Politics 177: America and the World

Spring 2004, TTH 2-3:45, Porter 148
Instructor: Ronnie D. Lipschutz
Office: 260 Stevenson Phone: 459-3275
e-mail: rlipsch@ucsc.edu
Office hours: Wed, 1-2 in 260 Stevenson;
Thurs, 4-5 at Porter College Hungry Slug Cafe
TA: Heather Turcotte

The website for this syllabus is: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/syllabus.html. Last updated June 4, 2004.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

Politics 177 offers an historical sociology of U.S. strategic and economic policies. The course includes an examination of the political, economic, and cultural relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, including historical background and sociological elements. The course offers a special focus on U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, and the politics and economics of that region as well as the extent to which domestic politics influenced foreign policy and vice versa. Course requirements include attendance at all lectures participation in class discussions, two short (5 pp.) papers, a mid-term exam and a take home final.

Assigned texts (available at Slug Books and on reserve at McHenry Library; you may be able to get a substantial discount by ordering these books on-line). You should also make a point of reading The New York Times on a daily basis.

Ivo Daalder & James Lindsay, America Unbound—The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2003).
Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (Yale, 1988).
Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire (Metropolitan, 2004)
William McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings and Reform (Chicago, 1980).
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Norton, 1988).
Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (Free Press, 1993)

Week 1: Introduction to the course (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Pol177-S04.week1.html)
3/30 High Noon!
4/1 An historical sociology of idealism, materialism, realism and culture

Please read the following prior to the second class meeting:
William Pfaff, “The American Mission,” New York Review of Books 51, #6 (April 8, 2004), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Pfaff%20on%20Brzezinski.pdf
Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Good Times columns, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Prospectus.pdf

Also read: Daalder & Lindsay, ch. 1-3
Project for a New American Century, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Sept. 2000, at: http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
The White House, National Security Strategy of the United States, Sept. 2002, at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html
Ronnie D. Lipschutz, “The Princ(ipal),” ch. 7, in After Authority (SUNY Press, 2000), at: www.netlibrary.com (you must log on from a UCSC account). You can also find this chapter at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/The%20Princ(ipal).pdf
Craig Calhoun, “Why Historical Sociology,” in: Handbook of Historical Sociology, edited by Gerard Delanty and Engin Isin (London: Sage, 2003), at:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=17&q=http://www.ssrc.org/programs/calhoun/publications/delanty_afterword2.doc&e=7317

Week 2: Idealist roots—Religion and liberalism (http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Pol177-S04.week2.html)
4/6 The Great Awakenings and Free Enterprise as American ideology and nationalism
4/8 Race, class and gender in politics and foreign policy

Read: Hunt, ch. 1-3; McLoughlin, ch. 1-4
John W. Robbins, “The Messianic Character of American Foreign Policy,” The Trinity Review (Sept./Oct. 1990), at:
http://www.trinityfoundation.org/PDF/075a%20-%20The%20Messianic%20Character%20of%20American%20Foreign%20Policy.pdf
Leo Ribuffo, “Religion and American Foreign Policy,” The National Interest (Summer 1998), at:http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Ribuffo.html
Garry Wills, With God on His Side,” The New York Times, March 30, 2003, at: http://www1.union.edu/~feffera/hst27B/wills,%20theocracy.html
Carol Cohn, "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals," at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Cohn.html

Week 3: Materialist roots—The Protestant Ethic and economic expansion http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Pol177-S04.week3.html

4/13 Success and salvation, personal and planetary
4/15 “Imperial Anticolonialism”
First paper assignment will be passed out

Read: Hunt, ch. 4; McLoughlin, ch. 5; Williams, ch. 1-4
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, especially ch. 2, 5, at:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WEBER/toc.html
H.W. Brands, “The Idea of the National Interest,” Diplomatic History 23, #2 (Jan. 1999):239-61, at:
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Idea%20of%20the%20National%20Interest.pdf

Week 4: Realist roots—Shock and awe

4/20 Manifest Destiny as foreign policy
4/22 Making the world safe for Democracy
First paper will be due

