IGA-337: Decision Making in Recent Crises: The Formulation and Consequences of Key Decisions on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan

Semester: Fall

Credit: 1.0

Syllabus: Click here for syllabus

Faculty: Meghan O'Sullivan

Schedule

Day Time Location
First Day 9/3
Meet Day T/Th 10:10 AM - 11:30 AM L332
Review

Description

This course uses some of the greatest contemporary challenges in American foreign policy to explore the broader issue of how and why important foreign policy decisions are made.  Employing a decision making framework developed in class, students will examine more than a dozen specific, historic decisions made in regard to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan over the past seven years.  This format will allow students to gain knowledge about the recent past, but also give students insight – through positive and negative examples – into how policy makers can make the best decisions in the face of imperfect information and various constraints.  The course will enable students to extract lessons from Americas recent experience that have relevance to future nation-building efforts by the United States or other powers.  Students will emerge from the course not only with substantive knowledge about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but equipped with analytical tools to understand and evaluate foreign policy decision making more generally.