Digital Commons Network^™

Counterinsurgency In Afghanistan: Doctrine, Implementation, Cannibalization, Noah S. Fischer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Taliban return to power in Afghanistan on August 15th, 2021, is a watershed moment in the 21^st century history of the United States of America. The swift collapse of the U.S. backed Afghan government shocked American politicians, military leadership, and the general public. To many, trillions of dollars were wasted in funding a government that could not even survive a month without U.S. troops. But those dollars were used by U.S. military leadership to implement a new and innovative strategy those same leaders thought would guarantee success: counterinsurgency, abbreviated as COIN. In this thesis, I will ask: what …

The Evolution Of U.S. Geoeconomic Grand Strategy Toward China And South Korea’S Strategic Space: A Comparative Analysis Of Neomercantilist Types In The Trump And Biden Administrations, Hyungbo Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the evolutionary trajectory of U.S. geoeconomic grand strategy toward China from the inauguration of the first Trump administration in 2017, through the Biden administration, to the second Trump administration launched in 2025, while exploring South Korea’s survival strategies in response. The findings confirm that U.S. foreign economic policy has radicalized into "Expanded Malevolent Neomercantilism," which moves beyond simple protectionism to weaponize global economic networks in the name of national security and exploit even allies.

According to the analysis, the U.S. progressed from the "Malevolent Neomercantilism" of Trump's first term, which focused on trade deficits, to the "Developmental …

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems And The Principles Of Distinction And Proportionality, Nicholas Cromie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) challenge the core principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), distinction and proportionality, by delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithms rather than human judgment.  This dissertation examines whether LAWS can conform to these principles and, if so, under what conditions.  Through process tracing, the study traces the historical integration of disruptive weapons technologies, including chemical, biological, nuclear, and armed drones, into IHL-compliant frameworks or their exclusion via prohibition.  Each case reveals distinct pathways: outright bans for indiscriminate or inherently inhumane systems (chemical and biological weapons), normative restraint and limited acceptance despite destructive power (nuclear weapons) and phased …

Know But Not Recognized? Québec, The United States And The Thresholds For Diplomatic Recognition, Thomas Forget

Student Theses

This thesis examines the conditions under which the United States would recognize an independent Québec diplomatically and how it would maintain stable institutional relations with it. It also examines the extent of Québec’s paradiplomatic network’s reach in the United States, and how it influences the relationship and the probability of recognition. Based on a qualitative case study using process tracing and conceptual analysis, the thesis proposes that the institutional density of the Québec-US relationship increases the probability of functional continuity and, potentially, of programmatic cooperation after independence. However, this would not lower the significant political, legal, and strategic US thresholds …

Distribution Of Power In South Asia: Assessing Sino-Indian Conflict Propensity, Fatima Faisal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In international relations, the distribution of power is a key theme impacting the propensity for nations to break into wars; however, the vast academic literature is Eurocentric with a concentration on the United States and the Soviet Union. This paper shifts to the unexplored distribution of power in South Asian with a particular focus of Sino-Indian border conflicts namely the Sino-Indian War (1962), the Nathu La and Cho La clashes (1967), the Arunachal Ambush (1975), Sumdorong Chu standoff (1987), the Armed Confrontation (2013), and the Doklam Standoff (2017), and the Galwan Valley (2020) to determine if the region was more …

Marshall Shulman: Bridging The Gap Between The Academic And Policymaking Worlds And Building Transnational Communities, Cynthia A. Roberts

Publications and Research

This essay examines Marshall D. Shulman’s legacy as a scholar of Soviet foreign policy, a scholar-practitioner who moved between academic and policymaking worlds, and a builder of transnational expert communities. It highlights Shulman’s early challenge to essentialist interpretations of Soviet foreign policy, his conception of the U.S.-Soviet relationship as a “limited adversary relationship,” and his emphasis on managing nuclear competition while avoiding catastrophic war. The essay also traces Shulman’s role in arms control, Track II diplomacy, scientific and expert exchanges, and the development of Russian and Soviet studies at Columbia University. Drawing on the author’s experience as Shulman’s student and …

Introduction To The Jervis Forum Roundtable Of Review Essays On Mark Kramer, The Fate Of The Soviet Bloc’S Military Alliance: Reform, Adaptation, And Collapse Of The Warsaw Pact, 1985–1991, Cynthia A. Roberts

