LEAD 165
America and the World
Last Offered Spring 2021
Division II
Cross-listed PSCI 161 / GBST 103
This course is not offered in the current catalog

This course will help students understand the US role in the world. US wealth and military power force its leaders to make choices that no other leaders in the world confront. Students will learn to evaluate the decisions that US leaders have made on a wide range of difficult foreign policy issues, including: rising Chinese power; Russian moves in Ukraine; nuclear proliferation to Iran; terrorist threats; humanitarian disasters in Syria and Libya; and long-term challenges like climate change. We will not only describe American involvement in various international issues but also seek to understand the reasons why the US perhaps should or should not be involved, and we will see why such careful reasoning only sometimes gains traction in actual US foreign policy debates. Finally, we will assess whether US foreign policy decisions are coherent – that is, whether the US can be said to follow a “grand strategy.” By the end of the course, students will develop their ability to think about foreign policy issues, improving their ability to participate in public life as engaged citizens.