ‘built-in agenda’. The thesis looks at the concept of the Emergency Safeguards Measures (ESMs) in the GATT/WTO and tries to develop an answer to the ‘question of ESMs’, which is deluding the negotiators and researchers for more than fifteen years. The thesis tries to analyse whether the GATT type ESMs can be transposed to GATS. It also explores that whether ESMs that are modelled on GATT are feasible under GATS, and if feasible, are these really desirable. If these are feasible and desirable then what should be their possible structure remaining within the existing GATT paradigm. The thesis walks through the provisions that already exist in the GATS to meet the circumstances perceived by the countries that are seeking specific ESMs under GATS and whether these provisions address the concerns of the demanders of the concept. The thesis not only takes into account the academic and legal literature on the subject but also and perhaps more practically, takes into account the dynamics of the negotiations, discussions and debates within the WTO system on the subject. The thesis tries to provide an in-depth analysis of the issue and goes beyond what is already available in the International Trade Law literature on the ESMs under the cross border trade in services. It seeks to answer a question that presently exists in the International Trade Law especially with reference to the law emerging out of WTO.