While serving as the Presidential Envoy to Iraq, historians, journalists, and students alike became acquainted with Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III for the first time. Those same observers judged Ambassador Bremer’s work and effectiveness, without knowing anything about his previous career and how his prior experiences shaped his intellectual growth as a Foreign Service Officer. Therefore, this thesis effectively serves as an opportunity for observers of the Iraq War and historians to put the fourteen months Ambassador Bremer served in Iraq into a greater context. The Thesis tracks his early Foreign Service postings, through his enormous impact on the Cold War as Ambassador to the Netherlands, up through the bi-partisan report that he chaired, which is sometimes referred to as the “Bremer Report.” His career before Iraq allowed him to gain experience in diplomacy, studying terrorism, and preparing himself intellectually to understand and attempt to solve problems in different areas of the world and different sectors within government and out. Additionally, the Thesis discusses two issues during Ambassador Bremer’s time in Iraq. One of the issues, based on interviews with each party, re-explains the nature of the relationship between Ambassador Bremer and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. This discussion also presents evidence as to why difficulties at the time did exist, although the overall nature of them have been greatly exaggerated. Lastly, the Thesis discusses the decision to disband the Iraqi Army, and attempts to place that decision in the context of Ambassador Bremer’s prior career and decision making. / text

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With a deep conviction that this study will be useful to those who would better understand contemporary foreign policy, "The Legislative Origins of the Marshall Plan" is written with the following purposes: (1) to discover the origin and motives of the Marshall plan, (2) to discover the effect of the world-wide tours made by Congressmen in 1947 upon the legislative processes in the Marshall plan, (3) to compare and evaluate the respective contributions of the two houses of Congress to the Marshall plan, (4) to ascertain whether the Marshall plan is an economic, political, or humanitarian instrument, and (5) to evaluate the domestic effects, both governmental and economic, and to project them into the future.

Faculty of Humanities School of Social Sciences 0413346n Wanguimaina@hotmail.com / This research report is a study of US foreign policy towards Kenya. The context of the study is informed by the role that the US played in Kenya’s democratisation process in the post-Cold War era, the 1998 US embassy attacks in Kenya, and US policy following the events of 11 September 2001. The study sets out to examine how these events subsequently affected the domestic policies of Kenya. It identifies the continuities and new avenues of the bilateral relations between Kenya and the US. Democracy, terrorism and US foreign policy are the underlying factors of the study.

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This study focuses on how perceived security environment affect U.S. unilateral, military intervention in civil conflicts, using the concept of Bayesian learning to illustrate how threat perceptions are formed, how they change, and how they affect the U.S. decision to intervene militarily in civil conflicts. I assess the validity of two primary hypotheses: (1) the U.S. is more likely to intervene in civil conflicts with connections to a threatening actor or ideology; and (2) the U.S. is more likely to intervene in civil conflicts for humanitarian motives in a less threatening security context. To test these hypotheses, I compare U.S. military intervention in three temporal contexts reflecting more threatening security contexts (Cold War and post-9/11) and less threatening security contexts (1992-2001). Results of logit regression analysis reveal that a conflict’s connection to a threatening actor or ideology is the most statistically and substantively significant determinant of U.S. military intervention in civil conflicts, both in more and less threatening security contexts. They also indicate that humanitarian motives are not a statistically significant determinant of U.S. military intervention in civil conflicts, even in a more benign security environment. These findings imply that U.S. unilateral military intervention is reserved for more direct national security threats, even those that are less grave, and that the perception of the U.S. as “global cop” may be misleading, at least in terms of unilateral military intervention.