Publications and Research

This introduction frames a Jervis Forum roundtable of review essays on Mark Kramer’s study of the final years of the Warsaw Pact and situates the book within broader scholarship on the end of the Cold War. It examines Kramer’s archivally- grounded argument that the alliance’s collapse was not predetermined but followed from a consequential Soviet policy shift under Mikhail Gorbachev, particularly the decision to renounce military intervention to preserve communist regimes in Eastern Europe. This introduction considers changes in Soviet military doctrine, civil-military relations, arms-control priorities, and Moscow’s effort to transform rather than abolish the alliance. It also situates Kramer’s …

From Seapower To Shining Seapower, Michael Lee

Publications and Research

The liberal world order is dead: the United States has abandoned both the domestic and international institutional commitments that enabled it to function. How can liberal democracy survive in an increasingly hostile world? How can liberal democracies grow powerful enough to defend themselves without becoming the empires they fear? I argue that seapowers have historically represented a distinct kind of hegemon, that is more amenable to international cooperation, and democracy at home. Moreover, the transition from declining seapowers to rising ones has played a vital role in preserving a space for more liberal states (relative to their historical context), such …

Giving Voice To The Frames Of War: A Digital Humanities Framework For Evaluating War Crimes Databases, Leila Markosian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Developments in digital technologies have complicated existing debates around the ethics of cataloging war crimes and human rights violations. Digital humanities methods of evaluating digital scholarship can help to construct a framework for evaluating war crimes databases, a process which requires a fine-tuned critical analysis aimed towards understanding the purpose of compiling the database, the platform or media template through which the database is presented, and the communicative potentials of the database. The following paper presents a survey of the existing literature on war crime databases and the politics of memory; a model of how war crimes database analyses may …

Transitional Justice And Counter-Productivity: A Case Study Of Serbia And Croatia, Michael F. Curry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the post-Cold War era, transitional justice emerged as a method to reconcile societies that had suffered large-scale human rights abuses through autocratic oppression and/or intra-state conflicts. During this time, the concept of what transitional justice meant and what problems it could resolve expanded exponentially. However, the empirical results of such initiatives have been mixed. Many states subject to transitional justice initiatives have failed to liberalize or develop domestic governance capacities. Why do transitional justice initiatives fail even under the most favorable conditions?

The most common answer to this question is that these initiatives are often ineffective, hindered by a …

Processing Of Diphthongs By Turkish English Bilinguals: An Erp Study, Ecem Kopuz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines how native phonological experience influences the brain’s response to speech sounds in Turkish-English late bilinguals and English monolinguals. We asked whether neural responses reflecting encoding of auditory information would be sensitive to language specific experience. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), and specifically, the Acoustic Change Complex (ACC) we measured neural responses to four stimuli, /u/, /ua/, /iu/, and /ia/, where vowel quality changes for three of these. A change from /u/ to /a/ or /i/ to /a/ within a syllable (as in [ua] and [ia]) represents a clear vowel quality shift. All participants were expected to show sensitivity …

Asia In World Politics Syllabus, Muhammad S. Kabir

Open Educational Resources

The continent of Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. The continent also hosts some of the oldest interstate conflicts, ranging from disputed borders to nuclear proliferation. This course examines the sources of insecurity and conflict in Asia. The course focuses on several interstate and regional conflicts: the Kashmir Conflict between India and Pakistan, nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula, the South China dispute, and the China-Taiwan relations. Although some of these disputes remain latent as of now, they have the potential to turn into outright regional wars with catastrophic consequences for the region and potentially for …

The Invisible Hand Of Networked Repression, Thuy Anh Tran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

U.S. history is awash with contentious episodes involving a legion of governmental and non-governmental actors operating through an array of means and arenas to destroy the political opposition. Yet, there has been little systematic examination in the repression literature of how and why repressive efforts proliferate so far beyond the police, military, and intelligence agencies tasked and equipped to preserve the existing order. This dissertation presents a novel framework for studying the relational basis of repression—particularly as it is organized, mobilized, and extended through a networked social structure. Social network analysis and interpretive case studies are conducted on two historical …

An Analysis Of The Russo-Ukrainian War, Daniel Braslavsky

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is a deep analysis of Russia’s aggression against and full-scale invasion of Ukraine, commonly referred to as the Russo-Ukrainian War. This is the largest conflict in Europe since WWII with devastating implications for Europe and the world. First it examines the root causes and political ideologies at play to understand why Vladimir Putin decided to launch his invasion in the first place. Then it puts together a chronological history of the war broken up into the post-Euromaidan period including the Russian annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas (2014-22), and Russia’s full-scale invasion (2022-present). Next it reviews …

Soviet-American Relations During The Cold War: What Policies And Circumstances Conspired To Unravel The Soviet Empire?, John W. Krey

