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Years of Dreaming Big: Chinese Nuclear Rise and Great Power Strategic Stability
Nikolić, Luka ; Ludvík, Jan (advisor) ; Kolmaš, Michal (referee)
Great powers have almost exclusively decided the destiny of international relations. The birth, life, and death of an order have been regulated by those actors with the largest military, strategic, economic, and other capabilities. Conceptually building upon the premises of structural realism, the thesis claims that the Chinese nuclear rise is the decisive factor for the disappearance of the incumbent international system and the consequent rise of the new one, labeled as asymmetric triangular nuclear competition. This critically affects the notion of strategic stability, adjusting its characteristics for a different strategic environment. The research has twofold relevance. First, in the academic sense, it deepens a scantly treated debate on the interconnection between the management of nuclear weapons arsenal and the overall outlook of the international system. Second, in the practical sense, the study of the behavior of great powers provides an excellent foundation for policy analysis. The aforementioned is achieved in the three stages. In the beginning, the Chinese nuclear rise is considered as a set of comprehensive reforms in terms of weapons systems, military apparatus, but also doctrines and strategic concepts. After that, the nuclear rise is put in the context of Chinese silent moves from...
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The social construction of nuclear threat : US nuclear disarmament discourse, 1945-2014
Pyrihová, Marie ; Smetana, Michal (advisor) ; Hynek, Nikola (referee)
Nuclear weapons are the key element of the security policy of the United States of America since 1945. Since then, nuclear weapons and related nuclear threats were part of a social discourse of the United States. This thesis examined how these threats were socially constructed within the discourse by individual actors. Then, by discoursive analysis, the thesis investigated how the nuclear disarmament discourse responded to these identified threats. The study focused on how these identified threats and the nuclear disarmament discourse influenced each other in each period and how they impacted following periods. This diploma thesis examined the U.S. nuclear discourse while using a methodological framework of discoursive analysis. The diploma thesis operated with the theory of securitization and determined key moments, when particular threat was designated as existential to the security of the United States and when, eventually, this threat subsided.
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