The 'special relationship' between the United States and the United Kingdom has existed since the beginning of the 1940s. During the Second World War, a strong alliance emerged that was based on a defense policy against a common enemy and a shared value principle. Throughout the Cold War, the special relationship evolved from a weakening of mutual relations in 1960s and 1970s to a renewed rapprochement in 1980s, mainly because of the shared opinions of the U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. After the geopolitical changes in 1989 a debate developed over the future of their special relationship. The question was whether (or in what form) the transatlantic alliance will continue to remain. The 9/11 terrorist attacks upon the United States gave the answer to this question and provided the impetus for renewed mutual British-American relations. Immediately after the attacks, the United Kingdom expressed its full support for the US-led fight against terrorism and followed the United States first into Afghanistan and later into Iraq. However, both President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were strongly criticized that their war engagement, particularly in relation to the war in Iraq, had been unlawful and was based on false evidence supporting the...

V Praze, dne 25. července 2013 ………………………………… Abstract The main focus of this thesis is the phenomenon of private military companies and their deployment in situations of armed conflict conducted under the auspices of the so-called "War on Terrorism". The aim is to provide the reader with an introductory insight into this issue, describe specific activities of private military companies during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to answer research questions about their positive or negative contribution to the overall results of these conflicts and the possible impact on civil-military relations. The main thesis of this work is that the performance of these companies can not be categorically evaluated because it is different from case to case. There are, however, some general trends which can be traced in regard to "War on Terrorism". They mainly relate to the lack of efficient state control of private military companies and their conduct. The work is divided into several parts. The first deals with the historical development of conducting military operations with the help of non-state financially motivated actors. This section is intended to create a framework for a better understanding of the issues examined. The second part is devoted to theoretical classification of private military companies and...

The continued use of weaponized drones in the War on Terror has stirred up a heated debate, both in the scholarly and academic world, and there is still no conclusive empirical evidence to suggest that they are effective. As such, there ought to be factors other than efficacy that impact the decision-making process. One factor that may play a significant part in how policy makers deliberate over high stakes decisions is what cognitive theorists refer to as analogical reasoning - relating the present to the past and using this comparison as a guideline in the decision-making process. This study analyzes historical analogies used in public speeches and remarks by U.S. President Barack Obama to ascertain if there is evidence to suggest that analogical reasoning has been part of the decision-making progress when it comes to drones, or if analogies mostly serve as a strategic tool to convey messages to the intended recipients. The findings suggest that in this instance, the analogies in relation to drones were used primarily in a strategic manner, but that cognitive analogical reasoning likely has been part of previous decisions in the War on Terror.

This research is concerned with Pakistan¿s participation in the US-led `war on terror¿ in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The study seeks to explain how Pakistan¿s state practice in the aftermath of 9/11 was normalised and made possible. In explaining the state practice, the study draws on a constructivist conceptual framework; which is further enhanced by incorporating key theoretical insights from critical realism. In the first instance, the study proposes that Pakistan¿s participation in the `war on terror¿, seen as a set of actions and practices, was an outcome of a specific domestic political discourse. This discourse enabled and legitimised the state¿s alliance with the US and its abandonment of the Taliban regime. Secondly, the study is concerned with explaining why the particular discourse emerged in the shape and form that it did. In this context, the argument is that a depth `critical realist¿ ontological inquiry can reveal underlying and enduring global and domestic social structural contexts, and traces of agential influence as connected to the discourse. Consequently, this study conceptualises Pakistan¿s actions in the context of the `war on terror¿ as emerging from a multi-causal complex in which discourse, structure and agency are complicit. The study represents a departure from realist readings that emphasise a mono-causal relationship between the US and Pakistan. Instead, this research uses a synthesis of critical realism and constructivism to add a fresh perspective in terms of how we may conceptualise Pakistan¿s political practice in this instance.

This research paper investigates the current turmoil in Pakistan and how much of it has been caused by the joint American-Pakistani War on Terror. The United States' portion of the War on Terror is in Afghanistan against the Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces that began after the September 11th attacks in 2001, as well as in Pakistan with unmanned drone attacks. Pakistan's portion of this war includes the support to the U.S. in Afghanistan and military campaigns within it's own borders against Taliban forces. Taliban forces have fought back against Pakistan with terrorist attacks and bombings that continue to ravage the nation. There have been a number of consequences from this war upon Pakistani society, one of particular importance to the U.S. is the increased anti-American sentiment. The war has also resulted in weak and widely unpopular leaders. The final major consequence this study examines is the increased conflict amongst the many ethnicities within Pakistan. The consequences of this war have had an effect on local, regional, American, and international politics.

No description available.

