Thesis (Master of Research and Development Management)-Air Force Institute of Technology, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Dec 28, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Master of Military Studies)-Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Jan 12, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

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This dissertation is a case study of a public policy decision, the decision to shift the military manpower policy of the United States from conscription to a policy of complete volunteerism--the all-volunteer force. The case study approach is largely historical and is concentrated on the turbulent period between 1965, when the United States' combat role in South Vietnam escalated sharply, and 1973, the year of American withdrawal from the war and the last Selective Service System draft call. A brief history of the military manpower policy of the United States is outlined in order to set the case study period within the proper context and to permit a fuller understanding and appreciation of the policy decision. In order that the case study may have potential application to the study of other public policy decisions, a theoretical model for changes in public policy-making is developed based on the research of public policy-making theorists. This model, which is largely adapted from the theoretical work of ~he Agenda-Building Theorists, is compared to the events and inter-actions of key players in the case study. Although conclusions about a wider applicability of the model is not possible, it can be concluded that the theoretical model does fit the events and circumstances contained in the case study. In addition to attempting to derive a working theoretical model of change in public policy-making, a secondary purpose of the research is to address the nonnative aspects of the shift in policy from conscription to volunteerism. Based on the pattern of American military manpower policy, it appears that Anglo-Saxon liberalism, rooted in the freedom of the individual, is an extremely strong strain in American thinking, and that the relatively long period of conscription in the United States after World War II was an anomaly in the history of American military manpower policies. / Ph. D.

The myth of the citizen-soldier resonates strongly in the American imagination and helps (re)construct America the nation. The construction of this myth in the historical context of World War II is especially prominent in contemporary American culture. The myth of the World War II citizen-soldier functions as an individualized discursive formation with specific rules of formation. I contextualize the construction of this individualized discursive formation within the historical era of World War II, and show how it excludes in direct contradiction to the ideals of civic nationalism that shaped the concept of national citizenship of that era. The United States military, which changed to an All Volunteer Force in 1973, functions as a neoliberal state apparatus in modern America. However, the United States Military still largely relies on the rules of formation and the ideals of civic nationalism in order to recruit volunteers for its forces. Traces of the myths of World War II, particularly the myth of the citizen-soldier, can still be found in the United States Army's recruitment material in its current "Army Strong" campaign despite the contradictory ideals of civic nationalism and neoliberalism. I conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of three recruitment television commercials from the "Army Strong" campaign aired in 2009. I explain how the United States Army uses both the ideals of civic nationalism and the characteristics of neoliberalism in order to encourage potential recruits to join its ranks. / Master of Arts

Most studies of the use of conventional military force by the United States in the twentieth century tend to characterize the decision making process in terms of a unitary state and a unitary presidential decision maker. One alternative to this approach is the Bureaucratic Politics paradigm proposed by Graham Allison. To test the explanatory power of this decision making model in the post-Vietnam era, this thesis applies the specific propositions of Graham Allison's "Governmental Politics Model" concerning the use of military force, to selected case studies. In an attempt to determine the explanatory power of Allison's Governmental Politics model in the wake of Vietnam, this thesis draws on case studies ranging from the Dominican Republic intervention to the recent invasion of Panama. This thesis seeks to measure the theory to present reality. / Master of Arts

One of the key features of the 2002 United States National Security Strategy was an abrupt shift from the traditional U.S. approach to proliferation threats that prioritized deterrence and promotion of nondiscriminatory nonproliferation norms, to an approach called counterproliferation that emphasized military preemption and direct challenges to adversarial state identity. This thesis asks the question, what caused counterproliferation to largely replace deterrence and nonproliferation as the central national security policies of the U.S. concerning unconventional weapons? The thesis argues that to understand this policy change requires not merely an appreciation of changes in the post-Cold War international security environment, but also an examination of how culturally shaped threat conceptions among American policymakers interacted with capabilities development and policy institutionalization within the U.S. military. As no current theory adequately addresses those dynamics, complimentary strategic culture and organizational theory models are presented as the framework for analysis. This thesis will contend that policy shift from NP to CP resulted from the merging of strategic cultural efforts aimed at legitimizing conceptions of proliferation threats as originating from state identity, with a military organizational drive to avoid uncertainty through the development of counterproliferation capabilities. Together these strategic cultural and organizational responses to shifting proliferation threats altered the menu of choice for policymakers by institutionalizing and legitimizing a policy response that directly challenged existing nonproliferation norms and practices. This thesis relies on a detailed case study of the evolution of counterproliferation policy from 1993 to 2002, with particular focus on the analysis of public discourse, declassified policy planning and Department of Defense documents, and participant interviews.

This paper examines United States arms transfer policies as they have been applied to Peru since the end of World War II and analyzes the role of these policies in achieving the goals of the United States as delineated by Luigi Einaudi et al. in their Arms Transfers to Latin America: Toward a Policy of Mutual Respect. The paper traces the course of recent U.S.-Peruvian relations, with special emphasis on Peru's arms acquisitions since 1968. The author concludes that, while U.S. arms transfer policies have undoubtedly strained U.S.-Peruvian relations over the past decade, the refusal of the U.S. to provide advanced weapons to Peru will prove to be in the best interests of the United States in the long run.

After much debate during the war years over how best to respond to Nazi criminality, the United States embarked on an ambitious postwar trial program in occupied Germany, which consisted of three distinct trial sets: the International Military Trial at Nuremburg, the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, and military trials held at the former concentration camp at Dachau. Within the Dachau military tribunal programme, were the concentration camp trials in which personnel from the Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, and Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps were arraigned. These concentration camp trials at Dachau represented the principal attempt by the United States to punish Nazi crimes committed at the concentration camps liberated by the Americans. The prosecutors at Dachau tried 1,045 defendants accused of committing violations of the 'laws of war' as understood through 'customary' international and American military practice. The strain of using traditional military law to prosecute the unprecedented crimes in the Nazi concentration camps was exposed throughout the trials. To meet this challenge, the Dachau concentration camp courts included an inventive legal concept: the use of a 'criminal-conspiracy' charge-in effect arraigning defendants for participating the 'common design' of the concentration camp, 'a criminal organization'. American lawmakers had spent a good deal of time focused on the problem of how to begin the trials (What charges? What courts? Which defendants?) and very little time planning for the aftermath of the trials. Thus, by 1947 and 1948, in the face of growing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, the major problem with the Dachau trials was revealed -the lack of long term plans for the appellate process for those convicted. After two scandals that captured the press and the public's attention, the United States Congress held two official investigations of the entire Dachau tribunal programme. Although the resulting reviews, while critical of the Army's clemency process, were largely positive about the trials themselves, the Dachau trials faded from public memory.

Also issued in paper format. / Title from title screen (viewed Nov. 28, 2003). "07 April 2003"--P. iii. Includes bibliographical references (p. 23-26).