Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, History

The origins of modern coalition warfare trace back to the Mediterranean theater of World War II. It was there on the treacherous battlefields of North Africa and Sicily where Anglo-American forces learned to harmonize joint and combined forces under a modular and largely experimental integrated theater headquarters for the very first time. Overcoming significant setbacks between 1942 and 1943, the Allies laid the foundations of a resoundingly effective military organization—a multinational coalition built around the distinctly modern principles of unity of command, combined and joint operations, partner integration as well as robust liaison, logistics, and administrative support. These synergistic elements constituted nothing less than an embryonic Allied victory formula, a theater-level template they would export wholesale to great effect in northwestern Europe and whose legacy lives on in western alliances and battlefield coalitions to this day.

Committee: Peter Mansoor (Advisor); Geoffrey Parker (Committee Member); Bruno Cabanes (Committee Member); David Steigerwald (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, History (Arts and Sciences)

After the Vietnam War, the US Army pivoted from counter-insurgency in Southeast Asia towards the renewed possibility of war with the USSR in Central Germany. This shift in perspective coincided with dramatic shifts in Army policy, most importantly the transition from conscription to the All-Volunteer Force, as well as the introduction of new battlefield technologies which transformed the battlespace. This dissertation analyzes the complicated military relationship between the US Army and an important European ally. It argues that during this period of intense reform, the US Army and the West German Bundeswehr used both new and preexisting institutions to engage in a period of intense, sympathetic, and mutually inspired reforms which developed significant new concepts in land warfare. This is significant because this period of cooperation helped to reaffirm a special relationship between the US and West Germany, which transformed to become the most significant within NATO and Western Europe. The focus of this dissertation is on the mechanics of the transatlantic exchange and how this shaped both forces through the last decades of the Cold War.

Committee: Ingo Trauschweizer (Advisor); Mirna Zakic (Committee Member); Paul Milazzo (Committee Member); Nukhet Sandal (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; European History; History; Military History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, History

Encompassing a great deal more than simply replacing equipment and recruiting new soldiers, rebuilding an army after defeat is a lengthy and complex process shaped by a myriad of internal and external factors. This dissertation examines how three different 20th-century Western armies rebuilt after military defeat and what factors shaped this process. Through a comparative analysis of the German Army after the First World War, the Dutch Army after the Second World War, and U.S. Army after the Vietnam War, this dissertation will argue that, despite different national circumstances, common trends existed in the process of rebuilding these armies after defeat. Vastly different in capability, size, and disposition after defeat, these three armies rebuilt into functioning instruments of national policy by breaking with their past defeat, implementing organizational change, studying past wars and thinking about future ones, working within political and budgetary constraints, instituting educational, doctrinal, and training reforms, studying other militaries, and incorporating new technologies. While these three armies successfully rebuilt into effective instruments of national policy, one should not see their success as preordained. The time involved to enact and implement changes required patience on the part of military and political leaders alike, with some degree of consensus between political and military leaders and society concerning the army's future form required for these organizations to rebuild.

Committee: Peter Mansoor PhD (Advisor); Bruno Cabanes PhD (Committee Member); Jennifer Siegel PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Armed Forces; History; Military History; Military Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

My dissertation explores the influence of British and American grand strategy on the Anglo-American military alliance from 1981-1991 and analyzes the notion of a “Special Relationship” between the two states. Drawing heavily on primary source documents from British and American governmental archives, I analyze the alliance's performance in the Polish Solidarity crisis, the Falklands War, the second deployment of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, the American invasion of Grenada, the American bombing of Libya in 1986, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and, of course, the Cold War. I argue that, while there is a Special Relationship, its nature is generally misunderstood. At the time, for instance, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher worried that the bonds of the Special Relationship were weakening. Instead, she simply failed to understand how it actually worked. It did not make the American and British governments more likely to agree on a common course of action than any other pair of allies. It instead made them more effective when they happened to agree, and helped ensure that disagreements did not fester or escalate into larger problems. The most important variable for determining the effectiveness of American-British cooperation was whether or not they shared strategic aims—which was hardly unique to the Anglo-American alliance. Finally, I argue that the true value of the “Special Relationship” lay in the cooperation between the lower levels of government, and not in the relations between the heads of state.

