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In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower charged an ad hoc advisory group with assessing the current U.S. Cold War effort and offering recommendations for an 'unified and dynamic' way forward. This work investigates the case of Eisenhower's Presidential Committee on International Information Activities and its role in the United States' approach to the Cold War. Problematizing that which is often taken for granted, this empirical, interpretive study uncovers the discursive conditions of possibility for and the discursive activities taking place within Jackson Committee decision making processes. Employing a constructivist discursive framework, this project builds on an understanding of policy making as a process of argumentation in which actors intersubjectively define problems and delimit policy and strategy options. Revealing discursive conditions of possibility enables a deeper understanding of the substance, tensions and discursive maneuvers informing subsequent U.S. strategy and policy choices during the Cold War and may offer insights into understanding and addressing geopolitical challenges in the 21st century. The thick analytic narrative illuminates the 'witcraft' involved in conceptualizing the unique threat posed by the Soviet Union whose practices challenged existing categories, and in extending wartime discourses to the post-war geopolitical environment. It examines discursive practices informing the nascent concepts of national strategy, psychological warfare, and political warfare, including arguments for constituent elements and relationships between them. In so doing, this dissertation conceptualizes national strategy as practices underpinning a prioritized drive for competitive advantage over adversaries. Additionally, political warfare represents practices intended to create and present alternatives to foreign actors that are in the U.S. interest through the integration and coordination of diplomatic, economic, military, and informational activities. Based on its conceptualization of a long-term adversarial competition with the Soviet Union, the committee recommended solutions for a sustainable national strategy of political warfare prioritizing the free world and liberal world order. Its recommendations sought to recast strategic panic into strategic patience. / Ph. D.

The Russian Federation has recently implemented a foreign policy strategy aimed at subverting the West’s ability to deter Russia from destabilizing its neighbors. This strategy combines elements of conventional military strategy with “weaponized information” in order to achieve success in the political and military arenas of conflict. “Weaponized Information” goes beyond the “network-centric” warfare envisioned by cyber security experts, focused instead upon the development of “fake news,” disinformation, and encouraging conflicting media narratives. This thesis explores this strategy through Thomas Schelling’s framework of deterrence elucidated in Arms and Influence and uses recent events in Ukraine, Syria, the United States, and Europe to describe the development and implementation of “weaponized information” in 21st Century international conflicts. / Master of Arts

No / Until now little attention has been paid to the development of military capabilities designed to target food crops with biological warfare agents. This book represents the first substantive study of state-run activities in this field. It shows that all biological warfare programs have included a component concerned with the development of anti-crop agents and munitions. Current concern over the proliferation of biological weapons is placed in the context of the initiative to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The author concludes that the risks posed by this form of warfare can be minimized by the implementation of regimes concerning the peaceful use and control of plant pathogens that pose a risk to human health and the environment.

Criticized for providing a simplified depiction of a post-9/11 United States, contemporary American “War on Terror” fiction has been largely neglected by critical discourse. In this dissertation, I argue that this fiction offers a vital engagement with how the War on Terror is waged, and how the fantasies and policies of the Global Homeland inform it. Most immediately, the texts I analyze undercut the sanitization of the war by including depictions of intense combat and the psychological fallout of derealized warfare. In these works, the public’s reluctance to acknowledge such concerns lays the foundation for a schism between American civilians and the military. I argue moreover that this fiction engages with the collapse of distinctions between foreign and domestic spheres through exploring both battlefields abroad and how a military logic is transposed onto American society. In the first chapter, I analyze the way in which narratives by Kevin Powers, David Abrams, Phil Klay, and Dan Fesperman complicate sanitized images of the war by foregrounding its visceral qualities and representing the traumatic impact of mediated warfare. The second chapter focuses on Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, specifically its representation of the military characters’ frustration with the public’s failure to acknowledge the traumatic impact of the War on Terror, and its critique of melodramatic patriotic gestures that glorify the war but do not require actual social, financial, or affective investment in the military. The third chapter zeroes in on portrayals of returned veterans in texts by George Saunders, Atticus Lish, and Joyce Carol Oates, who react with increasing antagonism to civilian disinterest in their plight, which gives rise to acts of violence against civilians and a shift in societal attitudes toward the military. I conclude by examining Lish’s depiction of how the policies of the Global Homeland result in the deployment of a military logic within the domestic U.S. Through its engagement with American warfare and the Global Homeland, contemporary American war fiction offers a nuanced exploration of the conduct and ramifications of the War on Terror.

