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JOHN CABOT UNIVERSITY

COURSE CODE: "PL 450"
COURSE NAME: "Modern Warfare and Interventions"
SEMESTER & YEAR: Spring 2025
SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTOR: Simone Tholens
EMAIL: [email protected]
 HOURS: MW 1:30 PM 2:45 PM
TOTAL NO. OF CONTACT HOURS: 45
CREDITS: 3
PREREQUISITES: Prerequisites: Senior standing or permission of the instructor; recommended: PL321
OFFICE HOURS:
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course introduces students to modern warfare and interventions through an intensive writing seminar that centres on the practices, discourses and technologies that shape 21st century international security. It focuses on the shift from large-scale peacebuilding of the 1990s and early 2000s, to post-liberal interventions from mid-2000 onward, including ‘light footprint’ warfare, stabilization, complexity, hybrid warfare, resilience, and remote warfare. It explores changing intervention and warfare practices, different types of actors, and effects on local conflicts, regional security and international orders. The course engages with International Relations theory, peace and conflict studies, international political sociology and critical geopolitics, and furnishes an advanced understanding of global-local relations as they unfold in international security.
SUMMARY OF COURSE CONTENT:

In this course we survey practices of modern warfare and interventions. Departing from a brief introduction to Cold War peacekeeping and proxy wars, and to Post-Cold War liberal interventionism, we explore contemporary debates and practices on remote warfare, complexity approaches, resilience and capacity building, and stabilization operations. The course will then move on to examine particular actors and transversal issues, including the role of technology and data, responsibility and protection, and effects on stability and conflict resolution. The course will be global in scope, drawing on conflicts and interventions in a variety of cases. Students will become familiar with key policies, discourses and practices that shape contemporary interventions, as well as a wide range of scholarly debates analysing them. Drawing on a diverse body of theory from International Relations, Political Sociology, Geography, Strategic Studies and Peace & Conflict studies, the course will provide students with skills to critically engage with key theme in international security.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

On successful completion of the course a student will be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

  • Demonstrate theoretical understanding and practical applicability of key terminology, concepts, institutions and actors defining the field of modern warfare and interventions
  • Recognize and evaluate the drivers and effects of international security practices
  • Acquire knowledge of key cases of relevance to modern warfare and post-liberal interventions

Intellectual skills

  • Analyse warfare and interventions holistically
  • Critical engagement with policy and practice of international security

Transferable skills

  • Debating and discussing different perspectives and positions in an academic environment
  • Analytical reasoning in oral and written form
  • Critically using existing written texts and resources
  • Critically using electronically available resources
  • Discussing audio-visual documentary work 
  • Planning and practicing the presentation format
TEXTBOOK:
NONE
REQUIRED RESERVED READING:
NONE

RECOMMENDED RESERVED READING:
NONE
GRADING POLICY
-ASSESSMENT METHODS:
AssignmentGuidelinesWeight
Discussion paperWrite a 800-word written discussion in the form of an op-ed/commentary on a pre-defined topic of central importance to the course. Deadline: End of week 520
Outline of research paperSubmit two pages describing the topic, title, abstract and outline for the research paper. Week 7.10
PresentationPrepare a 10-minute presentation on the case selected for the final research paper. Week 9 and 1020
Research paperStudents are required to write a 5000 word research paper on a selected concept of modern warfare covered in the course and use a case study to explore it empirically. Deadline: Submission week 1540
ParticipationAttendance, engaging with assigned readings and participate actively in class discussions. 10

-ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:
AWork of this quality directly addresses the question or problem raised and provides a coherent argument displaying an extensive knowledge of relevant information or content. This type of work demonstrates the ability to critically evaluate concepts and theory and has an element of novelty and originality. There is clear evidence of a significant amount of reading beyond that required for the course.
BThis is highly competent level of performance and directly addresses the question or problem raised.There is a demonstration of some ability to critically evaluatetheory and concepts and relate them to practice. Discussions reflect the student’s own arguments and are not simply a repetition of standard lecture andreference material. The work does not suffer from any major errors or omissions and provides evidence of reading beyond the required assignments.
CThis is an acceptable level of performance and provides answers that are clear but limited, reflecting the information offered in the lectures and reference readings.
DThis level of performances demonstrates that the student lacks a coherent grasp of the material.Important information is omitted and irrelevant points included.In effect, the student has barely done enough to persuade the instructor that s/he should not fail.
FThis work fails to show any knowledge or understanding of the issues raised in the question. Most of the material in the answer is irrelevant.
-ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS:
ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS AND EXAMINATION POLICY
You cannot make-up a major exam (midterm or final) without the permission of the Dean’s Office. The Dean’s Office will grant such permission only when the absence was caused by a serious impediment, such as a documented illness, hospitalization or death in the immediate family (in which you must attend the funeral) or other situations of similar gravity. Absences due to other meaningful conflicts, such as job interviews, family celebrations, travel difficulties, student misunderstandings or personal convenience, will not be excused. Students who will be absent from a major exam must notify the Dean’s Office prior to that exam. Absences from class due to the observance of a religious holiday will normally be excused. Individual students who will have to miss class to observe a religious holiday should notify the instructor by the end of the Add/Drop period to make prior arrangements for making up any work that will be missed. The final exam period runs until ____________
ACADEMIC HONESTY
As stated in the university catalog, any student who commits an act of academic dishonesty will receive a failing grade on the work in which the dishonesty occurred. In addition, acts of academic dishonesty, irrespective of the weight of the assignment, may result in the student receiving a failing grade in the course. Instances of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Dean of Academic Affairs. A student who is reported twice for academic dishonesty is subject to summary dismissal from the University. In such a case, the Academic Council will then make a recommendation to the President, who will make the final decision.
STUDENTS WITH LEARNING OR OTHER DISABILITIES
John Cabot University does not discriminate on the basis of disability or handicap. Students with approved accommodations must inform their professors at the beginning of the term. Please see the website for the complete policy.
SCHEDULE

COURSE OUTLINE

 

PART 1: HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY WARFARE AND INTERVENTIONS

 

Week 1

Class 1: Welcome & General Overview

Read and bring along the course syllabus.

 

Class 2: War, interventions and international security: discourse and practice

Chandler, David. 2016. “New narratives of international security governance: the shift from global interventionism to global self-policing”. Global Crime, 17 (3-4): 264-280.

Reus-Smith, Christian. (2013). ‘The concept of intervention’. Review of International Studies, 39 (5), 1057-1076.

SIGAR. 2021. What We Need To Learn: Lessons From Twenty Years Of Afghanistan Reconstruction, available here: https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-46-LL.pdf (Introduction, Chapter 1, 2 and 7)

 

Week 2

Class 3: Interventions during the Cold War: First generation UN Peacekeeping and Proxy Wars

Paul Williams with Bellamy, Alex J. 2010. Understanding Peacekeeping. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press. [Chapter 3]

Groh, T. L. (2019). The Evolution of Proxy War Since 1945. In Proxy War: The Least Bad Option (1st Ed., Pp. 41–82). Stanford University Press. [Chapter 3]

 

Class 4: Interventions after the Cold War: Humanitarian Intervention, Responsibility to Protect

Doyle, Michael & Sambanis, N, 2006. Making war and building peace: United Nations peace operations. Princeton University Press.[Chapter 1]

Williams with Bellamy, Alex J. 2010. Understanding Peacekeeping. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press. [Chapter 4]

Welsh, Jennifer M. 2013. Norm Contestation and the Responsibility to Protect, Global Responsibility to Protect, 5(4), 365-396.

 

Week 3

Class 5: From UN Peacekeeping to Peace enforcement

Berdal, Mats and David H Ucko. 2015. ‘The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Problems and Prospects’, in The RUSI Journal, Vol. 160, Issue 1, pp. 6-12.

Karlsrud, Jon. 2014. ‘The UN at war: examining the consequences of peace-enforcement mandates for the UN peacekeeping operations in the CAR, the DRC and Mali’, in Third World Quarterly, Vol, 46, Issue 1, pp. 40-54.

Fisher, Jonathan, and Nina Wilén. 2022. African peacekeeping. Ch. 1 and 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Class 6: Liberal interventionism and statebuilding

Oliver P. Richmond. 2006. The problem of peace: understanding the ‘liberal peace’, Conflict, Security & Development, 6:3, 291-314.

Barnett, M., & Zürcher, C. 2009. The peacebuilder’s contract: How external statebuilding reinforces weak statehood. In The dilemmas of statebuilding (pp. 37-66). Routledge.

 

PART II: POST-LIBERAL INTERVENTIONS

Week 4

Class 7: Post-liberal interventions: conceptual approaches I

Chandler, David. 2012. “Resilience and Human Security: The Post-Interventionist Paradigm.” Security Dialogue 43 (3): 213–229.

