This dissertation applies a Neoclassical Realism model to examine how the evolution of United States (U.S.) national security strategy-making institutions has resulted in a path dependent accrual of autonomy and increasing influence over the formulation of American grand strategy. Once U.S. national security strategy-making institutions were created, their existence inexorably led to increasing autonomy, the creation of new strategy-making institutions, and subtle influence in shaping American grand strategy by preferential focus on a militarized foreign policy. Additionally, the more autonomous these strategy-making institutions have become, the further they have strayed from the Constitutional mandate to create a government which provides for the common defense and the less successful they have been in implementing grand strategy for national security. This dissertation examines this evolution in strategy-making institutions across three grand strategic moments: the end of the Spanish-American War (1898-1911), World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War (1940-1950), and the end of the Cold War (1980-present). Each case study discusses the historical facts of the grand strategic moment’s evolution in strategy-making institutions. These facts indicate durable shifts in autonomy and influence. The increasing autonomy is evidenced by the ability of these national security strategy-making institutions to define their own evolution, despite traditional American strategic culture perceptions about civilian control of the Military. These strategy-making institutions also shaped the formulation of American grand strategy and their evolution has had important transformative effects on American strategic culture and civil-military relations. While, fortunately, the U.S. can rely on ethical military professionalism, and the nation still holds its Military in high regard, this path-dependent process of structural evolution generates concern for the American People’s future and common defense.

Under what conditions has Russia adopted assertive foreign policies towards neighbouring states in order to pursue regional primacy? Scholars usually map Russia’s foreign policy according to theoretical approaches that are generated either from the individual, the state or the structural levels of analysis. However, each of them, taken individually, cannot account for Russia’s foreign policy across space and time. This study analyses the complex interplay between causal factors by developing a neoclassical realist model of Russia’s pursue of regional primacy in the contested neighbourhood with the EU. This study employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) at a cross-case level and Process Tracing at within-case level. fsQCA aims to test the explanatory value of systemic conditions such as external pressure in the regional neighbourhood by other regional powers and membership of target states in a military alliance (i.e. NATO); and of domestic conditions such as Russia’s status recognition by the West, and Russia’s state capacity. This analysis is based on 27 cases of Russia’s interaction with post-Soviet states between 1992 and 2015. Process Tracing is employed as a confirmatory method for within-case analysis.The results of the study suggest that Russia was inclined to adopt assertive foreign policy instruments, particularly military intervention, if external pressure from other great powers in a neighbouring country was combined with Russia’s high state capacity to mobilise resources. Due to NATO membership by neighbouring states, Russia resorted to coercive instruments rather than to direct use of force to maintain regional primacy. Finally, from the comparative process tracing, it emerged that, besides international security concerns and domestic constraints related to Russia’s status recognition, the two violent conflicts of Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia/Abkhazia in the 1990s, which were of equal threat to Russia’s regional primacy in the South Caucasus, bore a different ‘iconic significance’ to Russia.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Sweden and Finland chose to join NATO, but Ireland and Switzerland chose to remain neutral. This study asked how Irish and Swiss neutrality differs with regards to integration and screening; why does their neutrality differ and how well can structural realism and neoclassical realism explain Irish and Swiss neutrality? The purpose was to gain an understanding of how neutral Ireland and Switzerland could be considerd to be since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and test if Irish and Swiss neutrality could be explained by structural and neoclassical realism. This study used four factors: national defense policy, strategic culture, public opinion, and the policy process. An analytical framework was applied to understand how their neutrality differed. The factors were compared to find where the biggest differences lie which could explain why their neutrality differed. Finally, how they differed was compared with why they differed to understand if the theories used explained their neutrality. The study found that Irish neutrality was more integrated compared with Swiss neutrality. Their neutrality differed due to differences in defense policy and policy process whilst similarities were due to strategic culture and public opinion. Finally, this study found that structural and neoclassical realism could explain Irish and Swiss neutrality, but studies using other theories and methods need to be made to strengthen these results

This work aims to analyze the responses of Syria to two international changes comparatively. After the end of the Cold War, US initiated a foreign policy doctrine based on American hegemony. This policy was firstly manifested in the war on Iraq as a response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on January 17, 1991. It was noteworthy to see Syria aligning with the US during the Gulf War (1990-1991), as the country had been allied against the US during the Cold War period. Syria was also the first state accepting US proposal for a peace conference known as Madrid Peace Conference. All these developments reveal that Syria had been cooperated with the US in the aftermath of the Cold War. The second international change analyzed within the framework of this study is the September 11 events. Following the September 11 attacks, the US declared a &ldquo / war on terror&rdquo / to recover its superpower position and intervened in Afghanistan and then Iraq. In that process, Syria opted for countering the US and became the leading critique of the invasion of Iraq. This study examines the different responses of Syria to the end of the Cold War and the post-September 11 period through using neoclassical realism as a model.

