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Security Policy Studies

IAFF 264 Defense Policy/Program Analysis I
Defense Policy & Program Analysis is one of three required core courses for the Security Policy Studies program. The course provides a very practical view of defense analysis: it stresses analysis as it is actually used in the national security community to help shape policy. The course will give students a firm foundation of defense affairs and issues; critical thinking about them; discrimination regarding analyses of them; and the skills to evaluate and sometimes employ the tools of analysis to help resolve them. Most of the major points of the course are illustrated by case studies of analysis as used in the Pentagon, for Congress, or in the operating forces deployed around the world. Where possible, combat data and its analysis are included. The state of analysis and of modeling of military processes will be covered. Topical issues will also be explored.

IAFF 268 Fundamentals of Intelligence
This graduate-level seminar will focus on the craft of U.S. Intelligence and its role in national security policy. It will examine the changing organizational structure of the Intelligence Community, including its homeland security component; the Intelligence production cycle, including tasking, collection, analysis, covert action, and counterintelligence; and relations between the Intelligence and Policy communities. Successes and failures will be examined using several case studies and class exercises. The seminar will then focus on new missions and agendas fostered by the changing nature of the post-9/11 threat environment, proposals on how best to pursue them, and performance thus far. It will conclude by assessing the extent of executive, legislative, and judicial oversight of the Intelligence Community and the compatibility of secrecy and democracy and other ethical questions, and will also assess selected foreign intelligence agencies. Upon completion of the course, students should have a better understanding of Intelligence as a craft and as a policy input and output; gain new insights into the dynamics of key historical and contemporary issues and the role of Intelligence in shaping them; and improve their analytical and writing skills.

IAFF 270 Covert Action & National Security
Covert action describes an operation designed to influence governments, events, organizations, conditions, attitudes or behavior in another state or territory in ways that cannot necessarily be attributed to the sponsor. It is a specialized instrument for implementing foreign policy. Covert action is sometimes confused with clandestine intelligence collection, or espionage. Covert action may employ similar methods, but its function of policy implementation is distinctly different from the function of gathering information. Variations on covert action are often employed in wartime.

The objectives of this course are (1) to understand the nature and principles of covert action, how it is employed to achieve foreign policy objectives, and its capabilities and limitations; (2) to analyze critically the record of covert action as an instrument of foreign policy; and (3) to acquire experience in constructing and briefing a covert action operations plan.

The course will begin with a review of the national security policy setting in which decisions to use covert actions operations are made. We will move quickly into the principles of covert action, the means and techniques involved in its employment, and its early history as an instrument of U.S. and other countries' foreign policy. We will then analyze a series of covert action cases from the early days of the Cold War to the current Global War on Terror. Cases will be taken from Chile, Guatemala, Cuba Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iran. To gain realistic experience in covert action planning, we will divide into groups to prepare presidential findings, write covert action operations plans, and brief them to the class.

While there are no prerequisites for this course, students should be familiar with American foreign policy since World War II, and the U.S. Intelligence Community. Students who have not taken an intelligence course or had practical experience in intelligence might find it useful to read an introductory work, such as Mark M. Lowenthal, Intelligence: from Secrets to Policy, 3rd ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 2005), available in paperback.

IAFF 271 Transnational Security Issues
This seminar will assess the dynamics of globalization, and the threats and opportunities it poses for U.S. and global security, economic prosperity and governance. It will examine whether globalization is an enduring successor to the bipolar system of the Cold War, with its own unique actors, distribution of power, regulatory mechanisms and sources of stability and instability as Tom Friedman suggests, or whether it may be a more ephemeral phenomenon that could be jettisoned by such threats as terrorism and protectionism. The course will also look at both the bright and dark sides of globalization to assess its over all value and durability. Specifically, it will do so by examining the scale, impact , and outlook for various transnational and non-traditional threats and challenges to global security arising from or influenced by globalization; their implications for the United States and U.S. responses. These include population and migration, the environment and health, ethnic and other forms of internal conflict, conflict prevention and peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention and human rights, terrorism and WMD proliferation, organized crime, globalization and financial vulnerability, and democratization. The seminar will conclude with an examination of alternative global futures, the role these challenges would play in such futures, and the extent and means by which the United States would both shape and be affected by such futures.

IAFF 273 Responses to Terrorism
This course will focus on the responses to terrorism by governments, particularly in the area of policy and decision-making.

The course will be divided into several sections designed to delineate between individual (and tactical) responses to terrorism and broader counter-terrorism strategies. These will include case studies of successes and failures, including the use of military force, public diplomacy, economic aid, covert and intelligence action, and information and influence operations.

