Lebanese society involves the Western, i.e. liberal and democratic model, and the Islamic model of society as umma. This Lebanese model originated and has been maintained as a compromise between communities of different value paradigms where no significant shift can be expected as Lebanon is situated at the borders of their territorial expansion. According to my analysis on the basis of theoretical concepts of neo-realism and social constructivism the external players prevail over the internal players. External players have essential influence on the development of Lebanese society and state. It is also the regional status quo or regional and international order that influences the development in Lebanon and is responsible for almost every conflict, conflict initiation or struggle in Lebanon. Lebanese multiconfessional society has always made an effort to achieve and has achieved by itself a consensus for its coexistence. That is why the international community and organizations should promote and use their influence more to maintain the peaceful co-existence.

Ce travail de recherche retrace la rivalité des puissances occidentales au Liban entre 1940 et 1958, qui découle d’un affaiblissement progressif de ses anciennes puissances colonisatrices, la France et la Grande-Bretagne. Nous essaierons de dérouler au cours de cette étude le nouvel ordre imposé au Moyen-Orient. Nous analyserons la manière dont les États-Unis ont cherché à supplanter les anciennes puissances coloniales.Pour la période suivante, de 1947 à 1958, qui voit au Moyen-Orient un bouleversement politique majeur avec la fin des Mandats, la création de l’État d’Israël et la montée du nationalisme arabe, nous nous pencherons sur l’apparition sur la scène moyen orientale d’une nouvelle superpuissance, l’Union soviétique. Nous détaillerons la position du Liban vis à vis des alliances, de la crise de Suez et de la cirse libanaise de 1958. Nous essaierons d’apprécier dans quelles mesures elles ont contribué à accélérer la chute des anciennes puissances colonisatrices supplantées par les deux nouvelles super puissances.Dans ce nouveau contexte, le Liban apparaîtra au cœur de ces événements, dépassé par les enjeux et tiraillé par l’opposition interne entre musulmans pro nassériens et chrétiens pro-occidentaux. Nous verrons notamment comment, pour contrer l’influence soviétique au Moyen-Orient après la crise du canal de Suez, Eisenhower remania sa politique dans la région profitant de la perte d'influence franco-britannique.Nous arriverons à la conclusion que ces dix années apparaissent comme déterminantes dans l’histoire de la rivalité américano-européenne au Moyen Orient et tout en dessinant un affaiblissement définitif des autres puissances occidentales, scellé par l’échec de Suez, elles déterminent pour la décennie à venir, jusqu’en 1967, les règles du jeu de cet Orient complexe… / This research, traces the rivalries, between the year 1940 and 1958, amid the Western powers within Lebanon, which is the result of the gradual weakening of their former colonial powers, France and Great Britain. Through this study, we will expose the new order imposed on the Middle East, and we will analyze how the United States sought to supplant the former colonial forces.Furthermore, during the years 1947 to 1958, the Middle East witnessed a major political upheaval with the end of the mandate, the establishment of the State of Israel, the rise of Arab nationalism and the rise of a new superpower in that region: the Soviet Union. Moreover, we will specifically detail the causes and consequences of the Suez Canal crisis and we will try to assess its extent on the accelerated collapse of the former colonial forces, superseded by their two new challengers. In the light of these events, Lebanon will appear overwhelmed by the challenges, and torn by the internal opposition between pro-Nasserite Muslims and pro-Western Christians. It will be shown in detail how, to counter the Soviet influence in the Middle East after the Suez crisis, Eisenhower reshuffled his policy in the area, taking advantage of the decreasing influence of France and Great Britain.Eventually, we come to the conclusion, that the decade spanning from 1947 to 1958 is decisive to the history of the US-European rivalry in the Middle East, where the weakening of all other Western powers is definitive, and where the rules of the game, in the extremely complex region, became determined for the following decade.

The central question of this thesis is, how has the alternative US media framed the war in Syria? The analytical approach is informed by recent scholarly debate regarding peace journalism and constructive journalism. The framings of the war in Syria have been studied in three alternative US online news sources through a qualitative content analysis. The news sources are Truthout, The Progressive and Common dreams. Results show that these alternative US media has framed the war in line with characteristics of peace journalism and constructive journalism. This tendency departs from how the conflict is regularly framed in mainstream US media. The three studied media have for example promoted diplomatic and peaceful solutions to the war in Syria and tend to give voices to people that are not part of the US political elite.

