Since World War II, the executive branch has dominated foreign policy and national security decisions, expanding war powers well beyond the president’s constitutional purview. Aided by a complicit Congress, the president has bypassed the legislator and unilaterally prosecuted some of the United States’ bloodiest conflicts. Continuing this tradition of executive overreach, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) on September 14, 2001, which ostensibly empowered the president to pursue those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, namely al Qaeda and the nations supporting them. However, the broadly-worded force authorization and equally far-reaching legal interpretations by the executive branch turned the AUMF into a nearly limitless authorization. Since its passage, the AUMF has provided the legal backstop for the war in Afghanistan, drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and elsewhere, National Security Agency surveillance, and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Enabled by the AUMF, the “war on terror” has eroded civil liberties, allowed extrajudicial killings, and transformed the conflict with al Qaeda into a war without end. In order to end the destructive legacies of the war on terror and begin to reverse the trend of executive overreach, Congress and the president should repeal the AUMF and update the force authorization regime.

This Master's thesis will focus on the newest trends in the field of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations that are moving the organization to unknown territory by deploying in theatres where missions are faced with asymmetric threats. In this regard, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), constituted as a groundbreaking and innovative peacekeeping operation, is spearheading a realignment in peacekeeping that can potentially shape future operations to come, as mandates increasingly reflect roles in areas such as counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism. The core objective of this study will be to analyze why MINUSMA is being forced to go green while studying how it is doing so, reflecting on past experiences from other operations such as the International Stabilization Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and the Multi-National Force in Iraq (MNF-I), that have guided changes in MINUSMA's doctrines and capabilities. Gabriel van Oppen Ardanaz

Pakistan is a poor and aid-dependent state but it is also the only Muslim state armed with nuclear weapons. In the late 1990s, Pakistan had to deal with economic and technological sanctions from the U.S., which punished Islamabad for its nuclear aspirations and military coup d'état in fall of 1999. The India-Pakistan rivalry is crucial aspect that impacts the U.S.-Pakistan cooperation. After 9/11, Pakistani president Musharraf was concerned that the U.S. could turn their attention to India, thus strengthening the cooperation with Pakistan's rival. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed the national security environment and Washington had to adapt, so it could more effectively respond to newly emerging threats. Rise of strategic importance of Pakistan was a result of the U.S. hunt for Al-Qaeda and subsequent war in Afghanistan, as Americans needed to assure access to Afghanistan, logistical support for American forces, intelligence information about situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan's border regions. However, U.S.-Pakistan cooperation was influenced by divergent national security priorities. Keywords Pakistan, USA, Musharraf, Bush, U.S. support, strategy, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, assistance, 9/11 Rozsah práce: 122 928 znaků

As democracy globally declines according to the indices that measure the level of democracy around the world, existing literature lines up a wide spectrum of explanations for this decline. However, the impact of foreign policy on the domestic democratic system is widely overlooked. In this research project I have investigated the possible contribution of human rights infringing elements in foreign policy to the decline of democracy in the US.  I have done a single case study with a constructivist approach, US foreign policy in the post Cold War era being the case, focussing on the War on Terror. This is done with Historical Institutionalism as the theoretical framework. The results of this study show that practices of detention without legal charges and torture strain the rule of law and the accountability of officials and violates the value of equality, a core value of democracy. I come to the conclusion that foreign policy does have impact on the quality of the domestic democracy.

Prior research demonstrates that multiple dimensions of religiosity significantly predict punitive attitudes and militarism. This study highlights the importance of believing in a masculine God, an aspect of religiosity with a robust and consistent relationship to punitiveness and militarism, but which has previously been unexamined. After accounting for multiple aspects of religiosity highlighted by previous research—such as frequency of religious practice, religious tradition, fundamentalist identity and beliefs, and other dimensions of God image including love, anger, judgment, and engagement—believing that God is a “He” consistently and strongly increases support for harsh social policies targeting intra-societal enemies (criminals), as well as general militarism and campaigns targeting extra-societal enemies (e.g. “terrorists”). These results highlight the importance of theorizing and measuring gendered dimensions of belief in God, as well as the importance of fine-grained considerations of religion in studies of penal populism and militarism.

Over fifteen years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States is still fighting the nebulous “War on Terror” – a conflict that includes ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as covert operations around the world (including the homeland). American cinema responded to the War on Terror in fits and starts, with many filmmakers wary of tackling such a controversial topic. For a War on Terror film to be financially successful, it would need to appeal to both supporters and detractors of the war effort. To do so, the War on Terror film genre builds on the narrative, characterization, and aesthetic frameworks of the war films of World War II and the Vietnam War to develop a set of conventions that recall the ideological projects of the films of those previous wars. By examining the combat film, espionage film, and returning soldier film subgenres, this thesis will demonstrate how the War on Terror film genre formally and ideologically represents the divisive ongoing war to appeal to both pro-war and anti-war viewers.

As the ¿War on Terror¿ evolves into the ¿Long War¿ against Islamo-fascism, it demands an enduring commitment to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies. This policy is based on the requirement to maintain control in a fractured and unpredictable global environment, while paying little attention to the underlying issues that lead to insecurity. It is an approach that is manifestly failing, as the continuing problems in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate. Moreover, ¿control¿ implies the maintenance of a global order that focuses on power remaining in the hands of a transnational elite community, principally focused on North America and Western Europe, but extending worldwide. This elite largely ignores socio-economic divisions and environmental constraints, and sees continuing stability as being best achieved by the maintenance of the status quo, using force when necessary. This collection of essays by Professor Paul Rogers argues that this post-Cold War security paradigm is fundamentally misguided and unsustainable. It concludes with two new essays on the need for a new conception of global security rooted in justice and emancipation.

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