Department
Of
Political Science/Texas State University
The online version of this syllabus can be accessed @ http://arnoldleder.com/4345.htm.
A condensed version of this syllabus for print
as well
as password protected materials for this course can be
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Scroll
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courses taught by
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For a list of undergraduate courses in Political Science
by group, see: http://www.polisci.txstate.edu/courses/undergrad-courses.html.
Office: ELA 335
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Texas
State University Academic Schedule
Texas State University Final Exam
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Locating
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Citation
& Bibliographic Styles & Related Information
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COURSE ORGANIZATION & STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES
Class Participation, Oral Presentations,
Exams,
Papers, Grades
1. This course includes two formats. One is
lecture when appropriate and the other is a seminar format when
course
materials make this more suitable. Students must attend every
class
meeting and be prepared to discuss assigned readings and other
materials.
Active participation in class discussion is essential. Course
grades
will be determined by oral presentations, class participation, and
written
papers.
2. Determinants of Course Grade: Oral Reports
&
Presentations 25%/ Seminar Participation 15%/ Essay Exams/Papers 60%
Attendance
1. Three (3) unexcused absences are
permitted.
Students with four (4) unexcused absences will have their course grade
lowered by one letter grade. Students who have five (5) unexcused
absences will have their course grade lowered by two letter
grades.
No absences beyond five (5) for any reason are permitted.
Any student who has more than five absences is likely to fail the
course
and, therefore, should withdraw from the course.
2. The instructor for the course is not
responsible
for bringing students who have missed class "up-to-date" on missed
material.
Each student has the responsibility to remain current with respect to
class
material.
Course Title
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
Topics
I.
An Overview & Approaches To The Study Of Foreign Policy
1.The
National
Interest
2. The Cold War
3. Nuclear War
II.
The International
Setting
1.Clash
Of Civilizations?/The Huntington Thesis
2. American Power
III.
Political Culture & The Ideological Setting Of American Foreign
Policy
Formulation
1.
American
Political Culture
a.
Political Culture & Foreign Policy Behavior
b.
The American Creed: Louis Hartz, S. Huntington, S. Hoffman, & Others
c. "Cowboy Ethics"
2.
Democracy & "Illiberal Democracy"
a.
The Case For Democracy
b.
Promoting
Democracy:
Favorable Views
c. Promoting
Democracy:
Doubts & Criticism
d. Free Markets &
Democracy
Recommended Books:
Niall
Ferguson/Colossus: The Price Of America's Empire (Peguin 2004)
Anatol
Lieven/America Right Or Wrong: An Anatomy Of American Nationalism
(Oxford
Univ. Press 2004)
Articles for reading and class discussion are listed in the appropriate sections of this syllabus.
Videos
Dr.
Strangelove/(1964)[1 hour 33 minutes]DVD/amazon.com
High
Noon(1952)[1hour 35 minutes]/DVD/.amazon.com
Shane/(1953)[1
hour 57 minutes]/DVD/amazon.com
TOPICS FOR LECTURE, CLASS DISCUSSION, AND
ASSIGNED
READINGS
I.
An Overview & Approaches to the Study of Foreign Policy
1. The
National
Interest
The
National Security Strategy of the United States of
America/http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc.html
John Lewis Gaddis,
"After Containment: The Legacy Of George Kennan In
The Age Of Terrorism", The New Republic, April 25, 2005, Vol.
232, Issue 15.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
TheReportFromIronMountain/LeonardLewin/Nov.1967(WithRemarksByLeonardLewin/NYTBookReview/March19.1972)
ReportFromIronMountain/Background&DescriptionOfReport/museumofhoaxes.com/iron.html
Jeane
J. Kirkpatrick/Dictatorships & Double Standards/Commentary/November
1979
The classic 1979 article which served as a reference point for many in
the latter days of the Cold War and beyond.
"Although most governments in the world are, as they always have
been,
autocracies of one kind or another, no idea holds greater sway in the
mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to
democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances.
This notion is belied by an enormous body of evidence based on the
experience of dozens of countries which have attempted with more or
less (usually less) success to move from autocratic to democratic
government. Many of the wisest political scientists of this and
previous centuries agree that democratic institutions are especially
difficult to establish and maintain-because they make heavy demands on
all portions of a population and because they depend on complex social,
cultural, and economic conditions.
...
