Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a clear violation of the norm of international sovereignty, has posed the greatest security challenge to Europe since WWII. The Middle East is sliding closer to the edge of a wider regional conflict because of the ferocious Israeli response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. China, under Xi Jinping, is challenging American hegemony in world affairs. The Russian war against Ukraine and China’s emergence as a great power, it has been argued, has given impetus to the transformation of the rules-based international order, created by the U.S. in the 1940s, to a post-Western world order—a world order which is no longer defined and structured by Western preferences. While President Biden has asserted that the Ukraine war is “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules based order and one governed by brute force,” others argue that Russian aggression, though reprehensible, is not unprecedented in the last three decades and that the lion’s share of them have come from the United States and its allies—in Serbia (1999), Iraq (2003), and Libya (2011), for example. Yet others posit that American global hegemony is moving toward the abyss in the Ukraine war with Russia; the war, they hypothesize, is the beginning of World War III. The post-war liberal international order, credited for the unprecedented prosperity (global economy grew 13-fold between 1950 and 2013) and world peace (there was no war between major powers during this period), became fragile by the turn of the 21st century and started to fracture after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the financial crisis of 2007-08. President Trump ushered in a new era in American foreign policy. His “America First” policy was a radical departure from the bipartisan foreign policy that prior presidents, Democratic and Republican, had pursued for seven decades. While the bipartisan American foreign policy emphasized multilateralism and creation, maintenance, and promotion of rules-based international order, a Hamiltonian and Wilsonian approach to foreign policy, the America First foreign policy, a neo-isolationist and zero-sum approach to global affairs represented the resurgence of the Jacksonian tradition. Trump withdrew America from thirteen treaties, agreements, and conventions, including the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the World Health Organization (WHO); he even threatened to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Though Trump lost in 2020, President Biden, facing the challenges of the pandemic and border crisis at home and the Ukraine war in Europe, continued with his predecessor’s protectionist policy toward China. While he reversed some of Trump’s isolationist policies, notably on NATO and the Paris Climate Agreement, and repaired U.S.’s alliances, Biden’s response to the global supply-chain crisis was similar to that of Trump—to revitalize American manufacturing, secure critical supply chains, and deny China access to advance technology from the U.S. and its allies. The difference was in tone only; unlike Trump, Biden is a “polite protectionist.” As the war in Ukraine continues and the U.S. relations with China remain tense, the world order is in flux. We are witnessing issues, crises, and disorder in the international system not seen since the end of the cold war: Has the Ukraine war and Covid-19 changed the world order, or they have simply thrown a brutal spotlight on the flaws, deficiencies, and the disrepair of the existing international order? What is Russia’s long-term strategy in invading Ukraine? Is Russia still a major power with the capacity to challenge the liberal international order, i.e. to erode the power and influence of the U.S. and its allies? Does Russia have the capability to stop the eastward expansion of the Euro-Atlantic institutions? Why does Putin believe that the U.S. is an existential threat to his regime and Russia? Is American power in decline and Chinese power in ascendance? Is China seeking global domination, or it is simply emerging as an economic and military rival to the U.S.? Can the Biden administration restore multilateralism and the American global hegemony of the 1990s, or will America pursue a narrower, interest-based foreign policy? Are we into a new cold war with China—Cold War II? Can China wage a cold war against the West leading to the rise of developing countries like India while Europe declines? Has Russia already become China’s junior partner? Is India likely to emerge as a great power in the foreseeable future? Is the 21st century going to be the Asian (read Chinese) century? Has World War III already begun with the Ukraine war, as Emmanuel Todd has recently argued? Can the democratic backsliding in the United States and other countries, notably in Hungary, Brazil, and India, be reversed? Can American prestige and world leadership, diminished during the Trump presidency, be restored? How much damage did the attempted January 6 insurrection do to America’s standing in the world? Is the challenge to America’s global standing primarily because of political polarization at home? These questions and many others will be addressed and debated in this seminar by analyzing world politics historically (since World War II) and conceptually (focusing mainly on the contribution of realist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist thinkers).

Student Outcomes

The seminar has two broad objectives: First, it will help you understand how world order is established, maintained, or destroyed. This will allow us to explore the contours of the world order that is emerging after the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Second, it will provide an opportunity to each one of you to learn about how to (a) write a good review essay, (b) formulate a research question in international relations, (c) do in-depth research, including data collection, (d) write the first draft of a paper, and (e) produce a well-argued and properly documented thesis. I will provide guidance and feedback to you at each step of the way—from topic selection to writing an outline, to data collection, and formulation of an argument and thesis statement. It will be an involved process different from anything you have experienced in other political science courses.

Download

Share

COinS