In the early hours of 20 October 1962, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched a series of devastating assaults on Indian posts stretched along thousands of miles of mountainous border. The attack drew a line under several years of acrimony over the border and an even longer period of uncertainty and ambiguity regarding each sides’ respective claims. However, the SinoIndian War was far more than just a territorial scrap, bloody as it was. It was widely perceived as a Chinese attack on Nehruvian non-alignment, a peculiar foreign policy posture that he had developed to counter the Cold War. By rejecting Nehru so firmly, Beijing was demonstrating a clear turn from the moderation it had pursued in tandem with the Soviets to engage non-socialist Asia through the mid-1950s. Mao’s attack on India was then a firm rejection of both Delhi’s moderation and Soviet partnership and a major turning point in the history of the Cold War and Asia. This thesis adds to the existing histories of the war by exploring Sino-Indian relations from 1949 when the two Asian giants cautiously swapped ambassadors. The ambiguous relationship between Beijing and Delhi is examined from the perspective of Nehru’s ambitious overall foreign policy agenda, rather than just a narrow focus on the border and Tibet. The deterioration of ties between Delhi and Beijing is often characterised as the result of conflicting territorial and indeed imperial ambitions. But it is also true to say that from early in the 1950s there was a remarkable effort at collaboration and accommodation of their respective ambitions. Simultaneously, collaboration was always underpinned by an acute sense of competition for influence in Asia, in particular over the appropriate model of development for the region. In particular, this thesis gives far greater emphasis on Beijing’s function within the dynamics of Sino-Indian relations, and shows how vital were the ideological shifts within the Chinese leadership. The ideologically framed judgements about Indian economic development policies had a major impact on how Beijing assessed the ongoing feasibility of its entire experiment with a moderate foreign policy in general and cooperation with Delhi specifically. By illustrating how these understandings of India also affected Chinese views of the Soviet leadership’s competence, this thesis also makes an important contribution to the historiography of the Sino-Soviet split. Ultimately, relations collapsed with Delhi not just because of hard territorial interests, but because Mao came to believe that the continued deferral of revolutionary goals was leaving the field clear for reactionary elements in China, India and beyond.

The main contention of this thesis is that traditional IR approaches, ethics of migration literature and a part of the poststructural scholarship, either implicitly but also often explicitly, are based on an exclusionary, hierarchical understanding of the Other and an Us versus Them ordering of society even when they purport to contradict it. As such, they engender a collective ethos, which, despite these approaches’ initial intentions or pronounced humanitarian commitments, does not take into account the stranger Other beyond a lordship/bondage view on one hand and allow for exacerbating the violence towards the Other/ stranger on the other. This exacerbation can be noted when looking at current hospitality practices (detention camps; “closed hospitality centres”; state sanctioned illegal push-backs of refugees; “fortress Europe” kind of policies, etc.). Whilst accepting this is not a new problem (movement of individuals, post-conflict waves of refugees, liminal figures in societies and communities have always been present and have constituted parts of on-going theoretical discussions in IR, bringing out theoretical tensions and difficulties), the thesis argues that there are certain novelties to be found: namely, a strengthened overarching security narrative and the resulting militarisation of the treatment of strangers. Against this background, my thesis notes the relative absence of any ethically engaged discussion around hospitality and finds it problematic. It proposes the reconsideration in IR of an umbrella term naming the liminal abject Other. It then argues for the need to reconsider the Levinasian understanding of the ethical responsibility towards the singular and multiple Others through the concept of fraternity. Finally, it revisits the Derridean theorisation of hospitality, i.e., hospitality as an opening up of theory to the “missing” or the Other in Western thought beyond an “Us/ Them” understanding, through an affirmative reading of autoimmunity, arguing that the autoimmunitary ethics of hospitality can enact the ethical responsibility by crossing the threshold of undecidability towards an opening to the Other.

