Defense and Security Studies Commons^™

The Future Of Human Trafficking Legislation: A Policy Analysis, Zoe E. Hunt

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Current legislation and policies are not effective enough to fight human trafficking as it continues to change and evolve worldwide. Human trafficking is not just sex trafficking; labor trafficking, organ trafficking, people smuggling, and forced criminal activities. This evolving and changing global issue continues to grow into a highly profitable "business." Overseas, many countries struggle to handle this issue, and some countries do not handle it at all. The United States has a major human trafficking problem that will continue to worsen unless there is a change in the government. The U.S. Congress should be more focused on the growing …

Arming Zambia In The “Dark Forest Of International Politics”: Kenneth Kaunda, Britain, And Arms Diplomacy, 1963-1971, Jeff Schauer

Zambia Social Science Journal

From the breakup of the Central African Federation in 1963 until the departure of British officers and trainers in the early 1970s, Kenneth Kaunda led the Zambian government in negotiating arms purchases from British arms manufacturers, with the assistance of the British government. These transactions were intimately connected to security guarantees against Rhodesian aggression that Kaunda negotiated with the former colonial power, and British attempts to foster Zambian foreign policy and technological dependency. While this decade of negotiations had its origins in the contentious local distribution of military resources at the end of Federation, by the time it ended, it …

Security Analysis: A Critical Thinking Approach, Michael W. Collier

EKUOPEN: Open Textbooks

Security Analysis: A Critical-Thinking Approach is for anyone desiring to learn techniques for generating the best answers to complex questions and best solutions to complex problems. It furnishes current and future analysts in national security, homeland security, law enforcement, and corporate security an alternative, comprehensive process for conducting both intelligence analysis and policy analysis. The target audience is upper-division undergraduate students and new graduate students, along with entry-level practitioner trainees. The book centers on a Security Analysis Critical-Thinking Framework that synthesizes critical-thinking and existing analytic techniques. Ample examples are provided to assist readers in comprehending the material. Newly created material …

Guide To The Ageing Of Explosive Ordnance In The Environment, Geneva International Centre For Humanitarian Demining

Global CWD Repository

The aim of this guide is to give an overview of what is currently known about the ageing of explosive ordnance and the changes in risk that this presents to EOD operators. Analysis of ageing requires internal examination of the ordnance, a highly technical process sometimes referred to as ‘exploitation’. A brief introduction to exploitation is given in Chapter 1. Different explosive ordnance with differing designs have different predispositions to ageing; this is explained in Chapter 2. How various environmental factors affect the components of explosive ordnance is covered in Chapter 3, more specific changes are detailed in Chapter 4. …

The Vilnius Summit: A Platform For Female Leadership And Flexibility In Europe's Security Infrastructure, Amber Brittain-Hale, Amber Brittain-Hale

Education Division Scholarship

This paper examines the strategic evolution of Europe’s security framework in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War and the concluded Vilnius Summit — a critical juncture, with the possibility of selecting a new Secretary General. Among the nominees was Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s Prime Minister, whose innovative vision advocated a departure from traditional models. Kallas promoted a more inclusive and flexible NATO membership structure, more active and robust support for Ukraine against Russian aggression, increased roles for women in security architecture and policymaking, and the utilisation of public diplomacy and strategic communication in novel ways. The summit culminated in the reappointment …

Leadership And Military Power – Can A Leadership Approach Provide A Competitive Advantage?, Lawrence E. Skelly Iii

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Leadership and Military Power – Can a Leadership Approach Provide a Competitive Advantage? When does a military commander's leadership approach give his or her unit a performance advantage? U.S. Army senior leaders have asserted that forces led using the mission command approach will have an edge in future combat. Mission command decentralizes decision-making to empower subordinates to react more successfully and seize battlefield opportunities. American forces have struggled to employ mission command partly because of a lack of understanding of the approach. This study applied two concepts from organizational psychology, empowering leadership and directive leadership, to better define and examine …

Wooing “Willing Dupes”: The Bush Administration’S Use Of Emotional Language In The Drive Toward War With Iraq, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

The publicly available texts of the George W. Bush administration from September 11, 2001, to March 19, 2003, as presented in The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, were analyzed for word frequency and the words themselves analyzed for emotional weight using the NRC Emotion Intensity Lexicon. Transcripts of six television news agencies (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, and PBS) were also analyzed for word frequency to determine the extent to which these agencies may have repeated and consequently amplified the rhetoric of the administration. Public opinion polling for this same period was examined in an …

