The Syrian regime used chemical weapons against its own citizens in 2013, and since then the U.S. has debated whether they should intervene or not. The purpose of this study is to find, analyze and explain the arguments presented by American politicians regarding the intervention in Syria. The study will be a qualitative and abductive desk study, that is done through a text analysis. This study will examine the different arguments from the politicians over the years and explain the arguments over the years through the theoretical lenses used. The theoretical lenses that will be used in thesis study is humanitarian intervention, democratic peace, just war, realism, and liberalism. The findings of this thesis will be arguments that are coming directly from the politicians, by looking into published statements, speeches, press-releases et cetera. This study will look into three selected representatives each from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. What this study has found is that the representatives from the two parties present rather similar arguments for intervention as well as non-intervention in Syria. They argue that interventions are necessary for humanitarian reasons, as well as for protecting American national security and interests. For non-intervention they argued that the U.S. was not affected by the conflict, and that intervention would drag the U.S. into another war. The theoretical lenses in this study could all somewhat explain the arguments presented by the politicians, and it became clear that the politicians are stuck in the same pattern when it comes to policies on this issue. Thus, the American foreign policies regarding Syria became rather predictable. For future research it is necessary to find if this is true in other western countries, or if it is a phenomonen isolated to the U.S.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-88086 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Löwgren, Manfred |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för samhällsstudier (SS) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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