Since many traditional autocracies permit
limited
contestation and
participation, it is not impossible that U.S. policy could effectively
encourage this process of liberalization and democratization, provided
that the effort is not made at a time when the incumbent government is
fighting for its life against violent adversaries, and that proposed
reforms are aimed at producing gradual change rather than perfect
democracy overnight. To accomplish this, policymakers are needed who
understand how actual democracies have actually come into being.
History is a better guide than good intentions."
Timothy
Noah/Realist:The former U.N. ambassador's neoconservatism looks quaint
today/Slate December 08, 2006
Observations on the applicability of the views in Jeane J.
Krikpatrick's much discussed 1979 article to contemporary foreign
policy matters.
"Like a lot of neoconservative thought, 'Dictatorships and Double
Standards' made a categorical pronouncement about the laws governing
human affairs that was later proved wrong.
...
On the other hand, Kirkpatrick's skepticism about the United States'
ability to bring democracy anywhere and everywhere in the world looks
prescient today. It has also been widely ignored by Kirkpatrick's
fellow neocons."
3. Nuclear War
Video
Dr.
Strangelove
TimDirks,InDepthReviewOfDr.Strangelove/filmsite.org/drst.html
Christopher
Coker/Dr. Strangelove and the real Doomsday
machine/timesonline.co.uk/August 08, 2007 (A review of Doomsday Men: The real Dr. Strangelove and
the dream of the superweapon by P. D. Smith - 2007)
BillKeller/TheThinkable/NYTSundayMagazine/May04.2003
"During the last years of the cold war, weapons of
mass
destruction were mostly abstractions to be counted and
negotiated.
Suddenly, with too few people paying attention, they are proliferating,
and those who now have or want nukes will use them to blackmail, or
worse."
The world has not been transformed, however. Nations remain as
strong as ever, and so too the nationalist ambitions, the passions, and
the competition among nations that have shaped history. The world is
still “unipolar,” with the United States remaining the only superpower.
But international competition among great powers has returned, with the
United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, Iran, and others
vying for regional predominance. Struggles for honor and status and
influence in the world have once again become key features of the
international scene. Ideologically, it is a time not of convergence but
of divergence. The competition between liberalism and absolutism has
reemerged, with the nations of the world increasingly lining up, as in
the past, along ideological lines. Finally, there is the fault line
between modernity and tradition, the violent struggle of Islamic
fundamentalists against the modern powers and the secular cultures
that, in their view, have penetrated and polluted their Islamic world."
See also: Robert
Kagan/The End Of The End Of History/The New Republic April 23, 2008,
Vol. 238, No. 4, 834, pp. 40-47
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Fareed
Zakaria/The Future of American Power: How America Can Survive the Rise
of the Rest/Foreign Affairs May-June 2008
Despite some eerie parallels between the position of the United States
today and that of the British Empire a century ago, there are key
differences. Britain's decline was driven by bad economics. The United
States, in contrast, has the strength and dynamism to continue shaping
the world -- but only if it can overcome its political dysfunction and
reorient U.S. policy for a world defined by the rise of other powers.
Fareed
Zakaria/Our Way:The Trouble With Being The World's Only Superpower/The
New Yorker/October 14, 2002
Zakaria's essay Includes remarks on Robert
Kagan/Power & Weakness/Policy Review/June-July 2002
Liberals & Liberal Hawks On American Power
Peter
Beinart/A Fighting Faith/The New Republic/December 02 2004
Kevin
Drum/Liberals & Terrorism(A response to Beinart's A Fighting
Faith)/Washington
Monthly/December 02 2004
Peter
Beinart/The Good Fight (A rejoinder to Kevin Drum)/The New
Republic/December
20 2004
These articles can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
A Conservative View On Liberals & Liberal
Hawks
William
Voegeli/The Implausibility Of A New Liberalism/claremont.org/December
08
2004
Realism & "Democratic Realism"
Francis Fukuyama, "The Neoconservative Moment", The
National Interest, Summer, 2004
Charles Krauthammer, "In Defense of Democratic
Realism, The
National Interest, Fall, 2004
The above two articles can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Return to
beginning
of syllabus.
Return to
Overview
of Course & Topics
III. Political
Culture & The Ideological Setting of American Foreign Policy
Formulation
1. American
Political Culture
Henry
R. Nau/Why
We Fight Over Foreign Policy/Policy Review April-May 2007
b. The
American Creed: Louis Hartz, S. Huntington, S. Hoffman, & Others
Samuel P. Huntington, "American
Ideals versus American Institutions", Political
Science Quarterly, Spring,
1982, Vol. 97, No. 1, pp. 1-37.
