After the Cold War ended, the process of nuclear disarmament began to stagnate and in recent years there are signs of backsliding. Efforts to revive the disarmament regime over decades culminated with the drafting and ratification of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017 and 2021 respectively, much to the dismay of nuclear weapons states. The U.S., Britain, and France have declared their dismissal of the treaty while subscribing to the disarmament regime as established by the Non-proliferation Treaty of 1970.  The Western nuclear powers typically channel their opposition through NATO, and this thesis will first look at NATO’s legal arguments and as the strategy of nuclear deterrence which is fundamental to their defensive strategy. I will then investigate NATO discourse as it pertains to nuclear weapon strategy as a constituent of its subjectivity and intentionality. In other words, what it is like to “be” NATO, and in so doing understand why it acts in opposition to a goal it already pursues.  This is relevant to IR in that it explores an alterative manner in which to understand social structures while adhering to research designs typically ascribes to the “lower” unit of analysis of individuals.

Efforts to control small arms and light weapons (SALW) in the periods following violent conflict can have positive or negative impacts on peacebuilding efforts. Similarly, peacebuilding activities can both support or endanger efforts to place SALW under greater control. Despite the regular occurrence of SALW control and peacebuilding activities in the same time and space in post violent conflict contexts, there is insignificant analysis of how the two sets of activities interrelate, and how these interelationships can be strengthened to improve the contribution that SALW control efforts make to peacebuilding, and vice-versa. The effects of interrelationships over time (contingency); in the same geographic space (complementarity) and the effects of public perceptions and social construction are particularly important and provide a framework for establishing these interrelationships through analysing a wide universe of cases of SALW control attempted in countries emerging from violent conflict, five mini-cases studies and a major analysis of interrelationships in Kosovo.

This thesis addresses the role of education to mitigate the risks of deliberate disease, including biological weapons. Specifically, it aims to analyse how education was constructed as a potential instrument to mitigate specific security risks; if and how education could impact on risks; and how effectiveness of education as a risk mitigation measure could be improved. The research framework combines concepts of security, risk and education within a general constructionist approach. Securitization is used to analyse attempts to construct education as a tool to mitigate specific security risks; risk assessment is used to identify and characterize risk scenarios and potential for risks mitigation; and instructional design and evaluation models are used for the design and evaluation of education. The thesis contends that education has been constructed as a mitigation tool for what were presented as urgent security risks of deliberate disease. Nine attempted securitization moves are identified and assessed. Improved competences identified in four thematic areas, and built with education, can mitigate risks in specific scenarios via impacting factors that primarily influence risk likelihood. The thesis presents several examples of achieved learning objectives, and tools that can be useful to evaluate behavioural and risk impacts, though empirical results on these levels here are still scarce. Design and evaluation tools, illustrated through a large amount of original and pre-existing data from a range of countries and contexts, are presented that can improve effectiveness of education as a deliberate disease risks mitigation measure.

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