Thursdays 3-5 PM
October 2 through November 20, 2003
D.O.C. House
Americans like to think of the United States as a peace loving nation, yet only World War II responded to direct foreign attack upon our country. This course will review events leading up to our entry into other foreign wars. We will seek out the principal actors and their means of persuading the American people to go to war. We will study the "marketing campaigns" for the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Grenada and Panama invasions and the first Gulf War. We will conclude with the "selling" of the Iraq War, comparing it to the earlier campaigns, and seeing what lessons we can learn from our history.
For each of the ten wars a team of two class members will volunteer or be assigned, one as "dove" and another as "hawk," to study in depth the build-up for war and present the opposing perspectives as the basis for the class discussion. There will be no lectures.
All participants will be expected to read from the textbook selected, relevant pages for all the wars (averaging about 10 pages per war), and, for those who wish to prepare in depth, additional optional selections will be suggested. Each "hawk" and "dove" is expected to invest several hours in the assignment, researching various sources while preparing for his/her 10 to 15 minute presentation and service as resource person for discussion thereafter.
Class is limited to 20 participants.
Arthur Mudge is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, and has divided his career about equally between New Hampshire law practice and USAID foreign service, combining the two over the past 15 years as an international development consultant working mostly in rule of law. In addition to war service in Korea, he lived and worked for 13 years abroad as USAID lawyer and mission director, mostly in Latin America and Africa, with subsequent consultant experience in the countries of the former Soviet Union. A diplomat fellow at the Harvard Center for International Affairs in 1979-80, he has also lectured at Dartmouth, Oberlin and Wellesley. More recently he has chaired the boards of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy and the New Hampshire Council on World Affairs. Among other vices, he is a student of military history and opinionated public policy junkie who writes too many letters to congressmen and newspapers.
