Government 312L (unique no. 38195)	Instructor: Clement M. Henry
Department of Government	Batts 4.152
UT at Austin	chenry@mail.utexas.edu
Class: Mezies 1.306 - Tu and Th 11:00-12:15 p.m.	Office hours Tu and Th 12:30-2 p.m., or by appointment (232-7210), or preferably by e-mail, or at 3:30 p.m if notified in advance.
TAs: TBA	TA office hrs. D. Morgan: Mondays, 12:30-3:30 PM at Batts 1.118; Voluntary help sections: Monday 3:40-4:30 p.m. WAG 201 and Thursday 3:40-4:30 p.m, WAG 208.  Matt Johnson: Tu-Th 12:30-2 at Batts 1.118

Course Content | "Virtual" Class Discussion and Policy Research | Grading criteria | Textbooks | Schedule of lectures and required readings | Week 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 | Main page

We will focus upon U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East since World War II and examine our traditional policies of containing communism, protecting oil and other U.S. interests, promoting Israel, and trying to reconcile conflicts among these goals -- always in the full glare of domestic American politics. Camp David, Irangate, U.S. interventions in Lebanon, Libya, and in three Gulf Wars will be reviewed. Aerial diplomacy to contain Iraq, then invasion and occupation to change the regime, economic sanctions to contain Iran, and support for the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians will be analyzed in light of U.S. national interests and foreign policy decision-making processes. Students will learn about these problems and processes in class and through computer conferencing with each other as well as with the instructor and the teaching assistants. These issues have taken on new urgency with the Obama Administration mission to clean up the post 911 mess but you will also be able to see the policy discussions of previous classes.

"Virtual" Class Discussions and Policy Research

You will learn to do research on the United States and the Middle East by using the Internet from the home page of our course, which is www.la.utexas.edu/chenry/usme and then using mena-politics as a jumping off place. Another useful virtual library, specialized in the Arab countries, is www.assr.org. For issues of goverance and democratization in the Arab world see www.pogar.org and www.carnegieendowment.org. The UT library staff has also given us some suggestions at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/resources/guides/clement.html.

You are required to use Blackboard, where you will find a general class discussion ("Chat") board and nine other discussion boards related to specific issue areas of US foreign policy.

You will be expected to contribute at least 5 substantive paragraphs to the general class discussion and an additional 5 commentaries to one specific policy area. You may just paste your comments into the appropriate Blackboard discussion board. You are especially encouraged to respond to other students, and to share your perceptions of how the media and your course readings treat controversial material. You will be expected to discover useful Internet resources concerning your policy area and to evaluate them for the benefit of others in our class who have selected your policy area.

Here are the policy issues:

• Iraq: how to withdraw, how to stay?
• Nuclear nonproliferation: after India and Pakistan, Iran soon to follow?
• Regional Security in the Persian Gulf: issues of oil, free navigation, and political stability
• Advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: identifying the partners in the post Arafat and post Sharon era?
• Fighting terrrorism, narcotics, and international crime: state-building in Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.?
• Relations with the United Nations and peace-keeping
• Promoting democracy and human rights - for Egypt? for Saudi Arabia? - how and where?
• Arms control versus arms sales: more arms races fueled by oil revenues?
• Trade issues and economic sanctions: promoting Arab countries' trade with Israel, isolating Iran? Should we be continuing the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) of 1996 vs Iran until 2012, as Congress recently resolved?

Please try to help other students who have selected the same policy area as yourself . You can do so in a number of ways. You may take notes on some of your required and recommended readings, type them on a computer, upload them, and post them to the discussion board you will share with others working in your policy area. You may find sources on the Internet to post to your policy group or to our general class discussion. Whenever you post a source, please summarize and evaluate it. You may also look at a past chat and policy bulletin board --not to plagiarize these out of date comments but to improve on them!

To get credit for your research and class participation, please make sure your name properly appears as the source of each of your postings to a Blackboard discussion forum. Please stick to just ONE research forum as we cannot give you credit for your work on more than one.

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2 Midterms 20% each (Feb. 26 and April 9)

Attendance and pop quizes 15%

Virtual class participation (chat) 15%

Policy research 15%

Final identifications exercise 15%

 

 Very important: You are encouraged in class discussion over the Internet to critique the news as it is presented in the various media you study as well as the required readings in your course. Your input (quality as well as quantity of messages!) into your policy group and into general class discussion will largely determine your research activities and virtual class participation grades. The other element of class participation will be pop quizzes and attendance in class.

