IGA-335: Values, Interests, and the Crafting of U.S. Foreign Policy

Semester: Spring

Credit: 1.0

Syllabus: Click here for syllabus

Faculty: Sarah Sewall

Schedule

Day Time Location
First Day 1/28
Meet Day M/W 8:40 AM - 10:00 AM L280
Review

Description

This course explores the tensions between values and interests in the formulation of contemporary U.S. foreign policy. It is a course about the political and bureaucratic process of crafting foreign policy as well as a substantive exploration of how morality is defined and manifest in that process. It is useful for those interested in working inside government or shaping its policies from the outside. Students begin by exploring the concepts of human rights (and their relationship to U.S. political ideologies) and definitions of the U.S. national interest (which shape the security discourse). They analyze changes in human rights rhetoric, policy, and organizational structure, probing the links between American decision making and international and nongovernmental influences and institutions. Political and bureaucratic factors shaping U.S. policy formulation are explored through consideration of topics such as U.S. prosecution of the "war on terror," the use of foreign assistance, (non) intervention in Iraq, Rwanda, Sudan, and Libya, and U.S. engagement with the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. We will conduct two class exercises. The first will be a simulatation of a Principal’s Commmittee Meeting regarding humanitarian intervention in Rwanda in 1994; the second will be a negotiation of the principles of a National Security Strategy. The course highlights tensions among individual rights and national sovereignty, exceptionalism and internationalism, and politics and ideals.

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