Demmers, Jolle, and Lauren Gould. 2018. “An assemblage approach to liquid warfare: AFRICOM and the ‘hunt’ for Joseph Kony”, Security Dialogue 49(5): 364-281.  

 

Class 8: Post-liberal interventions: conceptual approaches II

Doucet, Marc G. 2016. "Global assemblages of security governance and contemporary international intervention." Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 10 (1): 116-132.

Moe, L.ouise W., & Geis, Anna (2020). From liberal interventionism to stabilisation: A new consensus on norm-downsizing in interventions in Africa. Global Constitutionalism, 9(2), 387-412.

Riemann, Malte and Norma Rossi. 2021. “Remote warfare as “security of being”: reading security force assistance as an ontological security routine”, Defence Studies, 21:4, 489-507,

 

Week 5

Class 9: War on Terror and Counterinsurgency

Niva, Steve. 2013. “Disappearing Violence: JSOC and the Pentagon’s new Cartography of Networked Warfare.” Security Dialogue 44 (3): 185–202.

Karlsrud, John. 2019. “From Liberal Peacebuilding to Stabilization and Counterterrorism”, International Peacekeeping, 26 (1): 1-21.

 

Class 10: From Counter-insurgency to complexity approaches

Bell, Colleen and Brad Evans. 2010. “Terrorism to Insurgency: Mapping the Post-Intervention Security Terrain”, Journal of Intervention & State Building, 5 (1): 371-390. 

Moe, Louise Wiuff. 2017. “Counterinsurgent warfare and the decentering of sovereignty in Somalia”, in Louise Wiuff Moe and Markus-Michael Mueller (eds.), Reconfiguring Intervention. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017. 119-140.

Cold-Ravnkilde, Signe Marie, and Katja Lindskov Jacobsen. 2020. "Disentangling the security traffic jam in the Sahel: constitutive effects of contemporary interventionism." International Affairs 96 (4): 855-874.

 

Week 6

Class 11: Global Security Assemblages

Abrahamsen, Rita, and Michael C. Williams. 2009. “Security Beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics.” International Political Sociology 3 (1): 1–17.

Sandor, Adam. 2016. “Border Security and Drug Trafficking in Senegal: AIRCOP and global security assemblages.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 10 (4): 490–512.

 

Class 12: Everywhere wars/Shadow wars

Davidson, Christopher. 2016. Shadow wars: The secret struggle for the Middle East. Simon and Schuster. [Chapter 4]

Gregory, Derek. 2011. "The everywhere war." The Geographical Journal 177 (3): 238-250.

 

Week 7

Class 13: Remote Warfare, Vicarious Warfare, Surrogate Warfare

Knowles, Emily and Abigail Watson. 2018. Remote Warfare: Lessons Learned from Contemporary Theatres, Remote Warfare Program. London: Oxford Research Group.  

Krieg, Andreas, and Jean-Marc Rickli. 2018. “Surrogate warfare: the art of war in the 21st century?.” Defence studies 18 (2): 113-130.

Waldman, Thomas. 2020. Vicarious Warfare: American Strategy and the Illusion of War on the Cheap. Bristol: Bristol University Press. [Introduction and Chapter 1]

 

Class 14: Security Assistance

Tholens, Simone. 2017. “Border Management in an Era of ‘Statebuilding Lite’: Security Assistance and Lebanon's Hybrid Sovereignty.” International Affairs 93 (4): 865–882.

Wilén, Nina. 2021. "Analysing (In) formal Relations and Networks in Security Force Assistance: The Case of Niger." Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15 (5): 580-597.

 

Week 8

Class 15: Resilience and Capacity building

Bueger, Christian, and Simone Tholens. 2021. Theorizing Capacity Building. In: Bueger, C., Edmunds, T., McCabe, R. (eds) Capacity Building for Maritime Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Chandler, David. 2012. “Resilience and human security: The post-interventionist paradigm.” Security dialogue 43( 3): 213-229.

 

Class 16: War in the grayzone – hybrid warfare

Chiara Libiseller (2023) ‘Hybrid warfare’ as an academic fashion, Journal of Strategic Studies, 46:4, 858-880.

Mälksoo, Maria. "Countering hybrid warfare as ontological security management: the emerging practices of the EU and NATO." Ontological Insecurity in the European Union. Routledge, 2020. 126-144.

