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- Kunz, Barbara, 1980-
(author)
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Kind words, cruise missiles and everything in between : A neoclassical realist study of the use of power resources in U.S. policies towards Poland, Ukraine and Belarus 1989–2008
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study intends to explain why the United States led entirely different policies towards Poland, Ukraine and Belarus under circumstances where realist theory would predict otherwise. Realism being an “environment based theory”, it would indeed predict a state to lead highly similar foreign policies under identical conditions. Yet, within the overall context of managing unipolarity, the US has clearly led different policies toward these three countries from the demise of the Soviet Union to the end of the second Bush Administration (i.e., in the years 1989 to 2008). In seeking to explain that puzzle, this study follows a path hitherto neglected by neoclassical realist scholarship: a strong emphasis on the bilateral dimension in all foreign policies. Poland, Ukraine and Belarus are friendly, undecided and non-friendly states, respectively, as seen from a Washington perspective. What type of power resources seems appropriate in addressing them is likely to depend on this status. The study subsequently shows that different types of power resources or “base values” underlie the various foreign policy tools employed with respect to the studied countries. For that reason, it argues that perceptions of states’ friend, non-friend or undecided statuses should be considered an element of the missing link neoclassical realists identified between states’ power resources and their foreign policy output.
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| 2. |
- Håkansson, Peter, 1979-
(author)
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The United Nations Reformed : Responsibility, Protection and the Standing of States
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study is about reform of the United Nations. The study does not address reform proposals that set out to change the organizational structure of the UN, but focuses on initiatives that affect the normative basis of the international society that the United Nations and the UN Charter enable and sustain. Empirically, the study focuses on the international principle responsibility 10 prolecl, which prescribes that states have an individual and collective responsibility to protect against human rights violations. It is argued that the responsibility to protect and the Security Council's increased attention to protection of civilians in armed conflicts are politically and legally significant developments that challenge the pluralist international order that was instituted through the establishment of the UN in 1945. Both the responsibility to proteet and the protection of civilians are based on an understanding of statehood and international society that in the study is referred to as anti-pluralist. The results of the study show that the contemporary notion of protection once again brings into international political discourse the idea that states and political communities, in order to enjoy legal autonomy and a right to non-intervention, must abide by universally applicable standards of state hood. The results also show that the idea of protection is based on a progressivist philosophy that leads to a differentiation of states.
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