SAGE Journal Articles

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Journal Article 18.1: Rees, W. (2017). America, Brexit and the security of Europe. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19, 558–572.

Abstract: The Obama administration played a surprisingly interventionist role in the UK referendum on membership of the European Union (EU), arguing that a vote to leave would damage European security. Yet this article contends that US attitudes towards the EU as a security actor, and the part played within it by the United Kingdom, have been much more complex than the United States has sought to portray. While it has spoken the language of partnership, it has acted as if the EU has been a problem for US policy. The United Kingdom was used as part of the mechanism for managing that problem. In doing so, America contributed, albeit inadvertently, to the Brexit result. With the aid of contrasting theoretical perspectives from Realism and Institutionalism, this article explores how America’s security relationship with the United Kingdom has helped to engineer a security situation that the United States wanted to avoid.

Journal Article 18.2: Stachowitsch, S. (August 2012). Military gender integration and foreign policy in the United States: A feminist international relations perspective. Security Dialogue, 43, 305-321.

Abstract: The article investigates the relevance of foreign policy discourse and practice for military gender relations. The link between women’s status in military institutions and the gendering of foreign policy has so far not been thoroughly addressed in military and gender research or foreign policy analysis. Feminist international relations provides a research strategy to show how foreign policy doctrines and debates are gendered and how they are connected to gender (in)equality in central state institutions such as the military. The article thus applies feminist international relations as a theoretical framework that transcends the constructed dichotomy between national and international levels of analysis. In a case study of the USA from the Clinton to the Obama administrations, patterns of military gender integration are established as a phenomenon incorporating both domestic and international dimensions. Foreign policy discourses and practices in this time period are related to shifts in military gender policies and discourses on gender integration. It is argued that the gender order in military institutions is linked to international politics and state behaviour in the international arena.

Journal Article 18.3: Bolechów, B. (February 2005). The United States of America vis-à-vis terrorism: The super power's weaknesses and mistakes. American Behavioral Scientist, 48, 783-794.

Abstract: Due to international policy and internal sociopolitical factors, America has been the primary target of international terrorism since the 1960s and is seen as a major obstacle to the goals of international terrorism. This article discusses key mistakes made by the Unites States that the author argues have strengthened and given rise to further terrorism, including (a) acceding to terrorists’ demands; (b) funding freedom fighters who later became involved in terrorism against their former benefactors and allies; (c) misunderstanding foreign peoples and cultures and believing all terrorism must be state sponsored; (d) applying force selectively; (e) thinking in error that the United States is safe from terrorism; and (f) faulting U.S. media specifically, exacerbating the problem by inadvertently galvanizing sympathetic public opinion for acceding to terrorists’ demands. The author discusses corrections to these mistakes.