US Foreign Policy Challenges: Conventional and Unconventional

(POL 173)

During the history of the state system, no country has wielded more power than the United States. It accounted for 25 percent of world GDP in 2007. Its defense spending is greater than that of the next twenty countries combined. The international system in which it operates is more benign than it has ever been. In other ways, however, the United States confronts some exceptional challenges. International institutions, many created after the WWII, are misaligned. The current economic crisis has weakened, if not undermined, the liberal market-oriented vision that the United States has championed for decades. And, for some time to come, threats from weak states and transnational terrorists groups will remain a central concern of American foreign policy.

In this course, Stanford’s leading foreign policy experts will discuss the conventional and unconventional challenges now facing the Obama administration. Stephen Krasner, the former Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department, will direct the course and welcome a different expert each week. The speakers and topics will tentatively include: Judith Goldstein on the strategic problems presented by world trade; Scott Sagan on the ever-important question of nuclear weapons; Steve Stedman on making international institutions more effective, Kathryn Stoner Weiss on the new challenges presented by Russia and members of the former Soviet Union; and Larry Diamond on the challenges of democratization in hard places, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Stephen Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations

Stephen Krasner is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution and deputy director at FSI. He is the former Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State. Krasner received an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in political science from Harvard.