In addition to case studies, the class will focus on broader questions such as:

• Does terrorism necessitate a "war" such as the Global War on Terrorism?
• Can a unilateral counter terrorism policy be successful?
• Have terrorist organizations become criminal enterprises and if so, what are the consequences for counter terrorism policy?
• Are there distinct moral/ethical/legal concerns in Counter terrorism policy?
• How do we measure success in countering terrorism?

IAFF 275 Homeland Security
Immigration policy has played an important role in both shaping and serving national and homeland security objectives over the history of the U.S. From the Chinese Exclusion Acts, through Japanese internment during World War II, through the more recent events of the first World Trade Center bombings and 9/11, U.S. immigration law and policy has been an integral tool in our nation's response to security threats.

In this course, students will examine the different purposes immigration law and policy has served in the homeland and national security context. To achieve this, we shall examine topics in U.S. news currently, as well as historic use of immigration policy to implement U.S. security objectives. We shall also compare and contrast U.S. policy, with the policy of European Union and member states, as well as other countries.

Students are expected to attend all class sessions, to have done the assigned readings before coming to class, and to be able to discuss the readings in class. Grades will be based on a combination of in class participation and two projects. Projects will be scenario based; with emphasis on the student demonstrating their ability to research and present their arguments as appropriate for the role. For each project, students will submit a short (3-5 pages) written portion, as well as participate in a scenario-based panel or negotiation.

IAFF 280 International Organized Crime
International Organized Crime (IOC) is a graduate-level seminar, focused on developing broad critical skills and knowledge around IOC and the aspects and issues that intersect with the topic. IOC is an area of expanding interest by many research communities, making its proper study multi-disciplinary — crossing over the intellectual theories and practices of international affairs, sociology, geography, regional and cultural studies, anthropology, law, history and politics. IOC is a phenomenon as old as pirates and thieves. However, it has functioned largely as a footnote or an anecdotal account throughout most of history because of the clandestine nature of the social behavior associated with its activities and the violence associated with those who told too much about illicit activities. The survival and expansion of the activities grouped together under IOC is based on both of these ingredients, along with personal greed, resistant politics and informal social networks. The course will be organized by key themes that intersect many viewpoints of the issues and regions concerned with IOC. Each member of the seminar will be required to read, write, brief and engage in an open dialog around the many issues we will cover in our short time together. Participants will help create a learning environment in which they will explore and examine how IOC relates to global politics in a rapidly changing social environment.

IAFF 282 International Peacekeeping
This is a case-based, lecture-discussion course focused on the history, practice and evaluation of the military, policing, and related rule of law-supportive elements of internationally authorized, multilateral missions to promote and protect transitions from war to peace. Such missions are increasingly civil-military collaborations deeply involved in the politics of implementing settlements of intrastate wars. There are no formal prerequisites but general knowledge of the United Nations system is helpful. There will be up to 200 pages of reading per week. Students are expected to attend all class sessions, to have done the assigned readings before coming to class, and to be able to discuss the readings in class. Grades will be based on an early, 2-3 page paper, a mid-term takehome exam, and a policy analysis paper on an approved topic due at the end of the term. The final two sessions of class will be taken up with short briefings of the draft papers by their authors. [NB: This course was offered spring 2008 as IAFF 288.18.]

IAFF 282 Introduction to Conflict Resolution
This course provides students with an introduction to the field of conflict analysis and resolution. It is intended to provide a solid foundation for further inquiry and application. The course will introduce students to the major concepts and issues currently animating the field, explore the main strategies for responding to conflicts, and help them recognize the assumptions upon which these strategies rest. This is not primarily a "how-to" course nor does it delve extensively into the fields of community and neighbor mediation. Instead, this course considers the "upper end" of the conflict spectrum, focusing on inter-state disputes, contemporary civil wars, complex political emergencies and other forms of violent conflict. At the end of the course students should be acquainted with the nature of conflict resolution as a distinct theoretical and applied field of study and have some understanding of current thinking about major approaches to war prevention, mitigation, settlement, and post-war reconstruction projects. It will be useful for anyone with an interest in conflict resolution and management, including professionals in the fields of diplomacy, journalism, development assistance, humanitarian aid or international peacekeeping who wish to develop their knowledge of this important area. The course will connect theory to practice through discussion, research and case study review of real events.

