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The U.S. executive depends upon organized civil society to help set policy and facilitate its implementation. There are currently over one thousand authorized Federal Advisory Committees (FACs) in which such consultation takes place, including 160 that address matters of national security. FACs offer outside organizations, including business firms, voluntary associations, relief organizations, universities, and other private enterprises an important opportunity to exert influence over the direction of foreign policy. I argue that this influence primarily involves covertly helping the administration plan and execute a political strategy for securing consent to pursue a chosen policy. This paper offers an analysis of FAC appointments between 1997 and 2012, based on data published by the General Services Administration, which I have extended in several ways. It has three core empirical findings. First, consistent with the literature on the "two-presidencies" thesis, these data show that congressional involvement is much lower in national security FACs than in other policy domains. Second, these data show that association appointments increase for FACs addressing the most contentious geopolitical issues when the opposition has a more powerful, unified caucus in Congress. Third, association appointments increase when the president is popular among the public. This supports the proposition that interest group access improves when the executive needs help with its political strategy, to mobilize the public as a means to overcome an oppositional Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes and evaluates the emerging issue of rare earth elements (REEs) as a critical component of U.S. foreign policy and a potential source for international conflict. REEs are essential in the production of many high-tech and valuable products, from computers and telecommunications to military equipment and hybrid cars. REEs are in relative short supply for most countries in the world, and China holds a virtual monopoly, producing 97% of REEs. The situation is becoming increasingly sensitive to the U.S. and world as China rises up and becomes more competitive and a potential hostile power in the future. The U.S. government and corporations are declaring very publicly that there must be a major policy effort to obtain and secure large quantities of REEs for the long term. This paper examines the latest efforts by the U.S. to identify, extract, and protect REEs. It reviews briefly the history and basic characteristics of REEs and then brings everything up to date. It highlights the new public relations attempts at informing/warning the public about REEs. And, it analyzes the current trends and future expectations regarding REEs. The paper concludes with a number of policy recommendations and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of military forces abroad has been a major component of US grand strategy since the beginning of the Cold War. From providing security to the United States, its interests, and its allies, there are multiple reasons for maintaining forward deployments. It has been from this conict and economic perspective that the Field of international relations has typically approached the issue of military deployments. Beyond the work in political science, others have argued that the presence of American military personnel abroad creates a series of negative externalities that local communities suffer from. In this paper, we put some of these claims to the test by looking at the effect that military deployments have had on crime rates within the host state. More precisely, we examine whether or not US military deployments are significantly asso- ciated with higher levels of criminal activity across a large subset of possible crimes, including theft, physical and sexual assault, and murder. To that end, we employ cross-national crime statistics from the United Nations as well as recently collected data on US troop deployments to examine the impact that a US military presence has on a host country. Consequently, this paper contributes to a greater understanding of the impact that US military deployments, and US foreign policy more broadly, have had on other countries. By extension, this study will also enhance our understanding of the micro-level factors that might affect relationships between alliance partners by examining the roots of domestic opposition to a foreign military presence within a host country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research that taps into the biological basis of human cognitive potential has been active in the past decade. Outside of academia, multiple US government agencies, particularly the ones in security communities, also have rising interests in the research and development of cognitive neuroscience applications. In light of this, certain questions need to be investigated: why are the security communities interested in the research of cognitive sciences? What kinds of potential benefits and problems do the research and application of cognitive sciences bring? How do discoveries in cognitive science and neuroscience research relate to the way that human behaviors are theorized in politics and war? The advances in cognitive sciences and their security applications present complex problems, yet the definition of these problems continues to remain ambiguous. This paper explores the ways through which the emerging research and security applications in the cognitive sciences impact how one theorizes about politics and war. Particularly, by emphasizing the "human" element of armed conflicts, this paper shows that certain discoveries in cognitive sciences present potential challenges to some existing assumptions made about combatants in terms of human costs, soldier's morale, and cognitive autonomy. It is suggested that these assumptions have limited scope and utility in light of today's scientific progress and may need further consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colombia, the gateway to the continent of South America, plays a pivotal role in the world politics, insofar as natural resources, geopolitics and national conflicts. In this sense, not only does the world need to pay more attentions to Colombia, but is Colombia at the starting point to request active support to its neighbors on the globe. As will be