In this issue, we continue and complete the debate on the future of the transatlantic relationship and of world order after the Iraq war. The debate was initiated by an article by Thomas Risse (Freie Universität Berlin) in WeltTrends 39, which has provoked a remarkable reaction within the German academic community, as documented in WeltTrends 40. This issue features additional comments and the rebuttal by Thomas Risse. <br>Most authors believe that the transatlantic partnership is in a serious crisis, but claim that it remains without an alternative for both sides of the Atlantic.

In this issue, we continue and complete the debate on the future of the transatlantic relationship and of world order after the Iraq war. The debate was initiated by an article by Thomas Risse (Freie Universität Berlin) in WeltTrends 39, which has provoked a remarkable reaction within the German academic community, as documented in WeltTrends 40. This issue features additional comments and the rebuttal by Thomas Risse. <br>Most authors believe that the transatlantic partnership is in a serious crisis, but claim that it remains without an alternative for both sides of the Atlantic.

The use of unilateral force under George W. Bush is not a new phenomenon in US foreign policy. As the author argues, it is merely a continuation of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy and is deeply rooted in both the foreign policy traditions of Jacksonianism and Wilsonianism. The analysis concludes that Clinton used unilateralist foreign policy with a 'smile' whereas the Bush administration uses it with an attitude. / Die unilaterale Außenpolitik unter George W. Bush ist kein neues Phänomen der US-Diplomatie. Dem Autor zufolge ist sie vielmehr eine Fortführung der Politik der Clinton-Regierung und hat ihre Wurzeln in den Traditionen eines Andrew Jackson und Woodrow Wilson. Clinton vermochte jedoch seine unilaterale Politik mit einem "Lächeln" zu verkaufen, wohingegen die Art und Weise der Bush-Administration stets Irritationen hervorrief.

Despite the difficult situation in Iraq, US President Bush easily won a second term, but his room for manoeuvre is now significantly smaller than it was four years ago. He has at least three conflicts on his plate: the first and most critical one in Iraq, the second the continuing war on terror and the third the struggle to consolidate Afghanistan. Conscious of the growing risk of US overstretch, Bush is now reaching out to the European allies. However, most observers anticipate a change in style rather than any real change in substance.

This thesis analyzes the factors and conduct of the transformation of NATO and its likely effects on the globe. The implications of politics of the US, the EU on global security as well as enlarged threat perception will be investigated as the three main drivers of NATO transformation. The way transformation carried out will be synthesized into political and military areas. Political transformation here will be studied under three fold categorization of functional, geographical and institutional areas. The thesis will conclude with future tendencies of and within NATO.

The main objective of this dissertation is to analyze Turkish-American relationship from critical perspective. In this study critical geopolitics is used to examine the US policymakers&lsquo / discourses over representations of Turkey. Drawing on the theoretical literature, this dissertation took geopolitics as a deeply ideological concept and analyzed the ways in which US geopolitical discourse has shaped the Turkish-American relationship over time. The study outlined the historical evolution of the concept of the geopolitics since the end of the 19th century in order to reveal the limits of the classical geopolitical understanding, and to provide a theoretical framework against which the modern geopolitical imagination of the US has been formulated. Second, it revealed the ideological roots and the main characteristics of American geopolitical discourse. And third, the study applied critical geopolitics to the case of Turkish-American relations with respect to how the imagined geography of Turkey and the alliance have been shaped by the foreign and security policies of the US. Cold War, post-Cold War and post-September 11 periods are analyzed in separate chapters of this study. It is also argued in this dissertation that Turkey generally fits the geopolitical design of the United States and that these two countries have cooperated on numerous efforts in different parts of the world both during and after the Cold War. However, in this period the two allies also experienced several problems that display the limits of US geopolitical discourse.

Angola’s civil war in the mid-1970s has an important role to play in the ongoing debate within the diplomatic history community over how best to explain American foreign policy. As such, this dissertation uses the Angolan crisis as a case study to investigate and unravel the reasons for the American covert intervention on behalf of two pro-Western liberation movements: the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), led by Holden Roberto, and Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. That Angola is a late 20th century example of foreign intervention is not disputed. However, the more significant and difficult questions surrounding this Cold War episode, which are still debated and which directly relate to the purpose of this study, are first, “Why did the United States involve itself in Angola when it had previously ignored Portugal’s African colonies, preferring to side with its NATO partner and to maintain its distance from Angola’s national liberation movements?” Was it really, as the Ford Administration asserted, a case of the United States belatedly responding to Soviet expansionism and Kremlin-supported aggression by Agostinho Neto’s leftist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Secondly, “Exactly when did the United States intervene, and was this intervention largely responsible for the ensuing escalation of violence and external involvement in Angola affairs?” In other words, as suggested by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, was the Soviet Union’s intervention in response to the American decision to allocate $300,000 to Holden Roberto’s National Front in January 1975? If so, then contrary to the Ford Administration’s official account of the crisis, the United States - and not the Soviet Union - was the initial provocateur in the conflict that left the resource-rich West African nation in a ruinous, perpetual state of warfare into the early 21st century.

