Evolution of Strategic Thought – Serhat Güvenç

• Eğitmen: Serhat Güvenç
• Dersin Verildiği Okul: Kadir Has Üniversitesi
• Kadir Has Üniversitesi Ders Kodu: IR 614

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Course Description

This is a graduate seminar focusing on the evolution of military strategy with the ebb and flow of state, society and technology.  Departing from Clausewitz’s oft-quoted maxim: “War is … a continuation of political activity by other means,” the seminar seeks to explore and emphasize the primacy of politics in determining the military strategy.  During the course, students will be introduced to and familiarized with, the succession of land, naval and air power strategies as well as nuclear strategy.  Although majority of cases covered in the course reflects the primacy of states for strategic studies, supranational and non-state actors’ challenges to Clauswitzian conception of strategy, such as the European Defence Policy or international terrorist networks will merit particular attention. This course requires active student participation, including presentation of reviewed books to the class. The learning outcomes include developing familiarity with strategic ideas and understanding the link between politics and strategy.  

Participation
15%
Book Presentation and Review
35%
Final Paper
50%

Students are expected to prepare at least one questionfor each weekly reading assignment and email them to the intsructor by 14:00 each Monday. Students’ questions will provide the basis for class discussions and count toward course participation.

Key Indicative Texts

• Colin S. Gray, War, Peace and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History, (London: Routledge, 2007).
• Peter Parret, (ed.), The Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
• Murray et. al.,The Making of Strategy: Rulers: States and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Weekly Meetings

Week 1: Introduction: The Course, the Instructor and the Textbooks

Week 2: On Strategic Studies

• Davi Eklebadh, “Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression-Era Origins of Security Studies,” International Security 36(3), (Winter 2011), 107-141.
• John Baylis, “The Continuing Relevance of Strategic Studies,” Defence Studies 1(2), (Summer 2001): 1-14.
• Isabelle Duyvesteyn and James E. Worral, “Global Strategic Studies: A Manifesto,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 26 December 2016 (online publication).

Week 3: Essence of Political War: Clausewitz

• Gray, pp. 15-30.
• Parret, pp. 186-213.
• Michael Howard, Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: OUP, 2002).
• Peter Parret, “On War: Then and Now,” Journal of Military History 80, (April 2016): 477-485.

Week 4: Sea Power Strategies: Mahan and Corbett

• Gray, pp. 51-73.
• Parret, pp. 444-477.
• Peter Karsten, “The Nature of Influence: Roosevelt, Mahan and the Concept of Sea Power, American Quarterly 23(4), October 1971, pp. 585-600.
• Geoffrey Till, “Corbett and the Emergence of a British School,” in The Development of British Naval Thinking, ed. G. Till, (London.: Routledge, 2006), 60-88.
• 
  James W.E. Smith, “Corbett’s Relevance to the Modern Strategic Thinker,” The Bridge, (21 August 2018).
  
• 
  Paul Kennedy, “The Rise and Fall of Navies: To Rule the Waves,” The New York Times, 5 April 2007.
  
• 
  Recommended Documentary: The Great Ships: Dreadnoughts, (History Channel 1996). 50 mins.
  

For a four part series on the battleships (A Complete History of Battleships):

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4 

Week 5: Air Power Strategies

• Parret, pp. 624-647.
• Jonathan Haslam, “Guilot Douhet and the Politics of Airpower,” The International History Review 34/4, pp. 753-773.
• Charles M. Westenhoff, “Airpower and Political Culture” Airpower Journal 11/4 (Winter 1997): 39-50.
• Tarak Barkawi, “Air Power and Liberal Politics of War,” The International Journal of Human Rights,” 4(3), (2000) : 307-313.
• Dag Henriksen, “Inflexible Reponse, Diplomacy, Air Power and the Kosovo Crisis, 1998-1999,” Journal of Strategic Studies 31(6), (December 2008): 825-858.
• Renz, Bettina and Sybille Scheipers, “Discrimination in Aerial Bombing: An Enduring Norm in the 20th Century,” Defence Studies 12/1 (June 2012): 17-43.
• Documentary: Walt Disney’s Victory through Air Power, (1944). 65 minutes.

