The United States emerged from the destruction of World War II a superpower with burgeoning global interests. Nowhere was this more evident than in Iraq. US policymakers greatly expanded their relationship with the pro-Western regime in Baghdad during the 1950s. To examine these trends more closely, this dissertation analyzes the American relationship with Iraq during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953 to 1961). This study discusses how American oil concessions, military aid programs, collective defense arrangements, and modernization initiatives shaped the US-Iraqi bilateral relationship of the 1950s. It also looks intensively at American intelligence assessments and covert action programs in Iraq in this period. An in-depth examination of the Eisenhower administration’s policies vis-à-vis Baghdad offers important lessons about the ways US officials understood and navigated complex political developments in the Middle East. In addition, this dissertation considers US strategies in Iraq in the context of ongoing developments in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, and elsewhere in the region. This transnational lens yields fascinating insights into how American interests throughout the Middle East influenced US policies in Iraq. As with their partners in the Iraqi government, American officials privileged the pursuit of “order” and “stability” in Baghdad. When confronted with the prospect of “unrest” in Iraq, the Eisenhower administration decisively supported its Iraqi allies’ moves to clamp down on political dissent. The United States worked energetically to control Iraqi developments in channels favourable to US interests. However, the regime led by Abdel Karim Qasim fundamentally transformed the patterns of the US-Iraqi relationship following the July 1958 Iraqi Revolution. Qasim’s program calling for the “Iraqification” of national economic resources collided with larger American understandings of Washington’s power in Baghdad. The Eisenhower administration proved unable to control the disorderly nature of revolutionary rule in Iraq, suggesting (as with the pre-revolutionary period) the tangible limits to American power in Iraq and the Middle East in this critical period of the Cold War.

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As a prominent and influential missionary in Turkey in the early 20th century, Samuel Ralph Harlow offers a new perspective that should be included in historical literature on foreign missionaries and human rights. Through his correspondence and academic works, Harlow’s story unveils internal conflict among United States officials and missionaries in regard to Turkish treatment of Greeks and Armenians in the interwar period. Samuel Ralph Harlow represents the position in support of American intervention to rescue Greeks and Armenians from massacre and deportation, but as his superiors’ views on the matter changed, Harlow was silenced. The U.S. may have decided not to intervene after all, but missionaries certainly played a role in the decision. Harlow was an early advocate for foreign intervention for the sake of protecting human rights, and his story shows how American missionaries helped mold U.S. support for protecting vulnerable populations abroad. The Samuel Ralph Harlow Papers at Amistad Research Center are virtually untouched by academics; thus, Harlow deserves a study in his own right. This study involved extensive research on Harlow’s original papers, the United States Government Official Foreign Relations Documents, and the historiography of human rights and missionaries in the Middle East, particularly Turkey.