Dissertations and Theses

The two victorious superpowers of World War II – America and the Soviet Union – conceived and implemented unilateral foreign policies amid an atmosphere of intense hostility and suspicion of each other’s international intentions. Regardless of Moscow’s acquiescence in joining the United Nations and resolving a host of disputes (for example, the Security Council veto) regarding the establishment and operation of the same organization, it threatened to disequilibrate power relations between the US and the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, which convinced Washington to develop the containment policy, a defensive realist posture for repelling …

Anti-Discrimination Clauses In Higher Education Collective Bargaining Agreements, William A. Herbert, Erin Ward, Karen Stubaus

Publications and Research

This report presents excerpts from 30 current or recent higher education collective bargaining agreements involving faculty, post-doctoral scholars, or graduate student employees along with hyperlinks to the full agreements. The excerpts are organized by institution and bargaining unit type: combined faculty collective bargaining units; non-tenure track faculty bargaining units; community college faculty bargaining units; post-doctoral scholar and academic researcher bargaining units; and graduate student employee bargaining units.

2024 Directory Of Bargaining Agents And Contracts In Institutions Of Higher Education, William A. Herbert, Jacob Apkarian, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

The 2024 Directory of Bargaining Agents and Contracts in Institutions of Higher Education includes data and analysis regarding 902 collective bargaining relationships in higher education through January 1, 2024 involving tenured and tenure eligible faculty, non-tenure track faculty, department chairs, administrators, postdoctoral scholars, and academic researchers and graduate and undergraduate student employees at public and private non-profit institutions.

Winning The War While Losing Their Souls: The Crisis Of Honor And Discipline Within The French Army In Algeria, Thomas A. Schellhammer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1939 to 1962, the French military fought in continuous conflicts. In 1961, in the midst of the Algerian War, these wars would result in military coup attempts and mutiny, as well as the formation of a breakaway terrorist group of army officers known as the Organisation de l’Armée Secrete (OAS), dedicated to the political overthrow and assassination of President of France Charles de Gaulle. While both the insurrectionists and the OAS and its adherents were ultimately unsuccessful, for members of a stable, functioning military to even contemplate such dire political action, these events illustrated a profound breach of military …

Future Land, Futures Lost: Planning The Crisis On The Louisiana Coast, Sheehan Moore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

South Louisiana is rapidly losing coastal land to the combined forces of subsidence, sea-level rise, and worsening storms, accelerated by the effects of flood control engineering and extractive industrial development. With erosion threatening homes and industry alike, the state has marshaled a response on a massive economic and geographic scale: its Coastal Master Plan recommends $50 billion in river sediment diversions, barrier island restoration, and other projects over fifty years. This dissertation is about the emergence of Louisiana’s coast as a place from this knot of human and environmental relations, as an object for governance and a container for political …

Spending The Peace Dividend: Nato And The Failures Of American Diplomacy, Caleb Batman

Theses and Dissertations

Recent years have seen a massive increase in available resources pertaining to US-Russian diplomacy in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Using these newly available resources including diplomatic cables, declassified transcripts, and personal correspondence between President Clinton of the United States and President Yeltsin of the Russian Federation the author attempts to illustrate how the White House missed a chance for reconciliation with Russia during the first Clinton term. Additionally, this paper illustrates how it was not merely bad diplomacy that led to a resumption of Cold War hostilities, but willful policy in Washington that sought …

Genere E L’Identità Femminile In Ariosto E Castiglione, Patricia Stumpp

Theses and Dissertations

A discussion of the attitude toward women expressed in Orlando Furioso and The Book of the Courtier seen through an historical and cultural lens. Included is an English translation of portions of Cantos 9 and 10 of Orlando Furioso important in the development of the character of Olimpia.

Discourse Analysis Of Ethnonyms For Black Italians On Youtube, Kaithlyn Massiah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There have been various studies on the intersection of race and national identity for the African diaspora, but there has not been many on how language is used to evoke a stance on identity. This project focuses on the how ethnonyms, or names given to an ethnic group, are assigned to Black Italians in online discourse on YouTube. In this research, comments were analyzed from two YouTube videos that comprise of Black Italians who discuss their identity and the ethnonyms they prefer. ZERO is the first Netflix Italian series that centers the Black Italian experience. In the videos “Black [Italian] …

Analysis Of Victim/Villain Narratives Presented Under Genocide And Ethnic Cleansing Frameworks: The Kosovo Case, Kristi Allaj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The small country of Kosovo has been a point of contestation in the Western Balkans for decades. In that regard, the country has divided the two main feuding groups into Albanians and Serbians, who contemporarily showcase intense ethnic rivalries. The 1998-1999 conflict impacted the region's demographics, the international community's normative changes, and the contemporary policies of the now-independent country. The Kosovo War is often attributed to ethnic tensions and the rise of nationalism. At the same time, the NATO intervention that created a series of dissenting opinions is pinned on the humanitarian crisis. All notions that stand. This thesis aims …

