Strategy/Policy/Military Ops

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor, Undergraduate

This is one of the two core courses in the Security Studies Program (SSP) and is a required course for all SSP students in their first semester. The goal of the course is to provide students with an understanding of how strategy is made and wars are fought. The course introduces students to foundational concepts such as the political nature of war; what constitutes grand strategy and military strategy; the role strategic culture plays in war; the levels of war and their interaction with one another; the civil-military and bureaucratic dynamics that shape strategy development; and the fundamentals of strategic logic used to formulate and evaluate strategies. The course begins with an overview of core concepts pertaining to war and strategy formulation. Students will then apply those core concepts to historical case studies, beginning with World War I and continuing to the present day.