Defection, territoriality, and the evolution of national security discourse

By examining the concept of defection and how it interconnects with territoriality, this dissertation seeks to add to geographers' understanding of territoriality as well as to reveal how national security discourse has evolved alongside both. Defection is closely linked to national security discourse. Though essentially a type of migration from one place to another, defection is distinct because it requires a context of binary conflict, and it assumes that the defector, by breaching a secured boundary, participates in the conflict and might affect its outcome. Although defection is conceptually connected to treason and loyalty, it is the element of territoriality that distinguishes defection from these related ideas. Defection is territorialized treason.;The dissertation examines defection's entry into the Anglo-American geopolitical lexicon during the Protestant Reformation, a pervasive binary conflict with strong territorial implications, and against the backdrop of global geographical exploration and the formalization of intelligence functions within state governments. This points to an intrinsic interrelationship of geography and intelligence; and it suggests defection, a term most common to the intelligence profession, and territoriality, a prominent theme in geographic discourse, are deeply interconnected concepts.;The dissertation follows treason within contexts of territoriality from an early modern English to a modern American setting. American territorial imagination was most challenged during two periods: the generation following the American Revolution and the generation following the closure of the frontier. Americans' understanding of what a defector is and what the act of defection means for the security of American territory is best considered in light of the cultural imagination of American landscape as territory.;Examination of Cold War defection scenarios and security rhetoric reveals real and imagined implications for territoriality. With Korea as one site of the Cold War's founding, considering the integration of defection and territoriality in the inter-Korean context will be especially instructive. Defection reinforces a binary approach to political ideology, so it carries important implications for how the superpowers have imagined territorial security and security weaknesses, as well as the ways they have imposed and maintained their territorial schemes on the globe.