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In 2012, The New York Times reported that the Obama Administration excluded all Military-Age Males from the collateral damage count in areas where the U.S engaged in drone warfare/ Though the Military-Age Male (MAM) category references the draft, the term is applied to all boys and men, including civilians, who are aged sixteen years and older. The Military-Aged Male category is not synonymous with 'combatant,' but marks boys and men for differentiated treatment in conflict zones, to the point where male bodies are used as a shorthand for 'combatant' when assessing the collateral damage count. This dissertation seeks to answer an empirical puzzle. The U.S Army/Marine Corps Counter-Insurgency Field Manual (2006), a document which emerged from the American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, emphasizes that militants vie for the civilian population's support as a way to win the war against a stronger and better-resourced military force. These documents state that the United States cannot rely on military prowess alone and that, in fact, “non-military means are the most effective” way to win an irregular war against militant groups. Both the Bush Jr. and Obama Administrations used the Military-Age Male category to structure military strategy, meaning that civilian protection was applied asymmetrically and that military violence was legitimized when directed against male civilians. These security practices would seemingly cause resentment from a large segment of the population and undermine the success of U.S foreign policy. This dissertation documents the political ecosystem that legitimized violent military action against the 'Military-Age Male.' Specifically, I examine Military-Age Males under the Bush and Obama Administrations and illustrate how counterinsurgency and drone warfare became practices that were sustained by an elaborate bureaucracy that interpreted the battlespace—and combatant from civilian—by using assumptions about gender. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Univ., Diss.--Paris, 2002.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-283).

This thesis will analyse the identity politics of the Chinese party-state’s nation-building project in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It will examine how the party-state intends to overcome the barrier of ethnic boundaries in the production of a shared sense of multi-ethnic, national belonging. Uyghurs and Han can be thought of as belonging to different civilisations (Chinese and Turkic-Islamic) but in modern times they are often thought of as divided by ethnic boundaries. The party-state’s idea of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua Minzu) is a nation-building project to eliminate these boundaries so as to produce a multi-ethnic nation. Fieldwork was conducted after the riots of July 2009 engulfed the region. Ethnically targeted violence against both Han and Uyghurs destabilised the city of Ürümchi and challenged the party-state’s vision of China as a unified and harmonious nation. The official Chinese explanation was that this was an internationally funded and synchronised terrorist attack but Uyghur rights groups have blamed tensions on government policy repressing Uyghur culture and stoking Han nationalism. The theoretical framework employed draws from the concepts of production and performativity in Post-Structuralist and Critical International Relations (IR) theory, particularly the work of Cynthia Weber (1998) and David Campbell (1998). The critical approach adopted here takes security as a process of performative enactment of identity, which produces the units we take for granted as worthy of security. The analysis will examine official performances of what it means to be Chinese and Uyghur. It will then ask how these performances are received and (re)performed by members of the postulated nation. The party-state seeks to include Uyghurs as Chinese but it also excludes and securitises Uyghur Turkic and Islamic identities as ‘outside’ threats to the unity of the nation. The research is a result of one year of fieldwork (September 2009-August 2010) in Ürümchi, the capital city of Xinjiang. This was the first ethnographic study of responses to the violence of July 2009. Furthermore, the incorporation of Han perspectives has been very limited thus far in the literature on Xinjiang. The analysis uses a top-down approach, which employs discourse analysis of official texts to understand what type of national identity the party-state seeks to produce. However, these methods are coupled with a bottom-up analysis using ethnographic methods, particularly detailed, semi-structured interviews, to explore how these official discourses are received. The perspectives of Han and Uyghurs in Xinjiang can inform us how nation-building will unfold and what type of social dynamics it will engender. Analysing perspectives on the nation from below can help us understand the type of nation we expect to be produced in China rather than the type of nation the party-state narrates. The findings of this research demonstrate that both Uyghurs and Han are turning official Chinese nationalist discourses against themselves to articulate separate ethnic nations. Uyghurs frame China as an assimilationist transgression of ethnic boundaries for the benefit of the Han. Han frame their nation as under threat from Uyghurs and articulate China as a Han nation. The party-state’s nation-building project is unintentionally producing insecurity and reinforcing ethnic boundaries which remain obstacles to a shared sense of nationhood.

This thesis responds to the longstanding call from constructivist and poststructuralist scholars for a turn to discourse. It focuses on the paradox of the ability of language to act as a constituting and constraining device within an agent-structure discussion. The Copenhagen School (CS), its attention to language and its concept of securitization is examined in terms of its strengths and weaknesses, including bringing discourse onto the security agenda to an unprecedented extent. This thesis seeks to speak security at a deeper level and move securitization beyond the moment of utterance and the notion of agents breaking free of rules that would otherwise bind, as well as beyond a singular definition of security. It is proposed that the CS framework can be theoretically complemented by Wittgenstein’s notion of language games on board. The analytical shift made by juxtaposing a speech act and a language game also foregrounds the link between language and rules. Wittgenstein’s idea of ‘acts of interpretation’ is also considered, and substantive questions are raised about what the language of security legitimates in principle and in practice. The Bush administration’s justifications for the 2003 Iraq war are taken as a point of departure, and covers how the Bush administration deployed the language of security to justify highly controversial moves. Their narrative about the use of the pre-emptive use of force without an imminent threat existing and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ such as those seen in the Abu Ghraib photographs in the name of security exemplify that words matter. The arguments conclude that adjustments are needed in the way security is currently spoken in IR theory.