seen, this paper indicates that how U.S. government recognizes Colombia as a strategic partner, hence, what kind of means and schemes are provided to Colombia by U.S. government, through the analysis of U.S. foreign policy towards Colombia. On top of that, this study gives answers to the questions that why US greatly concerns the Colombia issue and how US government formulates "Plan Colombia" strategies according to the background of US policy to Colombia. In details, this research analyzes that US shows four perceptions about Colombia when it comes to appropriation from 2000 to 2008 reported in "Plan Colombia: Drug Reduction Goals Were Not Fully Met, but Security Has Improved; U.S. Agencies Need More Detailed Plans for Reducing Assistance", US Government Accountability Office, October 2008. To this end, I will observe that how US appropriation 2000 through 2008 is allocated to Plan Colombia operations, moreover, explain that what plans US government agencies carry out under Plan Colombia. In addition, this paper goes on to say that each perception leads US government to set proper operations up with goals by presenting the political significance of Colombia in the American international relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the effect of the post Cold War structural change of the international system within the scope of security cooperation of Turkey with the United States. In this context, this article argues that the post Cold War period has influenced the security perceptions of Turkey and the US in different ways. In the new world order, American and Turkish national security policies have continued converging on many domains such as NATO enlargement, intervention to the Balkan crisis and energy security issues in the early 1990s. However, both counties clearly diverged in the 2003 Iraq Crisis and failed to co-ordinate their security policies against threats emanating from Iraq. Therefore, this paper suggests that the new international system has exclusively changed the scope of the Turkish-American strategic relations. In global and international settings, Turkey and the United States are successful in coordinating their efforts to tackle with the new threats towards security where they have however failed to settle some prevailing regional problems for Turkey such as the Kurdish issue in Iraq. In this context, this paper hereby introduces the "model partnership" coined by the President Obama, which has been a necessity for the Obama administration rather than a choice in order to continue cooperation with Turkey following the 2003 Iraq Crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few leaders worry about the status of their honor; they do worry, at times obsessively, about their credibility. The "credibility imperative" has occupied a central position in every major U.S. foreign policy debate in the last fifty years. It affects discourse and decisions in predictable - and deeply pathological - ways. This paper examines the continuing importance of honor in modern U.S. foreign policy. It first discusses the traditional importance of honor in international and interpersonal politics, and explains of the central role it plays in the construction of security in any system that lacks a central authority. Second, it describes the predictable, consistent effects that honor has on state behavior in general, and U.S. foreign policy in particular. Third, it argues that the lingering concern for honor is pathological, for a couple of reasons: There is no evidence that it helps states attain their goals, and it certainly has no relevance in those systems (like today's international) where no existential threats to member security exist. The paper then speculates about the genesis of the honor pathology, and why it continues to have such salience in the new century. Honor as a motivation for action seems as anachronistic today as horse-drawn carriages, alchemy and the duel. But it persists, if under different guises; and to the extent that it persists, it pathologizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will attempt to show that a strategy of flexible integration can be a superior alternative to other forms of statecraftâ€"especially on problems of self-determination which are at the center of many of the threats of terrorism, regional war, economic damage, loss of legitimacy, and nuclear proliferation that the U.S. now faces. Flexible integration refers to a way of making America secure by seeking to partially integrate select territories and/or countries whose real or potential conflicts threaten U.S. vital interests. In the past, the U.S. has helped induce various forms of integration between the territories of Europe; Germany; Bosnia; Northern Ireland; Sudan; and Iraq. In every case however the integration that results through this strategy involves two or more political communities that share and divide powers rather than one community becoming fully subordinate over another, as with the relations between an empire and a colony. This paper will proceed by (1) describing what flexible integration is, (2) deriving categories for comparison between competing forms of statecraft, and (3) explaining why flexible integration is a better alternative for the U.S. as compared to other American foreign policy strategies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observers as varied as Secretary of Defense Gates, academic analysts and presidential candidates have commented on the dysfunctional nature of the U.S. weapons acquisition process: massive cost overruns, performance shortfalls or complete program failure, and weaponry ill-suited to the national security challenges facing the United States. A similar debate occurred in the 1980s, followed by reforms to the process. This paper will analyze this previous debate, looking at specific reforms that were instituted. The paper will then examine the current criticisms of the weapons acquisition process, as well as specific examples of dysfunction, in order to evaluate the adequacy of the previous round of reform and to explain the persistent of major problems with the process. The paper will conclude with reflections concerning the possibility of new reforms in the acquisition process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the global health implications of security-oriented regulation of laboratory research on pathogenic micro-organisms. The