528a: Domestic Policy Analysis: An Historical Approach to U.S. Foreign Policy
Brad Simpson, Spring 2009               

Tues: 9-11:50am, Room 012 Robertson

bsimpson@princeton.edu; 609-468-9532

Course Description and Objectives: 

This seminar will introduce MPA and MPP students to U.S. foreign policy history and approaches.  The seminar aims to demonstrate the utility of historical analysis for consideration of contemporary foreign policy challenges.  Topics to be explored include global trade, nuclear policy, military intervention, decision making, development and foreign assistance, human rights, Congress and bureaucracies, the presidency and war, diplomacy, international institutions and the Cold War.                                                          

For half of the semester’s readings students will prepare a two - or three-page paper as a way of getting discussion going. In addition, a class participant will help to lead each week’s discussion. In these short papers the emphasis should be first on explaining the main points of the reading, and secondarily on offering a critique of those points. "Critique" does not mean tearing a book apart, but assessing a book's value, its importance, its place in the literature, and after that, what more we might have expected from it.

Course Schedule:

Final Paper: Students will prepare a substantial review essay (15 pp) on a thematic topic of your choice in the field of US Foreign Policy History, subject to instructor approval.

Readings:                                                                                                                              

Michael J. Hogan, Ed. /Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations/, 2nd Edition    The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (Revised) (Paperback)                                                                                           

John Prados, /Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA/
Michael Hogan, /A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State/
John R. MacArthur /The Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington and the Subversion of American Democracy/
Fredrik Logevall, /Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam/
Kathryn Sikkink, /Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy And Latin America /(2004)
Jeffrey Taffet, /Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Policy in Latin America/ (2007)
William B. Quandt, /Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967/
Samantha Power,/ A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide/
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: US National Security Strategy During the Cold War                                           

David Coleman and Joseph Siracusa, Real World Nuclear Deterrence: The Making of International Strategy

Basic Resources for Studying US Foreign Relations and International History