Committee: Peter Mansoor PhD (Advisor); Jennifer Siegel PhD (Committee Member); Joseph Parrott PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Military History

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, History (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation analyzes the role of the United States in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) dual-track decision, which called for the deployment of 572 intermediate-range missiles in Europe and simultaneous arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union. Tracing the evolution of U.S. theater nuclear policy from 1977 to 1987, it demonstrates that President Jimmy Carter was an effective manager of the Atlantic alliance. In the wake of the neutron bomb fiasco in April 1978, Carter learned from the episode and implemented those lessons during intra-alliance consultations about theater nuclear modernization and arms control. In contrast to existing historiography, Carter was the chief architect of the dual-track decision, proposing the essential framework for the initiative on the sandy beaches of Guadeloupe in January 1979. Unable to make progress on the arms control track, Carter secured the passage of a program that allowed President Ronald Reagan to approach the arms talks with the Soviet Union from a position of strength. At first cold to the inherited dual-track policy course, Reagan, a bona fide nuclear abolitionist, improvised throughout the intermediate-range negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland. Reagan, who never exerted the effort required to master the arcane substance of nuclear strategy, listened to different advisers at key moments during the talks, which reflected his evolving approach to the negotiations. Between 1981 and 1983, he primarily leaned on the counsel of hardliners in Washington, especially Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and his cunning deputy, Richard Perle, who reinforced Reagan's inclination to distrust the Soviet leadership and press for the maximalist zero option, which required the liquidation of U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range missiles. After the Soviets stormed out of Geneva in November 1983, Reagan increasingly heeded the advice of Secretary of State George Shultz, who encouraged him to compromise, abolish n (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Chester Pach Dr. (Committee Chair); Kevin Mattson Dr. (Committee Member); Ingo Trauschweizer Dr. (Committee Member); James Mosher Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Modern History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Political Science

Why do states sometimes adopt wildly overconfident foreign policy choices – choices that have unreasonable expectations about potential benefits of success and unreasonable expectations about the absence of risks of failure? In this dissertation, I argue that extreme cases of these choices can occur as a consequence of mania: a wave of irrational, excessive optimism. One example of mania in foreign policy was the drive to enlarge NATO to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine in 2007 and 2008, prior to the Russian invasion of Georgia and later invasion of Ukraine. Derived ultimately from the work of John Maynard Keynes in economics, I argue that mania in international relations is both expected and inevitable under certain circumstances. Manias primarily occur as part of a three stage process: a sudden, unexpected shock that changes the nature of the international system (“displacement”), followed by new stories that explain both the causes of the shock and explain their consequences for the future (“New Era Thinking”). The new era opens up possibilities for foreign policy success that had not existed before, leading policy elites to “invest” in foreign policies. If those policies do not fail, skepticism about New Era Thinking diminishes and optimism about future success grows. This process produces a feedback loop where New Era Thinking and policy choices interact with each iteration – and with each iteration have higher expectations for gains and lower cognizance of risk. Similar to the psychological dynamics that drive stock market bubbles in economics, the result is a foreign policy process that dismisses both uncertainty and risk, creating the potential for failure. I will show how the end of the Cold War was a displacement that produced New Era Thinking, and that as NATO enlargement – which was predicated on New Era Thinking – progressed eastward it became manic. Mania has its basis in the human need to overcome uncertainty: the inability to know the future. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennifer Mitzen PhD (Committee Chair); Christopher Gelpi PhD (Committee Member); Alex Wendt PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations; Political Science

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2018, Slavic and East European Studies

Cyber operations for the purpose of furthering state power, wealth, and influence are a relatively recent historical development. State cyber operations have consistently increased in scale, scope, and frequency since the mid-1990s. The trend marks a transition from the use of conventional conflict to the use of cyber operations as a key component to protecting and advancing national interests. The Westphalian international order has provided nation-states with a robust set of laws and norms that govern conventional and nuclear armed conflict. However, cyberspace is an increasingly contested domain with minimal international governance or agreement on its use as nation-states do not uniformly understand and apply international law to cyberspace. The Russian Federation has been actively challenging US cyberspace dominance for the previous decade, reshaping international cyberspace norms. The US must establish and maintain an effective cyberspace strategy that is uniquely suited to Russia's application of cyber operations. In order for the US strategy to adequately provide security for the nation's economy, infrastructure, and democratic institutions, it must take into account the distinction between the Western and Russian application of international law to state cyber operations. Russian scholars differ from Western legal scholars in four aspects; 1) Russian scholars differ in their understanding of the relationship between state sovereignty and cyberspace, 2) Russian experts generally do not view the current international framework as a sufficient guiding body for establishing legal norms in cyberspace, 3) Russia's concept of self-defense in cyberspace changes with the strategic environment, and 4) The country emphasizes “information security” as opposed to “cyber security,” which has impacts on international human rights.

