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Hybrid Warfare' or 'Weaponisation' of Information? Comparative study of the evolution of Russian assertive (dis)information actions
Topuria, Revaz ; Cheskin, Ammon (vedoucí práce) ; Murphy, Karl (oponent) ; Aslan, Emil (oponent)
Russian assertive actions over the last decade have led some observers to think that Kremlin is employing fundamentally new concepts of armed conflict. Subsequently, scholars came up with a number of buzzwords and ill-defined concepts such as 'hybrid warfare' and 'Gerasimov Doctrine'. This paper believes that novelty of Russian actions is not in terms of its military, but rather the specific nature of operations employed by Kremlin had to do more with the way military was integrated with other instruments, mostly state-run and coordinated information operations. Thus, the project puts a whole new emphasis on information operations and claims that while in certain cases Moscow still uses conventional military, Kremlin's new plan is to achieve goals through information online in the first place, rather than fight the enemy on the battlefield. As paper intends to analyse how Russian information strategy has evolved, it employs quantitative and qualitative content analysis to examine narratives built by RIA Novosti and Russia Today/RT during Russo-Georgian War of 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014. The results show that Russia has learnt its mistakes from Georgian case as in 2014 pro- Kremlin media was more sophisticated and relied on using contested areas of international law to depict Russian...
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Nuclear Governance and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Irvine, Caitlin ; Hynek, Nikola (vedoucí práce) ; Machold, Rhys (oponent) ; Murphy, Karl (oponent)
On the 7th July 2017, the United Nations adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) by a vote of 122-1-1. The TPNW has been widely credited with opening a new chapter on nuclear governance norms with the potential to disrupt the current order. Therefore, studying this contemporary treaty is important topical piece of research. Due to the frequently expressed normative value of the TPNW, two theoretical frameworks have been used to evaluate the normative progress of this treaty. This research project studies not only the TPNW, but two other treaties that are commonly grouped into Humanitarian Disarmament. The Mine Ban Treaty, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the TPNW have been analysed in order to study their linguistic similarities through the methodological approach of discourse analysis in order to consider the salient aspects of the Humanitarian Disarmament trend. The results of this project suggest that the TPNW has opened up new room for debate in the typically state centric field of nuclear governance but the TPNW has not yet become a widespread norm. Instead, it remains at the "tipping point" and more time is required to see if it will cascade across international relations or fail. The treaty is still contested by Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) and supported by...
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Constructing Coup d'Etat: Discourse legitimisation in Thailand and Turkey
Liberatori, Daniele ; Střítecký, Vít (vedoucí práce) ; Harnett, Liane (oponent) ; Murphy, Karl (oponent)
Contemporary societies overwhelmingly chose to organise themselves politically in the form of states, social constructs within which different groups are expected to behave consistently with generally accepted norms. Social constructs, however, are not immutable. Groups' behaviours within the state are fluid and may cause fundamental changes in the polity's organisation. This is the case of coups d'Etat, when armies overtake the bureaucratically established executive and assume direct control of the state. This research project adopts a new perspective towards the analysis of military coups. Based on a Constructivist approach to the dynamics occurring in the immediate aftermath of golpes, this research aims at improving our understanding of the phenomenon. Specifically, this paper will analyse how members of the army employ discourse legitimisation techniques to legitimise in front of the state's society their change of behaviour from law enforcement actors to policymakers. This research analysed and collected the broader sociological and political research over discourse legitimisation practices, collating them into a coherent framework to be employed in the analysis of during- and post-coups discourses. According to this framework, discourse legitimisation techniques occur at three different...
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Western arms transfers, the tension between an ethical foreign policy and national interests
Michelot, Anne-Lise ; Berg, Julie (vedoucí práce) ; Murphy, Karl (oponent) ; Hynek, Nikola (oponent)
The post-Cold War era has been marked by a surge of conventional arms regulation initiatives, driven by logics of Human Security and the will for global improvement of human rights and the human condition worldwide. Western states, carried by new ethical foreign policies, but also internal pressures from civil society, greatly contributed to the inclusion of humanitarian considerations in world politics. These have spread to enter the real of arms exportations, until then part of every states' sovereign right. In addition to treaties banning the use and exportation of certain inhumane weapons, the most remarkable innovation was the creation of an Arms Trade Treaty in 2013, with the aim to regulate the trade of all conventional weapons. Under this regime, states are expected to apply caution and restraint when engaging in this business. In particular, risk assessment regarding the conflict and humanitarian condition in the receiving state must be conducted before exportations can be authorised. These developments of arms regulations correspond with the policy discourse adopted by Western states during the same period, which would imply that they would be the first to join, apply and promote them. However, there is a gap between discourse and practice, highlighted particularly by NGOs, which are...
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