This thesis focuses on the use of the term &lsquo / failed state&rsquo / as a category in the US foreign policy discourse in the post Cold War era. The concept of &lsquo / failed state&rsquo / is critically examined in terms of its methodological and ontological flaws. It is suggested that the primary methodological flaw of the failed state discourse is its atomistic and essentialist approach which describes &lsquo / state failure&rsquo / as an internal problem which needs external solutions. By rejecting the internal/external dichotomy, the dialectical method is offered as an alternative to examine the use of the term in the US foreign policy discourse in the post Cold War era. It is argued here that failed state discourse is used as a means in the justification of an international order based on &lsquo / preemptive strikes&rsquo / and unilateral economic, political and military interventions. Building upon this ideological function of failed state discourse, the current discusssions on state failure is related to contemporary debates on imperialism.

This study seeks to analyze the change of US security policy in Southeast Asia from the Clinton to Bush administrations. The main aim of the study is to examine the position of Southeast Asia in US security policy and changes in US security policy toward Southeast Asia between the two administrations at both regional and bilateral levels. Besides examining the US security approach to regional institutions like ASEAN and ARF, the study especially concentrates on the US security approach to some ASEAN members - The Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia - as well as interactions between the United States and these countries in terms of security. The main argument of this study is that since the end of the Cold War, Southeast Asia has occupied an important position in US security strategy though it was far from being the highest priority in US foreign policy. During the Clinton administration and in the context of the post-Cold War environment which saw the decline of American economic power, the dynamic economic and political development of East Asia, and the existence of hot spots like North Korean and Taiwan, the United States supported the establishment of the ARF and strengthened its alliance with several ASEAN members, including the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia. With the goal to form a ???New Pacific Community???, the US had strategic interests in keeping Southeast Asia stable and preventing the emergence of a potential adversary in the future. To implement the security pillar in the Clinton Doctrine, the US provided military assistance to, and increased military exercises with the ASEAN states. During this period, the China factor was also a key element contributing to the change of the US relationship with the region. In the post-Cold War, the US has seen many challenges posed by China, especially from China???s military modernization program. Moreover, China???s activities in the South China Sea during the 1990s also contributed to the strengthening of bilateral relations between the US and ASEAN states. Under the Bush administration, Southeast Asia became more important to the US interests. Economically, Southeast Asia was the USA???s fifth-largest trading partner. At the same time, the US ranked as either the largest or second-largest trade partner of nine of the ten ASEAN states. Strategically, after September 11, 2001, Southeast Asia played a significant role in US security strategy since it served as the ???second front of terror???. Besides strengthening its relations with ASEAN and the ARF, the United States revitalized its bilateral relationships with ASEAN states, such as: The Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Through anti-terrorism initiatives, military assistance programs, intelligence sharing and joint military exercises, the US deepened and expanded its relations with ASEAN states. From this perspective, both the Philippines and Thailand were designated as ???major non-NATO allies??? of the US. In the long term, the USA???s objective in the region was to prevent the emergence of any potential adversary that would be capable of competing with the US in the future. Importantly, the US re-engagement in Southeast Asia under the Bush administration was not only to counter terrorism, but also to contain China. The rapid increase in China???s defense spending and the expansion of its influence in Southeast Asia concerned the United States. During the Bush era, China also played a key role in the US relationships with ASEAN states.

