This piece highlights the Trump administration's history of diplomatic relations with states in East Asia (specifically North Korea (DPRK), South Korea (ROK), Japan, and China). The research in this essay primarily focuses on Trump's public attitudes towards these states during his presidential campaign, and seeks to establish if any negative statements towards East Asian states have affected social and diplomatic relations after Trump's inauguration. Overall, residents of Japan and South Korea had an overwhelmingly negative view of Trump during his campaign, primarily due to cultural differences and dissatisfaction with Trump's blunt, unpredictable demeanor which clashes with Japanese and Korean social norms. While public opinion of Trump was still low in mainland China, Trump's attitude is reminiscent of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which serves as the societal and governmental framework of the modern People's Republic of China. Therefore, individuals living in China were more likely to be attracted to Trump's personality \u2014 this evident through the popularity of Trump "fan clubs" which gained popularity on Chinese social media websites during the American presidential campaign period. In terms of the bilateral relations between the U.S. and each East Asian state, Donald Trump's negative statements towards China, Japan, and South Korea during his campaign did not significantly impact diplomatic relations during his presidency. While Trump is vocally opposed to certain initiatives that are supported by these heads of state, he has demonstrated a willingness to discuss issues with these leaders. While this openness is not completely evident in U.S. \u2014 Southeast Asian relations, the leaders of Northeast Asia have set aside Trump's controversial campaign statements and have reciprocated his willingness to discuss important issues.

The rise of China over the last two decades has left the United States switching its focus from other areas of the world to the ever growing presence and influence coming from Asia in the spectrum of world politics. Many countries in Eastern Asia are being forced to choose determine whether they want to strengthen their alliances with China, their most important economic partner, or the United States, which for most of these countries, has been their most impactful political partner. Japan has been put in the scenario of having incredibly strong ties with the United States, especially militarily, and having a long history of conflict with China, but needing to recognize the importance of China as a rising power. Simultaneously, Japan is working to increase their own global influence to match their economic strength. With the recent development in the change of Japan's constitutional self-defense and diversion from their traditional pacifist nature since adopting their constitution in 1947, the rest of the world is waiting to see what changes will be coming from Japan regarding military policy. The foreign policies that are in the relatively early development of shaping up between Japan, China and the United States that are heavily influenced by the current United States military presence in Japan and the Asian region, will have a significant impact on the global political system in the coming years.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation refers to the United States' lead agency involved in the investigation of terrorism (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009). The federal law defines terrorism as a crime committed by non-state and state actors in order to influence the actions of the government through coercion or intimidation. Undeniably, terrorists have conducted destructive attacks that have resulted in massive loss of both lives and properties. Recent terrorist attacks that have led to massive loss are the Westgate attack in Kenya, the 1998 bomb blast in the American Embassy in Nairobi, and 11 September attack in the United States of America. Despite the existence of a number of security agencies in the United States, FBI has emerged as the lead agency in the fight against terrorist attacks. In this paper, I intend to unfold the responsibilities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a unit of the Justice Department, analyze how civil liberties fit into the responsibilities of the FBI, and then eventually scrutinize some of the challenges the FBI has encountered. In addition, this thesis shall examine some of the controversial acts such as the Patriot Act, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the Protect America Act.

The purpose of this research is to identify the factors contributing the resiliency of Syria's President Assad amongst a backdrop of falling authoritarians during the Arab Spring. After determining the Assad's regime's strategies of authoritarian rule both before and after the 2011 uprisings, this paper theorizes what Assad's persistence is most dependent on today by analyzing his discourse throughout the conflict. Assad's framing of the war to the media has significantly legitimized his rule.

The unprecedented rise of terrorist network ISIL has brought the revolutionary Salafi agenda to the forefront of global politics. This thesis provides an analysis of the ideology and an overview of ISIL. The research is comprised of reports on the organization from prominent think-tanks, books analyzing the tenets and thinkers of Salafi radicalism and original source material confiscated from ISIL's predecessor al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). An international coalition is posited as a solution to the threat as well as the Middle Eastern terrorist threat more broadly. However, the likelihood of such international cooperation is minimal, and the commitment it would require may make it unfeasible.

The Guantánamo Bay detention center received its first detainees on January 11, 2002, four months after the 9/11 attacks that precipitated the facility’s creation. According to the rhetoric of Bush Administration officials, the detention facility’s purpose after 9/11 was simple and obvious: it was there to keep ordinary Americans safe by keeping the most dangerous terrorists the United States military and intelligence communities could find under lock and key. But the administration’s reasons for creating the Guantánamo Bay facility, and the legal and political foundations on which they did so, were far more complicated.

