Amer Persian Gulf: Crisis

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This class will explore U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf since 1979. It will focus on key American decisions, including the decision to engage in the Tanker War of 1987-88; the decision to defend Saudi Arabia and liberate Kuwait in 1990-1991, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (and not to properly rebuild it); the decision to pursue the “Surge” strategy to stabilize Iraq in 2007; the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 and their return to fight ISIS in 2014; and various decisions regarding how to address Iran’s nuclear program—including President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign and the 2020 decision to kill Iranian general Qassim Sulaymani. The class will examine why the United States made the decisions it did in the circumstances it did. Factors we will consider will include military dynamics, energy economics, domestic politics, bureaucratic politics, the limits of intelligence, leaders and their personalities, and the lessons that American citizens and policymakers took from each prior crisis. In this way, we will chart the course of American strategy toward the Persian Gulf, both to better understand how and why the U.S. faces the situation it is in at present in the Gulf, and as a case study of how different factors shape U.S. foreign policy toward an important part of the world over the past 40 years.