This submission for PhD by Publication includes two studies I conducted during 8 years of dedicated field research examining the US role in mediating the Arab-Israeli conflict. These studies developed from my collection of in-depth oral testimonies and were buttressed by my recovery and examination of troves of original documents that had been previously denied any public, much less academic, scrutiny. The scope of this qualitative research and my political and historical analysis of it resulted in two published books that chronicle the unsuccessful American efforts to negotiate Arab-Israeli peace agreements during the presidencies of William Clinton, George W. Bush, and the first term of Barack Obama. In order of publication, they are The Truth About Camp David (New York: Nation Books, 2004) and The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road? (London: Hesperus Press, 2011). The original academic contribution of both works was the presentation of new empirical evidence to advance understanding of how heavily biased American mediation severely damaged this diplomatic undertaking. Despite being a solidly pro-Israel country, the United States had previously been able to achieve some notable mediation successes when it made efforts to adopt an “even-handed” approach. Yet in the period covered by both my books, I demonstrated how top American mediators—comprised of mostly pro-Israel partisans—dismissed any pretext of impartiality, and in most instances even escalated their mediation bias. This behavior has exacerbated the Arab-Israeli conflict and made the stated aim of a comprehensive peace a very distant prospect. The Truth About Camp David was intended as a first rough draft of history. The title references the famous summit convened by President Clinton in July 2000 that failed to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the overarching US-led “peace process” around it which contributed to the outbreak of the Second Intifada. The book also details the effort to conclude an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement at Geneva just months before, which also failed. My research advanced the thesis that both the Geneva and Camp David summits were historic miscarriages of diplomacy by my presentation of granular insider accounts revealing the intensity of American mediation bias. I also exposed the general disorganization of its negotiating team, a dysfunction that was largely unknown to the public prior to my book’s release. My primary purpose in writing The Truth About Camp David was thus to enable its reinterpretation by making public new evidence about this watershed moment and the period surrounding it. Relying primarily on oral history, I interviewed US, Arab, Israeli and European officials who were first-hand participants to collect their personal narratives. I sought to identify discrepancies in their accounts, and attempted to reconcile them through further interviews, document interrogation, and my own analysis. A key challenge of The Truth About Camp David was thus to weave a thread through the various testimonies and present, as best as I could, a coherent historical narrative. Following that, my aim was to have it reviewed and discussed among credible scholars and the foreign policy community. The testimonies within The Truth About Camp David directly challenged the official narrative and prevailing media orthodoxy at the time of Palestinian blame and Syrian intransigence. As a result, it helped reframe both political debate and academic scholarship concerning this crucial period of American diplomatic intervention. In 2006, The Truth About Camp David was translated into Arabic, giving its contents even greater reach. My 2011 book “The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road?” continued my earlier line of inquiry and was largely based on documents given to me the year prior, referred to as “The Palestine Papers,” the largest leak of confidential negotiating records in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Published in full by Al Jazeera Media Network, and in limited partnership with the UK’s Guardian newspaper, the content of the files generated headlines around the world from January 24-27, 2011. My additional research for The Palestine Papers was released in May 2011 as an anthology of select papers with my accompanying qualitative analysis and interpretation rather than a stylistic mediation critique. My aim in writing “The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road?” publication was to reach beyond Al Jazeera and Guardian audiences and equip interested scholars, practitioners, and skeptics with essential highlights from the papers as well as an analytical framework to put them into context. My research for The Palestine Papers sought to help reconcile the intervening gap of negotiating history from Truth About Camp David, following the trajectory of how Israelis and Palestinians alike had grown even more conditioned to expect if not rely upon biased American mediation that excessively tilts toward Israel. The Palestine Papers also catalogues for the first time the dynamics that enabled US negotiators to escalate its role from being the self-appointed judge of Palestinian negotiating behavior during the talks (in the Camp David 2000 era) to the unilateral “juror” of its final-status positions (evidenced by the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama). A supplemental essay included in this submission analyzes an earlier diplomatic era to advance my thesis of how far US mediation bias has traveled since America assumed the principal negotiator role of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the early 1970’s. Indeed, based on the overarching narrative that evolve from both those publications and this essay, it is entirely predictable to see how America’s mediation posture has matured into the era of extreme pro-Israel bias that now characterizes the approach of the Trump Administration. I will interpret this collective diplomatic history using a range of multidisciplinary academic theories addressing biased mediation in international conflict resolution. Then, by drawing on the scholarship from my previous books, I will assess and critique the theoretical benefits of employing biased mediators in conflict resolution—as some prominent scholars have advocated for. By taking a fresh look at earlier Arab-Israeli negotiations led by Henry Kissinger under President’s Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, I am able to make even greater contrast to that very limited era when biased American mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict appeared to yield limited success. The process of applying the scholarship of others against the knowledge created from my own published works enable me to demonstrate in this essay that the present day American negotiating bias toward Israel largely exceeds what the normative scholarship on mediation bias envisaged.