This doctoral dissertation examines the lived experiences of refuge in Denmark from the perspectives of Syrian refugees. Situated within feminist political geography, it moves beyond examining geopolitics merely from the perspective of the law, the state, and policy makers. Instead, it seeks to grasp the ways in which geopolitics are encountered, experienced, and negotiated on the ground – by the people who are most affected by state policies and practices. It draws on more than ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in Denmark with Syrian refugees, including semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observations, as well as interviews with state and non-state actors providing assistance to Syrian refugees in Jordan. This dissertation brings insights from feminist political geography into conversation with those from critical refugee studies, border studies, geographies of law, and postcolonial studies in order to unsettle core ideas and terms of reference surrounding what refuge is and how it is practiced. This dissertation makes three distinct but closely related arguments. First, focusing on family reunification of refugees and how this form of protection became a target in the Danish state’s efforts to prevent refugee immigration, I argue that the geopolitics of refuge needs to be examined in a way that includes but also moves beyond the actual territorial border line as well as the legal border (i.e. the moment a person obtains protection and legal status). Second, through an examination of Syrian refugees’ everyday encounters with the Danish state, I draw attention to the disjunctures between idealized notions of refuge with its ostensible ‘humanitarian’ ethos and the practical articulations of refuge as manifested in the everyday lived experiences of refugees. This is what I term lived refuge. I argue, however, that the dissonances between idealized and actually existing refuge point to the persistent presence of governance within refuge, rather than a lack or an absence of ‘true’ humanitarianism - i.e. a promise of freedom, betterment, and prospect that did not fully materialize. Instead, the state practices, which refugees are subject to within refuge, are enabled and normalized through the asymmetrical relationships between the state and the refugee. Third, calling attention to how Syrian refugees experience, articulate and locate war, I trouble prevailing geographical imaginations of “Europe” and Denmark as spaces of peace, safety, and prosperity. Drawing on Syrians’ experiences of war, I argue that attending to everyday experiences of war in refuge prompts a re-articulation of where war is, what counts as war, and who decides.

L’objet de cette thèse porte sur le magistère délivré par le clerc syrien, autorité du sunnisme contemporain, Muhammad Sa‘īd Ramahān al-Būtī, né en 1929. L’intérêt porté, via une traduction au plus près des sources écrites et orales, privilégie l’« islamologie appliquée » et la démarche pluridisciplinaire qu’elle induit pour saisir la complexité d’une pensée en situation. En convoquant depuis une trajectoire singulière des lieux complémentaires d’une pluralité identitaire, les « hybrides » de la biographie comblent un déficit de connaissance de l’histoire contemporaine des relations qu'entretiennent la sphère religieuse et l’État syriens dont le conflit, ressenti comme tabou, qui opposa l’exécutif à la frange islamiste. Au prolongement, le terrain d’expérimentation d’une médiation éthique montre l’implication subjective du clerc par un déplacement du factuel vers les possibles d’un compromis de régulation. Inscrite dans le « discours religieux » qu’éclaire l’ordre graphique, en vertu du passage d’un univers théologique à un énoncé idéologique, l’expression contemporaine de la réflexion du šayh Sa‘īd s’articule autour d'une unité communautaire idéalisée. L’apport conceptuel de la psychanalyse groupale, associé à une pragmatique discursive, contribue à prendre la mesure de formations et de processus défensifs, au moyen d’usages métaphorisés du corps, dont l’acmé, l’« esprit de corps » désincarnant et redoublé par le caractère virtuel de l’Internet, reverse le conflit dans l’axiologique. À rebours, les contingences traitées dans les fatwā-s et l’expérience intime de la corporéité, mesurée à l’aune du « souci de l’autre », donnent à penser les présents enjeux éthiques. / This thesis deals with the teaching given by the Syrian scholar, Muhammad Sa‘īd Ramadān al-Būtī, born in 1929 and an authority on contemporary sunnism. Our concern, through a close translation of his written and oral works, privileges « applied islamology » and a multidisciplined method which it induces in order to grasp the complexity of a thought in progress. While mentioning, from a pecular path, places complementary of a plural identity, the « hybrids » of his biography fill a shortage in our knowledge of the contemporary history about the relationship between the Syrian religious sphere and the state, among which the conflict felt as a taboo and opposing the Executive and the islamist fringe. Following this factor, the experimental field for an ethical mediation shows the subjective involvement, through a shifting from the facts towards a possible compromise for a set of regulations. The contemporary expression for šayh Sa‘īd’s thinking, in keeping with the « religious discourse » which is enlightened by the graphic signs thanks to a changeover from a theological field to an ideological wording is stated around an idealized community unity. The conceptual contribution of the group psychoanalysis associated with a discursive pragmatics shows a defensive process by means of various metaphors for the body, among which at the height the « esprit de corps », being disembodied and emphasized by the virtual aspect of Internet, pours the conflict into an axiology. In return, the contingencies mentioned in the fatwā-s and the inmost experiencing of the corporeity, according to the idea of « care » set us thinking about the present ethical issues.