This Huntington article can be accessed
@ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library.
A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
George
McKenna/The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism/Yale University
Press (2007)
Click on Excerpts for the text of
the first eight pages of the Introduction, "The Puritan Legacy". (pdf)
From Yale University Press:
"In this absorbing book, George McKenna ranges across the entire
panorama of American history to track the development of American
patriotism. That patriotism — shaped by Reformation Protestantism and
imbued with the American Puritan belief in a providential “errand” —
has evolved over 350 years and influenced American political culture in
both positive and negative ways, McKenna shows. The germ of the
patriotism, an activist theology that stressed collective rather than
individual salvation, began in the late 1630s in New England and
traveled across the continent, eventually becoming a national
phenomenon. Today, American patriotism still reflects its origins in
the seventeenth century.
By encouraging cohesion in a nation of
diverse peoples and inspiring social reform, American patriotism has
sometimes been a force for good. But the book also uncovers a darker
side of the nation’s patriotism — a prejudice against the South in the
nineteenth century, for example, and a tendency toward nativism and
anti-Catholicism. Ironically, a great reversal has occurred, and today
the most fervent believers in the Puritan narrative are the former
“outsiders” — Catholics and Southerners. McKenna offers an interesting
new perspective on patriotism’s role throughout American history, and
he concludes with trenchant thoughts on its role in the post-9/11 era."
John
Gray/Chosen ones/Financial Times November 10, 2007- Review of George
McKenna/The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism/Yale University
Press (2007).
(Note: The Financial Times may require registration.
There
is no fee.)
America's unshakeable faith in its ability to remould the world is an
inheritance from puritanism.
The intense religiosity of American life has bemused Europeans
at least since Alexis de Tocqueville commented on it in the early 19th
century. It is not just that America is more religious than practically
any other advanced country. More, religion seems to inform American
national identity in ways that have few parallels in other countries.
Being British does not entail subscribing to any creed - it is simply
an accident of birth - and the same is true in other European nations.
By contrast, being American seems to inv-olve accepting that the US has
been assigned a special role in history - an idea echoing religious
belief in providence.
Interview with George Mckenna on Puritan patriotism
@Between the Covers on National Review Online (listening
time 10 min.) September 25, 2007.
George McKenna, author of The Puritan
Origins of American Patriotism,
tells John J. Miller that Puritan
patriotism is “a social ideology.
Robert Kagan/Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776/World Affairs Spring-2008
Stanley Hoffman, "More Perfect Union: Nation
&
Nationalism In America", Harvard International Review, Winter
1997,
Vol. 20, Issue 1.
The Hoffman article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Jack Critin, Ernst B. Haas, Christopher Muste, "Is
American Nationalism Changing? Implications for Foreign Policy", International
Studies Quarterly (1994) 38, 1-31.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Samuel
P. Huntington/The Hispanic Challenge/Foreign Policy March-April 2004
(pdf)
"The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to
divide the
United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike
past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated
into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and
linguistic enclaves—from Los Angeles to Miami—and rejecting the
Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United
States ignores this challenge at its peril."
Jack Citrin, Amy Lerman, Michael
Murakami, and Kathryn Pearson/Testing
Huntington: Is Hispanic Immigration a Threat to American
Identity?/Perspectives on Politics March, 2007, Volume 05, Issue 01 (pdf)
"... The second paper, by Citrin, Lerman, Murakami, and
Pearson takes issue with the influential arguments Samuel Huntington
advances regarding the threats posed to American national identity by
Latino immigration to the United States. Huntington advanced his views
in non-academic venues in the context of growing public debate about
immigration policy. Citrin et al. argue that the empirical data simply
do not support Huntington's views."
The html version of the article, "Testing Huntington", with internal links and links to references, can be viewed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.html. Scroll to section on "American Foreign Policy" and look for the title "Testing Huntington". In the document, scroll to the abstract and then to the full text of the article. This location is password protected. Password and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.
David Gelernter, "Americanism-and Its Enemies",
Commentary,
January 2005.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Colin Kidd, "My God was bigger than his", London
Review Of Books, 4 November 2004, Vol. 26, No. 21.
A review essay of several recently published books on
American political culture and nationalism with lengthy comments on Anatol
Lieven/America Right Or Wrong: An Anatomy Of American Nationalism.
