POL 05 — Vital Issues in American Foreign Policy
Spring
Thursdays
7:00—8:50 pm
Date(s)
Mar 31—May 19
8 weeks
Drop By
Apr 13
1 Units
Fees
$330
Format
On-campus course
Open
This course will examine some of the most pressing
issues in contemporary American foreign policy.
We will consider the many issues in the Middle East
(specifically, terror and the confrontation with ISIS):
the Israel-Palestine conflict; the war in Syria; Iran
and the question of the spread of nuclear weapons,
including in North Korea; and the failure of the Arab
Spring in the region. We will also explore the badly
deteriorated relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia,
including the conflict in Ukraine and Russian intervention
in Syria. Finally, President Obama has renewed
American focus on Asia, and the course will examine
this policy shift with attention to China, Japan, South
Korea, and other allies in that region. We will close
with an assessment of the Obama administration’s
successes and failures in foreign policy.
Gerald A. Dorfman, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science, Emeritus, Stanford
Gerald Dorfman is an expert on British and European politics, including the European Union. He is also interested in US foreign policy and international relations. Dorfman served in the Agency for International Development and the US Department of State, and has been a professor of political science at Iowa State, a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, and a distinguished visiting professor at San Jose State. He received a PhD from Columbia.Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Steven W. Hook and John Spanier, American Foreign Policy Since World War II, 20th Edition (ISBN 978-1-4833-6853-5)