 

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Texts (*=required reading)

 

* Z. Brzezinski and B. Scowcroft, moderated by David Ignatius, America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy (Basic Books 2008) ($18.15 from amazon.com)

Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace not Apartheid (Simon and Schuster, 2006) - strongly recommended as a subject for your chat and/or discussion of "Advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process" ($10.81 from amazon.com)

Congressional Quarterly, The Middle East 11th ed, 2007, 978-0-87289-369-6 - strongly recommended reference book ($46.95 from amazon.com)

* Samuel P. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations Debate, Foreign Affairs reprints. ( $9.95 from amazon.com)

* Douglas Little, American Orientalism (U of North Carolina Press, 2004) ($14.16 from amazon.com)

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (Paperback - Sep 2, 2008) - strongly recommended as a subject for your chat ($10.20 from amazon.com)

Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, Ballantine Books, 1996 ($13.46 from amazon.com) - optional backup for in-class videos

 

Note: You should also be reading the New York Times (available on the WWW at http://www.nytimes.com) or Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com) and other sources of international news on a regular basis to keep up with current events. The BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/ ) is also useful, with pointers to the Middle East. Middle East Policy, The Daily Star, and Ha'aretz are also good sources of news and commentary. You will find many other sources free of charge on the Internet, but you may wish to compare them with "conventional" media coverage of the Middle East. Excellent recommended background readings are

Francois Burgat, Islamism in the Shadow of Qaeda (U of Texas Press, 2008)

Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge UP, 2005).

Glenn P. Hastedt, American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future 7th edition (Prentice Hall 2008).

George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Duke U. Press, 1990) - sympathetic to big business, even-handed on the Arab-Israeli issue.

Andrea Levin, Bearing False Witness: Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (Camera Monograph Series) (Paperback) - pro-Israeli views.

Donald Neff, Fallen Pillars: US Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1995) - sympathetic to the Palestinians.

David M. Paul and Rachel Anderson Paul, Ethnic Lobbies and US Foreign Policy (Lynne Rienner, 2008)

Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict (U of Chicago Press, 1985) - sympathetic to Israel.

Shibley Telhami, The Stakes in the Middle East, 2002

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Week 1 (Jan. 20-22): Introduction: The American Foreign Policy Process and the Challenges of the Middle East. 

Congressional Quarterly, Middle East 11th ed (CQ Press, 2007), pp. 159-166.

Douglas Little, American Orientalism, pp. 1-42

and familiarize yourself with a map of Africa and the Middle East region, our mena-politics and especially with its US government sites such as the State Department's http://www.state.gov/p/nea or the Middle East Partnership Initiative- read some official statements to get a sense of current US policy objectives in the Middle East to be discussed in class next week.

Does the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Still Matter? - discussion July 1, 2008 at the Brookings Institution

 

Other Required Activities:

Map exercise due in class: Tuesday, Jan. 27. Just download and fill in the names of the Middle Eastern and North African countries.

 

Week 2 (Jan 27-29): American Exceptionalism? Thinking About Foreign Policy.

• Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72:3 (Summer 1993), 22-49, and various responses in reprint pack: read everything
• Joseph Nye, Jr., " The new Rome meets the new barbarians," The Economist, March 21, 2002.
• Nye, Soft Power, pp. 1-32, 127-147
• Brzezinski et al, America and the World, pp. vii-x
• Stanley Hoffmann, "The Foreign Policy the US Needs," New York Review of Books, Aug 10, 2006 

Other Required Activities:

Think about policy-making: what is policy?

Week 3 (Feb. 3, 5): US Presidents and Foreign Policy "Doctrines" from Monroe to Bush 43

• Brzezinski et al, America and the World, pp. 1-35
• Little, pp. 117-155 ("A Tale of 4 Doctrines")
• Congressional Quarterly, Middle East 10th ed (CQ Press, 2005), pp. 86-135, or better 11th ed (2007) pp. 159-214

  Recommended: Robert Jervis, "Understanding the Bush Doctrine," Political Science Quarterly, 118:3 (falll 2003), pp. 368-388.

Week 4 (Feb. 10-12): The Domestic Roots of Foreign Policy: Congress

• Louis Fisher, Expansion of the President's War Power, and Michael Genovese, George Bush and Presidential Leadership: The un-hidden Hand, in Betty Glad and Chris J. Dolan, eds., Striking First (Palgrave, 2004), pp. 123-148.
• Little, pp. 157-192 ("Sympathy for the Devil?")

