ForeignPolicyAfter911

Exam Questions without answers are posted

The exam questions without answers have been posted.  Go to the course home page.

Final Exam, Monday, May 8, 2006, 5p.m., 145 Dwinelle

The exam will be given on Monday, May 8th, in 145 Dwinelle during the regular class time beginning at 5 p.m. Bring scantron and pencil. 

The exam's multiple choice questions (without answers) will be posted on Thursday morning at the course web site. The exam will focus primarily on the lectures since the midterm and the assigned readings, including the interviews.

The video for all lectures is posted with the exception of the Larry Brilliant lecture. There will be questions on his lecture though the video will not be posted.

Monday, May 1, 2006, 5 p.m. Last Lecture, 145 Dwinelle

Ian Lustick, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennyslvania, will speak on "U.S. Foreign Policy and the War on Terror."

Monday, May 24th, 145 Dwinelle, 5p.m.

Our guest Monday will be Steve Walt, Academic Dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard.  He will be talking about "What Went Wrong with U.S. Foreign Policy."

Monday, April 17th, 5:00 P.M., 155 Dwinelle

Our guest for the next class will be Larry Brilliant, M.D., the new executive director of the Google Foundation.  He will be delivering the Sanford S. Elberg Lecture in 155 Dwinelle at 5 p.m.  His topic is "The Health of Humanity,"  and he will be talking about the issues of global health that are very much a part of a comprehensive foreign policy.  The world of pandemics and terrorist threats very much needs to hear voices like that of Larry Brilliant who was key figure in eradicating smallpox.

April 10, 2006 Class 7p.m 155 Dwinelle

Monday's class will be in 155 Dwinelle at 7 P.M. The session will be a panel on the Bush Presidency with

Michael Barone (Columnist, U.S. News and World Report), Michael Duffy (Assistant Managing Editor, Time), Michael Kinsley (Columnist, Washington Post), and Nelson Polsby (Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley)

April 3, 2006 Class

Our focus tonight will be U.S. policy toward Iran.  The session will provide insight into the current controversy over Iran's nuclear policy and also help us understand what the U.S. can and should do in the current situation with its military tied down in Iraq.  Our guest will be Dariush Zahedi who will offer insight into the foreign and domestic policy of Iran. Dariush was a political prisoner of the Iran regime and recently contributed this op ed to the New York Times