Oil is one of the most widespread high-density energy sources in the world: its importance for the military-industrial complex became even more evident in the postwar context. In this framework, establishing the conditions for accessing the world's oil-rich areas became essential for states, not only to provide for their own energy needs, but also to buttress national economic and geostrategic interests, and protect energy security. In addition, regulating the oil flow between countries afforded the ability to influence their operational capabilities. Exploiting oil as a geopolitical weapon was not distinctive of the two global hegemonic powers, but was also employed by less powerful countries, such as France and Italy. My thesis shows how, from the second half of the 1940s, successive Italian and French administrations established agencies for hydrocarbon management, and devised strategies of oil exploration according to their political agendas. Achieving energy autonomy was the main objective of both countries. However, the predominance of Anglo-American interests in both French and Italian oil scenarios led to continuous bilateral diplomatic tensions, especially over issues of exploration rights. Anglo-American governments and companies sought to shape the French and Italian oil scenes to their benefit, also by looking for allies in the political classes of the two countries. It was the outcome of these 'oily deals' that eventually shaped the history of Italian and French oil industries. Conflicting interests were revealed at their fullest during the Algerian war of 1954-62: following the discovery of large oil and gas fields in Algeria, US and Italian companies started to negotiate, first with the French and then the Algerians, their access to, and prospecting rights for Algerian territories. My work shows that negotiation processes involved secret surveillance activities, the establishment of parallel diplomacies, and serious confrontation between Cold War allies. A fundamental role in these deals was played by technocrats and geoscientists, who facilitated the communication of secret data on oilfields to their national authorities. Significant global oil discoveries occurred worldwide in the 1950s, eventually leading to overproduction: an outcome assisted by major progress in geophysical prospecting techniques. France's new role as an oil producer thanks to discoveries in Africa provoked a shift of national interest from exploration to transport. At the same time Italy, after the signing of massive oil-for-technology barter agreements with the Soviet Union, could now dispose of a surplus that needed channelling to potential outlets. For both countries, building pipelines became an essential aspect: however, as both were targeting the West European market, Europe became an arena of bitter competition for pipeline dominance. Italian-Soviet contracts, together with the current level of West European trade with the Soviet Union, prompted an examination of Western security by international organisations. The issue of limiting Soviet oil exports into West European countries was widely debated at the European Community and Nato, as was European technological aid to the Soviet project of constructing a colossal pipeline system. My analysis of the terms of the debates, their development and outcome, reveals the ambiguity of the concepts of security and 'strategic technology' as a ground for decision-making, indicating how these were construed as co-products of negotiations.

The present study provides an analysis of China's foreign policy towards Central Asia to trace ‘culture of China's foreign policy'. The culture of China's foreign policy approach deals with China as an identity and process rather than being static or within boundaries. The present research highlights China's multilateral and cooperative policies in Central Asia and with Russia as an outcome of evolutionary process of construction of China's identity. The complex process of building relations with Central Asian region although within a short period of time (in post-Soviet context) are analysed to make a case for China's innovative (partially) political processes of dealing with frontier security and embracing multilateralism. This is explained by studying the evolution of China's identity and interests and the role of significant events that affect its perceptions of self and that are a prescription for its policy orientations as observed in case of foreign policy towards Central Asia. The theoretical foundation of Peter Katzenstein thesis is helpful premises upon which an argument in favour of the discourse of identity and security is developed to see how culture of national security of China and ‘complementarity' of Central Asian states is at work in security cooperation seen among these states. By problematizing the notion of ‘national interest', the present study argues that interests of the states can be contextualized in a broader environment referred as civilization to trace the relationship between interests and identities of China as at play in Central Asian region. By placing the political state of ‘China' in the broader context of civilization and as evolving, helps understand how Chinese political spectrum seeks to construct and maintain a great power identity while locating ‘self' against ‘others'. It further argues that the cooperative and multilateral policies of China in form of Shanghai Cooperation Organization can be understood best by studying how the configurations of identity of China has guided the policy formation process; that constructs and reconstructs interstate normative structure in form of SCO.

Theories regarding the power of the United States in the International Political-Economic order conventionally treat issues of culture and aesthetics as functional aspects of the system of mass production created in the early 20th century. The ‘hegemony' of the United States is attributed to the ability of its political-economic elites to create and maintain ‘consensus' amongst other nations. Cultural manifestations of American hegemony are regarded as ‘soft' signposts of this power, serving to entrench the values of American capitalism at a global level. Yet critical theories of international political economy have evaded analysing the ‘appeal' of this cultural power, prioritizing materialist aspects of consensus formation such as the compromises made between capital and labour during the early 20th century during the rise of the mass production society. The task of this thesis is to provide the theoretical tools which allow critical evaluations of American hegemony to move beyond these materialist conceptions of cultural power. It is argued that an aesthetic approach to hegemony can fully realize the enduring power of American culture in political-economic terms. It does so by critically re-situating the terms of hegemony in Sloanism, which provides a more adequate template for realizing the power and meaning of mass consumption for non-elite social agents. Sloanism's focus on branding and stylistic obsolescence demonstrates that the ‘aesthetics' of hegemony can be grasped by evaluating the role of style and design in a mass production, mass consumption society. It therefore places epistemological priority on the contestations over cultural meanings of style, and the rise of ideals of upward social mobility which upset materialist expectations of a clearly discernable characteristics for different social groups. This in turn allows a questioning of the stability of norms, values and interests of ruling elites. It also restores the social agency of non-elite groups who contribute to ‘hegemony' through the provision of styles, techniques and designs that represented challenges to received ideas of cultural order. Furthermore in the context of early 20th century, new techniques of mass persuasion in advertising and public relations provide a ‘site ‘ in which the discordant and antagonistic aesthetic values of different social groups resolve in an uneasy tension- one that is nonetheless powerful enough to hold a durable cultural power, celebrating both upward social mobility and aspirations of abundance.

