INTS 371-01, American Foreign Policy, Fall 2009

Abstract

This course offers a review of key paradigms in US foreign policy, while raising the question of America’s role in the international system today. We will survey the founding principles of American foreign policy and different ideological and analytical approaches affecting our policy choices. Next, we will discuss the key players in foreign policy-making and their relative importance in the process. The second half of the semester will focus U.S. strategy after the Cold War and the seminal impact of 9/11 on U.S. foreign policy. We will address the question of the shifting U.S. position in the international system and its implications for the future of American foreign policy. The larger question that will guide this seminar is the extent to which the Democratic Peace Theory has come to define U.S. foreign policy discourse in the U.S. domestic context, and whether we are capable today of thinking of the international system in Realist terms.