EDITORIAL DESK A Firebrand in a House of Cards By DARIUSH ZAHEDI AND OMID MEMARIAN (NYT) 973 words Published: January 12, 2006 New York Times Berkeley, Calif. - IN defying international monitors and breaking the seals on its nuclear facilities, Iran seems to be courting confrontation. But Western leaders would do well to consider what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bravado really says about Iran's likely posture in the region and at the nuclear talks that are scheduled to resume at the end of January. To continue down the path of conflict could be very costly, both for the regional interests of the United States and most of all, for the territorial integrity of Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad is surely motivated by ideology and the desire to solidify the position of the security faction within Iran's ruling elite. But he also appears to be acting on the perception that the United States is in a position of considerable, indeed unprecedented, weakness. America's military is overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington has focused on monitoring North Korea's nuclear program rather than Iran's. If threatened, Iran could wreak havoc in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. These observations may lead Mr. Ahmadinejad to an incorrect assessment of Iran's strength relative to any American threat. In fact, Iran has serious domestic frailties, including a shaky economy and its attendant unemployment and popular resentment, not to mention soaring levels of drug abuse and a brain drain. But President Ahmadinejad no doubt takes comfort not only in his belief in divine protection but also in the knowledge that Shiite religious parties aligned with Iran are now the dominant political forces in Iraq, while the American public hardly seems amenable to waging another war in the region. Moreover, Mr. Ahmadinejad very likely believes that the best way to guard against regime change from without is to emulate North Korea by swiftly advancing Iran's nuclear capacity. The new president also surely knows that even if Iran's nuclear dossier is referred to the United Nations Security Council, meaningful multilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic will most likely be vetoed by Russia or China. Flush with petrodollars, Iran has become a major purchaser of Russian technology, including roughly $1 billion worth of allegedly defensive weapons that Moscow recently agreed to sell to Tehran. Meanwhile, China, seizing on Iran as a key producer of oil and gas not beholden to the United States, has quickly emerged as one of Iran's largest trading partners. Given this favorable strategic picture, Mr. Ahmadinejad might even welcome an American or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Tehran could then retaliate against American and Israeli interests by mobilizing its Shiite allies in Iraq, the Persian Gulf countries and Lebanon -- or even by making common cause with some Sunni rivals. All the while, Mr. Ahmadinejad's faction in government would make full use of the war footing to marginalize its rivals at home and crush the remnants of Iran's civil society. But the Iranian regime is not invulnerable, and Washington knows this. Just as Iran can use the Shiite card to create mischief in the region, the United States could manipulate ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iran, which has significant, largely Sunni, minority populations along its borders. Many of Iran's ethnic and religious minorities see themselves as victims of discrimination, and they have not been effectively integrated into Iranian economic, political or cultural life. Some two million disgruntled Arabs reside mainly in the oil- and gas- rich province of Khuzestan. The United States could make serious trouble for Tehran by providing financial, logistical and moral support to Arab secessionists in that province. Other aggrieved Iranian minorities would be emboldened by the Arabs' example -- for example, the Kurds and the Baluchis, or even the Azeris (though the Azeris, being Shiites, are better integrated into Iranian society). A simple spark could suffice to set off centrifugal explosions. Furthermore, the plummeting Iranian economy will only worsen if the United States succeeds in referring Iran's nuclear file to the Security Council, whether or not meaningful sanctions follow. Such a referral would accelerate capital flight, deal a blow to the country's already collapsing stock market, devastate its hitherto booming real estate market, and wipe out the savings of a large part of the middle class. It would also most likely result in galloping inflation, hurting Iran's dispossessed, whom the Ahmadinejad administration claims to represent. In light of these ominous possibilities, both Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Bush would do well to avoid overplaying their hands. They should take a leaf from the book not of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini the ideologue, but of Ayatollah Khomeini the pragmatic politician. Like Mr. Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khomeini argued that the ''Zionist entity'' should be wiped off the map. But he chose regime preservation over ideology when he ended the Iran-Iraq war and even bought weapons from Israel. IRAN should endeavor to regain the trust of the international community by engaging in compromise, and the United States should allow this compromise to be sufficiently face-saving for Iran's ruling elite. To regain the confidence of the international community, Iran should accept the Russian offer to process Iranian uranium gas into fuel and voluntarily stop, for a specified time, insisting on its right to do so at home. In return, the United States should lift its unilateral sanctions from Iran. These sanctions, which include a ban on the sale of aircraft and spare parts to Iran, have absolutely no effect on the regime's nuclear capacity, but they harm Iranian civilians. Today the incentive for both sides to step away from the brink of conflict is even greater than it was at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. If the United States responds to a perceived Iranian threat by exploiting Iran's ethnic, sectarian and economic cleavages, it is not just the Islamic Republic that will be threatened -- Iran itself could be dismembered as well.

No class March 27: Spring Break

No class Monday, March 27th as Berkeley begins the spring break holiday.

Monday, March 20, 2006 Class

Monday's class will have a distinguished panel talking about what is being done in various countries and internationally to address global warming.  The class will be in 155 Dwinelle just across the hall from where we meet regularly.  Our guests include

Speakers

Lars-Erik Liljelund, Director-General of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket)

Arild Moe, Deputy Director of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway

John Wilson, Advisor to Commissioner Arthur H. Rosenfeld, California Energy Commission

Commentators

David Caron, William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley
John Harte, Professor of Energy and Resources and the Ecosystems Science Division of the College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

For more information, the url is at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/SpecialEvents/Sather2006/

Mid term exam

Here is the study guide for the mid term.  Your exam will consist of choosing the correct answers from 4 choices.

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/911/courses/midtermS06.html

All the course lectures are now webcast ready and available at

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/archive.php?seriesid=1906978286

Remember to bring a  green scantron answer sheet for fifty multiple choice questions and a number 2 pencil