Finished!?

Thesis was submitted and approved by the graduate school after some rather annoying formatting issues with their new electronic submission. The next task I am attempting is to complete a outline of my thesis to turn it into a 25 page paper for my research seminar (yes I am taking the class out of order) and for an article I want to get published.

Only a Few Weeks Left!

It amazes me that my thesis is due to my committee in just two weeks and I constantly find myself wanting to add another section to my Kissinger chapter.

My article

Check out my article at AmericanDiplomacy.org !

I'm Published!

A fairly condensed version of the first four chapters of my thesis have been turned into an article that will be featured in the "Graduate Student" section of the February 1st issue of American Diplomacy.

My Thesis

“Détente or not Détente that is the Question: The Nixon Administration’s Response to Transnational Palestinian Terrorism in 1970”

The Labor Day weekend hijackings of four airliners in September 1970 and the events of ‘Black September’ by the Palestinian transnational terrorist organizations—the PFLP and the PLO—challenged the Nixon administration’s Cold War-era Middle East foreign policy. The administration's policy was based on Détente between the US and Soviet Union, a sharp divergence from previous policies by the United States. Détente was sought for three reasons: in order to maintain the US-Soviet balance of power in the region, to restrict Soviet influence on radical Arab governments, and to ensure important US-Soviet cooperation in a peace process as outlined in ‘the Rogers Plan.’ In this paper I argue that the administration’s and Kissinger’s response to the PFLP and PLO terrorism proved unsuccessful because it was rooted in traditional state-to-state diplomacy. The administration and Kissinger did not (or could not) understand the transnational nature of the organizations because they were non-state actors who performed extraterritorial actions across many national boundaries in the international system. Consequently, while their traditional state-to-state diplomacy could punish state actors in the region, it could not punish the transnational organizations directly.

Through the analysis of the historiography of US foreign policy in the Middle East it becomes clear that the transnational nature of these organizations is absent as it relates to these events and the administration’s response to them. In addition to the historiographical sources the newly released FRUS, 1969-1976, Vol. XXIV. Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula, 1969-1972; Jordan, September 1970 sheds light on how the administration’s and Kissinger’s response to the transnational nature of the organizations challenged their state-to-state diplomacy in the region.