Syllabus
Course outline
Monday 12 & Tuesday 13 March 2018; Tuesday 17 & Wednesday 18 April; Wednesday 9 & Thursday May 10; (schedule: 14:00 to 16:50). 1. Tweet: "I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” The rationality of the "Madman theory" and a brief overview of the course.
Reading: Ellsberg 2. Hitler playing and winning the game of chicken, and the (nuclear chicken) "balance of terror".
Reading: Ellsberg; Allan & Dupont; NYT (4 February 2018) 3. "Between 1 in 3 and even": the probablility of disaster as estimated by Kennedy for the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and rational foreign policy decisionmaking.
Readings: Allison; Allison & Zelikow (1999) 4. Organizations: a necessary tool of foreign policy decisionmaking – the sociology of organizations and foreign policy.
Readings: Allison; Allison & Zelikow (1999) 5. Foreign politics is also domestic – the politics of foreign policy.
Readings: Allison; Allison & Zelikow (1999) 6. Misperceptions in decision-making and non-rational explanations – the psychology of foreign policy.
Reading: Mintz & DeRouen 7. Iran, North Korea, etc.: is nuclear proliferation good ? Pro and contra.
Reading: Waltz 8. Diplomacy: an art and a science.
Readings: Jönsson & Hall; Schelling; Fisher & Ury 9. Strength and weakness, promise and threat: How to use coercion and exchange for reaching an agreement ?
Readings: Jönsson & Hall; Schelling; Allan & Dupont; Fisher & Ury 10. Terrorism and its strategic logic, a weapon of the weak (and the strong, too !). 11. Mao Zedong's war against Japan and for a revolution in China: What makes his political theory of guerrilla warfare successful ?
Readings: Mao; Allan & Stahel 12. Che Guevara, the internationalist guerrillero in Bolivia: Why did he fail ?
Readings: Mintz & DeRouen; Allan & Stahel; Mao 13. What are thin and thick recognition ? Renouncement, sacrifice, and looking for compromise.
Readings: Allan & Keller; Fisher & Ury 14. What are "rotten" compromises ? Political and moral compromise, pro and contra.
Readings: Margalit; Allan & Keller 15. Conclusions: when to escalate, when to compromise in international conflict ?
Annotation
When do international actors prefer conflict, and when are they willing to compromise in order to settle their disagreements ? This course will examine this question in various ways, with the help of theories of international relations. Its central focus is on diplomacy, not in terms of formal relations between states only, whether bilateral or multilateral, but focusing on the skill, the craft and science of influencing others.