The concept of Strategic Culture was developed during the Cold War years as a tool to analyse the nuclear policies of the Soviet Union and the United States, in an effort to assess the likelihood of their utilising their nuclear capabilities. Strategic Culture provides a useful lens through which we may understand the context, outlook and behaviour of states, shedding light on the way they perceive the international community and their role within it. As the Cold War came to an end, the focus of Strategic Culture literature shifted from the nuclear bipolarity that characterised U.S.-Soviet relations, to focus on other states and issue areas that dominated the international agenda within the New World Order. This thesis seeks to return to the original tenets of Strategic Culture, bringing attention back to the initial remits of this area of study, that is, the nuclear strategic cultures of the U.S.A. and Russia. Further to identifying the strategic cultures of the United States and Russia, this research questions whether these have been impacted by the change in international order brought on by the end of the Cold War. This work will also question whether nuclear weapons contorted their respective strategic cultures, or whether their strategic cultures were insulated from the impact of nuclear weapons. It will also assess whether the differences in strategic cultures have brought about differences in nuclear policy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 424-451).

Presented diploma thesis is pursued to the topic of conceptual evolution of civil protection in the last century's 50's to 70's period. This period of time, population safety was secured by so called Civil Defence. Noticeable atribute of all the Civil Defence measures impacting population was mainly protection against mass destruction weapons. That is why protection against mass destruction weapons is given the most attention in this diploma thesis. Target of the thesis is historical analyse concerning Civil Defence and its evolution in Czechoslovakia in noted period. Out of it the thesis sketches also general formation and evolution of civil protection in previous period. Diploma thesis is done based on study of available literature and mainly based on accessible sources from military archive in Prague. Thesis is divided to six chapters, chronologically describing the most important milestones in Civil Defence conceptual evolution. Emphasis is laid on description of its organisational structure and way of population protection against mass destruction weapons. During studies of these sources, the emphasis was laid also on military evaluation of country territory according to level of expected threat by aerial attack that time, or later by nuclear weapon of mass destruction in case of war conflict....