Committee: John Quigley (Advisor); Richard Herrmann (Committee Member) Subjects: Armed Forces; East European Studies; European Studies; International Law; International Relations; Law; Legal Studies; Military Studies; Political Science; Slavic Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, History (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation focuses on U.S. Army forces in Berlin from 1945 to 1994 and on broader issues of U.S. and NATO policy and strategy for the Cold War. It seeks to answer two primary questions: Why did U.S. officials risk war over a location everyone agreed was militarily untenable, and how did they construct strategies to defend it? Much of the Berlin literature looks at the city only during the two crises there, the Soviet blockade in 1948 and 1949 and Moscow's periodic ultimatum between 1958 and 1962 that the Americans, British, and French leave the city. These works maintain that leaders conceived of Berlin's worth as only a beacon of democracy in the war against communism, or a trip wire in the event that the Soviet Union invaded Western Europe. This dissertation looks beyond the crises, and contends that a long view of the city reveals U.S. officials saw Berlin as more than a liability. By combining military, diplomatic, political, and international history to analyze the evolution of U.S. diplomacy, NATO strategy and policy, and joint military planning, it suggests that U.S. officials, realizing they could not retreat, devised ways to defend Berlin and, when possible, use it as a means to achieve strategic and political ends in the larger Cold War, with both enemy and friend alike. This research is broadly concerned with national security, civil-military relations, and alliance politics. It focuses on the intersection of the military and political worlds, and tries to answer how governments analyze risk and form strategy, and then how militaries secure political and military objectives. Ultimately, it is a study of deterrence in modern war, an examination of how leaders can obtain objectives without harming friendships or instigating war.

Committee: Ingo Trauschweizer (Advisor); Steven Miner (Committee Member); Chester Pach (Committee Member); James Mosher (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Armed Forces; European History; History

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, Slavic and East European Studies

In the aftermath of the Greek Civil War, the right-wing elements of Greece's government felt that they needed to join NATO to protect Greek interests from the perceived threat posed by Communism and their Balkan neighbors. Throughout this period of time, the Greek state implemented several drastic and often undemocratic motions that led to measures against minority groups, suppressing left-wing politicians, and applying old nationalistic rhetoric such as the “Menace from the North” to the situation with the Communist regimes in their neighboring countries. During this time, Greek interests often were pushed aside in order to appease the United States and other members of NATO while at other points, Greece nearly went to war with their NATO ally Turkey over the future of Cyprus. Meanwhile, Greece's new-found alliance with NATO led to an improvement of their military capabilities to the point where the highly nationalistic, anti-Communist army would seize control of the government in 1967 and form a Military Junta. During the seven years of military control, NATO continued to work with the Military Junta which in turn would have drastic consequences when Greece nearly went to war with Turkey over Cyprus. With the collapse of the Junta, Greece has slowly taken steps to begin distancing their decision-making towards Greek interests.

Committee: Georgios Anagnostou (Advisor); Anthony Kaldellis (Committee Member) Subjects: Slavic Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Arts and Sciences : Political Science

The dissertation studies the functioning and management of NATO in the post-Cold War distribution of power. The core purpose is the articulation of a framework that enables coherent explanation of NATO's transformation while at the same time binding together the invitation to new allies, the expansion of allied missions, and advancement of new capabilities. I explain these three aspects of NATO's transformation through club goods theory and the concept of complementarities. The club goods framework originates from collective goods literature and is consistent with the theory of intergovernmental bargaining in integration studies. It suggests that NATO has features similar to heterogeneous clubs: voluntarism, sharing, cost-benefit analysis and exclusion mechanisms. Based on club good theory, I conceptualize complementarities as a relationship between military resources and transformational allied capabilities. The military resources considered include military personnel, army, navy, air force and defense spending. The alliance missions in terms of peacekeeping, crisis management and non-proliferation are key intervening variables in my model that shape the development of allied capabilities. Combined Joint Task Forces, NATO Response Force and different non-proliferation teams illustrate the advancement of new capabilities. This framework distinguishes between three groups of nations: the core NATO allies, the new members and the non-NATO nations that are members of the European Union (Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden). The study indicated that a strong relationship between resources and allied capabilities for the old NATO members, while for the new NATO allies this relationship is much less powerful and none of the observed variables is significant in the case of the non-NATO nations. Based on these findings the dissertation makes the argument that the United States as a hegemon has a key role in managing allied relations, while at same time influencing the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Harknett (Committee Chair); Dinshaw Mistry (Committee Member); Joel Wolfe (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, History

