790:322- Strategies of International Relations

Transcription

1 790:322- Strategies of International Relations Instructor: Michael McKoy Office: 511 Hickman Hall Office Hours: Tues, 11:00am 12:00pm; appointment upon request Course Description This course focuses on the different aspects and applications of strategic thinking. Strategy is most fundamentally about interactive decision-making. The essence of strategy is making decisions in order to achieve one s preferred aims, but these decisions must be based on how you believe others will act as well. Strategy, therefore, requires understanding one s own preferences, capabilities, and constraints and those of one s allies, adversaries, and other important parties. We develop the ability to think strategically when dealing with everyday common occurrences. The first part of this course focuses on important aspects of strategic thinking, such as the structure of strategic environments, establishing credibility, and the effects of regime (or government) types and psychological factors. I regularly use film clips to illustrate these points, as popular media is a common means by which we learn strategy. Once we have reviewed these critical strategic components, we will then analyze a series of historical international crises in order to better understand the decision-making involved. These crises include World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Iraq Wars, and the international politics of genocide. These diverse cases provide a series of different strategic environments and highlight both common and different aspects of strategic thinking. Readings Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, New York: Penguin Group, I often assign different parts of articles or book chapters rather than the whole in order to focus on the most pertinent information. Page numbers often correspond to specific sections within the chapter. You should, therefore, begin or end with that section, rather than reading the entire page. Sometimes, the assigned reading begins or ends in the middle of a chapter or section. In those cases, I put the paragraph number in parentheses. Make sure to pay close attention to the page numbers, so you do not overload on reading. Assignments We will be doing in-class activities and simulations, so attendance is mandatory. Throughout this course, we will also use examples from popular media to demonstrate different components of strategic thinking. The first major assignment will be to choose a film, book, or song (subject to my approval) and write an essay describing its strategic environment and explaining the subsequent decision-making of the characters involved. The essay must be 3 5 pages long and is due on October 12. For the case study sessions, there will be reading quizzes at the beginning of each class. I will drop the two lowest grades, and the seven highest scores will make up 30% of your final grade. Given the central importance of this crisis to our current understanding of strategic thinking, it is critical that students pay close attention to the reading. Therefore, that quiz score will count to your overall grade. The final exam will be a take-home exam consisting of essay questions. announced later in the semester. The exam date will be

2 Grading Participation- 10% Film/Literature Essay- 20% Quizzes- 30% Final Exam- 40% Session 1, September 4: Introduction Jennifer Schuessler, Game Theory: Jane Austen Had It First, New York Times, April 22, Session 2, September 11: Games and Dilemmas Avinash Dixit, Susan Skeath, & David Reiley, Games of Strategy (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009), pp , , Session 3, September 18: Beliefs and Biases James Fearon, Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands vs. Sinking Costs, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 41, No. 1 (February 1997), pp Robert Jervis, Perceiving and Coping with Threats, in Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp , Session 4, September 25: Rational (and Irrational) Reasons for War Dan Reiter, Exploring Bargaining Model of War, Perspectives of Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 2003), pp (Skip Old wine in new bottles? subsection) Shiping Tang, The Security Dilemma: A Conceptual Analysis, Security Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring 2009), pp , Session 5, October 2: Allies and Adversaries Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, Dynamics of Coercion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1-5(2), 48-51(2), 59(1)-86. Glenn Snyder, The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics, World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 4 (July 1984), pp

3 Session 6, October 9: World War II- Europe Kershaw, Fateful Choices Ch. 1, London, Spring 1940, pp (1), 25(1)-53. Ch. 6, Moscow, Spring 1941, pp , 253(3)-260(3), Recommended: Ch. 1, The Demise of Free Security, pp ESSAY DUE: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, Session 7, October 16: World War II- Asia Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices Ch. 3, Tokyo, Summer and Autumn 1940, pp , Ch. 8, Tokyo, Autumn 1941, pp (top), , 350(1)-359, Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press, Session 8, October 23: Cold War Origins Ch. 4, The Demise of Free Security, pp Ch. 5, Confrontation, pp Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since New York: Penguin Press, Session 9, October 30: Korean War Ch. 6, To the Ends of the Earth, pp (1), , Thomas Christensen, Worse than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Session 10, November 6: Cuban Missile Crisis Ch. 5, The Nuclear Rubicon, pp Bruce Allyn, James Blight, and David Welch, Essence of Revision: Moscow, Havanna, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, International Security, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Winter ), pp

4 Recommended: Robert L. O Connell, The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust, in Robert Cowley, ed., What Ifs?of American History, New York: Berkeley Books, Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble : Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Session 11, November 13: Cold War Settlement Ch. 9, Endgame, pp Andrew Kydd, Trust, Reassurance, and Cooperation, International Organization, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Spring 2000), pp , Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, The Unraveling of the Cold War Settlement, Survival, Vol. 51, No. 6 (December 2009/January 2010), pp , 44(1)-55. Mary Elise Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Session 12, November 20: Rwandan Genocide and International Response Stuart J. Kaufman, Symbolic Politics or Rational Choice: Testing Theories of Extreme Ethnic Violence, International Security, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Spring 2006), pp (top), [end: Case 1: Ethnic War in Sudan], 69(3)-81(2). Samantha Power, Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen, Atlantic Monthly, September Stephen E. Gent, Strange Bedfellows: The Strategic Dynamics of Major Power Military Interventions, Journal of Politics, Vol. 69, No. 4 (November 2007), pp (2), 1093(Issues & Intervention) 1096, 1100(1) Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, Session 13, December 4: Iraq War, 1991 Janice Gross Stein, Deterrence and Compellence in the Gulf, : A Failed or Impossible Task? International Security, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall 1992), pp Mohammed Heikal, Illusions of Triumph: An Arab View of the Gulf War. London: Harper Collins, Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, : Diplomacy and War in the New World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

5 Session 14, December 11: Iraq War, 2003 Kenneth Pollack, Next Stop Baghdad, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 2 (March/April 2002), pp Steven E. Miller, Gambling on War: Force, Order, and the Implications of Attacking Iraq, in Carl Kaysen, et al., War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (2002), pp (Start: Unfortunate Outcomes: Fears of a Costly War ), Recommended: Frank P. Harvey, President Al Gore and the 2003 Iraq War: A Counterfactual Test of Conventional W isdom, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No. 1 (March 2012), pp Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.