 

Week 9

Class 17: Student Presentations

 

Class 18: Student Presentations

 

 

PART III: KEY ISSUES AND ACTORS

 

Week 10

Class 19: Student Presentations

 

 

Class 20: The West

Biddle, Stephen, Julia Macdonald, and Ryan Baker. 2018. “Small footprint, small payoff: The military effectiveness of security force assistance”. Journal of Strategic Studies 41 (1-2): 89-142.

Rittinger, Eric, 2017. “Arming the Other: American Small Wars, Local Proxies, and the Social Construction of the Principal-Agent Problem”. International Studies Quarterly, 61 (2): 396-409.

Matisek, Jahara. 2018. “The crisis of American military assistance: strategic dithering and Fabergé Egg armies." Defense & Security Analysis 34 (3): 267-290.

 

Week 11

Class 21: The challengers: China, Russia, Iran  

Natulya, Paul. 2021. China’s Blended Approach to Security in Africa. ISPI report, available here: https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/chinas-blended-approach-security-africa-31216

Springborg, Robert, F. C. Williams, and John Zavage. 2020. “Security Assistance in the Middle East: A Three-Dimensional Chessboard”. Beirut: Carnegie.

Krieg, Andreas and Jean-Marc Rickli. 2019. Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the Twenty-First Century, Washington: Georgetown University Press.  [Chapter 6 - UAE]

Ostovar, Afshon. 2019. The Grand Strategy of Militant Clients: Iran’s Way of War, Security Studies, 28 (1): 159-188.

 

Class 22: International Organisations and non-state actors

Tchie, A. E. Y., & de Coning, C. (2023). “Special Issue on the Evolving Nature of African-Led Peace Support Operations and African Armies”. Journal of International Peacekeeping, 26(4), 259-265.

Raineri, Luca, and Francesco Strazzari. 2019. "(B) ordering hybrid security? EU stabilisation practices in the Sahara-Sahel region." Ethnopolitics 18 (5): 544-559.

Leander, Anna. 2005. “The power to construct international security: On the significance of private military companies.” Millennium 33.3: 803-825.

 

 

Week 12

Class 23: Effects: Conflict Resolution

Hellmüller, Sara. 2021. “The challenge of forging consent to UN mediation in internationalized civil wars: The case of Syria.” International Negotiation 27 (1): 103-130.

Kane, Sean William. 2022. “Making Peace When the Whole World Has Come to Fight: The Mediation of Internationalized Civil Wars”, International Peacekeeping, 29 (2): 177-203,

 

Class 24: Effects: Stability

Rubrick Biegon & Tom F. A. Watts. 2022. Remote Warfare and the Retooling of American Primacy, Geopolitics, 27:3, 948-971,

Watling, Jack and Nick Reynolds. 2020. War by Others’ Means: Delivering Effective Partner Force Capacity Building (New York: Routledge). Chapters 1 and 2.

 

Week 13

Class 25: Technology and data

Thomas Gregory. 2015. “Drones, Targeted Killings, and the Limitations of International Law”, International Political Sociology, 9 (3): 197–212.

Hurd, Ian. 2017. "Targeted killing in international relations theory: Recursive politics of technology, law, and practice." Contemporary Security Policy 38 (2): 307-319.

DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency). 2018. Mosaic Warfare. Available at https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/darpa-tiles-together-a-vision-of-mosiac-warfare 

 

Class 26: Protection and Responsibility

Saferworld. 2018. Lawful But Awful? Legal and political challenges of remote warfare and working with partners. Available here: https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1279-lawful-but-awful-legal-and-political-challenges-of-remote-warfare-and-working-with-partners

Cormac, R. and Aldrich, R.J. 2018. “Grey is the new black: covert action and implausible deniability”, International affairs, 94(3), pp.477-494.

 

Week 14

Class 27: Knowledge and expertise  

Gould, Lauren and Nora Stel. 2022. “Strategic ignorance and the legitimation of remote warfare: The Hawija bombardments”, Security Dialogue, 53(1):57-74.

Guevara, Berit Bliesemann de, and Roland Kostić. 2017. “Knowledge Production in/about Conflict and Intervention: Finding ‘Facts’, Telling ‘Truth.’” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 11 (1): 1–20.  

Moe, Louise Wiuff and Markus-Michael Mueller. 2018. “Counterinsurgency, knowledge production and the traveling of coercive Realpolitik between Colombia and Somalia”, Cooperation and Conflict, 53(2): 193-215.  

Washington Post. 2019. At War with the Truth, Dec 9, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/

 

Class 28: Summing up the course