IAFF 288 Advanced Seminar: Intelligence
This course will examine successes and failures in intelligence, organizational & operations practices of U.S. and foreign intelligence, using a case study approach. The objective of the course is to apply these "lessons learned" to the challenges facing the US Intelligence Community today. The case studies will include Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Yom Kippur War, WMD, other proliferation issues, and Cold War Counterintelligence.

**Students are expected to have completed previous coursework on intelligence (such as "Fundamentals of Intelligence" or relevant experience. Please consult the professor if you have any questions about this prerequisite.

IAFF 288 Conflict Prevention And Early Warning
This course explores two major areas that precede the outbreak of armed conflict: early warning signals and the ability to prevent a conflict from crossing the violence threshold. On the early warning side, the course focuses on the evaluation and assessment of conflict situations and their likelihood of escalating into a new phase of violence. Early warning models will be discussed in class to facilitate our theoretical understanding of how to improve our ability to predict the outbreak of political violence. The class will also analyze important concepts such as the conflict phases, structural indicators, accelerators, and conflict triggers. After identifying potential indicators of armed conflict, the course explores theories and practical examples of what could be done to prevent conflicts from becoming deadly. In particular, we will discuss which conflict prevention tools seem to work and under what circumstances (e.g. negotiation, mediation, and other forms of third party intervention); and to what extent these efforts have been successful in containing, managing, or preventing conflict escalation. In particular, the roles played by international, regional, government, and non-governmental organizations will be examined.

IAFF 288 Counterintelligence
Counterintelligence is broadly concerned with denying information to those who seek it through illegal means. CI includes aggressive activities to thwart all forms of collection targeted to acquire the information as well as policies and programs to ensure the trust in those who have the responsibility to protect it. This seminar explores the varied disciplines of counterintelligence including counterespionage, operational security, and deception; it will also address related areas of personnel, information and facilities protection. Students will develop familiarity with both foreign intelligence organizations and the US CI Community. The seminar combines lectures, discussion, practical exercises and simulations as well as student research and presentations. Drawing both on historical cases and on the most contemporary challenges of espionage and terrorism, seminar participants will navigate through a world where "all is not as it seems" and grapple with the thorny challenges of securing ourselves against hostile collection while maintaining the principles of the open society we seek to defend.

IAFF 288 Democracy and Intelligence

IAFF 288 Defense Trade in the 21st Century
The mission of the course is to develop a better understanding of the present and future direction of the global defense industry. This business involves complex relationships between firms and brokers, militaries, laws, and law enforcement; economies and states. The course will undertake a comprehensive investigation of the structure, content and imperatives associated with the world-wide aerospace and defense industry emphasizing non-US firms and business entities. Major factors including state and non-state actors as well as forces that shape the industry such as economics, politics, laws, sovereignty, suzerainty and technology will be considered. Defense trade political policies and economic processes, their interrelations, and their influence on national and transnational organizations will be examined and discussed.

IAFF 288 Energy & National Security
The way the United States gets and uses energy constitutes a grave, if non-traditional, threat to U.S. national security. The nature of the threat ranges from the geostrategic tensions that come with depending on oil to the destabilizing consequences of global climate change. This course will look at why energy security is such a significant challenge for the United States, and how the United States might meet that challenge.

IAFF 288 Evolution of the US Intelligence Community
It is important for us to understand our place in the rich, 230-year history of American intelligence. We need to appreciate how unique circumstances, technological developments and bureaucratic imperatives have shaped our contemporary Intelligence Community.

This seminar seeks to address both the challenges of mastering our evolution and of managing the debunking of popular mythologies. The seminar uses a rich mix of readings and discussion — and possibly a spy novel or two — occasional lectures and guest speakers, and several films that we will critique to meet these twin objectives. While the seminar will generally follow a historical chronology, scheduling of guest speakers may require some extraordinary navigation of our time machine. Seminar preparation envisions preparatory readings and there will be at least one short paper as well as a term paper, for which there will be many options running the gamut from traditional research topics to less conventional field research. Participation in spirited classroom discussions is a key component of the seminar.

IAFF 288 Forward Engagement
The rate of major historical change appears to be accelerating, in ways that could challenge our democratic society's ability to perceive events in time to debate and decide upon appropriate responses. If so, then there is a need to combine methods of forecasting with mechanisms for policy making, to create a process that could be called "Forward Engagement." The basic premise of "Forward Engagement," is that early awareness and early preparation for potentially major events is preferable than awaiting their unambiguous onset.

