Document Type

Graduate Syllabus

Date

Fall 2011

School

Diplomacy

Course Number

DIPL 6132

Course Description

This course briefly analyzes the history of American Grand Strategy and focuses on the Post-Cold War period. We will explore some of the most important debates in the past twenty years and then closely analyze two books written by acclaimed American foreign policy scholars and practitioners.

The course is designed to introduce you to the subject-matter and to help you formulate a Grand Strategy for the US. You will start the project by closely reading and then discussing one of the most thoughtful proposals on American strategy for the 21 51 Century, the Princeton Report. The Report is a collective bipartisan effort of numerous American scholars and politicians. Then we will create groups and each will begin researching, drafting, discussing, arid writing a new strategy beginning with a thoughtful critique of the Princeton Report. In order to accomplish the task of designing a strategy we will devote the first part of each class to analyzing the assigned texts. The second part of the class will be devoted to applying what we learned in that class to your concrete project.

Throughout the semester we will try to link the readings with contemporary events. Hence, you should keep informed about relevant current events through regular reading of newspapers. You should read a newspaper that provides thorough coverage of international news (for example, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal). If possible you should also read foreign newspapers. You may also want to watch news on TV. BBC, CNN International, CCTV9 (from China) and Russia Today provide good insight into current events. You.will get a better insight if you follow news from different countries.

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