Climate Security Insights From The Covid-19 Response, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The climate change crisis and COVID-19 crisis are both complex collective action problems. Neither the coronavirus nor greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions respect political borders. Both impose an opportunity cost that penalizes inaction. They are also increasingly understood as nontraditional, novel security threats. Indeed, COVID-19’s human cost is staggering, with American lives lost vastly exceeding those lost in recent armed conflicts. And climate change is both a threat accelerant and a catalyst for conflict—a characterization reinforced in several climate-security reports. To counter COVID-19, the President embraced martial language, stating that he will employ a “wartime footing” to “defeat the virus.” Perhaps …

A Hollow Victory And Unending Problem: The Undying Anti-Russian Insurgency In Ukraine, Abraham Ashley

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to: (1) explore the base causes of insurgency in Ukraine, (2) examine the historical basis for Ukrainian insurgency, (3) provide historical examples of successful and unsuccessful insurgencies to contrast against Ukraine, and (4) provide recommendations for NATO and Ukrainian policy. Collectively, this project demonstrates that current Russian counterinsurgency tactics will not be successful without significant adjustment. This Ukrainian insurgency may also derail the possibility of peace in the region.

Nuclear Weapons In Japanese Strategic Culture, Logan Joseph Douglas Campbell

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Acquiring nuclear weapons of its own has been inconsistent with Japan’s post-Cold War strategic culture, which is heavily based on an identity and associated norms grounded in nuclear pacifism. However, Japan’s strategic culture has been evolving with changing threat perceptions, eroding international nuclear nonproliferation norms, and declining confidence in US security guarantees. As Japan’s strategic culture shifts towards a more pragmatic interpretation of its national interests, acquiring nuclear weapons may become a more easily legitimized option, one that would be entirely consistent with a remilitarized strategic culture. Scholarship on Japanese strategic culture is vast but lacks a strategic culture explanation …

Thawing Interests: The Arctic In U.S. Grand Strategy, Benjamin S. Murray

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The thawing Arctic is subject to increasing activity, attention, and a renewal of interests in the region from around the globe. National interests have compelled strategic planning in the Arctic region and are connected to global geopolitics. A concept of grand strategy is distilled from theories of past authors, understood within the modern context. That concept includes a terminological framework consisting of interests and threats to inform an ends, ways, and means design of strategy, composed of all instruments of state power, blending policy with strategy, and across the peace-war continuum. Then fundamental precepts of existing U.S. grand strategy are …

The Higher Education Risk To National Security: A Case Study Of The University Of Akron, Anna Back

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

There are numerous threats to U.S. National Security within higher education. Through this paper, I will provide an analysis of current and future threats using a literature review and informational interviewing. The literature review revealed four major National Security threats facing higher education institutions due to Foreign Intelligence Entities (FIE): foreign recruitment of faculty and students, increase in foreign students and screening difficulties, campus openness/easy access to facilities and information, and foreign funding for research. A set of informational interviews were conducted with The University of Akron faculty, employees, and partners to evaluate whether these same threats were present. The …

Unscr 1325 Did Not Help Women, Peace, Or Security In Afghanistan: The Role Of Militarism And Hegemonic Masculinity In International Security, Sawyer Bannister

CMC Senior Theses

This paper argues that UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security exemplifies how the international security system is constructed in a way that not only preserves militarism and hegemonic masculinity, but further perpetuates gendered power disparities and exacerbates human insecurity. In this pursuit, this paper develops a theoretical framework of radical feminism to illustrate how the international arena embodies militarized hegemonic masculinity and how this power paradigm fundamentally inhibits international security organizations from successfully addressing gender issues. Additionally, this paper utilizes a case study of UNSCR 1325 and WPS implementation in Afghanistan to reveal how when international security organizations attempt …

United States Policy To Undermine Iran’S Regional And Global Strategy, William Stewart

CMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to understand the way in which Iran uses proxy groups to implement its regional foreign policy strategy while increasing relationships with foreign actors to implement its global foreign policy strategy. I will dive into the intricacies of Iran’s strategy on a country-by-country basis while outlining the goals of the regime. I will analyze the way in which the United States has dealt with Iran and its proxy groups in the past as well as provide suggestions on the steps the Biden administration and the United States as a whole must implement in order to contain Iran’s influence …

Identifying The Main Causes For Support Of Crime Control Theater Forms, And Understanding How To Correct The Public’S Perception, Erisjames M. Elliott

CMC Senior Theses

Much research has been completed on the forms of crime control theater (CCT), and the impact that the existence of CCT laws have on society. Research on CCT laws has shown that they are definitively unsuccessful in providing the safety they were created to provide. This thesis will utilize completed research to explain the main psychological phenomena holding people back from decreasing their support for CCT laws. It will also describe proven methods of correcting misinformation in order to change the perceptions of people who support crime control theater laws, and provide suggestions for how research should be continued.