Read: Hunt, ch. 5; Williams, ch. 5-6; Johnson, Prologue, ch. 1-3
Frederick Jackson Turner, “Middle Western Pioneer Democracy,” ch. 13, in The Frontier in American History (NY: Henry Holt, 1935), at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TURNER/chapter13.html
Ronald Steel, “The Missionary,” New York Review of Books 50, #18 (Nov. 20, 2003), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Steel%20on%20Wilson.pdf
James Chace & Nicholas X. Rizopoulos, “Grand Strategy,” World Policy Journal16, #3 (Fall 1999), at: http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/wpj/wp_99chj05.html

Week 5/6: Constructing the Cold War Empire
4/29 Strategic superstructure
5/4: Economic substructure

Read: Hunt, ch. 5-6; Williams, ch. 7-conclusion and afterword; Johnson, ch. 6-7
NSC-68, United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,
http://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/history/us1945/docs/nsc68.htm

Halford Mackinder, “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace,” Foreign Affairs, July 1943, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Round%20World.pdf
Francis P. Sempa, “Mackinder’s World,” American Diplomacy 5, #1 (2000), at:
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/ad/ad_v5_1/sef01.html

or, alternatively, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Sempa.doc

Additional reading:
Stephen R. Gill & David Law, “Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital,” International Studies Quarterly 33, #4 (Dec. 1989), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Gill%20and%20Law.pdf

Week 6, May 6: Videoconference in Media Arts Theater, 2-3:45, with a representative of the U.S. State Department's Office of Religious Freedom (see: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/irf/)

Week 7: The tragedy of neo-liberal globalization
5/11 The crisis of capitalism and the passing of Fordism
5/13 Instantiating the new global economy

Read: Johnson, ch. 9
Mark Rupert, “Fordism,” at:
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/merupert/Research/Fordism/fordism.htm
Mark Rupert, “Crisis of Fordism,” at:
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/merupert/Research/Fordism/Crisis.HTM
Katherine Boo, “The Churn: Creative Destruction in a Border Town,” The New Yorker, March 29, 2004, at: http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040329fa_fact

Additional reading:
John E. Elliott, “Marx and Schumpeter on Capitalism’s Creative Destruction,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 95, #1 (Aug. 1980), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Marx%20&%20Schumpeter.pdf

Week 8: Petropolitics and the crisis of accumulation

(http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Pol177-S04.week8.html)
5/18 Elixer of industrialism, prisoner of politics
5/20 Oil eyes and gas gauges
5/20 (evening): Talk by Prof. Michael Watts, UC-Berkeley, "Empire of Oil"
Second paper assignment will be passed out

Read: Yergin, especially parts 4 & 5; Johnson, ch. 8
Browse articles at: http://www.petroleumworld.com/sundayfeature.htm
Ronnie D. Lipschutz, “Oil and Its Discontents,” at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol70/oil%20history.html
Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Good Times columns, at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/GoodTimes.html

Week 9: Imperium http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Pol177-S04.week9.html
5/25 Empire as immanent formation
5/27 Discipline and punish

Read: Johnson, ch. 4-5; Daalder & Lindsay, ch. 4-10
John G. Ikenberry, “America’s Imperial Ambitions,” Foreign Affairs 81, #5 (Sept./Oct. 2002), http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Ikenberry.html
Sebastian Mallaby, “The Reluctant Imperialist,” Foreign Affairs 81, #2 (March/April 2002), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Mallaby.html
Second paper due

Week 10: States of Terror http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Pol177-S04.week10.html
6/1: Empire and Blowback
6/3: The new geopolitics of empire?

Final will be passed out last day of class

Read: Johnson, ch. 10; Daalder & Lindsay, ch. 11-12
Browse the web site of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States (aka the “9/11 Commission),
at: http://www.9-11commission.gov/about/index.htm

Additional reading
Ronnie D. Lipschutz, “Terror in the Suites,” Global Society 13, #4
(1999), at: http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Terror%20in%20the%20Suites.pdf
Ronnie D. Lipschutz & Heather Turcotte, “Wild in the Streets: The Political Economy of Threats and the Production of Fear,” at :
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/Pol177/Wild%20in%20the%20Streets.pdf

Final exam will be handed out on Thursday, June 3 and due Wednesday, June 9 at 12 noon in 260 Stevenson