  The Power Game: in-class required video #1: Congress (Be sure to take notes! You may also look at the corresponding pages of Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, pp. 20-40,119-159)

Week 5 (Feb 17. 19): The Pentagon: From the Shores of Tripoli to the Quagmire of Iraq; The Unelected - media, lobbies, staff

• Little, pp. 229-266 ("Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome")

  The Power Game: in-class required video #2: The Pentagon (Be sure to take notes! You may also look at the corresponding pages of Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, pp. 160-215).

   

• Smith, pp. 216-231 on AIPAC
• Paul Findley, They Dare Speak to Speak Out (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1985) pp. 25-49, 165-179 (or 3rd ed. Pb. 2003, pp. 27-50, 187-208)

  The Power Game: in-class required video #3: The Unelected - media, lobbies, staff (Be sure to take notes! You may also look at the corresponding pages of Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, pp. 216-271)

Week 6 (Feb. 24): The Special Relation with Israel

• Little, pp. 77-116 ("America and Israel")
• Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen M., "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" London Review of Books, March 23, 2006, also a lengthier footnoted version, KSG Working Paper No. RWP06-011, available on the Social Science Research Network or at Harvard's Kennedy School with a "debunking" of it by an Israel supporter - (but here is the original Harvard edition before the protests from influential funding sources--CH).

   

  Try AIPAC's home page at http://www.aipac.org/ and the Council on the National Interest (http://www.cnionline.org/) - along with the Washington Report. Look also at an opposition Israeli web site, the Israeli Committee Against [Palestinian] House Demolitions, urging an end to Israeli repression of the Palestinians and a "just and sustainable peace."

  Also see the home page of the USS Liberty at http://www.ussliberty.org, especially the commentary by Admiral Moorer

  Concerning reaction to to your Mearsheimer and Walt article, see Michael Massing, The Storm over the Israel Lobby, NYRB June 8, 2006 and, on the other side, Alan Dershowitz, Debunking..

  For the Israel lobby in action see Israel lobby presses Congress to soften Obama's tough stance on Netanyahu, The Guardian, March 30, 2010, and a critical response:Treason by Members of the United States Congress, You Tube video by Lawson, March 27, 2010

Week 6 (Feb 26): Midterm

Week 7 (March 3, 5): The Presidency, the State Department, and the National Security Council: From Irangate to W.'s War

• Little, pp. 193-228 ("Modernizing the Middle East")
• Glenn Hastedt, American Foreign Policy (6th ed. 2004) pp. 244-258 (very important - see your class notes)

  The Power Game: in-class required video #4: the Presidency (Be sure to take notes! You may also look at the corresponding pages of

  Hedrick Smith, The Power Game, pp. 3-19, 566-626

Week 8 (March 10-12): Why the War? Truth and Consequences

• Mark Danner, "Iraq: The War of the Imagination," New York Review of Books, Dec. 21, 2006
• Patrick J. Buchanan, "Whose War?" The American Conservative, March 24, 2003.
• Clement M. Henry, The United States and Iraq: American Bull in a Middle East China Shop, in Betty Glad and Chris J. Dolan, eds., Striking First (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 65-73
• Richard Haass, "The New Middle East," Middle East Journal, Nov-Dec. 2006

   

  In-class video: Uncovered: the whole truth about the Iraq war

   

**** SPRING BREAK ****

 

Week 9 (March 24-26): What is to be done? What is the problem and why do they hate us? 

• Juan Cole, "The Necessary Withdrawal," The Nation, Dec. 26, 2008
• President Obama's Speech on Iraq policy, Feb. 28, 2009.
• Robert Harris, "Pirates of the Mediterranean," New York Times, op.ed., Sept 30, 2006
• Jeffrey Toobin, "Killing Habeus Corpus," New Yorker, Dec 4, 2006, pp 46-54
• Brzezinski and Scowcroft, pp 35-78; see also Brzezinski's Feb 1, 2007 testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee
• Project on Defense Alternatives, Iraq War Withdrawal and Exit Plans (Dec 2005, updated to Oct. 20, 2008) - note esp the "Quickly, Carefully, and Generously:The Necessary Steps for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq," June 2008 proposals

   

  Other Required Activities

  In-class video: Uncovered: the whole truth about the Iraq war

  Optional: State Department archives, 2001-03, planning The Future of Iraq

  Iraq Study Group (James Baker and Lee Hamilton, cochairs), The Way Forward (US Institute of Peace, Dec. 2006)

  Congressional Quarterly Press, The Middle East, "Iraq," pp. 261-277

  Peter Galbraith, "The Surge," New York Review of Books, March 15, 2007

   

   

Week 10 (March 31, April 2): Rebooting the Peace Process?

