Class Questions, September 7-14

September 7
How might the following events be perceived as acts of aggression? as self-defense?

• The Truman Doctrine
• The Marshall Plan
• The Soviet takeover in Poland
• The unification of West Germany
• The expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe
• The Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• An hypothetical intervention in Syria?

September 10

• What is autarky?
• Why did the typically isolationist US agree to provide the UK with Lend-Lease aid?
• Why was the US so concerned with constructing a new world economic order?
• Why would the US and UK want (West) Germany to regain its former strength?
• Why was the US preoccupied with an integrated European economy?
• Besides the potential threat from Moscow, what foreign threats motivated the US to construct the postwar security and economic orders?
• Layne posits that the US would have pursued this policy even if the Soviet Union “didn’t exist.” Do you agree? Why or why not?

(more recent classes after the jump)

Convergence

At the moment, you're reading about a period in history during which the world was split between two contrasting factions. Both powerful, one was capitalist and democratic, the other was communist and autocratic.

Today however, it seems like we're all moving the same direction, if at different paces. China opened up its economy and commenced a profitable march towards capitalism with Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s. Russia did the same in 1991, albeit with far less success.

At a recent summit, both Chinese and Russian delegates extolled the virtues of low trade barriers, while Secretary Clinton called for stronger trade ties with Moscow.

What might be the international security implications of trade integration among these three, once very different, political economies? Why?