Social networks are complex adaptive systems made up of nodes - human beings - and the links between those nodes. The links in any given network provide individuals with goods and services necessary for survival, including the quest for meaning, narrative and identity. This thesis argues that social networks are not rapidly increasing in complexity (a common view) but that the process of making and breaking links, and the ability to observe and document such processes, has been accelerated and simplified by modern technology. It is this ability to observe the dynamics within networks, networks that are subject to constant and on-going change and evolution, which makes the study of networks useful. Most approaches to social network analysis focus on spoken and written communication along links between the nodes, but shared suffering or execution of violence, or the simple association with a narrative involving violence, is a powerful dynamic in networks. It is a dynamic which has thus far been largely overlooked, but one which has important implications for international relations. Violence creates a shared identity and provides guidance for the behaviour of individuals, but also destroys life. The thesis analyses the case studies of Lebanon and Afghanistan from these perspectives. Whilst most studies on the Lebanese Civil War argue that the outbreak of violent conflict was unavoidable due to domestic and regional antagonisms, these studies do not explain why and how the war ended in 1990 in circumstances where the same factors continued to exist yet suddenly with a relative absence of large-scale violence. In contrast, violence has plagued Afghanistan since the 1970s and shows no signs of abating. Violence here is not tied to a specific conflict but has become the defining form of communication between the various network actors. Network theory can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the causes of violent conflict as well as, importantly, the forces that maintain or limit violence. Once these forces are understood, they can be utilised in an effort to change the prevailing dynamics of violence within a network, and to initiate a more successful approach to peacebuilding efforts within violent conflicts.

It is not only war and conflict that can determine the political fate of a leader but also peacemaking initiatives. Reversing long-standing national foreign policy choices that perpetuate animosity, friction and lack of diplomatic relations between states can put leaders in a precarious situation given domestic and external reactions. Accordingly, can foreign policy change of that respect be considered as risk-seeking or risk-averse behaviour on the part of leaders? Furthermore, if foreign policy change is considered as risk-seeking behaviour, then why do leaders and decision-makers spearhead and engage actively with these initiatives of peacemaking? This study, the first of its kind in the literature of prospect theory, analyses peacemaking initiatives under conditions of risk and uncertainty by shedding light on the decisions undertaken by the leadership of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), focusing specifically on its foreign policy choices vis-à-vis Cyprus and Armenia in 2004 and 2009 respectively. In particular, it raises questions as to the extent to which Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s and his inner circle’s decision to promote the resolution of two long-standing diplomatic issues was risky and what induced them to actively engage with the cases at hand. Using prospect theory’s analytical tools, it is argued that the revisionary policies that the AKP leadership, in particular Recep Tayyip Erdogan, introduced and promoted were riskier choices compared to Turkey’s long-standing policies vis-à-vis Cyprus and Armenia. This raises questions as to what induced Erdogan to push for a solution of the Cyprus issue during the Annan negotiations between 2002 and 2004, and the Annan Plan referendum in 2004, despite Turkish Cypriot leader’s, Rauf Denktas’s reactions and his support from the Turkish establishment at the time. Similarly, what induced Erdogan to seek the normalisation of Turkish-Armenian relations? This is a particularly puzzling question if one considers that Erdogan’s government signed the Zurich Protocols on 10 October 2009, which provided for the normalisation of Turkish-Armenian relations without any reference to the NagornoKarabakh issue - the foremost security concern for Azerbaijan and one of Turkey’s main prerequisites for normalising relations with Armenia – but then shortly after reversed the process. Towards that end, I have developed questions concerning the riskiness of these options, the risk propensity of Erdogan himself and the factors that affected this. After a comprehensive empirical analysis on the basis of two new prospect theoretical models (a. prospect theory-diversionary peace theory model, b. prospect theory-external balancing theory model) that provide alternative hypotheses about what induces risk-seeking and riskaverse behaviour in cases of peacemaking through concessions, I argue that the prospect theory-diversionary peace model’s main assumption about the effect of internal threats on decision-makers’ risk propensity is validated. Accordingly, there is a direct causal link between, firstly, the internal strife that took place between the AKP leadership and the Turkish establishment at the time, particularly the Turkish Army; and, secondly, the riskseeking propensity of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in revising Turkey’s traditional foreign policy. More specifically, Erdogan felt that he was in the domain of losses in terms of his political survivability and that of his government as well as in terms of the prospects for consolidating his power in the sphere of Turkish politics. In order to counterbalance the army’s subversive policies against the AKP and its clout in Turkish politics, he attempted to revise Turkey’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Cyprus and Armenia. It became clear to him that changing Turkey’s foreign policy in these two cases could, potentially, boost his personal image and that of his government amongst Turkey’s traditional allies, the EU and the US. In the case of Cyprus, EU member states directly connected the opening of accession negotiations with Turkey with its constructive role at the UN-sponsored negotiating table for a final settlement of the longstanding issue. In the case of Armenia, US institutions, particularly the US Congress and to some extent the US administrations had traditionally pressed for the normalisation of Turkey’s relations with Armenia and the opening of the borders. By revising, for the first time, Turkey’s long-standing foreign policy vis-à-vis Cyprus and Armenia, Erdogan and his government exhibited a risk-seeking behaviour compared to the reproduction of Turkish foreign policy that had traditionally taken place. The AKP leadership’s expectation was to increase its international popularity with Turkey’s traditional allies, the EU and the US, as a means of remedying the internal threat that the Turkish establishment, and particularly the Turkish Army, posed at the time to the survival and consolidation of Erdogan’s government. Parallel to that, the AKP’s revisionary policies were an attempt to discredit the Turkish Army’s international profile among Turkey’s traditional allies for being intransigent, while a potential final solution of the two problems would weaken the powerful domestic narrative that the Army had used to depict itself as Turkey’s guarantor of security against external threats. The frozen conflict on Cyprus and the enmity with Armenia had been important sources of legitimacy for the Turkish Army.

