Security Studies
Take a practitioner’s view of the most difficult national security challenges the United States.
In the final week of the Political Studies Program, fellows will turn to the study of America and the world.
One seminar will explore a classic international relations text—Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War—and the important, and even unusual, insights into strategy it provides us in the present day. The second will explore the concept of grand strategy in American foreign policy, with a focus on the challenges and opportunities facing the United States in the contemporary era.
Image Credit: Globe, Ryan Gacayan, via Flickr
Jakub Grygiel on Caesar Augustus' foreign policy lessons
This course is part of our residential Political Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet prominent men and women in public life over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 36 fellows will be selected.
Faculty
Colin Dueck
Colin Dueck is a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has worked as a foreign policy adviser on Republican presidential campaigns, and acted as a consultant for the State and Defense Departments and the National Security Council.
Colin Dueck
Colin Dueck is a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
He has worked as a foreign policy adviser on several Republican presidential campaigns, and acted as a consultant for the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Council. His current research focus is on the relationship between party politics, presidential leadership, American conservatism, and U.S. national security strategies.
Dueck has published four books on American foreign and national security policies: Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today (Oxford 2015), Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II (Princeton 2010), and Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton 2006).
He has provided congressional testimony and published articles on these same subjects in journals such as International Security, Orbis, Security Studies, Review of International Studies, Claremont Review of Books, Political Science Quarterly, American Affairs, and World Policy Journal, as well as online at RealClearPolitics, National Review, Foreign Affairs, Ricochet, the National Interest, Providence, the American Mind, Texas National Security Review, War on the Rocks, Ambassador’s Brief, and the New York Times.
Dueck studied politics at Princeton University and international relations at Oxford under a Rhodes Scholarship.
Jakub Grygiel
Jakub Grygiel is an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America. From 2017–18, he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. His most recent book is Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present.
Jakub J. Grygiel
Jakub Grygiel is an Associate Professor at the Catholic University of America. From 2017–2018, he was a senior advisor to the Secretary of State in the Office of Policy Planning working on European affairs.
Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and on the faculty of SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. He has previously worked as a consultant for the OECD in Paris and the World Bank in Washington.
His most recent book is Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present. He is coauthor of The Unquiet Frontier: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power (with A. Wess Mitchell) and also the author of Great Powers and Geopolitical Change. His writings on international relations and security studies have appeared in The American Interest, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Commentary, Joint Forces Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, as well as U.S., Swiss, Polish and Italian newspapers. He earned a Ph.D., M.A. and an MPA from Princeton University, and a BSFS Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
American Grand Strategy
The Early Republic
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- What is grand strategy, and why is it important?
- What distinct qualities of the American Founding informed U.S. grand strategy from the start?
- Did Abraham Lincoln have a grand strategy? If so, what was it? How and why did it succeed? Did it change over time?
- What lessons for today can we draw from the example of Lincoln’s statecraft?
Liberal Internationalism
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- What are the key strategic assumptions of the U.S. liberal internationalist tradition and its leading alternatives? Why do these alternatives wax and wane in popularity?
- What was Woodrow Wilson’s proposed innovation of American grand strategy emerging from World War I? Why was it rejected? Was this rejection justified?
- How did Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman revive the liberal internationalist tradition more successfully during the 1940s?
- What was containment? Was it the optimal strategy for the United States after 1945?
Cold War Variations
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- What was Dwight Eisenhower’s New Look? What kind of strategy was it?
- What was the Nixon-Kissinger approach toward American grand strategy?
- What was Ronald Reagan’s grand strategy? What were the ends, and what were the means?
- What lessons for today can we draw from these examples in U.S. Cold War statecraft?
The Unipolar Era
Readings:
- Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders (Princeton, 2006), pp. 114–63
- Colin Dueck, The Obama Doctrine (Oxford, 2015), pp. 25–39, 42–47, 100–07, 109–10, 129–38, 144–52
Discussion Questions:
- Did the U.S. have a grand strategy during the 1990s? If so, what was that strategy? Was it effective?
- How did U.S. grand strategy change under George W. Bush as a result of the terrorist attacks of 9/11?
- What alterations did Barack Obama introduce to American grand strategy, and why? How would you judge his effectiveness?
- What continuities are worth noting about U.S. grand strategy during the post-Cold War era, regardless of president? What lesson should we learn from this?
From Trump to Biden
Readings:
- Colin Dueck, Age of Iron (Oxford, 2019), pp. 105–33
- President Joseph Biden, National Security Strategy (The White House, 2022), pp. 6–48
- William Inboden, “The Fight for the Future of Republican Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, November 9, 2022
- Andrew Bacevich, “The Reckoning that Wasn’t,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2023), pp. 6–21
Discussion Questions:
- What changes did the Trump administration introduce into U.S. grand strategy? How consequential were they?
- What are the key characteristics of American grand strategy under the Biden administration? Is this simply a return to the liberal internationalist tradition?
- What are the most striking or compelling alternatives to the Biden vision? Describe them.
- What would be the most fruitful direction for American grand strategy in the coming years? Where should we go from here?
Thucydides & Today's Challenges
How to Assess the Enemy
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- Geopolitical rivalries begin and continue with an assessment of the enemy: how to know the rival?
- What are the consequences of a poor assessment?
The Role of Alliances
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- Great powers fear “entrapment” (being dragged into small and peripheral wars by their allies) while their allies fear “abandonment” (being left alone by their distant security patron). How can these fears be mitigated? Do they reflect the reality of international politics?
- What is the importance of allies for the U.S.?
Land Power vs. Sea Power
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- The Peloponnesian War was a conflict between a sea power (Athens) and a land power (Sparta). What are the features of such a conflict? What are the differences in how they conduct war?
- How did the strategy of Archidamus differ from that of Pericles?
- What strategy should the U.S. pursue against its continental rivals (China, Iran, Russia)?
The Role of Domestic Cohesion and the Rise of Demagogues
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- States are fragile. Factions are powerful while social cohesion can collapse unexpectedly. What are the sources of weakness and strength?
- How does internal cohesion (or lack thereof) affect foreign policy?
- What is the appeal of demagogues?
Are Distant Expeditions Always Doomed?
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- Pericles warned against ambitious power projections. The Athenians went to Sicily and failed miserably. Are distant expeditions doomed? Was it a strategic blunder – or a strategic bold move but executed poorly?