Week 6: Nuclear Strategy

• Parret, pp. 735-778.
• Beathrice Heuser, The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons in their Historical, Strategic and Ethical Context, (London: Longman, 2000), pp. 84-101
• Fred Kaplan, “JFK’s First Strike Plan,” The Atlantic Monthly (October 2001), pp. 81-86.
• Simon J. Moody, “Enhancing Political Cohesion in NATO during the 1950s or: How it Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the (Tactical) Bomb, “Journal of Strategic Studies 40/6, (2017): 817-838.
• Documentary: The Fog of War, (2003). (First 5 chapters only)
• Recommended feature movie: The Crimson Tide

Week 7: Students’ Book Presentations

Week 8: Case Study I: US Strategy in the Vietnam War

• Robert E. Doughty et. Al (1996), Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations since 1871, (Boston: Cengage Learning), pp. 901-934.
• Robert A. Pape, (1996), Air Power and Coercion in War, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) pp. 176-209.
• Robert S. MacNamara (1995), In Retrospect: Tragedy and Lessons of the Vietnam War, (New York: Vintage Books), pp. 319-335.
• Documentary: The Fog of War, (2003). (From Chapter 6)

Week 9: Case Study II: The Turkish Strategy in the 1974 Cyprus War

 

• Muzaffer Sever, 20 Temmuz 1974: Bitmeyen Gece, İstanbul, Kastaş Yayınları, 2012.
• Jan Asmussen, Cyprus at War: Diplomacy and Conflict during the 1974 Crisis, London: I.B. Taurus, 2008.
• Fiona B. Adamson, “Democratization and Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy: Turkey in the 1974 Cyprus Crisis,” Political Science Quarterly 116/2 (2001): 277-303.

Week 10: Spring Break

Week 11: The End of Political War I

• Gray, pp. 264-279.
• Andrew S. Basevich ”The Revisionist Imperative: Rethinking Twentieth Century Wars” Journal of Military History 76, (April 2012): 333-342.
• Michael Mousseou, “The End of War: How a Robust Market Place and Liberal Hegemony are Leading to Perpetual World Peace,” International Security 44/1 (2019): 160-196.

Week 12: The End of Political War II

• Antony Vinci, “Becoming the Enemy: Convergence in the American and Al Qaeda Ways of Warfare, “ Journal of Strategic Studies 31(1), (February 2008), pp. 69-88.
• Dima Admasky, “Jihadi Operational Art: The Coming Wave of Jihadi Strategic Studies,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 33(1), (2010): 1-19.
• 
  F. S. Naiden, “Heroes and Drones,” The Wilson Quarterly, (Autumn 2013)
  
• 
  Movie: The Eye in the Sky
  

Week 13: Hybrid War/Asymetric War

• Pat Phelan, “Fourth Generation Warfare and its Challenges for the Military and Society, “ Defence Studies 11/1, (March 2011), 96-119.
• Shane R. Reeves and Robert E. Barnsby, “The New Griffin of War: Hybrid International Armed Conflicts,” Harvard International Review (Winter 2013), 16-18.
• Alexander Lonazscka, “Russian Hybrid Warfare and Extended Deterrence in Eastern Europe,” International Affairs 92/1 (2016), 175-195.
• Donald Stoker and Craig Whiteside, “Blurred Lines: Gray-Zone Conflict and Hybrid War – Two Failures of American Strategic Thinking,” Naval War College Review 73/1 (2020): 1-37.

Week 14: Future of Strategic Studies

• Hew Strachan, “Strategy in Theory, Strategy in Practice,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42/2, (2019): 171-190.
• Kersti Larsdotter, “Strategy in the 21st Century,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42/2 (2019): 155-170.

Prof. Dr. Serhat Güvenç, Lisans ve yüksek lisans eğitimi Marmara Üniversitesi’nde, doktorasını ise Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’nde tamamlamıştır. Daha önce Koç, Chicago, Bilgi ve Boğaziçi Üniversitelerinde ders veren Güven. 2010 yılından bu yana Kadir Has Üniversitesi Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü’nde akademik çalışmalarını sürdürmektedir. Türk-Yunan ilişkileri, Türk-AB ilişkileri ve Güvenlik Çalışmaları konularında yurt içinde ve dışında yayınlanmış çeşitli çalışmaları bulunmaktadır.