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This study examines the contours of Turkish-American foreign relations in the post-Cold War era from 1990 to 2005. While providing an interpretive analysis, the study highlights elements of continuity and change and of convergence and divergence in the relationship between Ankara and Washington. Turkey’s encounter with its Kurdish problem at home intertwined with the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish authority in northern Iraq after the Gulf War that left a political vacuum in the region. The main argument of this dissertation is that the Kurdish question has been the central element in shaping and redefining the nature and scope of Turkish-American relations since 1991. This study finds that systemic factors primarily prevail in the early years of the post-Cold War Turkish-American relations, as had been the case during the Cold War era. However, the Turkish parliament’s rejection of the deployment of the U.S. troops in Turkey for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 could not be explained by the primacy of distribution of capabilities in the system. Instead, the role of identity, ideology, norms, and the socialization of agency through interaction and language must be considered. The Justice and Development Party’s ascension to power in 2002 magnified a wider transformation in domestic and foreign politics and reflected changes in Turkey’s own self-perception and the definition of its core interests towards the United States.

After the weakening of Turkish-Armenian relations and intensive American missionary activities, Armenians began to leave their homelands for educational, economic and political reasons. Emigration to the United States intensified in particular in response to the 1915 Techir (Relocation and Resettlement) Law. After achieving political rights in the United States, Armenian immigrants formed groups that began trying to influence U.S. government policy, working to win recognition of the alleged Armenian Genocide, financial assistance for Armenia, and other policies favorable to Armenia. The process that began resolution the alleged Armenia Genocide was removed from the historical dimension and moved to the political dimension and an international policy instrument was created. In the United States, the Armenian Diaspora strives to influence government policy systematically through diaspora organizations that carefully follow the international scene and advocate for United States foreign policies in favor of Armenia. In this study, the ultimate aims of the Armenia Diaspora over American politics and policy-making, and the activities of the Armenian Lobby will be examined.

In recent decades international economic disputes have become ever more legalized, which in principle allows states to compartmentalize individual disputes from broader diplomatic relations. Nowhere is this more true than in the international investment regime, where private investors have been empowered to directly sue host states in international arbitration, rather than relying on their home states for diplomatic support. I challenge the standard narrative that investment protection has become "depoliticized", and reveal the persistent importance of informal commercial diplomacy in the settlement of investment disputes. I show that the US government continues to intervene diplomatically in disputes between American investors and developing country governments, despite the availability of institutional alternatives. Moreover, I argue such interventions are not primarily driven by pressure from private companies, but by government bureaucracies strategically pursuing their own interests, including advocating for investment climate reforms and demonstrating the value of commercial diplomacy to domestic constituencies. The empirical support for these claims proceeds in three stages. First, I use zero-inflated negative binomial regressions to demonstrate that American investors are more likely to file formal arbitration claims when they are less able to rely on diplomatic support, namely when the position of ambassador to the host state is temporarily vacant. Second, I provide a behind-the-scenes look at American investment protection policy using an original dataset of US diplomatic interventions in 256 investment disputes discussed in internal State Department cables released via WikiLeaks. Third, I use structured, focused comparisons in seven case studies of investment disputes to probe the particular drivers of US intervention, and show that diplomatic engagement is most likely in cases where the state itself has strong interests in intervening, rather than when private pressure compels it to do so. This thesis makes important and original contributions both to the literature on the international investment regime - which to date has broadly ignored the role of commercial diplomacy in contemporary dispute settlement - and to broader debates on the legalization of international economic disputes and the strategies firms use to shield themselves from political risks.

This study argues that the American Relief Administration (ARA) operationally and culturally was defined by the character and experiences of First World War American military veterans. The historiography of the American Relief Administration in the last half-century has painted the ARA as a purely civilian organization greatly detached from the military sphere. By examining the military veterans of the ARA scholars can more accurately assess the image of the ARA, including what motivated their personnel and determined their relief mission conduct. Additionally, this study will properly explain how the ARA as an organization mutually benefited and suffered from its connection to the U.S. military throughout its European missions, in particular, the 1921 Russian famine relief expedition.