The Balance of Power is one of the foundational concepts for the academic discipline of International Relations. Most treat it as a theoretical or analytical concept – a tool that scholars use to investigate the workings of world politics. However, there is a gap in the literature on the balance of power; it is also a concept used by political practitioners and diplomats in concrete debates and disputes throughout centuries. No one has systematically investigated the concept as a ‘category of practice’, and I seek to redress this omission. I ask, how, why, and with what effects has the balance of power concept been deployed across different contexts? This is important, because the discipline needs to investigate the histories of its dominant concepts – the balance of power deserves attention as an object of analysis in its own right. I combine a genealogical reading (by what accidents of history did we end up here?) with conceptual history (how was the balance used then as a rhetorical resource in making arguments?). The result is a history of practical international thought. I trace the trajectory of the balance of power concept empirically and concretely – from its emergence in England based on a domestic republican tradition, to its elaboration at the British-founded University of Göttingen in Hanover, on to Prussia and Germany, before finally ending up in the USA with the emergence of IR as a discipline. Throughout this trajectory, the concept of the balance of power has been centrally linked to what historical actors took to be European polities and their relations. In this trajectory, ‘shifts’ in the balance of power, is governed more by how the concept itself is deployed, than any material or territorial assessment of power alone, or by any deliberate refinement of the concept. It has affected and constituted international politics and foreign policies across time, as well as our own discipline of IR.

This thesis challenges common political science assumptions about regions, nations, and societies in contexts of state weakness, with a special focus on de facto, rather than de jure, statehood in sub-Saharan Africa. I argue that theories of statehood must reach deeper into the empirical workings of state-society relations. Instead of positing abstract models or normative ideal types of modern states, I conceive of statehood as a set of daily practices that govern, regulate and generate effects on those experiencing and “performing the state”. I look at public good provision and consumption as a way to study these practices of statehood. The arguments advanced in this thesis are based on interpretive and relational methods. Interpretivism focuses on meanings and beliefs, as opposed to strict laws and statistical correlations. Relational methods demonstrate how interactions between consumers and providers of public goods evolve and condition de facto statehood. Qualitative data, which includes semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observations, are drawn from firsthand encounters with service providers and citizens in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Empirical observation and analysis shed light on governance patterns, citizen-subject relations, and provide a heuristic approach to statehood dimensions. Approaching the concept of statehood through dimensions is useful in light of the multiple meanings that it holds. Statehood, I argue, is never fixed and does not reach a teleological end point, but rather, embodies different dimensions that can be analyzed through patterns of public goods provision. I argue that the state, often imagined as a coherent entity, is comprised of different practices found in a variety of spaces and social relations. This approach to statehood decreases discrepancies between the literature and empirical realties and engages with “real” experiences of statehood in non-Western spaces.

This thesis analyses resilience as a value which constitutes a telos for contemporary liberal security initiatives. In recent years, resilience strategies have been increasingly employed within liberal states a means of responding to the radical contingency of threat. Rather than seeking to protect a referent through prophylactic measures, resilience strategies aim to optimize the capacity of complex systems to rapidly adapt to, and evolve through, crises. The advent of resilience strategies is premised upon a radical re-evaluation of the referents of security as complex systems. The discovery of the natural resilience of systems integral to liberal life has enabled strategies of emergency governance seeking to harness these processes, and optimize their conditions of ‘freedom’. By naturalising resilience these accounts serve to render its value self-evident. This thesis problematises these accounts by offering a biopolitical genealogy directed at elucidating the historical conditions of possibility for resilience to emerge as a security value. This thesis takes as its empirical referent the case of the historical evolution of a British machinery of governance for responding to emergencies. Analysis makes explicit distinct, and indeed rival, rationalities of governance which can be read from its evolving design. Resilience is demonstrated to be an expression of an emergent neoliberal order of governance. Applying a biopolitical security analytic inspired by Foucault, this genealogy traces the historical consolidation of this order in respect of transformations in the regime of power/knowledge enacted by apparatus of security. A biopolitical genealogy demonstrates that resilience is the correlate of a broader restructuring of the rationalities and practices comprising liberal security governance. By drawing attention to the complex historical processes and significant governmental efforts required to make resilience possible this thesis aims to open up a space through which the value of resilience may be more critically interrogated.

