Spring 2007 Course Description
Topics in Policy
Please note: Public Affairs undergraduate courses do not count toward any graduate degree program offered by the LBJ School. These courses are intended for students enrolled in undergraduate programs at the University.
Description: The Department of Defense is a large, complex, and highly consequential enterprise: it spends more than $400 billion annually and employs more than three million people, and its activities have huge domestic and international ramifications. Because of the length of time needed to train leaders, develop new doctrines and acquire new equipment, DoD also plans far ahead.
This undergraduate seminar will help students understand (1) current defense policy; (2) the international forces, domestic political factors and institutional dynamics that influence defense policy; and (3) how the Defense Department is organized to implement policy. The focus will be on DoD, but with some attention to other key players such as the Congress. The course also will give students an opportunity to explore specific issues such as the growing representation of women in the all-volunteer force, the doctrine of ?preventive war?, and the role of the military in nation building.
Course Outline: The course will follow a logical progression from the articulation of national security strategy through decisions about DoD organization and resources. Because most students probably will not be familiar with the military, the seminar will begin with an overview of military terms and organizing principles. Students will become familiar with some of the basic documents that shape defense policy, e.g., Title X of the US Code, which provides the purposes and organization of the Defense Department, and the President?s National Security Strategy.
The Defense Department, like all organizations, must succeed at several key things: it must decide on its basic purposes or policies; obtain the resources (money, people, equipment and information) needed to carry out those purposes; and hire or develop good leaders. These six topics ? policy, personnel, acquisition, budget, intelligence and leadership ? will be the ?meat? of the course.
Course Outline: The course will spend one to two weeks (two to four class sessions) on each of the following topics:
- Background. Overview of DoD and of the military services, the difference between war fighters and resource providers, the roles of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- Purposes: What Are We Defending Ourselves Against (or Fighting For)?
- National Security Strategy. Who writes it, what influences it.
- National Defense Strategy. Threat-based versus capability-based approaches.
- People: Recruiting, Training and Rewarding the Force.
- From conscription to the all volunteer force.
- Who should serve, and who shouldn?t?
- Pay and Benefits.
- Things: Acquisition and Logistics.
- Figuring out what to buy and how to buy.
- Maintaining the industrial base.
- Money: The Defense Budget.
- Defense Planning Guidance.
- Deciding among competing needs.
- Information: Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence.
- Internal communications and coordination.
- Intelligence.
- Leadership: Developing the Officer Corps.
- Thinking About The Future: Anticipating Threats, Defining Roles and Missions.
Principal Texts:- Amos A. Jordan, Willliam J. Taylor, Jr. and Michael J. Mazarr, American National Security (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Buy.
- Lawrence J. Korb, Reshaping America?s Military: Four Alternatives (New York, Council on Foreign Relations, 2002). Buy.
- Barbara A. Bicksler, Curtis L. Gilroy and John T. Warner, eds., The All-Volunteer Force: Thirty Years of Service (Dulles, VA, Brassey?s, 2004). Copies on reserve in the Wasserman Public Affairs Library.
Performance Expectations: Students will be expected to contribute to class discussions, to write a short paper describing their interests in defense issues (i.e., why they are taking the class), to review a book about an issue they choose, and to take a mid-term and a final examination.
- Class attendance and participation ? 10%
- Short paper ? 10%
- Mid-term examination ? 20%
- Book review and discussion ? 30%
- Final examination ? 30%
Class Size: up to 20Return to Spring 2007 Undergraduate Course Schedule
