International and Area Studies Commons^™

Why Democracies And Autocracies Go To War: Comparing The Cases Of Iraq And Ukraine, Ketevan Chincharadze

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

History shows that both democratic and nondemocratic countries wage wars to advance their strategic interests. This study has comparatively analyzed two conflicts – the 2003-2011 U.S. invasion of Iraq and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine – to identify the trends that motivate both democratic and autocratic leaders to behave similarly by launching an invasion. The interpretive research of various memoirs, books, interviews, academic articles, news reports, and speeches, has uncovered that personal biases, particularly confirmation biases, play a significant role in motivating leaders to start a war. Leaders’ confirmation biases are often shaped by three prominent factors – historical memory, …

U.S. Democratization In Post-Cold War Russia: A Critique, Franklin T. Hughes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

States are path dependent entities that deviate solely in the face of catastrophic failures in the pursuit of axiomatic ends by conventional means. The inertia of bureaucratic institutions, a foreign policy consensus within a self-reproducing elite of experts, the self-interest of political elites and a sense of “national self” or identity lead states to understand themselves in light of a history and a relative level of status on the world stage. Since the end World War II, the U.S. has a certain path that places the spread of democracy and laissez-faire capitalism extremely important if not vital foreign policy goals. …

Strategic Competition And Escalation Management In The 21st Century: Russian Hybrid Warfare And China’S Rise, Raymond L. Reilly Iii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) and the unclassified version of the U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS) both focus on China and Russia as preeminent challenges for the United States. The NDS states specifically, “Long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities for the Department [of Defense].”¹ This paper focuses on the strategic challenges that these two nations pose and provides recommendations for U.S. strategy and policy. Globalization and the rapid advancement of technology has changed the utility of force in the 21st century. The utility of force has evolved, resulting in a shift in the …

The Foundations Of Aleksandr Dugin's Geopolitics: Montage Fascism And Eurasianism As Blowback, Grant Scott Fellows

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of Aleksandr Dugin's The Foundations of Geopolitics, of which I have translated important sections into English and these are included as an appendix. Despite the importance of Foundations of Geopolitics to Russian strategic thought there has not been a translated edition published in English. This work was published in 1997 and has been quite influential for Russian political and military leadership. I strive to provide context for the setting in which Foundations of Geopolitics was created through an analysis of the social and political conditions that existed in Russia while the text was being …

Communism's Futures: Intelligentsia Imaginations In The Writings Of The Strugatsky Brothers, Elizabeth Tammaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were the most popular science fiction writing duo in Soviet Russia from the 1960s through the 1980s. Examining their imaginative fictional worlds against the background of wider changes in the Soviet Union allows scholars to gain insights in the world of the Soviet intelligentsia, the educated bearers of culture. As members of this group, the Strugatskys expressed the hopes, frustrations and fears, of their peers, vindicating their intellectual and emotional life. I support the argument that the Brothers occupied a middle ground between conformity and dissident, dubbed the "lost" intelligentsia by Lloyd Churchward. I demonstrate this …

Russian Foreign Policy In The Middle East: Priorities And Effectiveness, Brett A. Schneider

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes contemporary Russian Foreign Policy toward the Middle East. Six factors are identified as most critical to Russian foreign policy in the region: Islamic terrorism, arms transfers, natural resources, influence over former Soviet Spaces, general trade, and great power status. With rare exceptions, these principles are shown to guide Russian foreign policy in the Middle East since 2000.

The paper continues by considering the effectiveness of Russia in achieving its desired policy outcomes in the Middle East. This includes assessing situations in which two or more priorities run counter to each other. Generally, Russia is shown to be …