This article can be viewed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.html.
Scroll
to section on "American Foreign Policy" and look for the author and
title
of this article. This location is password protected.
Password
and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.
Paul Starobin, "State Of The Union: Misfit
America", The
Atlantic Monthly, January-February, 2006.
"Many of the values and cultural attributes that once
made the United States unique have eroded; those that remain look
increasingly
ugly to some foreigners. Is our evolving national character a liability
in our foreign relations?"
This article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Recommended Additional Articles On American
Political
Culture & The American Creed:
Anatol Lieven, "Taking Back America", London
Review
of Books, 2 December 2004, Vol. 26, No. 3.
This article can be viewed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.html.
Scroll
to section on "American Foreign Policy" and look for the author and
title
of this article. This location is password protected.
Password
and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.
Jonathan
Tepperman/The Anti-Anti-Americans/NYT/December 12, 2004
John Gerring, "Perspectives in Policy History -The
Perils of Particularism: Political History After Hartz", Journal of
Policy History 11.3 (1999) 313-322.
The Gerring article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Peter
Dreier & Dick Flacks/Patriotism's Secret History/The Nation/June 3
2002
Robert
Bonner/Star-Spangled Sentiment/tcommon-place.org/vol-03/no-02/January
2003
"It is worth considering why Americans have invested
their flags with such importance and how the United States has become
more
saturated with patriotic color than any other country in the world. The
comparative intensity of American loyalties is less noteworthy than the
country's fixation on a single symbol, which has come to be associated
with a remarkably wide range of emotions."
J.Hoberman/It's
Always 'High Noon' at the White House/NYT/April25.2004
Gary Cooper as the lone man of courage, dispensing
violent
justice despite the cowardice of the townspeople, in "High Noon," the
film
most often requested for screening by American presidents.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Kyle
Smith/The Real Political Message of High
Noon/pajamasmedia.com/June 10, 2008
Robert
Kagan/Cowboy Nation/The New Republic/October 14, 2006-updated January
13, 2007
"These
days, we are having a national debate over the direction of foreign
policy. Beyond the obvious difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, there
is a broader sense that our nation has gone astray. We have become too
militaristic, too idealistic, too arrogant; we have become an "empire."
Much of the world views us as dangerous. In response, many call for the
United States to return to its foreign policy traditions, as if that
would provide the answer. ... What exactly are those
traditions?"
Recommended:
Chris Orr, "Home Movies: Into The Sunset", The
New Republic, May 25, 2004
A review of the film "Once Upon a Time in the West"
(1989),
a film "about not only the end of the West but the end of the Western."
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
Thomas
S. Engeman/In
Defense of Cowboy Culture/Claremont Review of Books/Summer 2003
Lucy
Ash/Wild, wild
east/newstatesman.com/29 November 2007
"Soviet-era cowboy films have inspired politicians,
writers and cosmonauts alike." Listen to a reading of this
article at this
location.
"... Gaddis’s major contribution is to treat the Bush Doctrine as a set of ideas worthy of scholarly examination rather than as a subject for ritualistic denunciation. He does not denigrate the President as a cowboy ..."
Videos2. Democracy
& "Illiberal Democracy"
Fareed Zakaria, The Future Of Freedom,
chapters
1, 2, 3, 4.
Robert
Kagan, "The Ungreat Washed: Why Democracy Must Remain America's Goal"
(a review essay on Fareed Zakaria's The Future Of Freedom), The New
Republic, July 3, 2003. For direct access to
this article, see: http://www.powells.com/review/2003_07_03.html.
This article can also be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library.
A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
Also see: Fareed
Zakaria/The Rise Of Illiberal Democracy/Foreign Affairs/November 1997.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Links
For Reviews Of Zakaria's The Future Of Freedom & Links For Other
Zakaria
Writings/brothers.judd.com-Scroll to Links (Some
links may be "down".)
a. The
Case For Democracy
Books:
Natan Sharansky, The Case For Democracy,
the
entire book.
Gary
Rosen, "Freedom From Fear", Newsweek,
December 20 2004.
"One of the more curious leaks from the White
House
right after the election was word that U.S. President George W.
Bush
had been reading a book. Notable in itself—the president isn't
exactly
a bookworm—the story was made still more interesting by the fact that
the
work in question was "The Case for Democracy" (PublicAffairs.