challenge with such regulation, implemented to address government concerns about biological weapons use, is to maximise security benefits while minimising interference with legitimate scientific research conducted for therapeutic ends. The biotechnology sector performs basic research on infectious diseases, produces vaccines and other drugs, and instructs health professionals on how to use them. Too much biosecurity regulation might cripple commercial and academic enterprise in the life sciences and thereby diminish the ability of public health systemsâ??particularly their diagnostic and patient care elementsâ??to respond to an infectious disease outbreak. It may also hinder valuable international collaborations on addressing local and transnational infectious disease threats. On the other hand, the potential application of gene technology for offensive purposes highlights the powerful position held by scientists with access to pathogens and knowledge of what makes them dangerous. The paper compares biosecurity regulatory schemes in the United States and Australia, and offers more general observations about health and security trade-offs in a global context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'National Vision' of the Bush Administration with regard to homeland security aimed to 'prevent the entry of terrorists and the instruments of terror while facilitating the legal flow of people, goods, and services'. International implications of homeland security measures have resulted in the emergence of new class of foreign policy makers: Customs and Border Protection, Transportation Security Administration, and other units in the Department of Homeland Security whose exposure to international partners increased considerably. This paper challenges a reader to make a certain conceptual shift and look at homeland security as a foreign policy issue as well as the internal security one. The analysis of transatlantic homeland security progresses in two steps. First, it explores the post-September 11th development of homeland security cooperation between the US and the EU in order to identify challenges to the transatlantic governance of homeland security. Then, the attention is paid to internal challenges stemming from domestic politics on each side but also to external ones posed by the international environment and third parties. Issues under discussion in this paper include aviation security and customs cooperation which represent most impressive but at the same time most problematic dimension of the contemporary transatlantic homeland security cooperation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that dynamically developing border security policies of the European Union are influenced by transnational regulation originating from the United States. It shows that the process of transatlantic homeland security is increasingly taking place through network structures. The emergence of transatlantic networks and socialisation processes within them allowed for the US involvement in the EU policy-making. This is mostly due to growing personal relationships between policy makers, gradual substitution of formal legal instruments with psychological contracts, and informal understandings providing the contents for formal agreements. Consequently, the paper analyzes the implications of these developments, looks at still unresolved issues and proposes potential solutions. The empirical examples for this paper are derived in particular from the EU-U.S. cooperation on data protection in the context of homeland security. The networks under investigation include the High Level Political Dialogue on Border and Transportation Security and the High Level Dialogue on Data Protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the potential a dedicated deterrence strategy offers as part of a broader cyber-security strategy. The paper finds that a deterrence strategy can play some role in an overall cyber-security strategy when developed within specific guidelines and with carefully delineated thresholds. This examination is rooted in the work of Richard J. Harknett, Lawrence Freedman, John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, and Martin Libicki, as well as national security documents. Given the lack of theoretical and definitional rigor applied to the problem, the intent of this piece is to open a discussion of the varying strengths and weaknesses of offense-defense and deterrence approaches as they relate to the cyber realm, with a particular emphasis on the world's most cyber-capable and cyber-reliant power - the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom holds that governments matter. That a new government, particularly one of a different political party, will make substantial changes to the policies of the state they were elected to lead. The focus of this paper is on whether party affiliation matters in determining Canada's priorities and policies in its trade relationship with the United States (US). It will compare policy statements and performances of Liberal, Progressive Conservative, and Conservative governments from 1968 to the present and it will argue that party affiliation has had little impact on Canada's US trade policy over this period. The analysis will proceed in four parts. In the first part, the role of political parties in Canada will be outlined briefly. This will be followed by an overview of Canada's exports to the US. The third section of the paper will examine the economic priorities of Canadian governments concerning the US from 1968 to present as gleaned from major policy statements (e.g. white papers and speeches). The final part of the paper will set out some of the reasons why party affiliation has had little substantive impact on Canada's trade policy with the US over the last forty years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, Norwegian strategic culture has been about national defence, presupposing a close or special relationship with the United States. During the Cold War this was also the case in other small and medium sized European countries. The paper analyses the various types of US hegemonic power at work in Norway and how they are converted into influence over the specific content of Norwegian strategic culture and security policy, using a practice-based approach. Within IR theory, hegemony is generally understood as the power of one state