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Grand Strategy Syllabus

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Grand Strategy Syllabus LAH 350 U.S. Grand Strategy Unique #30190 Spring 2013 Thursday, 3:30-6:30, CRD 007B Professor Mark A. Lawrence GAR 3.220, 475-9304 [email protected] Office Hours: Tuesday, 11-12; Thursday, 2-3 p.m.; and by appointment This course examines how U.S. leaders have conceived of their nation’s place in the world and sought to use various types of power to achieve national objectives. We will consider military affairs, economics, and diplomacy, but the class is most fundamentally concerned with ideas. How have U.S. leaders, especially on the years from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, thought about U.S. vulnerabilities, resources, and goals, and how have those ideas influenced foreign policy decisions? How have key leaders and strategists balanced competing objectives and navigated difficult international and domestic circumstances? Which leaders were successful in managing U.S. statecraft, and which were not? Which leaders developed coherent grand strategies? What lessons might we derive for our own times from studying this history? How important is historical knowledge in thinking about contemporary dilemmas? The course will sweep across American history but will not attempt to be exhaustive. Rather, it will focus on the last hundred years and especially certain moments that highlight shifts in grand strategic thought. We will carefully consider, for example, Wilsonianism, postwar planning during Second World War, the evolution of containment during the Cold War, the debate over U.S. priorities following 1989, and the evolution of U.S. grand strategy since September 11, 2001. The course is also designed to help students hone their skills in writing argumentative essays – skills with enormous value not only inside the academy but also in law, journalism, business, and other career fields. Each student will be required to write several papers of different styles and lengths, one of which will be revised and resubmitted. Course requirements 1. regular attendance and active participation in class (20 percent of term grade) 2. Critical book review (4-5 pages) of Mead’s Special Providence, due Feb. 7, with rewrite due Feb. 21 (20 percent) 3. Essay (4-6 pages) on NSC-68, due March 21 by 5 p.m. (20 percent) 4. argumentative essay (approximately 10 pages) analyzing the thinking of a significant American involved in grand strategic planning, due May 2; statement of topic and preliminary bibliography due by 5 p.m. March 8 (30 percent of term grade) 5. op-ed (3-4 pages) on the future of U.S. grand strategy, due May 6 by 5 p.m. (10 percent) 1 Required texts Andrew Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (2002) John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (rev. ed., 2005) George Kennan, American Diplomacy: Expanded Edition (1984) Henry Kissinger, Dipomacy (1994) Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (2001) Course reading packet Additional notes . The professor may occasionally hand out short documents that should be treated as required reading. The professor reserves the right to adjust the readings in order to respond to student interests and unexpected lines of discussion in our class. All of the required books are available for purchase at the University Coop. The photocopy reader is available at Jenn’s Copy & Binding at 2200 Guadalupe Street. Students should be fully aware of university rules regarding academic dishonesty. The instructor assumes full compliance throughout the semester and will strictly observe all university procedures in cases of violations. The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of Students at 471-6259 or 471-6441. Schedule of topics and assignments January 17: Introduction What are the basic goals and requirements of the course? January 24: What is Grand Strategy? What is meant by “grand strategy”? How is grand strategy different from “strategy” or “tactics”? Is grand strategy a reasonable subject of study? What are the problems with implementing grand strategies? How can we study the history of American grand strategic thought? Reading: John Lewis Gaddis, “What is Grand Strategy?” (unpublished lecture, 2009) Paul M. Kennedy, “Grand Strategy in War and Peace: Toward a Broader Definition,” in Kennedy ed., Grand Strategies in War and Peace (1993) Richard K. