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The Fourth Instrument of Statecraft: Biopolitics in the Post-Modern Security Environment

Slaughter, Olivia Caroline
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Abstract
The global security environment has drastically transformed for interstate conflict in post-modernity. Where interstate power operations were once solely reliant on the economic, military, and diplomatic instruments, a new instrument of statecraft has risen which relies on information. This information includes psychological, sociological, historical, cultural values, scientific qualities, and knowledge. Information can dictate power operations when it is collected, analyzed, and disseminated. State actors, non-state actors, and global citizens can manipulate global power realities by controlling information. Information as a statecraft may not always be operationally separable from the other instruments of power. In chapter one, the post-modern security paradigm will be introduced. The literary analysis in chapter two is a compilation of a series of theorists who have, in some way, described this fourth instrument of statecraft in their works. Chapter three details the historical beginnings of this instrument of power, including the trending methods of coercion, effects of neoliberal international institutions, and the Information Age. Chapter four is a case study of post-modern U.S. intelligence and defense operations and strategies which align with Foucault’s theory of biopolitics and Deleuze’s control societies paradigm. My findings of this research are that the statecraft of information is elusive; however, it is analytically separable from the other three major operations of interstate power. Further, this instrument will only continue to manifest in its importance as societies continue to modernize in the age of information.
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Thesis (B.A. in Political Science)--John Cabot University, Fall 2020.
Date
2020
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Keywords
Biopolitics, Information warfare
Citation
Slaughter, Olivia Caroline. "The Fourth Instrument of Statecraft: Biopolitics in the Post-Modern Security Environment". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2020.
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