The Department of Defense (DoD) is a large, complex, and highly consequential enterprise. It spends more than $600 billion a year and employs more than three million people, and its activities have major domestic and international ramifications.
This graduate level seminar focuses on the processes by which national security goals are translated into defense policies and programs. The objectives of the course are to (a) help graduates who take defense-related jobs to orient themselves inside the national security establishment, whether they are working in the Pentagon, at OMB, on Congressional staff, or with a DoD contractor, and (b) use DoD as an example of the way in which policies are developed and implemented in large organizations.
Principal Texts
Amos A. Jordan, William J. Taylor, Jr. and Michael J. Mazarr, American National Security (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Buy.
Lawrence J. Korb, et al, Building a Military for the 21st Century, published on-line by the Center for American Progress. Available on Blackboard.
Barbara A. Bicksler, Curtis L. Gilroy and John T. Warner, eds., The All-Volunteer Force: Thirty Years of Service (Dulles, VA, Brassey’s, 2004). Buy.