Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Shield Or Glue? Key Policy Issues Constraining Or Enhancing Multinational Collective Ballistic Missile Defense, Marxen Kyriss

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation explores a series of eleven political factors nations would have to consider should they contemplate joining a military coalition or alliance that uses ballistic missile defense (BMD); which of these factors incentivize or dissuade states from joining this coalition, and whether they vary from region to region, or state to state. It uses a two-stage case-study-based qualitative research design, in which the first theory generation phase was comprised of 21 experimentation events over a ten-year period with BMD policy experts from 24 nations led by the United States Strategic Command known as NIMBLE TITAN. The results of these …