To compete and thrive in the 21st century, democracies, and the United States in particular, must develop new national security and economic strategies that address the geopolitics of information. In the 20th century, market capitalist democracies geared infrastructure, energy, trade, and even social policy to protect and advance that era’s key source of power—manufacturing. In this century, democracies must better account for information geopolitics across all dimensions of domestic policy and national strategy.
The seminar will examine the absence of balancing in the international system and ask under which conditions do great powers employ noncompetitive strategies during periods of transition. Traditional theories of international relations are overly restrictive in the strategies that they search for and locate in great power behavior because they do not account for instances when a state may wish to sustain the domestic regime and/or political structures of a rival. This arises when a state recognizes its rival as status quo or, at least, as having limited goals it can live with, but worries that it may become revisionist in the future. Strategies that employ cooperation and engagement as a means of imposing checks and balances on a rising adversary may be particularly well suited for accomplishing these goals.
Please join us! Coffee and tea provided.