IGA-211: Central Challenges of American National Security, Strategy, and the Press

Semester: Fall

Credit: 1.0

Syllabus: Click here for syllabus

Faculty: Graham Allison, David Sanger

Schedule

Day Time Location
First Day 9/10
Meet Day M 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM FAS FACLB FACLB
Review
First meeting will be held in Starr

Description

Using a series of case studies from the front page of the U.S. national security agenda, this course grapples with the hardest U.S. national security challenges of the decade ahead. Issues range from the Arab Awakening and intervention in civil wars to combating Iran’s nuclear ambitions and dealing with the economic and military rise of China. Assignments require strategic thinking: analyzing dynamics of issues and developing strategies in a government whose deliberations are discombobulated by leaks, reports about internal differences among policymakers, and press analyses. Students will learn to devise strategies and write strategic options memos as participants in the policymaking process. Strategic options memos combine careful analysis and strategic imagination, on the one hand, with the necessity to communicate to major constituencies in order to sustain public support, on the other. A subtheme of the course explores coping with a world where a pervasive press makes secrecy more often the exception than the rule. In each case, there will be exploration of how media coverage affects decision making, with an examination of WikiLeaks and other examples of the publication of classified information.

Enrollment restricted. Also offered by the Government Department as Gov 1796.