Watchdogs Wars: Oversight

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Watchdogs and Wars: Oversight of America's Wars What does a government watchdog do during a war? This course examines how the United States oversees its wars: the inspectors general, auditors, congressional committees, courts, whistleblowers, and journalists who together form the war accountability ecosystem. Students trace how oversight findings are produced and contested, why thousands of corrective actions remain open for decades, and what the documentary record reveals about the human and economic cost of war. The course is built on primary sources, including audits, evaluations, Lead Inspector General quarterly reports, statutes, testimony, FOIA releases, and investigative reporting, organized through a public research repository of wartime oversight documents. Case studies examine Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Ukraine, and Iran, where students read a war's oversight while it is being produced. Students learn to read oversight products critically, follow money and recommendations through the system, and write concise problem and decision memos for policymakers. The course prepares students to use, and to improve, the machinery of wartime accountability.