to generate consent and support from other states through a combination of coercion, incentives and references to shared norms. In Norway, US influence is based on benevolent hegemony and ideational hegemony and institutionalized in bilateral military practices that have been developed over time. The paper argues that the reproduction of these practices in social structures is shaping Norwegian strategic culture. In principle, the lack of an immediate threat against Norway after 1991 could have loosened Norwegian-US ties and encouraged, firstly, a strategic culture more detached from territorial defense, and, secondly, a more European type of strategic culture. Though Norway participated in the US-led military operation in Afghanistan and had a military presence in post-war Iraq, these contributions were withdrawn in late 2005. To what extent does this indicate a breech away from a declining US hegemonic influence and a development towards a distinct Norwegian strategic post-Cold War strategic culture where the bilateral relationship is less central? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will assess the manifold efforts to securitize global environmental change (GEC) as security dangers and concerns for national and human security that poses a new survival dilemma for those who are highly socially vulnerable due to the impact of natural hydrome¬teo¬¬rological hazards whose number and intensity has increased and is predicted to grow further due to the anthropogenic climate change. In the U.S. nearly as many people died due to the impact of Hurricane Katrina in August 2006 as of the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001. But the perception of these two cases as security concerns has differed not only between many governments within NATO but also among the people in Europe and in North America. The securitization of GEC has fundamentally differed and prevented so far effective global counter measures to adapt to and mitigate against the consequences of this new security threat where the enemy is us: our production and consumption patters as well as ways of life. Climate change as a new human and national security danger and concern poses new global equity problems between those countries and people that have contributed most to GEC and the survival of those poor people â€" especially in the South â€" whose livelihood and survival is directly threatened and who lack the resources for counter measures. The key thesis of this paper is that the turn towards the anthropocene requires a fundamental reconcep¬tua¬lizing of security as a result of a multi-, inter- and transdiciplinary process where natural and social scientists cooperate contributing to an anticipatory learning to prevent that the business as usual scenarios on climate change become reality with all its impact on global security policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand and empirically analyse the neo-conservative project and its influence on US foreign policy and its 'new imperial' turn. The nature, evolution, and long-term implications of the post-9/11 shift in US foreign policy are addressed from a perspective stressing the interplay between structure and agency, and, crucially, incorporating an ideological dimension. With the help of Social Network Analysis a neo-conservative (two-mode) network is identified starting from affiliation with the neo-conservative advocacy group Project for A New American Century. On the basis of both qualitative and quantitative (yet relational) data it is analysed how this multileveled network, spanning the private institutional, governmental, and corporate/financial level, has influenced US post-9/11 foreign policy, with a focus on grand strategy and the global 'War on Terror'. Taking a transnational political economy perspective as a point of departure it is analysed to what extent this neo-conservative project can interpreted as a 'hegemonic project' understood as containing: a political formula and a geopolitical strategy and how this is related to the reigning (neoliberal) accumulation strategy. In this respect it is also explored to what extent and how the neo-conservative project can be related to the neo-liberal project and how it differs from, or implies a transformation of the neoliberal project. The paper ends with a theoretical reflection on how to interpret the empirical findings with respect to some key questions concerning the the dialectical relationship between the interstate system on the one hand and global capitalism on the other. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates threat information coordination between intelligence and law enforcement agencies and integrates a new piece to this complex relationship: the public. A common criticism after the attacks on 9/11 was how the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence blocked effective coordination of incoming intelligence information. As a result the focus of intelligence efforts is increasingly being directed inward - toward the American domestic population and - "downward" - toward regional and local initiatives. This paper looks at domestic intelligence activities in Los Angeles in order to investigate the role of the public in the changing relationship between civil liberties and security. Los Angeles is used as a starting point and exemplar for other national domestic intelligence activities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the intensification of anti-immigration measures in Minnesota, first, as effective performances of biopolitical statecraft, i.e., as speech-acts that produce local agents of "national security" whose role is to secure "American society" against the perceived threats posed by foreign bodies. Blurring the boundaries between war and law enforcement, these agents defend the body politic against the parasitic and insidious bodies of immigrants by mapping local spaces and communities (thereby rendering potentially hazardous bodies visible), by inoculating, weakening, or purging bodies deemed hazardous (e.g., through surveillance, incarceration, deportation, and killing, and by threatening all of these tactics), and by regulating the everyday lives of Minnesota residents. Secondly, the paper analyses these orders and orderings as effects of the nationalist or, more accurately, nation-statist backlash against the boundary-blurring movements and migrations