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Postwar Japan’s defense policy is an anomaly; it is a non-neutral middle power that has regularly resisted translating its economic strength into military strength. This paper seeks to analyze postwar Japan’s defense policy at the international systemic and domestic unit levels through the use of neoclassical realism, and then make predictions as to where Japanese defense policy will go. First, this paper provides an overview of relevant neoclassical realist theoretical literature, before moving on to an examination of the norms created by Japan’s defense policies during the Cold War. The next chapter focuses on the post-Cold War evolution, in which systemic level factors pushed Japan towards rearmament. Next is an analysis of the most recent period of leadership by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, covering the challenges that Japan faces and the methods he and his administration have used to advance Japanese security policy, short of constitutional amendment. This paper then examines the current state and trends of national-level factors restricting policymakers, and predicts whether these trends will continue. This paper concludes that international-level pressures have consistently driven the major changes to Japanese defense policy, though these responses have been restricted by national-level factors, in particular Article 9 of the constitution and large pacifist protests. However, these factors are becoming less and less effective at restraining an expansion of Japan’s Self Defense Forces (SDF). Furthermore, there has been little effort to rollback the remilitarization of the SDF. Given the strength of the pro-constitutional-revision Liberal Democratic Party, the weakness of the opposition in the Diet, and the continuing decline of the importance of pacifism to the Japanese public, this paper concludes that Article 9 will be revised to allow for the expansion of Japan’s security policy. This conclusion can provide insight into how Japan will be able to act in the future, and thereby help plan the foreign policies of other nations in the region.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(法学) / 甲第22024号 / 法博第236号 / 新制||法||166(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院法学研究科法政理論専攻 / (主査)教授 中西 寛, 教授 鈴木 基史, 教授 島田 幸典 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Laws / Kyoto University / DGAM

Institutional regional integration has become the main focus of Brazil's foreign policy during the administration of the Workers' Party 2003-2016. Why has Brazil decided to involve itself so deeply into the process of Latin American integration? The main objective of this single case study is twofold. First, applying the theory of neoclassical realism, this thesis aims to discuss all the driving forces (variables) behind Brazil's decision to make regional integration its top foreign policy priority since 2003. Second, it attempts to clarify that the São Paulo Forum, a continental network of the leftist political parties, should also be included into the set of driving forces behind the foreign policy choices in Brazil from 2003 to 2016. The following research question is put forward: What role does the São Paulo Forum play in Brazil's intensified involvement into regional integration during the period of the Workers` Party in power? Assessed through the congruence procedure and process tracing technique, the influence of the Forum is placed under the intervening variables of the neoclassical realist theory. The results of the study demonstrate that since the Workers' Party coming to power, its leader, Lula da Silva has used the directives, elaborated at the São Paulo Forum, to restructure,...

The following thesis is a study of why the Swedish government´s approach to the use of military means in the Arctic region has changed over the last ten years. The analysis builds upon theoretical tools of neoclassical realism. First, an examination is made of the costal states’ military development in regards to the Arctic region to settle if there have been any significant shifts in relative power. Second, the Swedish government’s threat perceptions alongside the change of the Swedish military capabilities are analysed. According to the results of the study, several aspects may have played a part in the Swedish policy change. Factors on both the international and the national level are of importance, however it is concluded that changes in decision makers’ perception and reduced military capabilities could have had a certain role in shaping the governments approach to the Arctic region.

This thesis aims to shed light on the differences between offensive and a specific version of neoclassical realism on their expectations regarding how a great power shapes its environment. The neoclassical framework proposed in this work constitutes an independent variable captured by the polarity in the system, an intervening variable of state capacity, and a dependent variable of revisionist foreign policy. It is argued that along with multipolarity and bipolarity, there is a need to incorporate unipolarity in structural realist accounts. Analysed from this perspective, great powers feel high external pressure due to the nature of unipolarity, which diminishes the value of pure structural frameworks. In this respect, the incorporation of state-level factors provides more reliable analyses for explaining anxious great powers` strive for regional hegemony. As a result, neoclassical realism is better equipped to explain Russia`s revisionist foreign policy.