We live in an era of advanced technological innovations and it is therefore difficult to acquire a proper overview of the different surveillance techniques deployed for the purpose of enhancing and administrating migration control. The intent of this paper is to disseminate one of the new technologies on the market: the biometric technology that is an identification and verification system based on measurements of biological traits. Different approaches are used to explore and investigate the technological functions, social structures and political justifications for their validity and their role in the implementation of the biometric technology. The paper also provides an overview of the different areas of political and social management that are affected by the implementation of the biometric techniques.The principal aim of this work is to examine how the implementation of the biometric techniques will affect privacy for all people, taking both information privacy and personal integrity into consideration. The second question deals with migration management, as the current implementation mainly involves travel documents. It focuses on the consequences of the so-called war on terror and its call for prevention of terrorism and irregular migration. The dilemma between national security and the right to privacy, public good and private interests, and the realms of state and individual rights are also discussed and analysed.Hence, the framework and the fundamental structure of this thesis are based on three core issues pertinent to the implementation of biometrics in the EU: threats posed on the right to privacy, securitization of migration, and intensification of surveillance and state control. The findings are used to identify the threats posed on right to privacy and the way this right is compromised, and the consequences of practices and policies in the field of migration that are discriminatory and exclusory. Lastly, by employing different theories, this paper examines why state seeks technological control over citizens and why individuals comply with state control and surveillance.

