Current Courses – Spring 2026

PIA 2021. International Affairs

This is an introductory course in the field of international affairs. It is designed to give students knowledge of the major theoretical approaches and issues in international politics and introduce students to topics of interest within the three majors of MPIA: Security and Intelligence Studies, International Political Economy, and Human Security.

The course will focus on a series of central questions in international relations, such as: Why do states go to war? What are the prospects for international cooperation? Are democratic states more peaceful than authoritarian regimes? What role do international institutions, such as the United Nations, play in managing international politics? How has globalization altered the nature of international politics and the international economy?

The class will also provide you with a basic history of major international events of the twentieth century. Not only is this history intrinsically important, but it is with this empirical foundation that we will begin to apply theories of international relations, evaluate them and analyze their utility in understanding international political phenomena. For this class, we will focus on World War I, the interwar period, World War II, the Cold War and the Second Gulf War.

Finally, this class evaluates the implications of theory and history for contemporary international politics by focusing on three subfields of International Relations: International Law, International Political Economy and International Security. This class is not a current events class, but a primary objective is to provide students with the tools to analyze current events in a rigorous, theoretically informed manner.

The ultimate aim of this course is to bring the theories of International Relations into dialog with the events of the world, to apply, analyze and evaluate the former with the reality of the latter, and to broaden your understanding of both.

PIA 2471. Espionage, Surveillance, and Secret Information in International Affairs

This course will introduce students to the importance of secret information in the conduct of international affairs. Students will first learn about the ways in which states share information, protect secret intelligence, and deceive each other, both in war and peacetime. The course will also delve into how surveillance and espionage are practiced among states and on domestic populations. This includes discussion of the international legal framework for espionage; the development of intelligence sharing between allies (such as Five Eyes); the authority and limits of U.S. domestic and foreign surveillance (such as the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court); as well as more recent uses of cyber capabilities to spread misinformation.

The first portion of this course examines the historical use of espionage during the Cold War, the role of secret information in international politics, and intelligence cooperation. The second portion of the course focuses on mass surveillance, both what the leaks by Edward Snowden reveal about the NSA and the legal regime of foreign surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The third section discusses domestic surveillance in the United States, a comparative view of espionage and surveillance, as well as what international law has to say about espionage. The final portion of the class examines cyber espionage by state actors, as well as the privatization of espionage activities.

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Other Courses

PIA 2362. Leaders & U.S. Foreign Policy Decision-Making

How do U.S. presidents make foreign policy decisions? The class will review the constraints, dilemmas, risks, and opportunities that American presidents face during international crises and wars. It will expose students to alternative explanations for how states make foreign policy, with an emphasis on the decision-making process. We will critically analyze the decision-making process that led to the undertaking of major and historical decisions in the U.S. history and will conduct simulations of potential crisis scenarios. The course will examine rationalist and psychological theories of decision-making, as well as how other characteristics of leaders can create patterns of decision-making in foreign policy.

A key part of this course is the role of advisors and intelligence officials in assisting policymakers. Students will take on the role of members of the federal agencies with seats on the U.S. National Security Council in a roleplaying exercise on how to advise the President in an international crisis. As part of this simulation exercise, students will collaborate on policy options, propose them in a group setting, and draft a debriefing memo on the policy ultimately chosen to address the crisis. Students will also write and present a leadership analysis on current international leaders to assist students in understanding the parties across the negotiating table in policy issues involving the United States.

PIA 2470. U.S. Foreign Policy and Law Regulating the Use of Force

There are many contexts in which the United States uses force as part of the conduct of foreign policy, with one of the most controversial being the use of covert action. Since its founding in 1947, the CIA has undertaken covert activities intended to influence events abroad at the direction of U.S. presidents. Covert action is often referred to as a “third option” between diplomacy and military action. Many of the most consequential—and controversial—actions of the CIA have involved covert action. Such covert actions include coups against leaders in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s, and the attempted overthrow and assassination of Fidel Castro in Cuba in the 1960s. The CIA’s finance of the Afghan mujahideen forces against the Soviets in the 1980s directly led to the creation of Al Qaeda. Today, the ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria all involve U.S. covert activity.

These controversies led to increased attempts to regulate covert action, including through domestic and international law. Congress has restricted the locations, types, and procedures by which the CIA can conduct covert action, to varying degrees of success. International law also regulates when and how states can use force abroad, especially in ways that can affect civilians. Modern forms of covert action, including the involvement of the military or private military contractors, attempt to circumvent these regulations. 

Despite the designed secrecy of covert actions, the details of many covert programs from the Cold War period are now available to study through declassification of official records, as well as unauthorized disclosures in books, newspapers, and electronic media. We will delve into many of these materials to understand several covert action case studies during this course.

The first portion of the course examines the history of the CIA and its use of covert action. It also examines theoretically and empirically why covert activity is an attractive choice for policymakers and the effect of covert action on relations between states. The course then shifts to discuss domestic regulation of the use of force, focusing on Congress’s role in the domestic regulation of the CIA’s activities. The course will feature an in depth examination of primary documents related to U.S. intervention in the Angolan Civil War of the mid-1970s, as well as a group project examining a selected case study of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Lastly, the course examines the role of international law in regulating the use of force abroad. Modern extensions of covert activity are also considered, such as the use of private military contractors and drone targeting.