Very few places evoke the Cold War quite like Berlin. A city literally divided between East and West, it represented the international divisions from its capture in 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Starting in 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev put Berlin back in the center of the Cold War by threatening to end the Western presence in the western sectors of the city. Over the next five years, the status of Berlin remained at the heart of the relationship between the superpowers, and the possibility of war, especially the possibility of nuclear war, hung over the events of the period, including the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis. This project examines the development of the policies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in response to the perceived Soviet Bloc threat to Berlin from 1958 to 1963 by placing NATO at the center of an examination of the Western response to the Soviet challenge. The tensions between national and collective interests have been an important theme in Cold War history, but the role of NATO within these relationships has not been examined adequately. By placing NATO at the center of my work, this study shows how it became a central pivot around which allied governments approached the Soviet challenge. Doubts about nuclear strategy during the crisis meant that a conventional deterrent was necessary, and NATO provided that conventional deterrent. NATO's forces complemented and enhanced the main American nuclear deterrent, and helped to protect Western interests in Berlin and Germany during the crisis. Without NATO to harmonize Western policy behind the American lead, the Allies would likely not have been able to properly confront the Soviets over Berlin, and the presence in West Berlin could not have been maintained. The loss of credibility from losing West Berlin would have severely damaged Western credibility in the face of the Soviet presence, and the stability of West Germany and Western (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Peter Hahn (Committee Chair); Robert McMahon (Committee Co-Chair); Carole Fink (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; European History; History; International Relations; Military History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, History

This dissertation examines the history of the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) in NATO from its establishment through its formative and influential first decade. The current historiography, based on a limited number of primary and secondary sources, sees the NPG as an effective method of nuclear sharing in the early 1960s, as a vehicle utilized by the non-nuclear NATO members to influence United States nuclear planning. Utilizing government sources in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, this thesis argues that the Nuclear Planning Group was an effective tool of consultation that allowed for a measure of compromise concerning concepts on nuclear war. This consultation apparatus was a significant departure from American treatment of allied concerns in the first fifteen years of NATO. It represented a method of bringing West Germany into a unique relationship that conformed to the Anglo-American views on nuclear planning while also serving to minimize the influence of other non-nuclear states. There existed limits to which the United States was willing to extend nuclear influence to its partners, and in the longer term, the NPG remained a political instrument, that was unable to resolve some of the most difficult problems of nuclear defense it faced in its first decade. This study of nuclear relations within NATO focuses on those in the highest levels of government and how NATO allies negotiated policy. Once additional documents become available, further expansion of this topic into the dramatic events of NATO's nuclear history in the 1980s will become possible.

Committee: Carole Fink (Advisor); Alan Beyerchen (Committee Member); Peter Hahn (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2010, Political Science (Arts and Sciences)

On one hand, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the end of a number of insolvable issues; on the other, it created new, no less challenging ones with which states that emerged from the ashes of the Red Empire had to deal. Ancient hatreds, hostilities and violence became an inseparable part of the South Caucasus where confrontations closed ways to cooperation and peace. How did the Soviet Union generate these hatreds and conflicts? Why these threats and bloody armed conflicts? Where do they come from? How does each state react to those threats? The newly independent states even had to fight each other by forming, inter alia, powerful military alliances. What are the dynamics and implications of the alliance formation in the South Caucasus? How do these states choose their strategic-military allies? To what extent do heterogeneous military alliances between Armenia and Russia or Azerbaijan and Turkey, along with Georgia's effort to join NATO at any price despite negative messages from Russia, stabilize or destabilize the overall status-quo in the region? What drives those newly independent states in choosing their partners? Are those alliances cohesive? If so, how so? These questions are at the core of this research and are discussed and explored along with other important issues and conundrums.

