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UAVs as a tool in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the context of the U.S. strategic culture: Discourse analysis
Koleják, Martin ; Ludvík, Jan (advisor) ; Hynek, Nikola (referee)
The phenomenon of strategic culture and its influence on the state behaviour has penetrated the theories of international relations only recently. The same stands for unmanned aerial vehicles. The aim of this thesis is to examine how does the United States deploy their UAVs to fight Al-Qaeda in its save heavens located in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. To be specific my intention is to determine what does in this sense the behavior of Obama's administration mean in the context of the U.S. strategic culture. The main research tools utilized in this thesis are discourse analysis and Colin Gray's model of strategic culture. In the public discourse consisting of speeches and comments made by political and military representatives I have identified all the four strategic culture variables set out in the theoretical part of the work. Moreover, the public discourse around drone deployment contains several intriguing metaphors and symbols. Furthermore, the contribution of this work is that it deals with the issue of UAV deployment within the scope of strategic culture. Keywords UAV; drones; strategic culture; Colin Gray; Alastair Johnston; Barack Obama; Al- Qaeda
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Comparative analysis of Czechoslovak and Finnish strategic cultures before World War II
Jílek, Tomáš ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Soukup, Jaromír (referee)
Aim of the thesis is to examine the influence of strategic culture on states and their most substantial decisions. The concept of strategic culture introduced first by Jack Snyder in the 1970s is today generally accepted, there are even warnings that culturalism may become too fashionable, indeed some authors say this is already happening. Most works however focus on strategic cultures of countries with long and rich history, historical experience and a great amount of various doctrinal documents - such as USA, Russia, China or India. My aim is to identify the influence of strategic culture in small countries, with a rather short period of independence - Finland and Czechoslovakia before World War II. They differ in one crucial decision: Czechoslovakia had decided to yield to German territorial demands, while Finland had decided not to do so and as a result faced a war against the Soviet Union. Hypothesis of this work is that this crucial difference is caused by different strategic cultures in the two contexts.
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U. S. Safety and Strategic Culture during Barack Obama's 2nd Term
Kafková, Markéta ; Dubský, Zbyněk (advisor) ; Eichler, Jan (referee)
This bachleor thesis is about U. S. safety and strategic culture during the 2nd term of presidency of Barack Obama. It works with the hypothesis that U. S. safety and strategic culture between the years of 2012 and 2016 has signs of multilateralism, prefers political solutions and prefers use of soft power over hard power. This hypothesis might be confirmed based on discourse analysis of speeches and treaties. It is based on theory of safety and strategic culture and using criteria such as unilateralism besides multilateralism, preventive action besides preemptive strikes and militarism besides political solutions, this thesis evaluates the 2nd term of presidency of Barack Obama.
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Assessment of the Foreign and Security Policy of the 43rd American President
Pospíšil, Tomáš ; Eichler, Jan (advisor) ; Veselý, Zdeněk (referee) ; Lacina, Karel (referee) ; Krč, Miroslav (referee)
The main aim of the final thesis is to assess American foreign and security policy during 2001 -- 2008 using concepts of security and strategic culture. Security and strategic culture (SSC) are rather new concepts in IR, but always more attention is paid to them. Poststructuralist conception was chosen as to be the main approach towards these concepts, since it enables to work with discursive actions of strategic and security elites. On the theoretical plane, concepts of SSC are elaborated and theoretically separated. The practical level scrutinizes how the SSC influenced the key decisions within examined period and what impact strategic and security elites had on changes of SSC. The last, assessing level, analyzes how the changes of the SSC identified on practical level, influenced American foreign and security policy and also main doctrinal documents. The main focus is on the attacks of 9/11 which had a great impact on such turbulent times, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were fought in response to the above mentioned attacks, and changes of the foreign and security policy of the USA in the light of the unsuccessful Global War on Terror.
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The attitude of France towards the US security policy
Čmakalová, Kateřina ; Eichler, Jan (advisor) ; Veselý, Zdeněk (referee) ; Novák, Jaromír (referee) ; Adamec, Vilém (referee)
One of the most surprising aspects of the renaissance of scholarly interest in culture has been the emerging consensus in national security policy studies that culture effects significantly grand strategy and state behaviour. Therefore, the paper tries to advance rigorous procedures for testing for the existence and influence of security and strategic culture of different national states. It builds mainly on the definition of Alastair I. Johnston (1995) and Jeffrey S. Lantis (2002), who relate security and strategic culture with the definition of main goals/objectives of the state in security affairs and with ways of achieving them. As a case study, the paper will evaluate the approaches of the United States and France towards security threats in the early 21st century, especially towards the threat of global terrorism. It will assess whether and why when achieving security objectives, defined at the highest political level, persuasive or coercive strategy and military or non-military tools were preferred; whether negotiations, diplomacy and political pressure were favoured, or whether it was rather opted for deployment of armed forces and warfare. The text attempts to show how the differences in security and strategic culture, American and French particular identities, values, norms and perceptive lens might lead to different understandings of terrorism as global security threat and to distinct measures taken in the fight against it.
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