Presidential Command & National Security Leadership
Analyze case studies to better understand presidential control over foreign policy and the meaning of executive power.
War is an inescapable part of the human condition, with the course of history and the character of civilizations often shaped by the legacy of past battles and the possibility of future conflicts. Death and memory, heroism and tragedy, love of country and hatred of enemies—the human drama plays out, in sharp relief, on both ancient and modern battlefields.
Like any significant human activity, war raises profound moral questions for statesmen, soldiers, and citizens. When is war moral, and when is war unjust or even barbarous? Are there ethical and legal rules that should govern all warfare, and what happens when our enemies play by different rules? Do new technologies of war fundamentally alter the moral choices we face and the moral issues at stake? How do we deal with tough cases—including preemptive strikes, targeted killing, torture, drones, nuclear deterrence and nuclear proliferation, and the use of civilian shields?
Led by Harvard Professor Stephen Rosen, one of the world’s preeminent teachers of strategy, and Gen. James Dubik, one of America’s most experienced military leaders, this institute will think morally about war by looking at a series of key moments and great texts in military-political history: How do we evaluate the moral decisions of ancient peoples—such as the Athenians as portrayed in the Melian dialogue, or the Israelites as portrayed in the book of Joshua? Why continue fighting on the Western front in the First World War once the deadlock in the trenches emerged? Why firebomb the cities of Germany and Japan in World War II? Why not bomb death camps at Auschwitz? Is it right to use torture for prisoner interrogation in counter-terrorism campaigns? What about campaigns to starve civilians, as in the British blockade of Germany in World War I? And what about recent struggles—in Bosnia, in Iraq, and in Gaza? Or future dilemmas—such as the possibility of a nuclearized Middle East?
Our aim will be to analyze such cases in a way that takes seriously the political and strategic dilemmas, so that our moral judgments will be grounded in the real choices that leaders and citizens face, both in deciding when to fight and how to fight. In addition to lectures and seminar discussions, the course will utilize role playing simulations. Institute participants will be called upon to make ethical arguments for and against alternative courses of action from the standpoints of the statesmen, citizens, and soldiers affected by the decision.
This course was offered in conjunction with the Tikvah Fund.
Images courtesy U.K. Government | U.S. Army
Stephen Rosen on our geopolitical challenges
Faculty
James M. Dubik
LTG James M. Dubik (U.S. Army, Ret.) is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and a Professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. General Dubik has extensive operational experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, and in many NATO countries.
James M. Dubik
LTG James M. Dubik (U.S. Army, Ret.) is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of War and a Professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. General Dubik has extensive operational experience in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Bosnia, Haiti, Panama, Honduras, and in many NATO countries.
His last job on active duty was as Commanding General of the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) and the NATO Training Mission-Iraq during the Surge of 2007–2008. He is a member of the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame and a distinguished member of the U.S. Army 75th Ranger Regiment.
General Dubik taught Philosophy at West Point and Campaign Theory and Practice at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has completed an MIT fellowship program for national security studies as well as executive programs in national security at Harvard’s JFK School of Government and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is the author, most recently, of Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory.
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy from Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania; a Masters in Military Arts and Sciences from the Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Johns Hopkins University.
Stephen Peter Rosen
Stephen Peter Rosen is the Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University. He was the civilian assistant to the Director of the Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Stephen P. Rosen
Stephen Peter Rosen is the Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University.
He was the civilian assistant to the Director at the Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Political-Military Affairs on the staff of the National Security Council, and a professor in the Strategic Department at the Naval War College. He participated in the President’s Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy, and in the Gulf War Air Power Survey sponsored by the Secretary of the Air Force.
He has published articles on ballistic missile defense, the American theory of limited war, and on the strategic implications of the AIDS epidemic, and wrote the book, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military which won the 1992 Funriss Prize for best first book on national security affairs awarded by the Merchon Center at Ohio State University. His writings also include Societies and Military Power: India and its Armies (Cornell University Press, 1995), and War and Human Nature (Princeton University Press, 2007).