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security (2000) Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World (2001), xv-55 2 January 31: Traditions of American Strategic Thought, Part I How have Americans tended to think about grand strategy? What are the various traditions that feed into the ideas that have dominated at various times? Has American grand strategic thought been characterized more by continuity or discontinuity? Can one reasonably speak of broad schools of thought? To what extent was the rise of the United States to global power by the late 1890s the result of a coherent strategic vision? What is your opinion of Mead’s book? Do you buy his assertion that Americans have been remarkably successful in international diplomacy? Reading: Mead, Special Providence, 56-263 February 7: Traditions of American Strategic Thought, Part II Continue with discussion initiated in previous session. Mead, Special Providence, 264-334 February 14: Wilsonianism and Its Critics What are the defining characteristics of Wilsonianism? Why has at least one prominent historian labeled the twentieth century the “Wilsonian Century”? What kinds of criticism did Wilson face during his presidency, and what kinds of criticism has Wilsonianism faced ever since? Reading: Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, 29-55 Ross Kennedy, The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America’s Strategy for Peace and Security (2009), xi-64, 163-181 Engel, Lawrence, and Preston, eds., The United States and the World: A History in Documents (forthcoming), chapter 5 February 21: U.S. Grand Strategy and the Second World War What core objectives drove U.S. foreign policy from the mid-1930s through the end of the Second World War? Was there a consistent grand strategic vision? How did the Roosevelt administration go about changing American opinion and preparing the nation for war? What major strategic choices did FDR face during the war, and how did he resolve them? To what extent was U.S. policy during the war guided by a strong sense of how the global order should be shaped following the end of the fighting? Reading: Kissinger, Diplomacy, pp. 369-422 Eliot A. Cohen, “The Strategy of Innocence? The United States, 1920-1945,” in Williamson Murray, et al., eds., The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War (1994). Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions, American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (2006), pp. 15-70. 3 February 28: George Kennan and Containment What is the strategy of containment? How did George Kennan make the case for it? Why did containment take hold in the minds of many American leaders in 1946 and 1947 as opposed to other possible ways of coping with the Soviet challenge? Who was George Kennan, and how does containment reflect his broader intellectual underpinnings? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Kennan’s thought? Reading: John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 3-86. Gaddis, “The Uses of Kennan: A Grand Strategist’s Legacy” (unpublished lecture, 2008) George Kennan, “Mr. Hippisley and the Open Door,” “World War II,” “Diplomacy in the Modern World,” and “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Kennan, American Diplomacy (1951) March 7: NO CLASS (individual meetings with Prof. Lawrence) Use this week to settle on a topic for your research paper and to consult with Professor Lawrence. March 21: A Different Kind of Cold War: NSC-68 and the National Security State How did NSC-68 depart from Kennan’s version of containment? Why did NSC-68, as opposed to the more limited vision that had prevailed earlier, appeal to U.S. leaders in the early 1950s? How radical a departure was it? What were its strengths and weaknesses? Reading: NSC-68 Commentaries by Kennan, Nitze, Kuklick, and Rosenberg in Ernest R. May, ed., American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC-68 (1993) Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 87-124 Kissinger, Diplomacy, pp. 446-492 March 28: From the New Look to the Liberal High Tide Why did American leaders pull back from the ambitious program laid out in NSC-68 and then, in the early 1960s, call once again for the bold assertion of American power? Is there a cyclical pattern emerging? If so, how would you account for it? What historical circumstances helped produce these shifts in strategic thinking (or at least rhetoric)? To what extent did domestic political forces contribute to the shifts? Have the shifts been in any way exaggerated? What elements of continuity run through the 1953-1965 period? Reading: Speeches by Eisenhower, Kennedy, Rostow (1961) CIA report, “Estimate of the World Situation” (January 17, 1961) Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960), pp. 1-16, 106-144 Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 125-271 4 April 4: Nixon, Kissinger, and Détente Who were Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger? Why did they believe it was necessary to reorient U.S. foreign policy after they took office in 1969? What was the effect of the Vietnam War on the international position of the United States? What other developments weakened the United States internationally around the same time? What exactly are détente and triangular diplomacy? What fundamentally were Nixon and Kissinger trying to achieve with these approaches? Are you sympathetic to them? What are the strengths and weaknesses of their approach? Why did it not persist beyond the mid-1970s? Reading: Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp.
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