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29620 - Strategic Studies

Academic Year 2012/2013

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (cod. 8046)

Learning outcomes

Students are required to have a background in international relations and history. Some knowledge of military history also helps.

Course contents

The main purpose of this course is to introduce students to strategic theory and the study of armed conflicts
The course is divided into three parts.

  • Strategic theory: Clausewitz and other classical authors
  • Numbers and war: from game theory to computer wargaming
  • The tools of war and peace: military doctrines, weapons of mass destruction, peacekeeping and asymmetric conflicts

Readings/Bibliography

Mandatory for all students

  1. Peter Paret (ed.) Makers of Modern Strategy, Princeton: Princeton University Princeton 1986.
  2. Sun Tzu, The Art of War (any edition).
  3. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War (edited by M. Howard and P. Paret) Princeton: Princeton U. Press, Princeton 1976.
  4. either R. Smith, The Use of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, London: Penguin Books 2006 or M. Evangelista, Law, Ethics and the War on Terror, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008.
  5. Students not attending class will have to include: G. Giacomello, R.C. Nation (eds) Security in the West: Evolution of a Concept, Milano: Vita & Pensiero, 2009 (outside Europe the volume is available from Cornell University Press).

Teaching methods

Students are expected to attend all the classes and regularly participate in the discussion.
Video-documentaries and other audio-visual material will be extensively used for the class.
A number of guest speakers will contrribute to the class as well.

Assessment methods

(a) a final exam: 30 questions on the material covered for the whole course. Time: 2h

OR

(b) a final exam: 10 questions (instead of 30) AND end paper (25 pages, double spaced, font 12).

Teaching tools

Documentaries and original video footage will be used in class.

Important : All students are required to regularlyconsultthe following relevant websites (answering all questions in the final exam will be possible only be studying the material contained in these websites).

Office hours

See the website of Giampiero Giacomello