UCL - International Strategy and Security

[SPRI2330]

[30h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 1st semester.

Teacher(s): Michel Liegeois

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

At the end of the course the student will have to know the significance of the concepts of strategy and security as well as their evolution through history. He will master the contemporary theories of security as well as the principal concepts, on which they depend. He will be able to implement them in a critical way within the frame-work of the analysis of current issues.

Main themes

The themes presented in the course should highlight the widening of the problematic of Security, taking good care to keep our analysis in the field of political science. The traditional military issues therefore will not be forgotten and the great classics (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Liddel Hart,) will receive the treatment that they deserve. Contemporary issues (nuclear questions, crises management, terrorism,) will be evoked successively by linking them to the traditional theories and by underlining observed continuities and rup-tures.

Content and teaching methods

1) Introduction: concepts of security and strategy
2) Contemporary theories about security
3) The war and traditional literature about military strategy
4) Crises and operations (other than the war) management
5) The nuclear issue: dissuasion, doctrines, Arms Control and disarmament, proliferation
6) Contemporary issues on security: terrorism, raw materials, environment, privatisation of security,

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Geopolitics

Oral exam + individual assignments

Syllabus, printed material (collection of readings), maps and illustrations (projections)