Students will explore long-range trends and events in science, economics, defense and governance that could have a major impact on our society and on the world in general, by the time today's students reach positions of senior responsibility. Emphasis will be placed, this semester, on the search for trends that are not only of potentially major consequence, but are more consistently longer-range. Participants in this course will explore whether such events could prove particularly challenging to democratic governance. They will also analyze ways in which it would be possible, starting now, to modify policy in the hope of favorably influencing the course and impact of these developments. They will consider ways to improve the capacity of the government of the United States to perceive and respond to the accelerating rush of future events.

Finally, students will apply what they have learned in a specific scenario (details to be provided separately) that will engage them in the role of the staff of the House Annual Commission on Forward Engagement, preparing one of its periodic survey briefings for the House of Representatives. To do this, they will be asked — as have students in past semesters- to draw upon the work of previous classes, improved by their own insights.

IAFF 288 Global Security & U.S. Hegemony
This is both an academic and professional course. The ultimate objective is to place you in the role of national security advisor to the head of a foreign nation, international organization, or internationally-active NGO, with the tasks of (1) explaining the role of the United States in the international system (from a non-US perspective), and (2) designing a national security strategy for your nation or organization that could either affect, neutralize, or capitalize on the hegemonic position of the U.S.

IAFF 288 Implementing Peace Agreements
After a civil war, the over-arching goal of a peace agreement is to plant the seeds for durable peace. However, in nearly half of all cases, the peace agreement unravels and the country returns to war. This grim statistic reflects the fact that the period following a peace agreement is notoriously fragile and poses many challenges for the post-conflict state. After a civil war, governments must contend with signatories to agreements who are unable or unwilling to fulfill promises; new interest groups that appear and press new demands on the government; and the need to rebuild economic, political, and social networks.

How can peace agreements be implemented with more success? This course is about the methods, strategies, and objectives associated with implementing a peace agreement. Through an array of case studies and different peace agreements, the course explores topics such as confidence-building and cooperation between stakeholders; power sharing arrangements; disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration; social reconciliation and transitional justice; child soldiers; refugees and internally displaced persons; and transitional administrations. Students will be challenged to understand why certain aspects of a peace agreement might succeed, while others might fail.

IAFF 288 Intelligence Successes and Failures
This course will examine successes and failures in intelligence, organizational & operations practices of U.S. and foreign intelligence, using a case study approach. The objective of the course is to apply these "lessons learned" to the challenges facing the US Intelligence Community today.

Case studies will focus on historical and more recent challenges to include (subject to change): 9/11, WMD (Iraq), Indian Nuclear Tests (1998), Cuban Missile Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution, the Yom Kippur War, Operation Ryan (KGB), Beirut Bombings (1983-4), the British Invasion of the Falklands, AQ Khan and nuclear proliferation.

IAFF 288 International Law & Transnational Threats
In remarks to the 79th annual meeting of the American Law Institute in May of 2002, then Justice Sandra Day O'Conner said, "Understanding international law is no longer just a legal specialty" but "a duty we all share". Although she was speaking to lawyers, globalization makes her remarks applicable to all of us. We live in an interdependent world that makes events in far off lands applicable to each and every one of us in one way or another.

This course is not about transnational threats per se, it is about how the international legal regime may, can or does affect them. This is a course on international law, but one premised on the assumption that the student already has a grasp of contemporary transnational threats. We will begin with the foundations of International Law and proceed through its development to the present day with a general focus on how International Law does or does not meet contemporary needs. Along the way, we will assess the impact of international norms of behavior in context of conflict, crime, terrorism and related threat matters. This class will briefly touch on private international law, which is largely commercial but it will concentrate on public policy, international relations and the business of nations.

You will find that international law is a curious hodge-podge of logic, custom and agreement, but you will also find that the concept of sovereignty intervenes in a way that makes some aspects of the discipline illogical. More than that, you will find that international law revolves around geography — i.e., the physical dimension of a nation-state. Why nations have gone to war over scraps of land of little value, or why nations hold on to far-flung islands of no commercial value, harkens back to international efforts that were designed to avoid conflict but, instead, often promoted it. A sense of history will go a long way toward understanding why international law is as it is, and what, if anything, might be expected of it with respect to transnational threats in a post-Cold War era.