The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional study was to obtain a more accurate diagnosis of the factors that incite terrorism through examining the extent to which independent variables (the Group Grievance Index (GGI), the Legitimate State Index (LSI), and the External Intervention Index (EII)) can predict the dependent variable (the level of global terrorism (GTI)) for the period between 2006-2017. The study included data from the 162 member states of the United Nations, covering 99.7% of the world's population. Game theory and the political process theory provided the theoretical frameworks for the study. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to assess the effect of the interaction on the relation between GGI, SLI, EII, and GTI. The results of the study showed that the relationship between the level of terrorism and the independent variables varies according to the level of terrorism. Interaction between GGI, SLI, and EII was negatively associated with GTI in countries with low GTI risk with an adjusted odds ratio 0.99, but in the countries with a medium and high level of GTI, the relationship was positive, and the adjusted odds ratio was respectively 1.01 and 1.02. The findings benefit international and national security decision-makers by identifying the nature of the relationship between terrorism and the factors affecting it. As well, the importance of considering the interaction between variables that affect terrorism. The results of the study may serve to bring social change within government cultures in the third world when dealing with minorities and grievance groups. Furthermore, it may motivate third world nations to achieve legitimate representation within all social strata and push the international community to reduce interference in the affairs of other sovereign nations.

No description available.

<p>The Syrian military intervention in Lebanon which began in 1976 has impacted the country in many ways. There are numerous reports about the negative impact of that intervention in addition to the ways in which Lebanon is currently being exploited by Syria in the global political arena so that Syria can achieve its goals. Manifestations of this exploitation are the many unfair, unbalanced and unjust bilateral treaties that Lebanon has signed with Syria in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war. </p><p>However, the circumstances under which those treaties were signed as well as their implications have led to numerous debates. The manner in which Syria gained control over the Lebanese political system at the legislative, executive and judicial levels, in addition to the exploitation of Lebanon’s economic resources by means of those treaties has aroused serious concern. Therefore, the central question posed in this study is: Did the post Lebanese civil war bilateral treaties that Lebanon signed with Syria pave the way for Syrian hegemony over Lebanon? By employing the historical research method, I study past events in relation to the circumstances that led Lebanon to signing those treaties and then evaluate their effect and consequences on the present situation in terms of the economic advantages that Syria enjoys as a signatory to those treaties. </p><p>I apply a theoretical model based on Robert O Keohane’s definition of the theory of hegemonic stability. The result is that Syria, even though it is considered to be an underdeveloped market economy country, fulfills most of Keohane’s characteristics of hegemonic powers seeking preponderance of material resources. The central finding in this thesis is that the shortcomings of hegemony do apply to the Syrain presence in Lebanon due to the economic exploitation of Lebanon’s resources. </p><p>In addition, I employ Keohane’s cooperation theory and examine the “joint committees”, that were formed to regulate the application of the signed treaties, and their modus operandi. I argue tha Syria and Lebanon need to cooperate and that this cooperation needs to be regulated so that the two countries can deal with each other as equals rather than as a hegemon and a hegemonized. I claim that those committees can be the regimes that can enhance cooperation between Lebanon and Syria by means of trading based on the comparative advantages of their economic resources.</p>

The Syrian military intervention in Lebanon which began in 1976 has impacted the country in many ways. There are numerous reports about the negative impact of that intervention in addition to the ways in which Lebanon is currently being exploited by Syria in the global political arena so that Syria can achieve its goals. Manifestations of this exploitation are the many unfair, unbalanced and unjust bilateral treaties that Lebanon has signed with Syria in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war. However, the circumstances under which those treaties were signed as well as their implications have led to numerous debates. The manner in which Syria gained control over the Lebanese political system at the legislative, executive and judicial levels, in addition to the exploitation of Lebanon’s economic resources by means of those treaties has aroused serious concern. Therefore, the central question posed in this study is: Did the post Lebanese civil war bilateral treaties that Lebanon signed with Syria pave the way for Syrian hegemony over Lebanon? By employing the historical research method, I study past events in relation to the circumstances that led Lebanon to signing those treaties and then evaluate their effect and consequences on the present situation in terms of the economic advantages that Syria enjoys as a signatory to those treaties. I apply a theoretical model based on Robert O Keohane’s definition of the theory of hegemonic stability. The result is that Syria, even though it is considered to be an underdeveloped market economy country, fulfills most of Keohane’s characteristics of hegemonic powers seeking preponderance of material resources. The central finding in this thesis is that the shortcomings of hegemony do apply to the Syrain presence in Lebanon due to the economic exploitation of Lebanon’s resources. In addition, I employ Keohane’s cooperation theory and examine the “joint committees”, that were formed to regulate the application of the signed treaties, and their modus operandi. I argue tha Syria and Lebanon need to cooperate and that this cooperation needs to be regulated so that the two countries can deal with each other as equals rather than as a hegemon and a hegemonized. I claim that those committees can be the regimes that can enhance cooperation between Lebanon and Syria by means of trading based on the comparative advantages of their economic resources.

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.