303
pages) by Natan Sharansky, who had even been summoned to
the
Oval Office for a chat. Supporters of Bush's policies in the
Middle
East took heart from this bit of news, while critics found yet another
reason to grind their teeth. Sharansky's message, as he declares in his
subtitle: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror.
" (boldface added)
b. Promoting
Democracy:
Favorable Views
Michael
Ignatieff/Democratic Providentialism/NYT Sunday Magazine/December 12
2004
"...it remains true that the promotion of democracy
by
the United States has proved to be a dependably good idea. America may
be more unpopular than ever before, but its hegemony really has
coincided
with a democratic revolution around the world. For the first time in
history,
a majority of the world's peoples live in democracies. In a dangerous
time,
this is about the best news around, since democracies, by and large, do
not fight one another, and they do not break up into civil war. As a
result
-- and contrary to the general view that the world is getting more
violent
-- ethnic and civil strife have actually been declining since the early
1990's, according to a study of violent conflicts by Ted Robert Gurr at
the University of Maryland. Democratic transitions can be violent --
when
democracy came to Yugoslavia, majority rule at first led to ethnic
cleansing
and massacre -- but once democracies settle in, once they develop
independent
courts and real checks and balances, they can begin to advance majority
interests without sacrificing minority rights."
Michael
McFaul/Democracy Promotion As A World Value/Washington Quarterly/Winter
2005 (pdf)
"... critics argue that the United States must abandon
the ideological mission of democracy promotion, both in Iraq and
throughout
the world, and instead follow a more pragmatic, realist foreign policy
if it is to regain its respect abroad and more effectively defend U.S.
national interests.... Yet, this interpretation of the relationship
between
U.S. foreign policy and American popularity on the one hand and the
status
of democratic values in the international community on the other is
misleading.
First, democracy as an international norm is stronger today than ever,
and democracy itself is widely regarded as an ideal system of
government.
Democracy also has near-universal appeal among people of every ethnic
group,
every religion, and every region of the world. Second,
democracy promotion as a foreign policy goal
has become increasingly acceptable throughout most of the international
community."
Janine Di Giovanni/Democratic Vistas/NYT Sunday Book Review January 20, 2008 A review of Larry Diamond/The Spirit Of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Henry Holt 2008).
Uriya
Shavit/The Road to Democracy in the Arab World/Azure Autumn 2006
No. 26
"To many, this reality (the continuing
war in Iraq and
authoritarian regimes in the Arab world) is proof of a fundamental
incompatibility between Western forms of government and Arab
society.
In their view, liberal democracy (or anything approaching it) cannot
possibly bloom on Arab soil, since Arab societies are so profoundly
differerent than the West. Thus, President Bush's gravest mistake
-
and the source of his democratization initiative's failure - lay in
ignoring the uniqueness of Arab society and attempting to force an
alien and unwanted form of government upon it. According to this
thinking, the fate of America's campaign in Iraq was sealed even before
the first shot was fired. ...
This essentialist view of Arab society, while
commonplace in the West, is flawed. In truth, there is nothing
unique
to Arab societies that results in a preference for despotic regines."
c.
Promoting
Democracy:
Doubts & Criticism
Edward
D. Mansfeld and Jack Snyder, "Prone to Violence", The National
Interest Winter
2005-2006
This article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
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"THE BUSH Administration has argued that promoting
democracy
in the Islamic world, rogue states and China will enhance America's
security,
because tyranny breeds violence and democracies co-exist peacefully.
But
recent experience in Iraq and elsewhere reveals that the early stages
of
transitions to electoral politics have often been rife with violence.
These episodes are not just a speed bump on the road to the democratic peace. Instead, they reflect a fundamental problem with the Bush Administration's strategy of forced-pace democratization in countries that lack the political institutions needed to manage political competition. Without a coherent state grounded in a consensus on which citizens will exercise self-determination, unfettered electoral politics often gives rise to nationalism and violence at home and abroad.
Absent these preconditions, democracy is deformed, and transitions toward democracy revert to autocracy or generate chaos. Pushing countries too soon into competitive electoral politics not only risks stoking war, sectarianism and terrorism, but it also makes the future consolidation of democracy more difficult."
Julian
Sanchez/The Limits of Democratization: Will promoting democracy bolster
national security?/reason.com/February 15 2005
This article contains a number of links to materials
related to this topic.
Ian
Buruma/An Islamic Democracy For Iraq?/NYT Sunday Magazine/December 05
2004
"Is Islamic democracy really possible?
