Most courses concentrate on the results of policy, not the process in which the policy was made and maintained. This course is intended to introduce students to a critical but largely ignored process through which U.S. national security policies are made within the government. This is critical because policies by definition originate from within the process and normally follow a long and often torturous path until they emerge. They frequently emerge with only a bare resemblance to the original plan and, often as not, fail to emerge at all. In short, this course is an introduction to bureaucracy, i.e., the policy process and the competition between agencies and personalities who must exist within the same framework but whose aims and objectives frequently clash.

Principal Professor: S. John Tsagronis. Mr. Tsagronis is the current Senior Director for Policy Implementation at the National Security Council. Previously, he was Deputy Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Dept. of State and Senior Policy Advisor at USAID.