This work examines whether Sino-Brazilian trade or investment significantly influences Brazil's voting in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). To examine this relationship, this work regresses a dataset of UNGA votes, which the literature commonly uses to represent political influence, with trade and investment data. Understanding whether the growing Sino-Brazilian economic relationship politically impacts Brazil is important both to Brazil and to the United States. Any increase in Chinese influence on Brazil may translate into a corresponding decrease in U.S. influence, which may have...

This work argues that "coercive" counterinsurgency (COIN) has played a larger role historically than is currently recognized in today's FM 3-24 doctrine, which reflects the popular view of COIN as emphasizing protection of the population. The extent to which the essence of COIN has been misunderstood and misinterpreted, undermining the coercive "gold standard" is a central concern. While there has been some recognition of the utility of coercive action against insurgents, ethical concerns about proportionality and the indiscriminate use of force have imposed constraints. Where the "gold...

This work explores the history of U.S. Army deception and doctrine, and combines the insights gained with the various works on deception, cognitive psychology, communications, and decision-making in order to distill a concise handbook for deception practitioners. A longitudinal review of U.S. Army doctrine reveals a wide variation in the treatment of deception, from emphasized to ignored. This variation can be primarily explained by the U.S. preference for the cumulative destruction style of war and the perceived balance of power between the U.S. and its adversaries. This work strives to fill...

There are continual debates regarding the effectiveness of United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR) 1803 and 1929 as tools for limiting the Islamic Republic of Iran's goals for a nuclear program. This thesis examines the enforceability of the maritime sections of both resolutions at the police level in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Arab nations along the Arabian Gulf have had long-standing maritime trade relations with Iran and the greater Indian Ocean that extend generations into history. This relationship led to the extensive merging of Arab and Persian cultures...

Waterboarding, rendition, torture: each of these terms provides deeply negative examples of the mishandling of detainees by various entities of the United States government during the prosecution of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In order to rectify these failures of the various systems within the U.S. military's detention framework, the Department of Defense (DoD) developed and issued Field Manual 2-22.3 Human Intelligence Collector Operations. This new doctrine has created restrictions that add unnecessary hours to the process of exploiting detainees through tactical interrogation. Due...