Or
is it something meaningless, like 'Jewish science', say, or
contradictory,
like 'people's democracy' under Communism? This is the question
that
will determine the future of Iraq, ..."
Fareed Zakaria, "Islam, Democracy, &
Constitutional
Liberalism", Political Science Quarterly, Spring, 2004, Vol.
119.
“Although it is easy to impose elections on a
country,
it is more difficult to push constitutional liberalism on a society.
The
process of genuine liberalization and democratization, in which an
election
is only one step, is gradual and long term.
… the absence of free and fair elections should be
viewed
as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny. Elections are an important
virtue of governance, but they are not the only virtue. It is more
important
that governments be judged by yardsticks related to constitutional
liberalism.
Economic, civil, and religious liberties are at the core of human
autonomy
and dignity. If a government with limited democracy steadily expands
these
freedoms, it should not be branded a dictatorship.”
This article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Gary
J. Bass/Independence Gaze/NYT Sunday Magazine January 6, 2008
"Who deserves statehood?"
Gerard Alexander, "The Authoritarian Illusion",
The
National Interest, Fall, 2004, Issue 77.
"While it is true that several authoritarian
societies
have bred anti-Western extremism, many others have not. Sympathy for
democracy
does not constitute sufficient grounds for a sweeping policy of
worldwide
democratization.
...The United States does not require a fully
democratic
world in order to achieve security. Indeed, the threats we
currently
face are generated by causes that transcend regime type."
This article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
d. Free Markets &
Democracy
Patricia
Cohen/An Unexpected Odd Couple: Free Markets and Freedom/NYT June 14,
2007
"From China, where astounding economic growth persists
despite Communist Party rule, to Russia, where President Vladimir V. Putin
has squelched opposition, to Venezuela, where dissent is silenced,
developments around the world have been tearing jawbreaker-size holes
in what has been a remarkably powerful idea, not only in academic
circles but also in both Republican and Democratic administrations —
that capitalism and democracy are two sides of a coin."
Hilton
L. Root/Capitalism and Democracy/The American Interest, Vol. 3, No. 3,
January-February 2008
A review essay on Democracy's
Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World's Most Popular Form of
Government by Michael Mandelbaum (Public Affairs 2007) and Supercapitalism:
The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert
B. Reich (Knopf 2007).
"The
expectation that market capitalism will create social foundations for
the spread of Western-style democracy fails to anticipate the capture
of weak democratic institutions in emerging states by wealthy
minorities. Many of the business deals that benefit these wealthy
minorities are fashioned from a combination of foreign policy and
government power. They almost invariably involve what amounts to
insider trading between government officials in the capital city,
abetted by increasingly close connections and movements between
domestic and transnational capital, often at the expense of the
majority of people."
The full text of this article be viewed
@ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.html.
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to the section on "American Foreign Policy" and look for the author and
title
of this review essay. This location is password protected.
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and user name for access will be provided to students in the
course.
Return to
beginning
of syllabus.
Return to
Overview
of Course & Topics
IV.
Interest Groups, Symbols & Communication, & Congress
PeterDreier&DickFlacks/Patriotism'sSecretHistory/TheNation/June3.2002
Robert
Bonner/Star-SpangledSentiment/tcommon-place.org/vol-03/no-02/January2003
"It is worth considering why Americans have invested
their flags with such importance and how the United States has become
more
saturated with patriotic color than any other country in the world. The
comparative intensity of American loyalties is less noteworthy than the
country's fixation on a single symbol, which has come to be associated
with a remarkably wide range of emotions."
Daniel
Drezner/Mind the Gap/The National Interest/No. 87, Jan-Feb 2007
Why policymaking elites and foreigners alike distrust the judgment of
Americans.
"When it comes to American foreign policy, U.S. policymakers and
citizens from the rest of the world would not be expected to see eye to
eye. They do, however, agree on one thing—they both mistrust how
ordinary Americans think about international relations."
Robert
D. Kaplan/The Media & Medievalism/Policy Review/December 2004 &
January 2005
"Like the priests of ancient Egypt, the rhetoricians
of ancient Greece and Rome, and the theologians of medieval Europe, the
media represent a class of bright and ambitious people whose social and
economic stature gives them the influence to undermine political
authority.
Like those prior groups, the media have authentic political power —
terrifically
magnified by technology — without the bureaucratic accountability that
often accompanies it, so that they are never culpable for what they
advocate."
