Global Security Program Concentration

What factors and conditions explain patterns of peace and conflict in a global system of political, social, and economic actors competing for power, influence, and advantage? To answer this question, this course introduces core concepts, paradigms, and seminal debates from broadly defined security studies. Students will establish a foundation for investigating the causes and dynamics of conflict at the interstate, regional, and global levels of analysis. By integrating theory and practice, students can contextualize and assess the strategies actors employ to advance their interests as well as the underlying structural and configurational constraints shaping how these actors make decisions.

How do politics, organizations, and policy processes inside states create conditions for peace and conflict? To what extent do regime type, the perceptions of leaders, and past history influence a state’s security goals in the international system? In this course, students will answer these questions by understanding and applying core concepts from security studies, domestic politics, and foreign policy. In other words, this course uses characteristics from inside a state as a tool for understanding security relations between states and their abilities to identify, prevent, and resolve conflict.

Some see international conflicts and crises as essential events, the outcomes of which determine subsequent geopolitical arrangements. However, the humanitarian and other costs of such conflicts have helped give rise to the concepts and operations of conflict prevention. In order to better prevent conflict, experts have developed methods of assessing its likelihood, causes, and dynamics.

This course explores the methods and challenges of preventing the outbreak of armed conflict. Students survey contemporary approaches to the assessment of conflict: Conflict assessment frameworks used by different organizations incorporate a variety of theoretical assumptions and empirical tools in order to gain a better understanding of the causes of violent conflict. The course also explores challenges of predicting the outbreak of conflict through the exploration of the early warning concepts and instruments, and it examines the challenge of moving from early warning to preventive action. Students also consider cases of successful and unsuccessful prevention as practiced by national governments, NGOs, civil society organizations, the United Nations, and regional political organizations.