Georgetown University
Courses offered at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service
Dr. Chester Crocker
Conflict Management and International Security
The seminar’s central focus is the challenge of creating security and building peace in the 21st-century. It introduces students to the “intellectual map” of the peace-maker by exploring a wide range of literatures and cases in order to identify the roots and sources of conflict, and illustrates the varieties of third party intervention for conflict management.
International Mediation: Strategy and Methods
This seminar explores the role of mediation as an instrument of conflict management and a foreign policy technique. Students consult both theoretical and case study materials, and become adept at analyzing the suitability of diverse mediatory approaches and actors to concrete conflict situations at diverse stages of the conflict life cycle, using a five-phase model of mediation tradecraft.
Ambassador Barbara Bodine
Negotiation, Mediation, and Political Persuasion
For those who would be actors on the global stage, critics of or audience to the theater of diplomacy, this course will provide an introduction to the conceptual frameworks, the theories, and tools that shape political engagement across a spectrum of issues and multiple approaches. The ability to negotiate and to engage successfully rests upon a combination of analytic, intellectual and interpersonal skills, each of which will be examined as part of this course. Successful engagement, whether formal or informal, requires the ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity, institutional and personal resilience, the ability to lead without the need to dictate, and a willingness to think strategically and work tactically. The seminar will be based on a combination of academic literature, case studies and experiences of practitioners. There will be a written midterm and a written final, each based on the student’s own research, as well as class requirements and participation, and formal and informal oral presentations. This course is also a foundation course for both undergraduate and graduate candidates for the Certificate in Diplomatic Studies from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, has always been fragile state. Buffeted by the Arab Spring, it did, however, look to be one of the few success stories with a negotiated transfer of power, a laudable National Dialogue Process, and strong support from the international community. But even this near-success had fundamental flaws. The Houthi, long in conflict with the pre-Arab Spring central government, swept into the capital in the autumn of 2014 with an aggressive reformist agenda and demands for governmental restructuring. The National Partnership Plan agreed to with the transitional Hadi government was in retrospect Yemen’s last chance at a functioning government. By January 2015 the state and the government began to unravel. On March 25th, with Hadi in forced exile, Saudi Arabia launched a military campaign to force the Houthi out and bring Hadi back. Despite attempts at UN-brokered ceasefires and peace negotiations as of November 2016, that campaign continues, with untold destruction of the political, economic, social and physical infrastructure and a growing humanitarian catastrophe. The campaign has also unleashed AQAP and spawned the emergence of IS-affiliated groups.
This course – one of three that fulfills the capstone requirement for the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy’s Certificate in Diplomatic Studies (CDS) – will examine why the Yemeni success story in the end failed, and how this country – as a case study for other shattered states – can rebuild. What are the roles and responsibilities of the regional belligerents in the conflict, the international community, and the Yemenis themselves in post-war political and physical reconstruction? What lessons can be learned – good or ill – from elsewhere? The capstone course will conclude with a comprehensive strategy report by the capstone participants. It is taught by the Director of the SFS Institute for the Study of Diplomacy who previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Yemen.
Secretary Madeleine K. Albright
America’s National Security Toolbox
The primary objective of this seminar is to investigate the tools available to today’s foreign-policy practitioner. Students will evaluate the strengths and limitations of individual policy instruments in the areas of traditional diplomacy, economic measures, military force, and public diplomacy by looking at them in the context of recent cases. Role-playing scenarios will challenge students to design U.S. policy responses to foreign affairs crises, thereby testing the application of their policy “toolbox” in a complex, dynamic, inter-agency environment. Note: Permission needed to attend this course; space is very limited.
Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci
Nuclear Weapons and International and Regional Security
The purpose of the course is to explore the impact of nuclear weapons on international and regional security. The first part of the course deals with the design and development of nuclear weapons, the connections between nuclear power programs and nuclear weapons, the causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation, and concepts of deterrence and stability. The second part addresses specific countries in the context of their regional setting, Northeast and South Asia, the Middle-East, US-Russian security relations, and nuclear terrorism.
Ambassador Nancy McEldowney
A student driven, applied learning seminar limited to 2nd year graduate students, this course will address three main questions:
• What in the world is going on? Using intelligence community and private policy analysis, we will explore the range of global trends currently underway and identify those likely to exert the most significant and lasting impact.
• Is strategic forecasting fate or folly? Conducting an analysis of the principal methodologies employed in strategic forecasting, we will examine the extent to which projections are analytically sound and subsequently validated, or routinely ignored by policymakers and overly prone to cognitive bias.
• Is diplomacy dead? In light of the dramatic disruptions currently underway, has traditional diplomacy become obsolete? If so, what will take its place and how might this have its own impact on trends already underway?