POL 142 - International Politics (FYS) (1)

Can we save the world from war? Is lasting world peace possible? Diplomatic strategies and blunders have led to wars that have killed millions: Germany’s “blank check” before World War I, Britain’s “peace for our time” before World War II. We will discuss why diplomacy fails and why it succeeds, why states make peace and why they make war, and how recent changes in the world-new technologies, new economic and social interconnectedness, new international organizations-affect and may affect yet more the fundamentals of international politics: state sovereignty and the system of states. We will especially focus on the diplomacy preceding the start of the First World War and the United Nations’ recent efforts to bring peace to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighbors, where millions of people have died during the past twenty years with scant attention from outsiders.
(First Year Seminar (FYS))