Implications For Defense Strategy Stemming From Geopolitical Transformation Fueled By Climate Change, Steven R. Burrows

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Climate change has quickly become one of the most globally significant geopolitical issues facing all of humanity. Left unfettered, climate change is poised to impact nearly every facet of our environment ranging from increasingly dangerous and damaging storms, rising sea levels, increasingly extensive droughts to glacial melting, loss of arctic sea ice and a myriad of other catastrophic events. While still evolving, the current identified environmental threats will initiate long standing impacts not only to the environment, but to the global geopolitical and security climate of nearly every nation on the Earth. This project will not provide a synthesis of …

Continuity And Contrast In The Strategic Theories Of Four Classic Strategic Thinkers: Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Machiavelli, And Clausewitz, Morteza Safari

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The purpose of this research paper is to examine the thinking of four classic strategic theorists, namely Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Carl von Clausewitz, and explore continuity and contrast in their strategic theories. In doing so, this author has structured the paper based on the fundamental architecture of strategy, that is, ends, ways and means. Since the paper specifically addresses military strategy, it first investigates what the ideas of the four theorists are on war as the military means. Then, the paper will explore the theorists’ thoughts on different strategic approaches as ways. Then, the essay will delve …

S-400s, Disinformation, And Anti-American Sentiment In Turkey, Russell "Alex" Korb, Saltuk Karahan, Gowri Prathap, Ekrem Kaya, Luke Palmieri, Hamdi Kavak, Richard L. Wilson (Ed.), Major Brendan Curran (Ed.)

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

As social and political discourse in most countries becomes more polarized, anti-Americanism has risen not only in the Middle East and Latin America but also among the U.S. allies in Europe. Social media is one platform used to disseminate anti-American views in NATO countries, and its effectiveness can be magnified when mass media, public officials, and popular figures adopt these views. Disinformation, in particular, has gained recognition as a cybersecurity issue from 2016 onward, but disinformation can be manufactured domestically in addition to being part of a foreign influence campaign. In this paper, we analyze Turkish tweets using sentiment analysis …

Racialization And International Security, Richard W. Maass

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Racialization—the processes that infuse social and political phenomena with racial identities and implications—is an assertion of power, a claim of purportedly inherent differences that has saturated modern diplomacy, order, and violence. Despite the field's consistent interest in power, international security studies in the United States largely omitted racial dynamics from decades of debates about international conflict and cooperation, nuclear proliferation, power transitions, unipolarity, civil wars, terrorism, international order, grand strategy, and other subjects. A new framework lays conceptual bedrock, links relevant literatures to major research agendas in international security, cultivates interdisciplinary dialogues, and charts promising paths to consider how overt …

Finnish Response To Nato - Views From The Evangelical Lutheran Church And Christians In Finnish Politics, Miro Leporanta

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Excerpt:

Finland placed an application for NATO in May of 2022, together with Sweden, with whom Finland’s foreign policy goals had been aligned for years.

Finnish Christianity and Finnish Churches have offered a variety of responses to the end of Finland’s non-military alignment. Of historical institutions in Finland, the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (hereafter FELC) has a prominent social influence and is regarded as an institution that represents that country's values. This applies to Finnish defense policy as well. The church is a prominent player in the Finnish army and conscript service. On the FELC website, the Church states that: …

A Qualitative Study Of Understanding Female Navy Veterans’ Experiences With Representation And Inclusion In The U.S. Military, Antwanisha K. Williamson

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Research about women in the military helps to address the ongoing concerns about the lack of inclusion of female perspectives, which contributes to oppressive power dynamics and lack of women’s representation in practice, policy, and procedures. The problem this dissertation addressed is the lack of representation and inclusion of female perspectives regarding power and privilege that affect military practices, policies, and procedures. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand female Navy veterans’ experiences with representation and inclusion in military practices, policies, and procedures. Applying a larger conceptual framing using radical feminism, liberal feminism, and critical theory helped to …

Armed And Unarmed Drone Perception In Conflict Zones, Nazish Chunara

Student Works

Regions across the globe that are impacted by conflict are often the recipients of both armed and unarmed drones. These dual-use systems blur the boundary between military and civilian objectives. The goal of this literature review is to understand the scope of research conducted in conflict zones from the perspective of the civilian. Civilian includes resident, visitor, and worker. A gap in the available literature has been identified within the context of dual-use systems, conflict zones, and the civilian perspective.