Download the Full Syllabus
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
The Moral Meaning of War: Just War Theory and its Limits
The Moral Questions of War
Reading:
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (excerpt)
- Stanley Hauerwas, “Sacrificing the Sacrifices of War” (excerpt)
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (excerpt)
- Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (excerpt)
- Joshua, Ch. 8
- Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Bk. I Ch. I (excerpt)
- Niccolò Machiavelli, “What a Prince Should Do Regarding the Military,” The Prince, Ch. 14
- Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Bombing of Germany,” Christianity and Society, Summer 1943, pp. 222–23
- Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 31–33, 282
- George Weigel, “Moral Clarity in a Time of War,” First Things, January 2003
Case #1: The Fire Bombing of Dresden
Reading:
Required
Recommended
War and the Human Good: Hard Cases 1
Case #2: Extending Jus in Bello Responsibilities to Senior Political and Military Leaders: A Vietnam Case Study
Reading:
Required
- H.R. McMaster, “War Without Direction,” Dereliction of Duty, pp. 275–99
- Lewis Sorely, “Slogging” and “Epilogue,” Honorable Warrior, pp. 259–74, 302–04
Recommended
- Eliot Cohen, “The Unequal Dialogue,” Supreme Command, pp. 208–24
- Brian Orend, “Jus in Bello #1: Just Conduct in War,” The Morality of War, pp. 111–51
Case #3: Enhanced Interrogation/Torture
Reading:
Required
Recommended
War and the Human Good: Hard Cases 2
Case #4: Blockade and Starvation
Reading:
Required
- Lizzie Collingham, “Japan’s Journey Towards Starvation,” The Taste of War, pp. 228–47
- Gerd Hardach, “Food Supply in Wartime,” The First World War: 1914–1918, pp. 108–23
Recommended
Case #5: Humanitarian War: The Case of Libya
Reading:
Required
- Orend, “Jus ad Bellum #1: Resisting Aggression” and “Jus ad Bellum #2: Non-Classical Wars,” The Morality of War, pp. 33–110
- “The Three Pillars of the Responsibility to Protect” Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
- Stephen M. Walt, “More to Read About Libya,” Foreign Policy, Apr 14, 2011
- W., “Intervention in Libya: Taking Humanitarian Justification Seriously,” The Economics, Mar 23, 2011
- Plain Dealer Staff, “Libyan Intervention: The White House Releases Official Justification,” Cleveland.com, Jun 15, 2011
- Chris Stephen, “Partition of Libya Looms as Fight for Oil Sparks Vicious New Divide,” The Guardian, Mar 15, 2014
- “Fear, Silence in Libya as Divisions Deepen,” Kuwait Times (Feb 17, 2015)
- Steve Fox, “Analysis: NATO Deeply Divided Over Libya,” Middle East Eye, Dec 1, 2014
- Jack Moore, “Al Qaeda ‘Islamic Police’ on Patrol in Libyan City Contested With ISIS,” Newsweek, Jan 29, 2015
Recommended
The New Technologies of War and their Moral Challenges
Case #6: Mutually Assured Destruction in the Cold War
Reading:
- John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 212–21, 349–53 (excerpts)
- Herman Kahn, “Alternative National Strategies,” On Thermonuclear War, pp. 3-21
Case #7: Roboticization of War
Watch:
Reading:
Required
- David Sanger, “The Dark Side of the Light Footprint,” Confront and Conceal, pp. 243–70
- Technology Quarterly Q2 2012, “Robots Go to War: March of the Robots,” The Economist, June 2, 2012
Recommended
- Brianna Lee, “Drones,” Sep 13, 2012
- David Luban, “What Would Augustine Do? The President, Drones, and Just War Theory,” Boston Review, June 6, 2012
- Listen to the discussion of U.S. Drone Strikes on the Diane Rheme Show, May 31, 2012
- “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or An Associated Force,” Department of Justice White Paper, Nov 8, 2011