That detention center was at the center of two conflicting responses to 9/11, which the Bush Administration tried to pursue simultaneously. One response was to investigate the 9/11 attacks in order to find the terrorists responsible for their planning and execution, detain those individuals, and try them for violations of law. The second response was to initiate an armed conflict against terrorist organizations and their state sponsors more broadly, including against those with loose or no ties to the individuals responsible for the 9/11 attacks. However, administration officials conflated these different responses and failed to develop a coherent strategy for fighting terrorism that would further either objective. The Guantánamo Bay detention program embodied that failure. The legal, political, and moral crisis that it has represented for fifteen years serves as evidence of the dangers of responding to national tragedies outside the bounds of established policy and legal frameworks.

East Asia in the aftermath of the Cold War might provide the most favorable case for realist theory due to historical rivalries, territorial disputes, economic competition, great power politics and deep-rooted realist beliefs among politicians in the region. Yet the fundamental realist prediction of balance of power in the region has not materialized. Neither internal nor external balancing in their original senses is explicitly present. This poses a serious challenge to realism and more broadly, western international relations theories for understanding regional dynamics. Several explanations have been put forward in previous research, such as a total rejection of the applicability of realism for explaining East Asian politics, modifying realism by adding new variables, and focusing on domestic variables. Using a neoclassical realist term, underbalancing, this dissertation goes beyond neoclassical realist theory of underbalancing by reintroducing the distinction between external and internal balancing, which has direct implications for the resources needed for a balancing policy and external reactions to balancing policy. In particular, this approach emphasizes the effect of interaction between states on underbalancing. By doing so, it also highlights what is omitted by realism, namely, the agency of the targeted state at risk of being balanced. In other words, the policy of the state that is aware of its risk of being balanced could draw upon foreign policy tools it possesses to neutralize the balancing efforts from others. This notion of state policies influencing the outcome of balance of power is tested with post-Cold War East Asian politics. The cases included China-Japan and China-ASEAN strategic interactions after the Cold War. Based on materials from public media outlets, official documents and recently leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, this dissertation argues that China's policies towards neighboring states- policies expressed variously through cultural, diplomatic, economic and security initiatives- are indispensable to explain the fact of underbalancing in the region.

Amidst studies attempting to fix the U.S., China, and their relationship into preconceived frameworks of international relations, presupposed definitions, and models of reality, this dissertation adopts an identity centric approach to understanding the nature of U.S.-China relations and, more generally, international politics. This approach involves utilizing an interpretive method to understanding, analyzing the narratives of self and other expressed by political actors and how their identities--expressed through narratives--interact with one another and thus how they influence or reflect social behavior. Striving for greater understanding and a more intellectually honest approach to the study of international politics, this study seeks not theory building or generalizability in a traditional "scientific" sense. Rather, informed by thinkers from Karl Popper through those more recent, this dissertation develops and outlines an in-depth, contextual approach to understanding, applying this approach to analyzing the nature of U.S.-China relations. Ultimately, this study argues that U.S. and Chinese identities and how their identities interact influence the nature of U.S.-China relations, whether the relationship tends towards cooperation or conflict, and that in order to glimpse this nature researchers must delve into the details of their subjects of study. Attempting to do so, this study analyzes U.S.-China relations surrounding the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, relations regarding the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute between China and Japan as it pertains to U.S. relations with China, and relations regarding encounters between the U.S. and China in cyber space (paying special note to attempts to define this "space" itself).

The purpose of this dissertation is to study not only relations between Latin America and the United States, but also Latin American states with each other. It specifically aims to examine the extent to which the United States, the principal hegemonic power in the Americas, can play a constructive role by providing regional public goods. These goods include conflict resolution and economic progress. Although the United States has the potential to create such goods, it also has the potential to create public bads in the form of regional instability, political terror, and economic stagnation. This raises two fundamental research questions: Under what conditions can Washington play a positive role and if these conditions cannot be met, under what conditions can Latin American nations bypass the United States and create their own economic progress and conflict resolution strategies? Drawing upon qualitative research methods and case studies that have attracted scant academic attention, this dissertation finds that through regional multilateral diplomatic negotiations, the United States can play a positive role. However, due to U.S. parochial economic interests and the marginalization of diplomacy as a foreign policy tool, these conditions rarely occur. This research further finds, however, that through flexible regionalization Latin American nations can bypass the United States and create their own goods. Supported by an alternative regional power, flexible regionalization relies upon supranational institutions that exclude the United States, emphasize permanent political and economic integration, and avoid inflexible monetary unions. Through this type of regionalization, Latin America can decrease U.S. interference, sustain political and economic autonomy, and open space for alternative conflict resolution strategies and economic policies that Washington would otherwise oppose. This dissertation is academically significant and policy relevant. First, it reconsiders diplomacy as an instrumental variable for peace and offers generalizable results that can be applied to additional cases. Moreover, finding that Latin American countries can address their own regional issues, this study recognizes the positive agency of Latin America and counters the negative essentialization commonly found in U.S. academic and policy research. Finally, this research offers policy advice for both the United States and Latin America.