AMALGAMATED SECURITY COMMUNITIES

Abstract

This dissertation examines the process of the formation and dissolution of Amalgamated Security Communities, a topic that has been ignored by the academic community except as a side note when the origins of Pluralistic Security Communities are examined. Amalgamated Security Communities (ASC) must have some level of military integration. A multiple case study design examines the process of integrating military forces and capabilities to generate military power in the context of the formation of an ASC. The cases chosen were restricted to those in which the various previously independent political entities voluntarily and formally merged. Once a decision is made to integrate military capabilities, especially the integration of the capacity to produce military capability, an ASC will form as a result; this process is the mirror image of state dissolution. The degree of integration of military capabilities and the capacity to produce military capability is the independent variable which has been divided into a number of categories used to compare cases. This study argues that it is the decision to become "brothers-in-arms" that is crucial to the development of an "us" vs. "others" identity. It is military integration that creates and reinforces a new identity among and between amalgamated political entities rather than being a byproduct of an identity. This connection between military integration and identity formation is a critical foundation of this study. Findings include, that how military forces are created, controlled, organized, equipped, and by whom, has a political impact on the formation of an ASC. Multiple jurisdictions with control over military capabilities and the capacity to produce military capabilities creates a politically unstable ASC. This study permits prediction of how stable an ASC is and the likelihood of its violent fracture as well as providing methods to prevent violent conflict regardless of the geographic, cultural, and economic context of the ASC and whether it is an authoritarian political regime or not. Finally, this study places Constructivism as an approach at the heart of the creation of military forces, as well as at the forefront of military fracture and civil war.