The events of 9-11 caused the US military to deploy across the globe in support of the Global War on Terror (GWoT) with the assurance it would receive the resources needed to fulfill those operations. As a subordinate arm of the government, the US military is entrusted to prosecute the policies of its civilian leadership provided they receive the required resources to do so. As this thesis demonstrates however, the military is struggling to reconcile how to deliver the goals of its civilian administration when it simultaneously fails to receive the resources needed to meet their demands. The Department of Defense (DoD) is experiencing a stark increase in its deployments and combat operations. Unprecedented 'peacetime' use of Reserve and Guard forces and remarkable DoD personnel policies have stretched the military thin. Despite substantial military budget increases, the military fails to receive adequate funding for combat operations. Meanwhile, soldiers fail to receive the appropriate equipment needed to fight the emerging threats of the GWoT. The military continues to thin many of its own operations, increase the stress on its members, and over-work its equipment in order to meet the needs of its civilian government. Three solutions exist: maintain the status quo, reduce the scope of the GWoT, or begin military funding on par with past wartime budgets. The status quo produced an overstretched/underfunded military. Threats to US security can not support a reduced GWoT. Therefore, the US should increase DoD end strength, increase GWoT funding, and accelerate weapons research and procurement. / Master of Arts

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

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This study examines how the media construct the identities of the Other by creating various ‘us’ versus ‘them’ positions (Othering) when covering non-violence-based intercultural conflicts in Arab and Western news media. Othering in this study is understood as an umbrella concept that in general terms refers to the discursive process of constructing and positioning the Self and the Other into separate identities of an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’ This process is analysed using a mixed method approach. A content analysis is used to map the data, and then a closer examination of the discourse is conducted using a qualitative approach inspired by critical discourse analysis. Two empirical studies are conducted based on this analysis: 1) the case of the Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda’s publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed in 2007 and 2) the media coverage of the headscarf ban in French state schools in 2004. This study also employs Galtung’s Peace Journalism model as a frame of reference in the conclusions to discuss how this model could contribute, if applied in journalistic texts, to more balanced constructions of intercultural conflicts. The results show that Othering is a central discursive practice that is commonly adopted in both Arab and Western media coverage of non-violent intercultural conflicts, but it appears in different forms. Many of the previous studies have devoted considerable attention to rather conventional dichotomous constructions of Eastern and Western Others. The present study, in contrast, brings to the fore more non-conventional constructions and, while recognizing the occurrence of the conventional constructions, goes beyond these binary oppositions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Variations in the types of identity constructions found in my study can be attributed to the mode of the article, the actors/voices included, the media affiliations and the topic and its overall contextualization. The different types of identity constructions in the media coverage may bring about a less black and white understanding of an event and help bring forth a more nuanced picture of what is going on and who is doing what in a conflict situation. Their occurrence in the media can possibly be linked to a new vision of a global society that does not necessarily constitute homogenous groups with the same characteristics, but rather is more consistent with a hybrid identity. This research is timely, as with the recent arrival of large groups of migrants from the Middle East, the ‘fear of Islam,’ and the right wing propaganda regarding Muslims as a threat is increasing. Islamophobia can be seen as a new form of racism used by elites to serve particular agendas. If media practitioners applied a more critical awareness in their writings so as not to reproduce culturally rooted stereotypes, which can inflame conflicts between people and nations, we might see less hostility against migrants and achieve a less racist world.

