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What explains the variation of the nature of alignments in alliance relations? There is a major disagreement over the budgetary costs and benefits of alliances especially in the literature on great power relations. This dissertation fills the gap between the systemic and strategic level of analysis of alliances by introducing a theoretical framework that operationalizes the role of alliances in a great power's overall grand strategy by analyzing how alliances qualitatively adapt to changing strategic environments. This approach assists us in conceptualizing the qualitative changes that alliances go through which are governed by two independent variables, the availability of the defensive advantage and the strength of the perceived commitment. It illustrates this framework through two historical case studies: the Anglo-American alliance in the Middle East and the U.S.-Japan alliance. By illuminating the primacy of military strategies in explaining alliance politics, it argues that strengthening alliances-namely enhancing the military effectiveness of the alliance-is, in fact, compatible with retrenchment strategies. These findings contribute to the scholarly literature on great power relations, advances debates in U.S. grand strategy, and lay the groundwork for future research that unpacks the versatile roles of alliances such as order-building.

This study examines the role of the ‘China factor’ – defined as China’s regional role, which has been interpreted through the prism of the Sino-Indian relationship – in driving and sustaining India’s post-Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia. It aims to establish if China has been raised as a priority in discourses of India’s 'Look East' Policy and how this has varied over time from the origins of the policy to the most recent phase of the renamed ‘Act East’ Policy since 2014. In adopting a constructivist approach, this study deconstructs official narratives of the 'Look East' / 'Act East' policy through analysis of broader strategic elite discourses. In doing so, it addresses the distinction between what policymakers signal in their official statements and their true or underlying motivations, concluding that it is often what is not said that reveals more about real foreign policy intentions.

In the 21st century, the European Union (EU) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) play a growing role as international actors as well as security providers. Apart from trade, the European approach towards China remains underdeveloped and defence cooperation is ruled out by the EU’s arms embargo vis-à-vis China (1989). Nevertheless, bilateral relations have expanded in fields such as counter-piracy and military-to-military relations. Since the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) remains intergovernmental, understanding major EU countries’ foreign policy is crucial to analyse CFSP’s advance towards China. Namely, this research considers the approach of the Big Three EU Member States (France, Germany and the UK) towards China from 2003 to 2018. This timeframe is relevant because in 2003 the European Security Strategy (ESS) and the EU-China Strategic Partnership are signed; later, in 2016, the Brexit referendum is held, and the Joint Communication ‘Elements for a new EU strategy on China’ and the European Global Strategy are released. Finally, in 2018 the EU releases the EU’s Asia security strategy, and a European strategy on the BRI. The theoretical framework considered is Europeanisation because it helps trace European and national policy changes, analyse and compare their development and the shaping of the CFSP. Europeanisation is characterised as an interrelated process: changing national foreign policies following participation in EU foreign policy (top-down); projecting national preferences (bottom-up) and exchanging of ideas within the EU (cross-loading). By building on Reubens Wong’s study on France’s Europeanisation of its Human Rights policy to China, this thesis assesses whether the Big Three have attempted to upload their national foreign and security policies, through which mechanisms and with which outcomes. The development of the CFSP towards China is therefore tested against the empirical record of their respective policies. The main hypothesis is that the European vacuum in its CFSP vis-à-vis China provided the Member states (MS) with the opportunity to project their policies to the EU. In order to investigate this, this thesis contemplates each Big Three’s policies to the PRC by analysing primary sources, such as interviews of experts, public documents by Governments, Parliaments, foreign and defence ministries, speeches by Heads of state/government, etc., which may inform decisions on foreign and security policies.

From the 1967 June War through to the 1973 October War and the consequent energy crisis that concluded in 1974, the US, UK and Japan were involved in the Middle East military and political conflicts. Britain and Japan, although facing important domestic issues, effectively supported both America's Middle East and energy policies, thus putting the United States in the position of leader of the peace process. However, the argument challenges the accepted view that neither Anglo-American nor US-Japanese relations were important factors in the development of the Middle East politics during that period. Using important primary sources, this thesis contends that this view is oversimplified and is because previous research has focused primarily either on the Cold War history or the history of oil, failing to address the important overlap. This thesis focuses on viewing both fields not as distinct, separate areas but as part of the whole. This allows the author to reveal two important historical landscapes. Firstly, Britain considered that working closely with the United States in the field of oil politics provided the only alternative way to preserve the West's interests in the Middle East. Britain's policy for 'harmonisation' with Europe regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict had to be sacrificed in the short-term in order to favour the bigger, more ambitious interests of the West as a whole in the longer term. Therefore, Britain supported America's Middle East peace process, by trying to minimise Europe's individual peace initiatives. Secondly, while the Japanese government had a seemingly ambivalent attitude towards the Arab-Israeli conflict and the on-going conflict between the oil producer countries and oil companies, the Foreign Ministry, in fact preferred to follow the American leadership in the region, for reasons of national security and Cold War imperatives. The Japanese response to the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre, a radicalised Japanese New Left terrorist attack, revealed the Foreign Ministry's determination to demonstrate the country's more active support of the US-centred camp in order to gain international credibility. Neither did the 1973 Arab oil embargo undermine their position. Although Japan's Cabinet eventually issued a public statement to support the Arab cause, in order to satisfy the Japanese people, the pro-American contingent, behind the scenes, succeeded surreptitiously in bringing the Cabinet together to uphold the American-led petroleum order as well as the US leadership in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This study quantitatively tested whether the strategic preferences of China’s future decision makers are consistent with non-coercive Confucian values. Students at six elite Chinese universities were surveyed to identify beliefs about the character of the international system, when and how it is permissible to use force, and whether morality should constrain state behavior. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to characterize and validate stated beliefs, strategic preferences, and moral reasoning as well as to determine the extent to which they reflected the theoretical Confucian system of values and conception of moral governance. Respondents’ perception of a dangerous, zero-sum, conflict-prone international system was not consistent with a Confucian worldview. Neither was their strong proclivity to use force to counter most any potential threat or when in the state’s best overall interests. There was substantial concern for noncombatants and the intentionality of harming them influenced the morality of doing so. However, moral ideals did not strongly constrain behavior. At the same time, such exceptional necessity also did not tend to make immoral behavior moral. There was also a consistent, strong bias to hold foreign states to higher standards of behavior and morality than the respondents’ own state. The results also showed that the framework of related issues which define and differentiate major IR theories only explained a small portion of respondents’ beliefs about the international system, state behavior, and the role of morality in them. It is likely that respondents’ reasoning about these issues were also influenced by nationalistic beliefs which combined Confucian and political realist ideologies.