Using a comparative trend analysis for fifteen states in the Middle East during President George W. Bush's eight year administration, this paper provides one method for answering the research question, "What was the priority/focus of U.S. Middle East policy during the W. Bush Administration?" Within the context of international relations theories neorealism, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism, U.S. policy is broken down into three policy priorities: stability, security, and democracy promotion and measured for each state for each year of the administration. Line graphs illustrate the changes from year to year and linear trend lines indicate the direction of change as positive, negative, or neutral. The results are used to validate the three working hypotheses: 1) if the U.S. views stability as paramount, then its foreign policy will be to support the status quo regimes, 2) if the U.S. wants to maintain security, then its foreign policy will be to demonstrate power projection via its military, and 3) if the U.S. aims at democracy promotion, the its foreign policy will be to implement economic aid and assistance programs to reform non-democratic governments and strengthen existing democratic institutions. Eleven states confirmed the stability hypothesis, nine states confirmed the security hypothesis, and twelve states confirmed the democracy promotion hypothesis. There was no discernable pattern between the trends across states indicating that the U.S. consistently pursued one policy priority over the others. There were only two complete cases in which a state had only one positive trending policy priority. / Master of Arts

本論文探討智庫的定義及起源，並依其性質與功能將美國的智庫做分類，另介紹著名的美國外交智庫。本論文亦說明美國外交政策的決策環境，探討為何智庫得以參與美國外交政策，以及參與決策過程的方式，並討論智庫在決策過程中所扮演的角色以及智庫在美國興盛的原因。最後分析智庫在發展上可能受到的限制，及探討智庫如何因應未來的挑戰。 / This paper explores the definition and origin of think tanks, classifies American think tanks according to their nature and functions, and introduces some famous think tanks on US foreign policy. This paper also explains the decision-making environment of US foreign policy, discusses why think tanks can participate in the making of US foreign policy, and examines the roles of think tanks in the decision-making process and the reasons why think tanks flourish in the United States. This paper also tries to find out the development restrictions of American think tanks and explores how they meet future challenges.

Thesis advisor: Paul T. Christensen / The terms “jihad” and “Islamic fundamentalism” appear to dominate world news today. After the September 11th terrorist attacks, people began to wonder if the world of Islam and the world of the West were diametrically opposed and thus doomed to collide. In this thesis I study the work of Samuel Huntington, the leading theorist on the clash between Islam and the West, and his critics. Through case studies of Algeria, Indonesia and Lebanon, all predominantly Muslim countries, I argue that there is not a fundamental clash between these cultures. The conflict that is occurring today is a result of factors such as US foreign policy decisions, and not an existential culture clash. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This research project is designed to understand the relationship between states and Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), especially how they influence one another. In this study, I argue that the theoretical relationship between states' foreign policy behaviors and the behavior of NGO is dynamic and conditional, with the influence of NGOs on states' behaviors depending on the host states' regime type and the age of the influencing NGOs. I also argue that NGOs influence states' foreign policy behaviors toward other states both directly and indirectly, functioning as information providers, lobbying groups, agenda setters, and norm generators. By applying these theoretical arguments to the field of international development, the influence of NGOs on states' decisions about foreign aid is analyzed with the case of the United States. A new time-series cross-sectional dataset of the activities of US-based NGOs in developing countries is constructed by utilizing annual reports of NGOs, websites, and through personal communication with NGO officers. In addition, another new dataset is constructed about the number of New York Time articles. With constructed datasets, the quantitative studies are conducted. The quantitative studies show that as number of US-based NGO field operations in developing countries increase, that country is significantly more likely to receive higher amounts of aid from the United States. NGOs that have longer operations in developing countries are also more effective at lobbying the United States to provide more foreign aid. Furthermore, empirical analyses show that as number of US-based NGO activities increase in a country, the media coverage of that country increases. The qualitative analyses of NGOs' influence on states' foreign policy behaviors are also conducted. Interviews with NGO workers, governmental officials, and a reporter from the New York Times provide insight about how NGOs interact with the US government. In addition, these interviews show that NGOs function as information providers, lobbying groups, agenda setters, and norm generators. The theoretical understand of NGO-state relationships will contribute to the study of NGOs and NGOs' interaction with states. In addition, empirical analyses with newly constructed dataset and interviews with people in the field will become an important asset to social scientists in this field. The study also has a great potential to be expanded by including more NGO data, issue areas, and other countries' NGOs.