Committee: Patricia A. Weitsman PhD (Committee Chair); Maria Fanis PhD (Committee Member); Myra Waterbury PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations; Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2010, Political Science (Arts and Sciences)

Alliance formation and cohesion have been a crucial factor shaping roughly all agendas in international relations with the growing effect of interdependency. By understanding the importance of alliances in world politics, one can see that alliances can promote peace and eliminate the tension and insecure environment of international relations. In this respect, this thesis focuses on the peace-promoting role of alliances rather than their war-promoting one. The Turkey-NATO alliance underlines this situation very well, starting with the Cold War. Accordingly, this thesis presents the alliance formation and cohesion behaviors of Turkey by looking at the Cold War and post-Cold War periods and attempts to discover how Turkey provides stability in the Middle East. In this respect, different alliance theories explain Turkey's alliance behavior in different time periods. Turkey's alliance behavior in contemporary history shows that it resolves conflicts and promotes stability through institutional cooperation with the Middle East while maintaining a military alliance with the West. Its western characteristics as a secular state with a western democracy and the only Muslim country in NATO make Turkey the only bridge between the West and the Middle East. In this respect, it will be argued that since interconnectedness increases by globalization, Turkey has been experiencing a high level of sphere of influence because of its historical, religious and ethnic ties and its geopolitical importance. Studying Turkey's alliance behavior and its close historical and cultural ties with the Middle Eastern states not only questions Huntington's clash of civilization theory but also promises to increase cooperation between the West and Islamic countries. Alliances, therefore, should be formed and operated as "proponents of peace" rather than “weapons of war”.

Committee: Patricia A. Weitsman Professor (Committee Chair); James Mosher Assistant Professor (Committee Member); Andrew Ross Assistant Professor (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2008, History (Arts and Sciences)

This study is a reappraisal of the strategic dilemma of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Cold War. This dilemma revolves around the problem of articulating a strategic concept for a military alliance in the nuclear era. NATO was born of a perceived need to defend Western Europe from a Soviet onslaught. It was an imperative of the early alliance to develop a military strategy and force posture to defend Western Europe should such a war break out. It was not long after the first iteration of strategy took shape than the imperative for a military defense of Europe receded under the looming threat of thermonuclear war. The advent of thermonuclear arsenals in both the United States and Soviet Union brought with it the potential destruction of civilization should war break out. This realization made statesmen on both sides of the Iron Curtain undergo what has been referred to as an ongoing process of nuclear learning. This led to deterrence, rather than defense, being the priority for both the NATO allies and the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. But fundamental tensions remained, and a need for military strategies seemed to remain. The problem was to then gauge how important conventional forces, tactical nuclear weapons, and strategic nuclear forces were to determine force postures that provided the most effective combination of deterrence and defense.

Committee: Peter John Brobst PhD (Committee Chair); Norman Goda PhD (Committee Member); Steven Miner PhD (Committee Member); Harold Molineu PhD (Committee Member); Chester Pach PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: European History

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2008, Political Science (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis explores Russia-NATO relations after the Cold War. It focuses on how state power and perceived threat affect balance of power in Europe. The main argument in this thesis is that the Russian threat perceived by the Central and Eastern European countries created a security dilemma between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO. After the September 11th terrorist attack, the Central and Eastern European countries exploited the U.S.'s call of constructing a global counterterrorism alliance to satisfy their security needs, which increased American military deployment in Central Europe. However, this military expansion triggered an increasing NATO threat to Russia. It turned Russia's behavior from tethering to balancing NATO. Russia will most likely seek a trans-Asia alliance to ensure its security. On the other hand, although NATO alliance cohesion will be weakened temporarily since some NATO members are reluctant to provoke Russia, the alliance cohesion will ultimately increase because NATO allies will be forced to balance against Russia. In sum, the increasing military presence of NATO allies in Central and Eastern Europe will create a power competition between Russia and NATO. It will damage the Russia-NATO relations and bring instability to European security.