This thesis examines the methods through which the administration of George W. Bush utilized the events surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) to legitimize a type of imperial American foreign policy. The central argument of this research is that 9/11 was used by the Bush administration to present a perceived shift in the danger and threat that America faced, thus legitimating a more aggressive foreign policy, which this thesis categorizes as ‘informal imperialism’. It argues that an American grand strategy of global dominance is not new, but rather constitutes a continuation of policies whose ideological roots date back to the 1990s. This thesis explores this argument through the lens of critical geopolitics (CGP), which provides a critical and interdisciplinary framework for unpacking geographical assumptions in geopolitics and questions how they function within ideology. CGP serves as a framework for understanding the use of language in constructing and normalizing imperial policies in the United States after 9/11. Methodologically, this thesis used critical discourse analysis (CDA), which provides tools for analyzing discourse, and examining how language is the key to understanding how power functions. This thesis deploys a critical analysis and definition of American imperialism and the contributions of CGP to the debate of a ‘post 9/11 world’. A CDA of the writings of key people in the Bush administration traces their foreign policy and its ideological roots. Further, a CDA of post 9/11 discourses focuses on the changing geography of danger, fear, threat and the act of Othering as it relates to a post 9/11 world. Finally, a CDA of the discourses surrounding the Global War on Terror is conducted, arguing that the frames set up in relation to a new and dangerous world paved the way for policies that justified a war with Iraq.

What caused the Cold War to end? In the following I examine the puzzle of the fast and peaceful conclusion of the bipolar superpower standoff, and point out the problems this creates for the study of International Relations (IR). I discuss prevailing explanations and point out their gaps, and offer the framework of complexity theory as a suitable complement to overcome the blind spots in IR’s reductionist methodologies. I argue that uncertainty and unpredictability are rooted in an international system that is best viewed as non-linear. My analysis of the end of the Cold War proceeds with counterfactual investigations of leaders’ foreign policy choices. This helps produce a more fine-grained understanding of the manifold, dense interactive causal effects that abound in the international arena. I find that various choices made by four key international leaders in the 1980s – Ronald Reagan, George Shultz, Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush – contributed to the rapid and unexpected end of the Cold War in various ways. While such leadership effects need to be offset against the wider structural context within which politicians operate, it is mistaken to exclude individual leaders and their key associates from the study of IR. I conclude that deterministic analyses fail to account for the independent causal wellspring provided by reflexive, conscious human agency. Complexity theory and counterfactuals can help identify the scope and limits of leaders’ influence on international affairs.

This thesis provides an in-depth and detailed examination of China-EU relations between 2001 and 2013. Specifically, it investigates the collaboration on Climate Change and Renewable Energy between China and the European Union. It departs from the conventional academic literature in the field, which has treated Sino-European relations as bilateral ties between Beijing and Brussels, as well as between China and the national capitals of the EU member states. Instead, it studies Sino-European relations by focusing on individual institutions and corporate organisations. To achieve this, this thesis investigates the foreign policy formation and execution process in Beijing. It offers a detailed examination of the relations between elements of the Chinese Communist Party, as the ultimate decision maker, the Chinese governmental institutions and the Chinese companies involved in renewable and climate sectors. It analyses the extent to which changes in foreign policy priorities and the growing numbers of players involved in Beijing’s foreign policy making process have altered China’s EU policy. It also investigates individual actors on the European side. In particular, it focuses on whether the European actors recognise changes in China’s foreign policy agenda as well as whether they have responded effectively to shifts in the institutional balance of power in Beijing. It uses Sino-European collaborations on Climate Change and Renewable Energy as case studies to answer the key research question “To what extent are China-EU relations pre-dominantly determined by the interests of a diverse range of foreign policy actors?” It thus identifies who shapes the bargaining process; on which policy each actor bargains with, and the outcomes of the relevant bargaining process. The thesis was conducted using qualitative research methods, especially a large number of in-depth interviews, many of them with members of the commercial and political elite, and drawing the secondary sources to corroborate the interview results.