animated by the post-nationalist economic logic of global capitalism. Drawing on Foucault's recently translated lectures, I argue that the resurgence of nationalist populism in Minnesota, and in the U.S. more broadly, restages a xenophobic, "neo-racist" fantasy. The new populist movement strives to domesticate the U.S. war machine in order to police and defend the borders, internal and external, of an imagined American nation. Finally, drawing on Derrida, Althusser, and Lacan, I demonstrate the ways in which anti-immigrant populism is fueled by failure, and particularly by the failure to realize the fantasy of ethno-national harmony through representational practices and physical violence. I argue that the "American nation" cannot be defended because, in the last analysis, it does not exist. It is anxiety stemming from its absence, I suggest, that fuels the productive activities of the police state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly it seeks to address the burgeoning literature developing on discourse analysis within the discipline of IR (Doty, 1996, Larsen, 1997, 1999, Milliken 1999, Fierke 1998, Campbell 1998, Hansen 2006). In particular, I turn to the relevance of this approach for conceptualising traditional agent-structure and self-other relations as dialectical. Theorising the relationship between identity and recognition will thus become imperative throughout the paper. Taking these finding as a starting point, the second section moves to outline patterns of continuity and change systematically introduced into the Bush administration’s foreign policy discourse since September 2001. Essentially I maintain that the democratic language constructed therein has created a legitimacy crisis for the US by exposing a glaring gap between its words and deeds. Using discourse analysis as a tool, the analysis offers an alternative angle from which to explain and understand the tension created by such inconsistencies. Harnessing this approach, moreover, provides a lens to observe how these variations have opened up the space for alternative interpretations of current US foreign policy objectives. In sum, I seek to illustrate how the concept of democracy has changed from a widely accepted term into a paradox that the Bush administration has had to defend within its ambitious foreign policy goals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ‘Homeland Security’ is becoming increasingly evident in the EU’s Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), which is defined as ‘the protection of a clearly defined territory of a political community from security threats’. However, this political community is still in the making in the European Union. Consequently, this policy-making area in the EU is characterised by the most complex of decision-making procedures. This paper argues that these institutional arrangements are not just an expression of the national sovereignty of member states. They are also an expression of the aforementioned political process attempting to construct a ‘homeland’ for different political communities by ensuring their security from external security threats. Firstly, it will argue that it is vital to analyse actor behaviour in the process of ‘constructing security threats’. Secondly, however, despite the importance of member states in the European Union, institutional actors such as the European Commission or the Council Secretariat are increasingly gaining in importance. This paper argues that institutional actors have been vital in the construction of a ‘European Homeland Security’ area. Since September 11, the first and foremost security threat to enable the construction of a ‘European Homeland’ has been terrorism. It is argued that the construction of this ‘security threat’ has been utilised by EU institutions in order to establish the creation and the securing of a ‘European Homeland’, which ultimately drove forward the process of European integration. This can be observed empirically in counter-terrorism policy within the EU, as well as in transatlantic cooperation with the US on this matter. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) has undergone several reforms since its inception in 1947. The IC generally undergoes fundamental change in reaction to perceived intelligence failures. Thus, it is not surprising that there is a large amount of scholarly literature on intelligence failures and reform proposals. This literature focuses mainly on internal organization, cultural, and leadership deficiencies. However, the literature has yet to incorporate insights about the beliefs and reasoning processes of the IC into their arguments. This is problematic given that cognitions, which are beliefs and reasoning processes, underlie all political behavior. The purpose of this paper is to help remedy this by positing and testing a cognitive theory of IC behavior. I argue that by incorporating the worldview of U.S. intelligence into research on intelligence failures and reform proposals, we will better understand the limits of reform in general. This is because the cognitions that the IC holds about world politics are partly responsible for shaping its identity. Moreover, its identity is meant to help satisfy these beliefs. I utilize the operational code construct to measure the IC’s worldview and test several hypotheses using the VICS method of content analysis and an ANOVA test. After data analysis, the paper concludes with a general summary and a discussion on what the findings add to the literature. I also explain how the framework developed in this paper can be applied to the comparative study of intelligence reform and counterintelligence threat analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Security Council is designed to be the central coordinating body of the U.S. government on matters of national security and foreign affairs. That being the case, understanding the conditions under which it performs poorly is a matter of great importance. Several of those who have observed or studied the organization have stated that its lowest points, those periods during which it was most prone to dysfunction and most clearly failed to work as designed, occurred during the first presidential terms of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. This paper probes the causes of those decision-making failures. Drawing upon the concepts associated with the literatures