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International Security from the Atomic Age to Afghanistan

with John Steinbruner

The course is designed to review the principal features of international security as it is currently practiced. It does so by tracing the evolution of contemporary policy and other determining circumstances through the sequence of formative experience whereby current international security conditions developed. The underlying contention is that understanding the consequence of formative experience is indispensable for adequate comprehension of the prevailing concepts, organizing principles, military deployment patterns, legal regulations, and political relationships that determine the state of international security at the moment. This set of arrangements provides the foundation for all international relationships and affects all international policy topics.

The period of time reviewed begins with the initiation of nuclear weapons programs during the course of World War II. Contemporary security policy has deeper historical roots, of course, but current conditions were heavily determined by the developments that occurred over the past six decades. Although it is common to assert that we are now in a new era, anyone who does not understand the formative events and enduring legacy of that period will certainly not understand the contemporary problems that are covered in the second half of the semester. The course reviews this history from contemporary perspective for the purpose of understanding the current implications. That is, of course, a revisionist perspective from the point of view of those who lived through the events in question, but it is legitimate and important to use the advantage of retrospect to understand current circumstances.

The course is intended to be useful and appropriate for all people of whatever national affiliation. There is heavy emphasis on the experience of the United States and of Russia as principal successor to the Soviet Union, and in fact the course has been shaped by a joint curriculum development effort involving the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland and the Institute of USA and Canada Studies in Moscow. The reasoning is that the historical interaction between these two countries has disproportionately affected the international security conditions that all other countries now experience. Hence it seems important for anyone to understand this experience as a necessary foundation for any more focused national security perspective they might wish to develop.

Duration

Lesson Plan

The Role and Character of Security Policy30:37
Development of the Nuclear Arsenals38:29
Alliance Confrontation45:31
The Origins of Arms Control44:20
Limits on Proliferation35:34
Hard Lessons: Vietnam and Afghanistan35:35
Bilateral Stabilization and the End of the ...51:19
The Cold War Aftermath33:39
Problems of Civil Conflict43:03
The Legacy of Nuclear Weapons20:31
Asian Security Arrangements24:09
General Security Engagement in the Middle ...33:46
Projected Proliferation48:03
The Problem of Terrorism25:07
The Implications of Globalization36:42

Course Instructor

John Steinbruner

Director, Center for Security Studies

John D. Steinbruner is Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and Director of the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). His work has focused on issues of international security and related problems of international policy.

Steinbruner was Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1978-1996. Prior to joining Brookings, he was an Associate Professor in the School of Organization and Management and in the Department of Political Science at Yale University from 1976 to 1978. From 1973 to 1976, he served as Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he also was Assistant Director of the Program for Science and International Affairs. He was Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard from 1969 to 1973 and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1968 to 1969.

Steinbruner has authored and edited a number of books and monographs, including: The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis (Princeton University Press, originally published 1974, second paperback edition with new preface, 2002); Principles of Global Security (Brookings Institution Press, 2000); and A New Concept of Cooperative Security, co-authored with Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry (Brookings Occasional Papers, 1992). His articles have appeared in Arms Control Today, The Brookings Review, Daedalus, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, Scientific American, Washington Quarterly and other journals.