This dissertation explores how different understandings of power in IR theory lead to different understandings of world order. In particular, I examine how notions of power have informed recent 'debate about empire' and what the term empire might usefully mean in the context of contemporary international relations. I start by investigating how power is understood in relation to the role of shared understandings. Mainstream or "Rationalist" scholars of IR have argued that shared norms and principles are epiphenomenal, existing only to the extent that sovereign states find utility in them. 'Reflectivist' scholars, on the other hand, have suggested that we attribute a much greater degree of autonomy to what they call "constitutive knowledge". That is, the intersubjective and historically contingent truths about world politics that inform the values and norms of state behavior. What is noteworthy about the recent debates about "empire" is that, for better or for worse, Rationalist scholars have tended to explain America's recent unilateralism in terms of a return to the logic of political realism which gives primacy to state power. However, following the Reflectivist argument, I argue that it is a mistake to limit the analytic scope of unilateralism to the egoistic agency of any one state. Instead, it may be more precise to situate American unilateralism in the context of an emerging regime or formation of shared understandings which is more global in scope. To explore this possibility, I turn to Foucault's theory of power which explores how liberal governments both direct their populations and rationalize the use of certain forms of violence. I turn also to Hardt and Negri who, taking their lead from Foucault, offer a novel definition of the term empire as a quality or condition of the practice of global governance particular to late modernity. Hardt and Negri define empire as a new form of global sovereignty that has emerged along with the global market and global circuits of production. My research explores how this definition can be used to refine such key concepts and categories of IR theory research as sovereignty, political economy and security. Through the reinterpretation of these key categories, I show how theories based on constitutive knowledge are capable of recognizing that there is in fact a great deal more going on in contemporary global power relations than American unilateralism. / Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-10T10:46:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 JULIO DA SILVEIRA MOREIRA.pdf: 1490206 bytes, checksum: bfa5664056eb59da266a99ef24afb54c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-18 / This Master s thesis aims the criticism of legal equality in International Law, since the reference of Marxist criticism in Law Philosophy. Works with the historical and dialectical materialist method, and qualitative research with bibliographic and documentary sources. The starting point are the legal principles of equality, liberty and property, that support the assertion of capitalist society. The criticism of political economy, addressing the characteristics of commodity exchange under capitalism, observe the separation between direct producer and means of production, resulting in the contradictions of the legal principles: legal equality is material inequality, formal liberty is necessity and submission, abstract property is the condition of the dispossessed. Understanding the law from the legal relationships between abstract legal subjects, it criticizes the fetishism of legal rule and the legal ideology. Points to the role of the State as public power for repression and guarantor of legal relations, and especially the State in external relations with other States. The criticism of International Law begins with the study of the works of its founders, Victoria, Grotius and Kant. Then make use of Theory of Imperialism to examine the mechanisms of internationalization of the legal form in the midst of sharing and partition of the world between the capitalist powers. To understand that the internationalization of capitalism is the very negation of its development in the periphery of the system, makes use of the concepts of uneven development, bureaucratic capitalism and break of legality. Reveals the colonial conflict and the civilizational paradigm as inherent to International Law, lasting until the present time, as shown, in theory, the works of Anghie and Miéville, and in factual and concrete plan, the United Nations structure from the binomial peace and collective security and the contradictions in its policy of nuclear security. Finally, the permanence of colonial conflict and civilizational paradigm is evident in State policy called War on Terror, which proposes the revision of concepts of International Law and renew the enemy speech in the stereotype of terrorist, to legitimize imperialist aggressions. / Esta dissertação de Mestrado tem por objeto a crítica da igualdade jurídica no Direito Internacional, desde o referencial da crítica marxista na Filosofia do Direito. Trabalha com o método materialista histórico e dialético e pesquisa qualitativa com fontes bibliográficas e documentais. O ponto de partida são os princípios jurídicos de igualdade, liberdade e propriedade, que embasaram a afirmação da sociedade capitalista. A crítica da economia política, ao tratar das características da troca de mercadorias no capitalismo, permite observar a separação entre produtor direto e meios de produção, resultando nas contradições dos princípios jurídicos: igualdade jurídica é desigualdade material, liberdade formal é necessidade e submissão, propriedade abstrata é a condição do expropriado. Compreendendo o direito a partir das relações jurídicas entre sujeitos de direito abstratos, critica o fetichismo da norma jurídica e a ideologia jurídica. Aponta o papel do Estado como força pública para a repressão e garantidor das relações jurídicas, e especialmente o Estado nas relações externas com outros Estados. A crítica do Direito Internacional se inicia com o estudo das obras de seus fundadores, Vitória, Grotius e Kant. Depois, serve-se da Teoria do Imperialismo para analisar os mecanismos de internacionalização da forma jurídica no bojo da partilha e repartilha do mundo entre as potências capitalistas. Para compreender que a internacionalização do capitalismo é a própria negação do seu desenvolvimento na periferia do sistema, serve-se dos conceitos de desenvolvimento desigual, capitalismo burocrático e ruptura da legalidade. Revela o conflito colonial e o paradigma civilizatório como inerentes ao Direito Internacional, prolongando-se até a época atual, como demonstram, no plano teórico, as obras de Anghie e Miéville, e no plano fático concreto, a estrutura das Nações Unidas a partir do binômio paz e segurança coletiva e das contradições em sua política de segurança nuclear. Por fim, a permanência do conflito colonial e do paradigma civilizatório fica evidente na política de Estado chamada Guerra ao Terror, que propõe a revisão de conceitos do Direito Internacional e renova o discurso do inimigo no estereótipo do terrorista, para legitimar agressões imperialistas.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta dissertação trata do que se entende como terrorismo após os atentados de setembro de 2001, seja como lógica de ação ou como método de ação. A partir desta data, o terrorismo alcançou enorme projeção e passou a figurar como tema central tanto na imprensa cotidiana quanto em reuniões internacionais de cúpula. O fenômeno era, muitas vezes, historicamente circunscrito às nações que enfrentavam esse problema. Após o Onze de Setembro, o debate expandiu-se e as políticas, e a propaganda, antiterroristas incidiram sobre a sociedade, modificando comportamentos individuais e coletivos. A associação entre Islamismo e terrorismo foi frequente e a Guerra Contra ao Terror (GCT), promovida pela política externa norte-americana de George W. Bush, contribuiu para difundir uma percepção do terrorismo como uma lógica de ação afeita à violência em si. Isso contrasta com a percepção quanto a grupos terroristas de momentos históricos anteriores, cujo recurso ao terrorismo era compreendido como método de ação com valor instrumental para alcançar objetivos políticos diversos, como a emancipação nacional e a desestabilização de regimes políticos estabelecidos. O estudo de caso da Organização de Xangai (OCX) visa demonstrar que a identificação entre terrorismo e Islã leva ao equívoco de compreender os grupos terroristas contemporâneos islâmicos, com lógicas próprias, como uma fenômeno só o que leva à imprecisão de atribuir ao terrorismo o caráter de primeiro fenômeno macro-securitizado. Este breve histórico da ascensão do terrorismo na agenda política contemporânea, mediante a análise do processo securitizador tanto na GCT quanto na Organização de Cooperação de Xangai, serve como referência para as análises contidas no trabalho que o leitor tem em mãos, uma vez que o sentido atribuído ao terrorismo só pode ser entendido em termos dos atores políticos envolvidos na sua definição e no contexto em qual o fazem. Na OCX, o verificou-se o entendimento do terrorismo como método de ação de grupos separatistas, o que não corresponde à ideia do terrorismo como lógica de ação contida na GCT. / We wrote about our understanding what terrorism, after the September 2001 attacks, is liking as a logic and a method of action. After September 2001, terrorism has achieved a huge projection and has been integrated as a central theme in both the daily press and in international summit meetings. The phenomena was often historically confined to nations facing this problem. After 9/11, the debate has expanded and the political counter-terrorism propaganda was focused on society changing individual and collective behavior. The association between Islam and terrorism was common and the War on Terror (WOT), promoted by the American foreign policy of George W. Bush, helped to spread a perception of terrorism as an logic action of pure violence itself. The contrast between perception of the terrorist groups in previous historical periods, whose thinking to practice to terrorism was understood as an method of action with instrumental value to achieve different policy objectives, such as national emancipation and the destabilization of established political regimes. This study of Shanghai Organization (SCO) seeks to demonstrate the identification between terrorism and Islam leads to misunderstanding of understanding (a lack of comprehension) between the contemporary Islamic terrorist groups, with their own logic, and as a phenomenon only - which leads inaccurate to attribute terrorism to an first macro-securitized phenomenon character. This brief history of the rise of terrorism in contemporary political agenda has been analyzing the securitizer process both in WOT and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This study serves as a reference about our thinking and analyzes terrorism not only can be understood in terms of the political actors involved in its definition but in the context in which they do. The SCO has a understanding about terrorism like a method of action of separatist groups, which does not correspond to the idea of terrorism as an logic of action contained in the WOT doctrine.