Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-70).

In 2010, the Arab Spring started in Tunisia and expanded to other countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East. In Syria, it led to one of the most severe conflicts nowadays which turned into an international struggle with several external actors involved. Whereas most of the European countries, the United States and the Gulf countries oppose the Syrian government, Russia has supported the Assad-regime since the outbreak of the conflict. This present master thesis investigates Russia's role and motivation in the Syrian crisis and the country's support of the current Assad-regime. Due to the current relevance of classical geopolitics in Russia, the author took this approach for the investigation, complemented by some concepts from a current geopolitician. There seems to be evidence that Russian foreign politics is influenced by classical geopolitics and the approach explains, at least in part, the drivers for Russia's Syria policy. The qualitative analysis used primary and secondary sources, such as Foreign Policy Concepts, Security Reports, reports from key conferences, political speeches, letters and statements. The analysis revealed evidence, that Russia's engagement is driven by security issues, channelled by its own domestic terrorist fears. Additionally, the country seems to be aiming for...

Thesis is focusing on the analysis of the situation in Syria in the period since 2011 till present times. First part will present main theoretical thoughts on the international security such as Realist school, Liberalist school, Human and Collective security concepts and the most modern theoretical school of security- Copenhagen school. That was done in case to have a clear notion of the international security development and to chose the one theory which will reflect the best the situation in Syria. In the practical part I analyzing the actions and inter actions of the main international security actors, such as United Nations plus important actors in the region of the Middle East -- Arab League, and of course Syrian government and opposition. Also I will try to apply Copenhagen school of Security on the Syrian situation and to find out if that theory is good or not for that kind of analysis. After browsing actions taken by actors and opposition in the conclusion I found out that nowadays international security system cannot be called very successful and that Copenhagen school of Security its good explanatory theory but it pretty useless in case of conflict resolution.

Large scale destruction and surfeit chaos that accompany civil wars have provided a platform to several insurgencies operating in the setting to compete in a struggle for increased power and territorial occupation against their depraved regimes and each other. It is during this power struggle that several insurgencies make a jump from a purely nationalistic agenda of the civil war to a larger religious goal by complying with jihadist organisations thriving in the region. Although the topic of civil war and religious radicalisation has been on the international agenda as well as the academic community for many years now, proselytizing and hijacking of national agenda of insurgencies by religious extremists is also of growing concern. Thus, this research will seek to find if jihadisation of insurgencies is a direct consequence of civil wars by using the Afghanistan and the Syrian Civil wars as case studies. The approach adopted here is to dwell into the factors behind the adoption of jihadist ideologies by insurgencies in war zones. These factors would then be applied to both the case studies. The paper will incorporate insights from previous qualitative studies conducted on geo-referenced terror, the role of religion, and ideologies in civil wars in the aforementioned countries to arrive at the...

The aim of this work is to determine whether the concept of Responsibility to Protect is able to explain why in case of the Syrian civil conflict the international community did not intervene in a similar manner as it did in Libya. Primarily, the theoretical framework is defined using the concept of Responsibility to Protect. In order to answer the research question, all criteria applied in the analysis were operationalized in accordance with the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and the Outcome Document from 2005. At the same time, concept of state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention is designed. Although the conflicts in Libya and Syria started simultaneously in 2011 during the rule of authoritarian regimes, the intrastate situations were not identical. Based on the analysis of two case studies, I came to the conclusion that the concept of Responsibility to Protect is able to sufficiently explain the different reaction of the international community, which confirmed my hypothesis. Specifically, it is the principle of right authority, which was not fulfilled in Syria, while it is necessary to note the criterion of reasonable prospect becomes with the gradual development of the conflict more and more problematic. In contrast, the intervention in...

Yes / This study introduces ‘eco-sectarianism’, which is a new concept that explains the relationship between sectarian violence and environmental pressures in divided societies in the Middle East. Against the backdrop of climate change, ‘eco-sectarianism’ poses a challenge to many fragmented and unequal societies where the sense of national consciousness is weak and nation-building projects are incomplete. This paper draws attention to the links between politicisation of sub-national identities and emerging ecological challenges in Syria.

Master of Science

Thesis (MA (Ancient Studies)--University of Stellenbosch, 1992. / In the course of this M.A. thesis, 65 stamp seals (conoids, scaraboids, signet rings and scarabs) have been collected, described, and analyzed. They stem from legal archaeological excavations in Syro-Palestine, and have been found in strata and contexts which can clearly be ascribed to the Persian period. Methodological questions were addressed, including the following: historical outline of the Persian period, geographical limitations of the study, archaeological considerations, and the iconographic and epigraphic aspects of the study. For the description process, a computerized system was developed, by means of which the seals could be described on three levels: general description, element description, modification description. In this way, a uniform way of handling the data was achieved. The description procedure is reflected in the fonn of a catalogue. In order to facilitate the analysis, the seal corpus was organized in three, at times overlapping, classes: iconographic seals, epigraphic seals, and hieroglyphic seals. The different classes were then analyzed according to their peculiarities, e.g. geographical distribution, iconographic motif groups, palaeography, onomastica, etc. It was shown that the corpus of stamp seals from the Persian period consists of a wide variety of objects in tenns of form and content, and could by no means be characterized as being homogenous. A certain relationship between geographical origin, fonn, and content of the seal could be established.

Univ., Diss.--Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2005.

Why do some regimes enjoy more autonomy than others when taking foreign policy and alignment choices? How does the organization of state-society relations constrain or enable a regime's freedom to take foreign policy and alignment choices? What explains the overlap between the domestic and external security spheres of some states, but not others? Finally, how do the foreign policy and alignment choices of some regimes have domestic political origins, uses, and implications? / This study explores these theoretical questions through a comparative examination of the impact of the organization of state-society relations (the independent variable) on regime autonomy in taking foreign policy and alignment choices (the dependent variable) in King Hussein's Jordan and Hafiz al-Asad's Syria. In contrast to Jordan's overlapping security terrains, and the domestic political origins, uses, and implications of many of the Hashemite regime's foreign policy and alignment choices, in Asad's Syria these choices are responses to shifts in the external geopolitical environment. This study offers an explanation of the discrepancy between the Syrian regime's ability to ignore domestic constraints on foreign policy and alignment choices, due to its preoccupation with external sources of threat, compared to its Jordanian counterpart's inability to do so and, consequently, its preoccupation on many occasions with strictly domestic sources of threat. / This study bridges comparative politics and international relations theorizing, inviting a methodological shift away from the hitherto dominant neorealist tendency in the latter field, which anchors foreign policy and alignment choices in primarily external considerations and objectives. Borrowing from the literature on corporatism, populism, and historical institutionalism, this study also supplies a more rigorous methodology for investigating the relationship between the domestic structures of nondemocratic states and their foreign policy and alignment choices. More than a revision of neorealist theorizing, and in contrast to idiosyncratic, domestic structure, or constructivist approaches to the study of state behavior, this study contends that a contextual and historical analysis of the organization of state-society relations explains why regime autonomy to take foreign policy and alignment choices may be constrained in some states but not in others. Furthermore, and against neorealism's insistence on the external origins of foreign policy and alignment choices, this study also argues that on many occasions these choices have domestic political origins, uses, and implications. The implications of these conclusions on the study of Arab politics, and on the quest for a first-cut theory of state behavior, are also assessed.