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This dissertation presents the U.S. Army Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG) as an example of that service implementing successful change in wartime. It argues that creating the AWG required senior leaders to adopt a vision differing from the Army’s self-conceptualization, change bureaucratic processes to permit that vision to produce an actual military unit, and then place the new unit in the hands of uniquely qualified leaders able to build and sustain it. In the process, the dissertation will consider forces that influence change within the Army, arguing that the two most significant are its self-conceptualization and institutional bureaucracy. Only determined senior leaders can overcome these barriers, and then only by deep personal engagement. Such engagement extends to manipulating the bureaucracy by placing like-minded subordinates in positions where they can sustain the tenets of change long after the visionaries retire. The dissertation also posits effective leadership as critical to building and sustaining organizations able to consistently meet their founders’ vision. To effectively tell the story, the dissertation explores three major subject areas that provide historical context. The first is the Army’s institutional history from the early 1950s through 2001. This period begins with the Army seeking to validate its place in America’s national security strategy and ends with the Army trying to chart a path into the post-Cold War future. That section includes the major bureaucratic changes brought about by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the early 1960s as these changes created processes the service still uses. It also addresses the Army’s post-Vietnam War focus on re-establishing itself as a technologically sophisticated force optimized to defeat similar opponents. This dissertation also looks at several episodes further in the past. Prior to World War I, the Army’s history is largely one of asymmetric warfare. The dissertation thus examines several campaigns that offered lessons for subsequent wars. Some lessons the Army took to heart, others it ignored. Finally, the dissertation chronicles the AWG’s creation in 2006. The AWG was a direct outgrowth of the failures and frustrations that the Army experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq. The dissertation examines these campaigns and identifies the specific problems that led senior Army leaders to create the AWG. It also chronicles the organizations growth and re-assignment from the Army staff to a fully-fledged organization subordinate to the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in 2011. This reassignment placed a now mature AWG in the Army’s standard force structure, a place it held until its 2021 deactivation. This deactivation did not result not from the unit’s failure to adapt to a post-insurgency Army focusing on technical modernization. Rather, it resulted from the Army’s inability to realize that while the AWG originated as a response to counterinsurgency, it provided a capability to support the Army during a period of great strategic and institutional uncertainty. / History

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My thesis examines how metaphors of globalization shape the global governance of the Internet. I consider how, in a short span of time, discussions of the Internet’s globalizing potential have gone from the optimism of the global village to the penchant of the global marketplace to the anxiety of the global war on terror. Building upon Rorty’s theory of metaphors and Foucault’s notion of productive power, I investigate how the shifts in these prevailing metaphors have produced and legitimated different frameworks of global governance. In considering how these patterns of governance have been shaped in the context of a familiar example of globalization, I demonstrate that globalization has an important discursive dimension that works as a constitutive force – not only in Internet governance, but in global governance more generally. By illuminating globalization’s discursive dimensions, this thesis makes an original theoretical contribution to the study of globalization and global governance. It demonstrates that globalization is more than a set of empirical flows: equally important, globalization exists as a set of discourses that reconstitute political legitimacy in more ‘global’ terms. This recasts the conventional understanding of global governance: rather than a response to the challenges posed by the empirical transcendence of territorial borders or the visible proliferation of non-state actors, the aims, institutions and policies of global governance are shaped and enabled by discourses of globalization, and evolve as these discourses change. In short, this thesis provides further insight into globalization’s transformations of state-based political order. It links these transformations to the discursive processes by which systems of global governance are produced and legitimated as sites of power and authority.

My thesis examines how metaphors of globalization shape the global governance of the Internet. I consider how, in a short span of time, discussions of the Internet’s globalizing potential have gone from the optimism of the global village to the penchant of the global marketplace to the anxiety of the global war on terror. Building upon Rorty’s theory of metaphors and Foucault’s notion of productive power, I investigate how the shifts in these prevailing metaphors have produced and legitimated different frameworks of global governance. In considering how these patterns of governance have been shaped in the context of a familiar example of globalization, I demonstrate that globalization has an important discursive dimension that works as a constitutive force – not only in Internet governance, but in global governance more generally. By illuminating globalization’s discursive dimensions, this thesis makes an original theoretical contribution to the study of globalization and global governance. It demonstrates that globalization is more than a set of empirical flows: equally important, globalization exists as a set of discourses that reconstitute political legitimacy in more ‘global’ terms. This recasts the conventional understanding of global governance: rather than a response to the challenges posed by the empirical transcendence of territorial borders or the visible proliferation of non-state actors, the aims, institutions and policies of global governance are shaped and enabled by discourses of globalization, and evolve as these discourses change. In short, this thesis provides further insight into globalization’s transformations of state-based political order. It links these transformations to the discursive processes by which systems of global governance are produced and legitimated as sites of power and authority.