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(2018)ThesisThis thesis traces the origins and evolution of the ideas and concepts associated with the revolution in military affairs (RMA) with Chinese characteristics. More specifically, it identifies the group of RMA enthusiasts, tracing their patterns of activities, identifying their communication platforms and channels of influence, and examining their long-term impact on the RMA and ideas associated with it. It argues that from 1980 to 2002, the policy ideas created and advanced by this RMA epistemic community (RMA EC) were crucial in defining PLA conceptions of the RMA. In the early 1980s, they contributed to the reassessing of the international security environment and shaped the Chinese leadership’s threat perception which eventually led to the shift of PLA strategic thought from preparing for imminent all-out war to peacetime army building. They also advocated a holistic, forward-looking approach to defence studies. In the mid-1980s, they proposed major PLA-wide future war studies initiatives, which resulted in introducing the concepts of local war and high-tech wars into the PLA. This eventually led to the strategy of ‘local war under high-tech conditions’, announced in 1993. In the 1990s, they kept expanding the RMA EC and engaged with military regions and group armies, disseminated their future high-tech war ideas to combat units and helping them create operational concepts. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they played a leading role in identifying the information aspect of warfare as the key of future high-tech wars. This made a significant contribution to updating the PLA’s strategic outlook from ‘local war under high-tech conditions’ to ‘local war under conditions of informationisation’. Moreover, they were among the first to introduce foreign advanced training methods such as computer simulation, realistic combat training and base-ised combat training. In sum, the RMA EC played a leading role in introducing foreign military ideas and adapting them to Chinese contexts, which eventually defined the RMA with Chinese characteristics.
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(2018)ThesisThe period of democratic transition in Myanmar, beginning in 2010, has seen the emergence of devastating communal violence, the vast majority of which has been directed towards Muslim communities. This thesis considers the phenomenon of communal violence during democratic transition in Myanmar through a contentious politics framework. The historical institutionalist argument made in this thesis suggests three factors necessary for communal violence in this case; an exclusive definition of the political community at the time of democratic transition, elites’ promotion of exclusionary forms of nationalism during democratic transition, and the availability of non-elites willing to perpetrate violence. This thesis documents a mechanism between democratic transition and exclusionary forms of nationalism in Myanmar. The practice of democracy requires the definition of a nation’s boundaries – of who is a member of the political community and of who is not. Democracy, however, cannot determine where these boundaries should lie. It is instead nationalism which will define a new conception of the political community. This thesis finds that the exclusionary forms of nationalism which arose during democratic transition in Myanmar reflected the historically exclusive definition of the nation and the construction of particular communal groups, foremost the Rohingya, as a threat to it. Such conceptions were promoted by political, religious and other elites during transition. Using a dynamic contentious politics approach to study the interactions of actors, opportunities and mechanisms, this thesis stresses the ways in which communal violence interacted with democratic transition. This is considered through an analysis of the processes of; the historical construction of national and communal identities, the activation of the boundaries of these identities at democratic transition, the constitution of actors (including political parties and nationalist organisations), brokerage between these actors, and the interpretation of violence by the state and other actors as democratic transition continued. Insecurity is considered as an environmental mechanism which influences the attribution of threat by actors. Mobilisation for violence can be found throughout these processes and mechanisms. This thesis draws upon in-depth interviews with political, religious and community leaders and other community members, predominantly taken in five different case-study locations across Myanmar.
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