Changing Tides: Online Conspiracy Theory Use By Radical Violent Extremist Groups Over Time, William J. Eames Iii

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Radical violent extremist terrorism is a global issue that has existed for centuries and has been the cause of millions of deaths. Extremist organizations have learned to adapt and survive attempts at legal/military interdictions. One possible major element that allows for the survival of these radicalized organizations is the use of conspiracy theories within their online messages that are used to radicalize and recruit members to their cause. These conspiracy theories tend to elicit two types of messages: a quest for significance or a loss of significance. This study aims to observe how extremist organizations utilize conspiracy theories in their …

Security Investigations: A Professional's Guide, Alan Saquella, Larry Nicholson

Publications

From the forward:

"Security Investigations A Professional’s Guide has been expertly crafted to equip both novices and experienced investigators with the essential knowledge and skill to excel in the field of investigations. Whether aiming for a career in law enforcement, private investigations, corporate security, or you are simply interested in unraveling mysteries, this book will serve as your ultimate companion on the journey to becoming a proficient investigator."

Chapters 1 and 2 are presented here.

Challenges And Measurements For Governance Of Modern Cyber Space Society, Pinghui Wang, Hongbin Pei, Junzhou Zhao, Tao Qin, Chao Shen, Dongliang Liu, Xiaohong Guan

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The rapid development of information technology has unprecedentedly created a prosperous cyber society and greatly enhanced productivity facilitated by social interaction. At the same time, many problems emerge in the cyber society, such as telecom fraud, privacy leakage, Internet pollution, and algorithmic discrimination. The problems bring new challenges to social order and security. In order to find the way of cyber society governance and promote the modernization of national governance, this paper first presents the analyses on the new problems encountered in the cyber society in three typical scenarios, i.e., identity governance, behavior governance, and algorithm governance, as well as …

Progress In Chaos: Cash Transfers And Women Economic Empowerment Amidst Climate Change And Violent Conflicts In West Africa, Jennifer Obado Joel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Do cash transfers shift gender norms of economic relations within households and communities during crises? This study explores the effect of social protection programs like cash transfers on women's economic empowerment in contexts where climate change and violent conflicts co-occur. Cash transfers have become a policy of choice for governments and development agencies seeking to alleviate poverty, address economic and political grievances, and build individual and community resilience to climate change. Due to the recent popularity of cash transfers, there needs to be more scholarship on its effect on women's intra-household economic agency and voice in communities. Therefore, this study …

The United States Military’S Role In Maintaining National Security During The Height Of The “War On Drugs”, Sara Terrien

Washington Semester Program

This paper will seek to answer the question: What understanding of national security justified the use of the United States military in the “War on Drugs,” launched by the Reagan administration in 1982? A secondary question that this paper will investigate is whether the definition of “national security” that was used contributed to the protection of American lives and interests. The approach that this paper will take is that the understanding of national security as “defense of the homeland” justified the use of the United States military in the “War on Drugs.” Moreover, the involvement of the United States military …

Countering Terrorism On Tomorrow’S Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security And Resiliency (Nato Coe-Dat Handbook 2), Sarah J. Lohmann, Lucas M. Cox, Denise Feldner, Trevor P. Helmy, Frank J. Kuzminski, Marcus Mohlin, Aleksander Olech, Wuraola Oyewusi, Gabriel T. Raicu, Silke Ruhl, Sabrina Schulz, Máté Tóth, Megan A. Ward

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

Every day, malicious actors target emerging technologies and medical resilience or seek to wreak havoc in the wake of disasters brought on by climate change, energy insecurity, and supply-chain disruptions. Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield is a handbook on how to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience in an era of emerging threats. The counterterrorism research produced for this volume is in alignment with NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept, which details how NATO Allies can transform and maintain their advantage despite new threats for the next two decades. The topics are rooted in NATO’s Seven Baseline requirements, which set the standard for enhancing …

Post Pandemic Cyberbiosecurity Threats From Terrorist Groups, Haley D. Dodge

Master's Theses

The research in this thesis explored the research question: Are United States (US) health systems accessible to cyber-bio terrorist attacks post-pandemic, within the context of the emerging discipline of cyberbiosecurity? Key findings of the analysis demonstrated how US health systems are more accessible to cyber-bio terrorist attacks specifically from cyber hacking groups based on the increasing sophistication of their cyber capabilities and the lack of cyber protection for biological systems. The concept of cyberbiosecurity was first introduced in 2018 by researchers exploring the converging threat landscape of the cyber and biology domains. As biology is growing more dependent upon vulnerable …

Exploring Change And Stability In Counterterrorism Policy, Prosecution, And Sentencing Of Terrorists In America Over The Last Three Decades In The United States, Georgianna Grace Bettis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of legislation changes on how terrorists are adjudicated in American federal courts. The overarching question is: how have prosecutorial and sentencing outcomes changed in response to homeland security policy shifts over the last few decades? The project examines the impact of policy on changes to terrorists’ sentencing in three time periods, marked by three major events: The 1993 World Trade Center Attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, and the attack on the Twin Towers (9/11/2001). In addition to terrorists’ demographic and background attributes (i.e., gender, age, terrorism category), the …