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MSFS-643 Defining National Interests
This is a seminar on contemporary American foreign policy focusing on decision making in the U.S. government, and intelligence community support of the policy maker. The course is open only to foreign policy concentration students in the Masters in Foreign Service program.
The United States has, at this moment in history, unprecedented power, but a debate rages about how best to utilize and preserve this power in pursuit of U.S. interests. This debate has become particularly intense in the wake of 9/11 and U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This semester we will focus on four cases intended to illuminate U.S. decision making around the use or potential use of force: President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 decision to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam, U.S. decision making at the time of the fall of the Shah of Iran 1978-79, the 1998-1999 Kosovo crisis, and the 2003 Iraq War and its aftermath. These “cases” will be examined as part of a broader examination of contemporary American foreign policy and, especially on decisions taken by President George W. Bush.
We are particularly interested in the factors determining major foreign policy decisions - how U.S. national interests are defined in times of crisis, in the use/misuse/non-use of intelligence by policy makers, in the assumptions held by policy makers, and in the impact of these assumptions on policy decisions. We will want to identify “lessons” from these cases.
While the central focus of the four cases will be on decisions to use (or in the case of Iran, not to use) force, students will have the opportunity, in the research on their papers and in class discussions, to explore a fuller range U.S. national interests. Ultimately, our goal is not to come down dogmatically one way or another on decisions made by American presidents but rather to illuminate how policy makers struggled with the choices presented them. In so doing, we will gain an appreciation of the challenges confronting decision makers as they manage bad choices and, inevitably, must chose between competing interests.
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: None
Course syllabi
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Fall '09:
Yost C
(description, file download)
Additional syllabi may be available in prior academic years.
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