Committee: Patricia A. Weitsman PhD (Committee Chair); James Mosher Dr. (Committee Member); Myra Waterbury Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2007, Political Science (Arts and Sciences)

Why does NATO remain a cohesive alliance in the post-Cold War era? This question, which has bewildered international relations scholars for years, can tell us a lot about institutional dynamics of alliances. Since traditional alliance theory indicates alliances form to counter threat or power, it is challenging to understand how and why NATO continues to exist after its founding threat and power – communism and the USSR – no longer exist. The fluctuation of cohesion in NATO since the end of the Cold War will be examined to determine how cohesion is forged and maintained. To achieve this, alliance theories will be fused into a clear and understandable model to measure cohesion.

Committee: Patricia Weitsman (Advisor) Subjects:

Bachelor of Arts, Miami University, 2009, College of Arts and Sciences - Political Science

Since 1992, both the EU and Russia have seen dynamic changes in their foreign policies with the creation of the Treaty on European Union and the fall of the Soviet Union, respectively. This thesis will be divided into three sections. First, a literature review will take stock of existing research concerning EU, Russian and joint foreign policy actions. Second, an analysis of the relationship will be conducted based on field research, which will explain how the EU follows a difficult path of variable geometry to foreign policy decisions while Russia has embraced a new brand of power pragmatism. The third and final section will bring these different types of foreign policy formations together and present conclusions about the characteristics of the relationship and what future direction we can expect.

Committee: Warren Mason Dr. (Advisor); Karen Dawisha Dr. (Committee Member); Venelin Ganev Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Media and Communication

This dissertation carries out a multi-level analysis of how media reports establish durable narratives of war in both journalism and scholarship, illustrating a multi-dimensional process of the weaponization of media. It draws on a case study of NATO's attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, examining both news coverage and scholarly accounts, and with reference to relevant historical, institutional, economic and political contexts. The author conducts a grounded theory analysis of 1058 news articles appearing in the Associated Press, New York Times, and The Times (of London) surrounding the pivotal events of NATO's military intervention in Kosovo. The ways in which these selected media represent the events and the relationship between their dominant narrative themes and the contexts in which the events occurred, is further examined, comparatively, by means of grounded theory analysis of how 4 major scholarly treatises craft an understanding of NATO intervention in Kosovo. Based on these analyses, this research argues that (a) media content foregrounds (and in various ways privileges) the frames, sources and narratives that correspond with the interests of NATO that drive military intervention and (b) these media narratives exercise a lingering influence on long-term conceptualizations of conflict and have the capacity to shape the contours of cultural memory for years to come. Emerging from this inquiry – which situates the interrelationships between media, power and military conflict within the context of political and economic environment – is the theory of a weaponization of media that moves beyond the scope of existing propaganda theories (and, in the context of propaganda, agenda-setting and framing theories) that explains to what end propaganda works and the ways in which the media system capacitates and enhances processes of propaganda.

Committee: Oliver Boyd-Barrett (Committee Chair); Lynda Dixon (Committee Member); Lara Lengel (Committee Member); Scott Magelssen (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2011, History

This historical investigation of U.S.-Turkish relations from the end of World War II to 1964 provides a greater understanding of the challenges inherent in the formation and implementation of U.S. policy in Turkey at a time when the Turks embarked on multiparty politics and a determined campaign to become a modern and distinctly European nation through ambitious economic development programs. Washington proved instrumental in this endeavor, providing financial support through the Marshall Plan and subsequent aid programs, and political sponsorship of Turkey's membership in international organizations such as NATO and the EEC. U.S. policymakers encountered various quandaries as they forged bilateral relations with the Turks, specifically reconciling democratization with Turkey's development and participation in the containment of communism. The Turkish government under Adnan Menderes demonstrated its reliability as a U.S. ally, providing troops to fight in the Korean War and cooperating in the construction of NATO bases and the modernization of its military, but it came under increasing pressure from the political opposition when its economic policies failed to secure long-term economic growth and stability. Starting in the mid-1950s the Menderes government adopted increasingly authoritarian measures to control dissent, a problematic situation for Washington, as it desired greater Turkish democracy while at them same time did not wish to compromise the growing American military presence in Turkey. The U.S. solution to dealing with Turkey's political tensions was one of nonintervention and detachment, an approach that produced greater Turkish resentment and compromised Washington's ability to manage the frequent crises of the 1960s including 1960's coup and the 1964 Cyprus crisis.

Committee: Douglas Forsyth PhD (Advisor); Gary Hess PhD (Committee Member); Tiffany Trimmer PhD (Committee Member); Marc Simon PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History