IAFF 288 Health & National Security
This course will introduce students to the changing global health landscape and the challenges of framing non-traditional security threats such as disease and disasters within the national security agenda. This course does not require an extensive background in medicine or public health, and will not provide technical instruction in public health practices. Instead, discussion will focus on understanding transnational threats to health (ranging from slowly unfolding crises such as the global HIV/AIDS epidemic to sudden catastrophes like SARS), the public health intervention toolbox, the regulatory framework for health governance, and the shifting roles of state and non-state actors in addressing health concerns in the context of human, national, and global security. At the end of the course, students should be acquainted with the emerging field of study at the nexus of health, development, and security, and have some understanding of current thinking about links between h ealth status and political and economic stability. The course is intended to provide a solid foundation for further inquiry and application. It will be useful for anyone with an interest in public health and biological risks, including professionals in the fields of diplomacy, defense, journalism, development assistance, humanitarian aid or international relations who wish to develop their knowledge of this important area. The course will connect theory to practice through discussion, research and case study review of real events.

IAFF 288 National Security Priorities: Ideas, Interests, and Policy Dilemmas
This course examines American national security policies and planning from World War II to the present. This is a course about how ideas and interests shape national security decision making from the white house to the trenches. We will address theory, practice, and processes as they relate to the most important national security topics of the day. In this seminar, we will debate and explore how ideas and interests work together or in opposition to shape national security policies, priorities, and praxis; consider American strategic culture and how it shapes decision making; and discuss America's changing role in world politics. Among the topics we will address are American exceptionalism; how the NSC shapes national security policy; how the "war of ideas" has evolved from the Cold War to the global war on terrorism; energy security; democratization; the role of the media; and the how the definition of "national security" has changed.

IAFF 288 New Proliferation Dynamics
This course will address how the forces of globalization are altering proliferation risks and the implications of these changes for nonproliferation, especially in the area of nuclear and biotechnology. A brief primer on the existing nonproliferation regimes will be followed by surveying different aspects of globalization and transnational threats, such as the rapid advances and diffusion of technology, illicit networks and the rise of non-state actors. We will then analyze how existing regimes and policy approaches to prevent proliferation must adapt to address these changing dynamics. Course requirements will include a midterm, abstract and seminar paper as well as a presentation to the class.

IAFF 288 Political Risk Analysis
The political risk analysis graduate course will examine frameworks and methodologies that measure and mitigate political risk in a range of environments at the macro (national and international) and at the micro (local and regional) levels. Approaches will combine research from the international relations and political risk areas together with risk analysis derived from psychology to provide students with an array of approaches to understand the critical aspects of evaluating risks. Political risk analysis can be defined as the mediating relationship between state and non-state economic actors.

IAFF 288 Strategic Planning for the 21st Century
This course focuses on strategic planning from a conceptual and practical point of view. Its primary area of interest will be global-level national security planning by the U.S. government (USG), but we will look at other types of strategic planning as well. To do our subject justice, we will systematically work our way through a seven-step analytic process. This process will include a look at near- to mid-term environment from both general and agency-specific perspectives; examine the levels of risk the USG might be willing to accept in the policies it pursues and the capabilities it seeks to develop; explore how the USG might harness its vast, but not always well-organized power to operate most effectively in international affairs; and scrutinize how three leading departments are pursuing capabilities-centered reforms to improve on the process. Using this foundation, the course will look at specific planning procedures, templates and/or models that can be used by assorted organizations, including security ones, to ensure their continued viability and success. Finally, we look at specific strategic planning issues that are of significance to security specialists in the near to mid-term (including energy distribution, environmental issues, changing demography, insurgencies and terrorism, transnational strategic planning, etc.) through directed class discussions and student presentations.

IAFF 288 Terrorism & U.S. Foreign Policy
As political violence, terrorism is nothing new. We establish a working definition of terrorism that differentiates such behavior from legitimate revolution, guerrilla warfare, and insurgency. Throughout this course we will attempt to understand the ideologies, tactics, targets, and worldviews of terrorist groups in an attempt to foster a more sophisticated understanding of what we mean when we ascribe the label "terrorist." We avoid making simplistic dismissals of individual terrorists as psychopaths or deviants. Instead, we look at the inner logic and rationality that exists within groups and among group members, in an effort to establish a complex model of understanding.

Therefore, once we have established a definitional understanding of terrorism, we will examine structural and cultural variables, explore a series of case studies, define and analyze Islamism, and discuss available options for U.S. counterterrorism policy. The outline of the course will be divided thematically into six overlapping sections: definitions (terrorism vs. revolution; old and new terrorism); motivations (who becomes a terrorist and why; why terrorism is a preferred choice over non-violent participation); group behavior (tactics and targets; organizational structure); fundamentals of U.S. foreign policy (hegemony; global politics; domestic sources of foreign policy); the Islamic Question (secular nationalism and political religion; pan-Arabism; jihad as a reaction to Westernization); and implications (counterterrorism; expectations for future attacks; grand strategy; empire).

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