NATO in peace support operations: Efficiency of intelligence and propaganda in Bosnia Herzegovina and Afghanistan

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2017

Öğrenci: MURAT ASLAN

Danışman: EBRU BOYAR

Özet:

This thesis examines the efficiency of propaganda and affiliated intelligence functions of NATO in peace support operations. For this purpose, the research scrutinizes the context of peace support operations, NATO’s conceptualizations of propaganda and intelligence, their practice in the field, and the shifts that have occurred in these conceptualizations. In order to analyse such issues, the NATO operations in BosniaHerzegovina and Afghanistan are examined in detail as case studies. Both cases are used to pinpoint the discourse of propaganda and affiliated intelligence activities of NATO in peace support operations as well as challenges, which are encountered by NATO in such operations. It is argued that as NATO failed to shift its conventional thinking, stemmed from the Cold War environment, it is late to respond newly emerging threat types, actors, and the requirements of peace support operations. NATO’s experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan demonstrate to what extent NATO was unable to address the population centric concerns which peace support operations should have taken more interest in and to what extent intelligence and propaganda efforts of NATO in such operations proved to be successful in responding to the actual needs and necessities for (un)successfully completing peace support operations.