Dept Sem:War in the Modern Wor

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Most introductory courses on the international relations courses spend the bulk of their time looking at questions of why. For example, they examine why wars happen, why do states form international institutions and why do states trade with one another. This course, however, builds on this material, but concerns itself primarily with a somewhat different set of questions—namely questions of how. Specifically, this course seeks answer a basic question: how do states (and primarily the United States) control, develop and use force to accomplish their national objectives? The course is divided into four sections. First, it will introduce the basic building blocks in the course, namely war, strategy and military power. Second, it will then look at the primary actor in this course—the military—and delve into a series of questions, ranging from how the military interacts with civilians to how the military learns (or does not learn). Third, the course will explore how states can use different types of force and the threats of force—from airpower to economic coercion—to accomplish their national objectives. Finally, the course concludes by looking at the future of war and strategy in the twenty-first century.