Reinhold Niebuhr remains at the center of a national conversation about America's role in the world, and commentators with divergent political and religious positions look to his 1952 work, The Irony of American History, in support of their views. In this study, Scott R. Erwin argues that an appreciation of Niebuhr's theological vision is necessary for understanding the full measure of Irony and his perspective on life more broadly. Such a study is important because many individuals reading Irony today fail to acknowledge the central role that his Christian beliefs played in his writings. Niebuhr described his theological vision as being 'in the battle and above it,' and, it was this perspective that led Niebuhr, in Irony, to assert that America must both take 'morally hazardous action' in combating the aggression of the Soviet Union and engage in critical self-evaluation to prevent the country from assuming the most odious traits of its Cold War foe. Niebuhr developed his theological vision over the course of the 1930s and 1940s through engagement with Christian doctrine, as most readily seen in his academic works such as The Nature and Destiny of Man, and engagement with current events, as seen in his many journalistic writings during this period. By focusing primarily on Niebuhr's writings between 1931 and 1951, Erwin traces the development of his Christian interpretation of human nature and history, establishes how it informed his theological vision, and reveals how that theological vision underlay his writings on current affairs.

Quelle est l’influence du protestantisme évangélique américain, acteur non étatique -Et transnational en pleine expansion- sur la politique étrangère américaine? La constitution des protestants évangéliques en force de pression politique, à l’initiative de certains pasteurs évangéliques, remonte au début des années 70, peu après le passage du Civil Rights Act. Les protestants évangéliques traditionnellement acquis à la cause démocrate, ont alors choisi d’accorder leurs voix au camp républicain. Si R Reagan, proche des néo-Conservateurs, leur a entre-Ouvert les portes de la Maison Blanche, George W. Bush sera le président qui gouvernera en tenant compte de considérations morales et religieuses chères aux protestants évangéliques. Le vote évangélique est ainsi très disputé lors des échéances électorales. En quelques décennies, les protestants évangéliques ont acquis une place de choix dans la politique américaine nouant des alliances fructueuses avec les néo- conservateurs ainsi qu’avec le lobby pro-Israélien, tous les deux à la manœuvre en ce qui concerne la définition des politiques. Au niveau international, les protestants évangéliques ainsi que leurs alliés néo-Conservateurs défendent d’une même voix Israël. Si les néo-Conservateurs et le lobby pro-Israélien définissent une politique commune, les protestants évangéliques mobilisent leur électorat. L’alliance est ainsi très efficace ce dont atteste entre autres l’adoption de la loi International Religious Freedom Act ( Irfa). / How influent is the evangelical protestantism over american foreign policy? Evangelicals have established a lobby, in behalf of some well known evangelical pastors, not long after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act at the beginning of the seventies. Evangelicals traditionally more supportive of the democrats, chose therefore to give their votes to the republican party. Ronald Reagan, in close partnership with the neoconservatives, opened a space to the evangelicals while G.W. Bush while ruling the country, took into account their moral and religious considerations. Evangelical vote is a real issue for both parties in an election time. In the last decades, evangelicals have acquired an influent position in American politics along with their close allies, the neo-Conservatives and the Israël lobby, both of them defining a shared policy. On an international level, evangelicals along with neo-Conservatives are harsh defenders of Israel. Their partnership proved to be efficient, particularly concerning the enactment of the law International Religious Freedom Act ( Irfa) concerning religious freedom worldwide.

The post-Cold War era saw the extraordinary expansion of UN activity in the maintenance of global peace and security. Such a rapid expansion led to organizational over-stretch and failure and many in the international community began searching for ways to improve UN peacekeeping by reducing deployment time. In the mid-1990s, the Dutch, Canadian and Danish governments released proposals for a UN rapid reaction capability. Unfortunately, of the three proposals only the Danish proposed Stand-by High Readiness Brigade (SHIRBRIG) was implemented. The lack of movement toward UN rapid reaction is due to a number of factors, namely the loss of post-Cold War idealism, a disconnection with the political reality of the time and cost concerns. More fundamentally, rapid reaction posed a threat to state primacy. / October 2006