It is the objective of this thesis to examine contacts between the British government and German opponents to Hitler during the "Phoney War" (September 1939-May 1940). Throughout this nine month period opponents to Nazism within Germany sought both material and moral support from the British government for an overthrow of the National Socialist regime. This work analyzes the channels through which communication between the German opposition and the British government were established and the nature of the discussions which took place. The work also examines the British reaction to the German overtures.

This study is an intellectual history of Paul H. Nitze's contribution to the evolution of American Cold War strategy from 1949 to 1953. Nitze, a national security advisor and arms control negotiator to a succession of American presidents over fifty years, was almost unrivalled in his breadth and depth of experience in the Cold War national security establishment of the United States. As this study demonstrates, however, the most important and influential phase of his career was during his involvement with the Truman administration, as Deputy Director and then Director of the Department of State's Policy Planning Staff (PPS). It was in this position that Nitze contributed to a profound shift in American strategic thinking that redefined U.S. national security policy both at the time and for the decades to come. He was the principal author of National Security Council directive 68 (NSC 68), the most comprehensive and wide-ranging appraisal of American national security policy of the time. Developed in response to the Soviet Union's first atomic explosion, and approved after the North Korean invasion of South Korea, Nitze's NSC 68 recommended the United States move away from its prevailing strategy of massive nuclear retaliation and towards a forward defence of the' free world', made possible by a vast increase in conventional - or non-nuclear - military capabilities. This shift proved to be the forerunner of 'flexible response', the official defence posture of the Kennedy administration and the formal NATO strategic doctrine for much of the Cold War. Yet crucially, the phase of Nitze's career that produced this fundamental and enduring reorientation of American Cold War strategy has been largely unexplored by historical studies to date. This thesis addresses this shortcoming. Not only is it the first in-depth study of Nitze's years with the Truman administration, but it also makes use of previously unavailable archival sources, including Nitze's own papers held at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Given the dearth of literature on his career during this time, and the fact that the critical primary source material used in this study is absent in such literature, this thesis therefore offers a new, original and unprecedented contribution to contemporary understanding of Paul Nitze and the Cold War.

Thesis advisor: Seth Jacobs / This dissertation examines the intersections of transnational anarchist terrorism, American foreign relations, and national security in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such, the primary purpose is to examine how cultural concerns exert an influence over discussions of national security in the United States. In the face of an unprecedented wave of bombings and assassinations around the world, Americans made clear that anarchist terrorism was a dual menace. First, the actual threat of violence posed an external security problem that needed to be addressed. Government officials as well as private individuals debated the need to protect public officials, curtail press freedoms, punish anarchist crimes, and cooperate with other states to suppress anarchist violence. At the same time, however, many Americans expressed concern that by overreacting and making acceptable the passage of measures that would erode traditional values in the name of providing security, anarchist terrorism posed a second—greater—threat to American society. The failure to satisfactorily resolve those conflicting priorities, this dissertation argues, set the boundaries within which discussions over how to protect society from the threat of anarchist violence—both real and imagined—would take place. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

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