Course description
This course examines US national security affairs through the lenses of grand strategies and instruments of national power. Based on theories of international relations, grand strategy is intended to provide a plan for a nation to use in achieving its goals through the employment of tools of power, in the face of threats and challenges during war and peacetime. National power is the combination of a country's diplomacy, information and intelligence, military, and economic strength. This course examines the roles, applications, and mutual dependence of three key tools of national power—diplomacy, defense, and intelligence. The employment of grand strategy requires careful analysis and understanding of the security environment and risks (including budget) being faced, and a clear statement of goals (ends) so that appropriate means to achieve those ends can be determined within the ways available. This course explores and analyzes salient national security challenges facing the United States, including the rise of China, Russia's growing geopolitical ambitions, Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions, cyber as the fifth domain of international conflict, transnational terrorism, and the regional rivalry with Iran. Students approach the issues discussed in this course as future practitioners in training, learning to support national objectives as analysts, policymakers, and senior officials. The course begins with a consideration of theories of international relations and the general use of grand strategies as planning tools. Then students focus on analyzing the challenges facing the United States foreign policy establishment and how diplomacy, defense, and intelligence capabilities and posture serve the advancement of national interests. In this phase of the course, students develop strategic courses of action and convey them through writing strategic options memos that entail analyzing the challenges, assessing current strategy, and identifying alternative approaches to pursuing national goals. The next segment of the course dives into greater depth about the structure of the United States intelligence community, the way it supports defense and diplomacy, and causes of intelligence failure. Students exercise their learning by writing and briefing a national intelligence estimate based on real-world crises and conflicts. For complete and current details about this Harvard Extension course, see the description in the DCE Course Search.
