FYS 113 Why Peace Fails

This FYS explores the origins of war from an interdisciplinary perspective. With a primary focus on large-scale interstate wars, this course will survey a wide-range of reading materials about the causes and consequences of war. We will investigate the role of various domestic actors, economic interests, nationalism, diversionary tactics, and great power rivalry. We will also utilize a variety of films, documentaries, and war games and discuss nuclear proliferation, ethnic and regional conflicts. We will examine causal claims about the outbreak of war at different levels of analysis: the individual/group level, the state level, and the international system level. Throughout the course, we will apply these theoretical perspectives to historical and contemporary examples, including World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.

Instructor

Cho