Great Power Politics

Catalog description

This course offers an overview of the dynamics of strategic interaction between great powers, including the causes of conflict, origins of alliances, logic of coercion, sources of order, and definition of national interests. In a broad historical narrative, the course will discuss how the balance of power and the nature of relations between great powers have shifted from the pre-World War II era to the Cold War (bi-polarity), the post-Cold War period (uni-polarity), and the contemporary world system (multi-polarity).