U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security Program Concentration

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.

This course introduces the institutions and processes involved in making U.S. foreign, defense, and intelligence policy. The course provides a brief overview of the foreign and national security challenges facing the United States and focuses on the institutions, decision-making processes, and politics of U.S. foreign and national security policy making. Students will study the State and Defense departments, the intelligence community, the White House, interagency processes, Congress, and outside participants in the policy process.

The United States as a World Power Since 1898 introduces the history of U.S. foreign relations in the 20th century and beyond. Students taking this course will assess continuity and change in U.S. foreign relations as well as how ideas of racial superiority, economic factors, geography, and non-state actors influenced U.S. foreign relations in these years.