This course covers the role of ideas in international politics and the practical application of ideas to the conduct of foreign policy. It is an introductory survey which serves in many ways as the conceptual core of the Institute’s approach to the study of international politics.

It examines: the importance of ideas, values, and information as both targets and instruments of foreign policy and how different political cultures and methods of statecraft, including our own, are the consequence of certain ideas and belief systems; contemporary ideological, religious, cultural, and political forces and their implications for U.S. national interests; and how ideas and values are propagated and accepted.