POLS 319 - America’s Modern Wars: A Political and Military Analysis

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This course provides a political, strategic, diplomatic, and military analysis of America’s three longest wars: the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The semester long course will examine the major political, diplomatic, strategic, and military events associated with these conflicts. It will analyze US Government (USG) foreign policy, and strategic aims and objectives throughout those wars, and the political and military constraints that may have undermined their achievement. It will compare and contrast USG short term political rationale and domestic motives for intervention, with broader long term US political, geo-strategic, and global diplomatic interests. The course will also examine the evolving nature of US National Security Policy and Strategy during the course of each conflict, and the too often mismatched conventional military strategy and tactics employed against insurgents engaged in asymmetric protracted or revolutionary war. Finally the course will examine and evaluate key aspects of each War’s lessons as they were sequentially forgotten or ignored, later rediscovered and relearned, and eventually applied, too often late at great cost in blood and treasure.