• Little, pp. 267-318
• Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace not Apartheid (Simon and Schuster 2006), concluding pages 205-216 online (pdf).
• Gregory Levey, "The Other Israel Lobby," salon.com , Dec 19, 2006

   

  Optional background reading:

  • Joel Beinen and Liza Hajjar, Palestine, Israel, and Arab Israeli Politics: A Primer, Middle East Report (2002)
  • Robert Malley, "Fictions about the Failure at Camp David," NY Times, July 8, 2001.
  • Deborah Sonntag, "Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed," NY Times, July 26, 2001.
  • The Clinton Peace Plan - from Ha'aretz Jan. 8, 2001 - and BBC summary Dec 23, 2000 - and his farewell thoughts Jan. 8, 2001.
  • George W. Bush, Speech on Palestinian State, June 24, 2002
  • The Geneva Accord of Oct 2003

 

Other required activities:

View maps of the occupied territories - West Bank and Gaza and E. Jerusalem at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Here is B'tselem's latest (Feb 2008) map about the Wall/Security Barrier being erected by the Israelis. Here is departing Prime Minister Olmert's suggested compromise map.

 

Week 11 (Apr. 7): The War Against Terrorism (1983-2007): From Beirut to Afghanistan and Somalia 

• Little, pp. 307-342.
• Christopher M. Blanchard, "Al Qaeda: Statements and Evolving Ideology," Congressional Research Service, updated July 9, 2007.
• Brzezinski and Scowcroft, pp. 79-112

   

  Other Required Activities

  In-class video: Bill Moyers, The Secret Government (Iran Contra)

Optional: Francois Burgat, Islamism in the Shadow of Al-Qaida (U of Texas Press, 2008)

Week 11 (Apr. 9): Midterm Exam #2

Week 12 (Apr. 14-16): Nuclear Non-proliferation and Arms Sales: Various Middle Eastern Perspectives.

• Federation of American Scientists (FAS) on the history of the Israeli nuclear program and, from CDI, delivery systems
• "Israel reveals secrets of how it gained bomb" - Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' revelations on TV in 2001.
• Wayne White, Iran: best to avoid another Gulf crisis, Middle East Institute, Feb. 12, 2007
• Jacqueline W. Shire, "Iran Begins to Enrich Uranium," ABC News, Jan. 10, 2006
• Trita Parsi, "A Challenge to Israel's Strategic Primacy," Bitter Lemons, Jan 6, 2006.
• International Atomic Energy Agency NPT Report on Iran, Feb. 19, 2009

   

  Other Required Activities

  In-class video: Syria: Chess Match at the Borders (AMIP 2008 - icarusfilms.com)

Optional Reading: Congressional Quarterly Press, The Middle East, "Iran," pp.

 

Week 13 (Apr. 21-23): Issues of Democracy Promotion, Human Rights, the United Nations, and Regime Change.

 

• Brzezinski and Scowcroft, pp. 113-156
• US State Department, Middle East Partnership Initiative - read "mission and goals" - more on MEPI
• Jeffrey D. Sachs, "How Aid Can Work," New York Review of Books, Dec. 21, 2006

   

  Other Required Activities

  In-class video: Bob Jensen et al, Propaganda and the Holy Land

  Optional Reading: Congressional Quarterly Press, The Middle East, "Egypt," pp.

   

   

Week 14 (Apr. 28-30): Oil, Trade, Globalization and/or Eternal WOT: Alternative Futures?

• Brzezinski and Scowcroft, pp. 157-274
• Glenn P. Hastedt, American Foreign Policy, 5th ed (Prentice Hall, 2003), pp.409-423
• Mark Twain on War and Imperialism (sources and quotes), including "The Flag is Not Polluted" (1901)
• Charles A.Kupchan and Peter L.Trubowitz, "A Grand Strategy for a Divided America," [full text]Foreign Affairs, July-August 2007
• Parag Khanna, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony," NYT Magazine, Jan. 27, 2008

Week 15 (May 5-7): Conclusion

 

Identifications exercise in class: Thursday, May 7.

 

 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

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13 January 2008
Department of Government, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin.
Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to chenry@mail.utexas.edu

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