Thesis (Master of Military Studies)-Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008. / Title from title page of PDF document (viewed on: Dec 29, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Strategic level spiritual warfare has been an emerging trend within Evangelical missiology ever since C. Peter Wagner published his Spiritual Power and Church Growth (1986). The distinctive doctrines of Wagner’s SLSW are 1. The doctrine of territorial spirits, which entails the belief that powerful demons control specific geographical territories and its human inhabitants. Through a variety of spiritual warfare techniques such demons can be overcome. 2. The doctrine of territorial defilement. The assumption here is that a territorial spirit can only hold people in a location in bondage if it has obtained the legal right to do so because of sins and evils committed in that locality in the past. Identificational repentance on behalf of the people living in such territories removes the legal right of the territorial spirits. 3. The doctrine of Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare prayer. The underlying assumption is that territorial spirits can only be removed by means of aggressive spiritual warfare in the form of a variety of prayer and exorcism methods for dealing with territorial spirits. (4) The doctrine of territorial commitment. This doctrine justifies the exercise of spiritual power and authority by modern apostles in their communities. Wagner’s missiology has been largely shaped by the church growth movement. In his quest for better techniques to bring about mass conversions Wagner, impressed by the Latin American Pentecostal churches, embraced Pentecostalism and developed SLSW. However, a thorough biblical study demonstrates that SLSW is mostly unbiblical. A study of SLSW in Church history also demonstrates that SLSW was never accepted in orthodox Christianity. From a contextual point of view SLSW turns out to be a North American missiology with nationalist and political biases. Finally, when looking at the potential effects of a SLSW style missiology in the context of Malawi it emerges that Wagner’s SLSW is likely to reinforce rather than diminish the prevalent witchcraft fears in the Malawian society. At the same time SLSW tends to ‘demonize’ other cultures and thus hinders genuine contextualization. In the final analysis SLSW turns out not to be a commendable strategy for Christian Mission in Malawi. / Christian Spirituality Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This thesis seeks to investigate the short- and long-term socio-economic impact of the First Punic War on Carthage and its people. It will do so by exploring three parts of the Carthaginian political and socio-economic system during the fourth through the second centuries BCE. The first is its navy, and specifically the costs – in both material and man – of its use. This will be the subject of the first chapter. The second analyses the additional expenditures which the war extracted from Carthage, such as the outlays to recruit, maintain, and provide for the land army. The final chapter focuses on the long-term ramifications of the war, which will be explored by means of an in-depth analysis of the last few battles of the First Punic War from an economic angle.

This dissertation analyzes and critiques Neil T. Anderson's approach to spiritual warfare, specifically in the context of evangelism and discipleship. It argues that while Anderson's understanding of spiritual warfare in evangelism and discipleship is generally orthodox, his approach to spiritual warfare in evangelism is invalid and his approach to spiritual warfare in discipleship demonstrates significant points of theological and practical concern. It also shows the lasting value of Anderson's works but also establishes needed correctives for future works on spiritual warfare in evangelism and discipleship. Chapter 1 introduces spiritual warfare and some of the major biblical, historical, and theological issues that are important in Anderson's approach to spiritual warfare. This chapter communicates the dissertation's thesis, modern day implications, analytical approach, and important connections in evangelism and discipleship. Chapter 2 focuses on describing the life, teachings, writings, and ministry of Anderson. The impact of both the writings and ministry are considered over the past two decades and a summary understanding of his spiritual warfare views are given. Chapter 3 lays an essential, yet focused, basis for understanding spiritual warfare. Relevant biblical passages, early church history practices, and theological categories are presented and examined in order to establish a reference point for analyzing Anderson's ministry approach to spiritual warfare. Chapter 4 explores some of the main criticisms of Anderson's writings, specifically considering David Powlison's

The intention of this essay is to study the Swedish General Staff as a learning organisation during the period of 1914-1918 based on the theoretical work developed by the philosopher Bertil Rolf. Previous international research on the Prussian/German General Staff has shown that it is considered to be the first learning organisation in history. The Swedish General Staff was based on the German General Staff model and the focus of this study is to compare the development the tactics in Germany and Sweden regarding defence and attack in trench warfare. The questions are: How were the possibilities for gathering and analysing informa-tion affected by the war? Which conclusions were made for trench warfare in Swedish conditions? What experiences from the war and exercises in Swedish army were implemented in manuals and training?The conclusion of the study is that the Swedish General Staff was functioning as a learning organisation during the WWI through the ability to follow the international development, mainly in the Central Powers, and by modifying the experiences to the prevailing Swedish strategic and tactical conditions. During the war the German experiences, mainly from the eastern front, were used as a model combining movement and trench warfare. The main reasons were that the conditions on the western front with the concentration of artillery and troops were considered as an anomaly.The learning was created by processing the war experiences and experiences from the annual field exercises in several studies. One additional condition for the learning process was the demanding selection process for the employment of new General Staff officers, a process which meant that only a very small number of officers annually were appointed to general staff officers.