Foreign Policy Analysis
Dr. Behlül Özkan
Course Description
The aim of this course is to provide students with a critical analysis to the understanding of foreign policy discourses and practices. This course surveys theories of foreign policy not only as an exercise in the study of theory itself, but also to sharpen our analytical capacity for examining more adequately the issues of our time. Therefore, this course is structured for the following purposes:
1) To gain an understanding of how major scholars have theorized about foreign policy
2) To formulate key questions about the relationship between domestic political systems
and foreign policy
3) To seek answers to such questions, where possible, from the literature of international
relations theory and to understand the limitations of international relations theory in
providing such answers.
The course begins with an overview of the statist theoretical approaches to foreign policy and analyzes how they regard foreign policy as a bridge between preexisting states with secure identities. It challenges the well-established understanding of international relations as the existence of states that are uncontested entities in which identity is securely grounded prior to foreign relations. The conception of foreign policy is reoriented from a concern of relations between states that take place across ontological boundaries, to a concern with the construction of the boundaries that constitute the „state‟ and „international system‟. In selected case studies, the „state‟ is considered as a contested site and therefore, foreign policy discourses are analyzed as political practices that make „foreign‟ certain events and actors. The concluding sections consider the implications of increasing international and transnational processes and actors on the making of foreign policy.
Course Requirements
Required Readings: The required textbook is David Campbell‟s Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Additionally, there are selected articles and book chapters for each section. Required readings are assembled in the course pack.
Grading: There are two forms of assessment for this course. Each student will be required to make a presentation (30 points) and a final exam (70 points). The presentations are to be critical discussions, not summaries, of the assigned readings and the case studies. Students are encouraged in advance to discuss the intended topic of their presentations with the instructor.
Course Calendar, Outline, and Readings
Week 1
What is foreign policy? Statist approaches to foreign policy: Realism and its variants
– David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 1-35.
– Steve Smith, “The Self-Images of a Discipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory,” in International Relations Theory Today, eds. Ken Booth and Steve Smith (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 1-38.
– Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (Knopf: New York, 1948), 1-27.
– Kenneth Waltz, “International Politics is not Foreign Policy,” Security Studies 6 (1996): 54-57.
– Michael Joseph Smith, Realist Thought From Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 134-165.
Week 2
Imperialism and Foreign Policy
– Jean Gottmann, “Geography and International Relations,” World Politics 3, no.2 (1951): 153-173.
– Halford J. Mackinder, “On Thinking Imperially,” in Lectures on Empires, ed. M. Sadler (1907), 32-42.
– Geoffrey Parker, Western Geopolitical Thought in the 20th Century (New York: St. Martin‟s Press, 1985), 1-87.
Week 3
How are the “foreign” and the “other” constructed through foreign policy practices?
– David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, 35-73.
– Robert B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1-26.
Case Study: Cold War Geopolitics and the US Foreign Policy
– David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, 133-168.
– John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1995), 13-46.
– George Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25 (1947): 566-582.
Week 4
Foreign Policy as a Discourse: What is the relation between statecraft, society and foreign policy?
– Steve Smith, “Foreign Policy is What States Make of It: Social Construction and International Relations Theory,” in Foreign Policy in a Constructed World, ed.
– Vendulka Kubalkova (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 38-55.
– Robert W. Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 12 (Summer 1983): 162-175. 4
– Ole Wæver, “Identity, Communities and Foreign Policy: Discourse Analysis as Foreign Policy Theory,” in European Integration and National Identity, eds.
– Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver (London: Routledge, 2002), 20-49.
Case Study: Turkey‟s Foreign Policy Discourse during the Cold War
– Feroz Ahmad, “The Historical Background of Turkey‟s Foreign Policy,” in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, eds. Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 9-36.
– Melvyn P. Leffler, “Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Cold War: The United States, Turkey, and NATO, 1945-1952,” The Journal of American History 71 (March 1985): 807-825.
– Eylem Yılmaz and Pınar Bilgin, “Constructing Turkey‟s „Western‟ Identity During the Cold War: Discourses of the Intellectuals of Statecraft,” International Journal: Canadian Institute of International of Affairs 61 (Winter 2005-2006): 39-59. Accessible at http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~pbilgin/IJ2006.pdf
Week 5
Foreign Policy after the Cold War
– David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, 169-227.
– Gerard Toal, “The Postmodern Geopolitical Condition: States, Statecraft, and Security into the 21st Century,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90 (2000): 166-178. Accessible at http://www.nvc.vt.edu/toalg/Website/Publish/papers/millennium.htm
– Ken Booth, “Cold Wars of the Mind,” in Statecraft and Security: The Cold War and Beyond, ed. Ken Booth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 29-55.
– Richard Devetak, “Incomplete States: Theories and Practices of Statecraft,” in Boundaries in Question: New Directions in International Relations, eds. John Macmillan and Andrew Linklater (London: Pinter Publishers, 1995), 19-39. 5
Case Study: US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the post-Cold War Era
– David Campbell, “The Biopolitics of Security: Oil, Empire, and the Sports Utility Vehicle,” American Quarterly 57 (2005): 943-972.
– Gerard Toal, “The Effacement of Place: US Foreign Policy and the Spatiality of the Gulf Crisis,” Antipode 25 (January 1993): 4-31. Accessible at http://www.nvc.vt.edu/toalg/Website/Publish/papers/gulf.htm
– Michael Lind, The American Way of Strategy: the US Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life (London: Oxford University Press, 2006), 125-170.
Week 6
Foreign Policy in a Borderless World?
– Paul J. Taylor, “The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern-World System,” in State/Space, in Neil Brenner, Bob Jessop, and Martin Jones (New York: Blackwell, 2003), 101-114.
– John Agnew, “The Territorial Trap,” Review of International Political Economy 1 (1994): 53-80.
– Brian White, “European Challenge to Foreign Policy Analysis,” European Journal of International Relations 5 (1999): 37-66.
– Robert W. Cox, “Towards a Post-Hegemonic Conceptualization of World Order: Reflections on the Relevancy of Ibn Khaldun,” in Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 132-159.
– Uffe Ostergaard, “Nation-States and Empires in the Current Process of European Change,” in Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe, eds. Ola Tunander, Pavel Baev, and Victoria Ingrid Einagel (London: Sage, 1997), 94-119.
Case Study: Turkey‟s Integration into the European Union
– Mümtaz Soysal, “The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy,” in The Future of Turkish Foreign Policy, eds. Lenore G. Martin and Dimitris Keridis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 37-46.6
– Pınar Bilgin, “Turkey‟s Changing Security Discourses: The Challenge of Globalization,” in European Journal of Political Research 44 (2005): 175-201. Accessible at http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~pbilgin/Bilgin-EJPR2005.pdf