The Challenges Of Decoding Russian Coercion, Cynthia A. Roberts

Publications and Research

This review essay critically examines cultural explanations of deterrence and coercion, focusing on Dmitry Adamsky’s The Russian Way of Deterrence as the most important recent effort to explain Russian strategic behavior through the lens of strategic culture. While recognizing the book’s considerable strengths in describing Russian concepts, terminology, and practices of deterrence and coercion, the essay questions how much explanatory leverage culture actually provides. It argues that cultural approaches risk over-complexifying the Russian case while under-specifying causal relationships, and asks why distinctive strategic cultures do not produce greater variation in coercive behavior and outcomes. The essay contrasts cultural interpretation with …

Explaining The U.S Failure In Afghanistan, Edwar Ramirez

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis offers a comprehensive analysis of the trajectory of U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan spanning multiple administrations from Obama to Biden, contextualizing it within broader shifts in American interventionism since the Cold War. An examination of the Obama, Trump, and Biden eras, delineates the complexities of military interventions, nation-building endeavors, the limitations of incrementalism in addressing the multifaceted challenges of conflict resolution, and the challenges of maintaining stability in conflict regions while avoiding prolonged military engagements. Ultimately, it advocates for a comprehensive and more flexible approach to foreign policy, balancing idealistic aspirations with pragmatic considerations to safeguard national interests, …

America’S Enabler: How Colson Whitehead’S The Underground Railroad Contributes To Racial Inertia, Cherif Ba

Dissertations and Theses

Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad was met with near universal acclaim and enjoys regard as an important work which illustrates the difficulty and horror that was black life under chattel slavery. This essay argues that despite the work’s stated purpose, its ultimate, if unintended effect is to reify the current racial hierarchy. Drawing primarily from current events and an Afropessimist framework, I attempt to illustrate how this work, and others like it, occupy a specific space in the cultural zeitgeist bent to a specific purpose: obfuscating contemporary liberalism’s current transgressions from its past ones and maintaining a social stratum with …

Audible Futures: Scenes Of Sonic Encounter In Cold War Kurdistan, 1923–2023, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a century of cultural politics in Kurdistan, from 1923 to 2023, and it does so from a relatively marginal vantage point in most histories of Kurdistan: that of the Soviet Caucasus. It takes as its primary object the cultural and political itineraries of sonic media and listening in Kurdistan, from Soviet Kurdish radio broadcasting and pirated cassettes to postsocialist archives, DJ booths, and streaming music. These itineraries map not only the emergence and circulation of Kurdish notions of tradition, heritage, and cultural memory, but also the methods of counterinsurgency deployed by the states that occupy Kurdistan. In …

Rewiring The Spokes: The Future Of U.S. Bilateralism In Asia, Gian Marc Lombardo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the end of WWII, multilateralism has consistently grown as the go-to alliance structure for the United States. Despite this, the U.S. opted to create a series of bilateral alliances after WWII in Asia, dubbed the Hub-and-Spokes system. This alliance system has not only sustained itself, but also continues to fortify itself in the face of a rising threat in Asia. China has increased its assertiveness and has shifted the balance of threat in the region, while also being the primary economic and development option for regional states. This major change in the structure of Asian power has surfaced the …

Navigating Through World’S Military Spending Data With Scroll-Event Driven Visualization, Hong Beom Hur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Catching up with the current geopolitical event is more important than ever these days. Anti-western nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea constantly challenge the world order set by the United States and its close allies. As a result, the world has seen a rise in military spending consecutively for the last several years. This data visualization project aims to provide an easy-to-read summary of military spending data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for hotly conflicted regions: East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Scroll-event-driven visualization implemented using Scrollama.js and D3.js combines text, map, and data …

Numbered, Weighed, Divided: Revolution And/As Apocalypse In The Modern Liberal Tradition, Asher J. Wycoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A long-standing political-theological critique contends that liberalism lacks the capacity to address theological challenges, and qualitative political challenges more generally. This charge is prevalent in our current age of crises, when the capacity to address such challenges is essential to any political tradition’s self-legitimation. I argue that the liberal tradition, broadly conceived, has long contended with theological challenges, particularly during modern revolutionary periods. Theological discourses, especially eschatological ones, circulate widely in these moments. Modern political actors impute cosmic significance to the events of their present, with a central analogy crystallizing between revolution and apocalypse. Reading major theorists of three modern …