on leadership trait analysis, leadership style, small group processes, and organizational design, this paper systematically examines what led the NSC to perform so poorly in these two eras. By both contrasting the NSC as it existed in these periods to how it performed in other time periods, and by comparing these two periods to each other, this research aims to provide prescriptive recommendations that may point the way to avoiding similar failures in the future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite renewed interest in international security cooperation after 9-11, security coordination between Mexico, Canada and the United States has been limited. Lack of policy coordination between these three countries is no surprise. They all have developed different security doctrines and practices that are not likely to be changed in the near future. Hence, this paper will analyze the security policies of three North American countries from the end of World War II to the September 11 attacks. Post-World War II analysis will allow me to analyze how structural conditions regarding bipolarity interacted with the domestic conditions of each country. The second period to be analyzed, pre-September 11, will illustrate how structural changes are not immediately translated into new security doctrines, at least not in the near future. Policy adaptation tends to be slow and not always progressive. This paper will be structured in five sections. The first three sections will examine each country’s security doctrines during the Cold War period, focusing on the interaction between international and domestic politics. The fourth section will compare and contrast how each country reacted differently vis-à-vis the end of the Cold War. Finally, the last section will evaluate the implications of these findings and its impact on North American security cooperation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about the legality of pre-emptive and preventive wars became urgent and vigorous after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent United States national security doctrine which embraced pre-emptive and preventive war. This paper contributes to these debates by assessing the frequency with which states engage in pre-emptive and preventive wars. International law is formed by both statute and custom, and this is the first article to assess the custom of states with regard to pre-emptive and preventive war. Using databases that cover the seventy-nine major interstate wars from 1816 to 1997, I find that states engage in pre-emptive and preventive wars between 19 and 33 percent of the time, with revisionist wars comprising the rest. The best estimate is that 29 percent of major interstate wars are pre-emptive and/or preventive.In the paper, I discuss statutory and customary international law, discuss my methodology, and present my findings and their implications for international law. I use the COW, MID, and NMC databases to explore not only how many wars are pre-emptive and preventive, but also to check on how well my coding actually provides robust findings. For example, those who start pre-emptive and preventive wars are far less powerful and win far less often than those who start revisionist wars. Not only is this an interesting finding on its face, it implies a level of desperation in these initiators, and helps confirm that I am correctly coding pre-emptive and preventive wars in the first place. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Borders have historically served the purpose of defining the modern nation-state, delineating the territorial extent of its monopoly on the means of coercion and establishing the boundaries of national identity. Yet, borders are also a protective buffer at the fringes of the state, and a zone of ambiguity where state authority is frequently challenged. In times of war, particularly, borders become strategic bulwarks for national defense against intrusion, an epidermal layer that insulates the state’s core and demonstrates the state’s capacity to use and defend itself against violence. Even in times of peace, however, borderlands frequently suffer from violence, insecurity, and lawlessness because the states coercive authority and control are constantly challenged and subverted by transnational forces. This paper uses the U.S.-Mexican border experience to examine the theoretical dimensions of the state in relation to its borders, and the ways in which border violence and security challenges illustrate the manifestations and limits of state power. This paper pays special attention to U.S. and Mexican responses to violence amidst the heightened security concerns of the post-9/11 context and invigorated Mexican efforts in the war on drugs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent conceptual debate has been over “(re-)defining security.” While pushing to the mainstream a variety of issues that can impact the physical safety of a given population, the debate can also lead to analytical problems by lumping many different indicators of threat into one all-encompassing concept. Unfortunately, the debate has often manifested itself over definitional squabbling instead of a true empirical analysis of what the public and policymakers determine to be security threats. It is in practical applications (how states act or think they need to act) that definitions over what constitutes security truly matter. Public opinion literature has looked at how citizens view threats and how this may influence governmental leaders, but not enough work links these findings to the debates on the meaning of security. This paper bridges that divide by analyzing a new data set, the Survey of Attitudes and Global Engagement (SAGE), which asks U.S. citizens about what they perceive as security threats and whether they feel that the use of force is an appropriate response. This paper will 1) examine the degree to which the perceptions of the “new” components of threat have influenced the public, and 2) note any disconnect that may exist between what people perceive as threats and what they are actually willing to risk war over. Thus we can see whether the redefining security debate is purely academic or whether it has influenced Americans’ thinking, which could then have important implications for the behavior of U.S. foreign policy officials. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]