Matthew A. Baum, "Sex, Lies,
and War: How Soft News Brings
Foreign
Policy to the Inattentive Public", The American Political
Science
Review, March, 2002, Vol. 96, No.
1., pp. 91-109.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
See also: Matthew
A. Baum/Soft News Goes to War : Public Opinion and American
Foreign Policy in the New Media Age (Princeton
2003)
The full text of Chapter I, "War and Entertainment" is accessible @
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7655.html. For a review
of this book, see: Jakub Grygiel, Jakub Grykiel/A
Fuzzy Picture/Harvard International Review -
From
Harvard Symposia 59/Religion/Vol. 25 (4), Winter 2004
Lawrence R. Jacobs, Benjamin I. Page, "Who
Influences
U.S. Foreign Policy?", American Political Science Review,
February
2005, Vol. 99, No. 1.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library
A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
This article can also be viewed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.html.
Scroll
to section on "American Foreign Policy" and look for the author and
title
of this article. This location is password protected.
Password
and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.
Walter
Russell Mead/Jerusalem Syndrome/Decoding"The Israel Lobby"/Foreign
Affairs November-December 2007
This is a review essay on John
J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign
Policy (2007).
Daniel
Yankelovitch/Poll Positions: What Americans Really Think About U. S.
Foreign Policy/Foreign Affairs September-October 2005, Vol. 84, No. 1.
Note:
This
link provides access to a
preview of this article. The complete text of this article can be
accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library.
A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
VI.
The Military
Patricia M. Shields, "Civil-Military Relations: Changing
Frontiers", Public
Administration Review, November-December 2006, Vol. 66, Issue 6,
pp. 924-928.
An informative review essay on the changing dynamics of
civil-military relations with insightful comparisons of various
theoretical
perspectives and the state of scholarly studies in this important area
of the social sciences.
This article by Patricia M. Shields can be
accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library. A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required. This article can also be viewed @ http://www.arnoldleder.com/readings/index.html.
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to the section on "American Foreign Policy" and look for the author and
title
of this article. (The title in the list of readings has been
shortened to: "Civil-Military Relations".) This location is
password protected.
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and user name for access will be provided to students in the course.
Victor Davis
Hanson/Military Technology & American Culture/The New
Atlantis/Spring 03
Max
Boot/The New American Way of War/Foreign Affairs July-August 2003, Vol.
82, No. 4
Max
Boot/The Struggle to Transform the Military/Foreign Affairs March-April
2005, Vol. 84, No. 2
Peter
W. Singer/Outsourcing War/Foreign Affairs March-April 2005, Vol. 84,
No.2
Note:
This
link for the Singer article provides access to a
preview of this article. The complete text of this article can be
accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
Thomas
L. McNaugher/The Real Meaning of Military Transformation: Rethinking
the Revolution/Foreign Affairs/January-February 2007
A review essay of Finding the Target: The
Transformation of
American Military Policy by Frederick W. Kagan, Encounter Books,
2006, and War Made New: Technology, Warfare,
and the
Course of History, 1500 to Today by Max Boot, Gotham Books, 2006.
(Former Secretary of Defense) Rumsfeld's mishandling of
the Iraqi occupation has given the
"revolution in military affairs" a bad name. But as Max Boot and
Frederick Kagan point out in two new books, transformation is vital to
any military's success -- and more important now than ever.
This article can be accessed @ Locating
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State
University User Name and Password are required.
See also: Robert
D. Kaplan/What Rumsfeld Got Right/The Atlantic Monthly, July-August 2008
This article can be accessed @ Locating
Periodicals @ Texas State University Library. A valid Texas
State
University User Name and Password are required.
Thom
Shanker/In Air Force Changes, Signs of an Overhaul/NYT, June 10, 2008
David
H. Petraeus/Beyond
the Cloister/The American Interest Vol. 2, No. 6, July-August 2007
Civilian graduate programs broaden a
soldier's horizons.
Victor
Davis Hanson/War-Making and the Machines of War/Commentary December
2006
"... radical transformations in military practice have marked
Western
history at least since Sparta and Athens squared off in the
Peloponnesian war in the 5th century B.C.E."
This article can be accessed @
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University User Name and Password are required.
Robert
D. Kaplan/On Forgetting the Obvious/The American Interest Vol. 2, No.
6, July-August 2007 A society
that believes in nothing
will fight for nothing.