New Course 2SM353 International Security Relations

2SM353 International Security Relations is one of new courses offered to bachelor students in the winter semester 2019/2020. The course will be taught by Professor Jan Eichler on Tuesdays 14:30 – 16:00 (lecture) and 16:15 – 17:45 (seminar).

The first part of this course will be concentrated on the theory of international security relations. It will explain why the security is perceived as the most important value in the life of every human being, society and state. At the same time, the most important schools of thought in this field will be presented and discussed.

The following part will present the complicated history of the Cold War. It will be aimed namely at the discussion about the following questions: why this specific form of international order occurred, what has been its price, who won it, who lost it, what are the lessons to be learned from this long-form of international confrontation?  

In the third part, students will be informed about the main stakes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the end of the WWII until today. After, they will study and discuss the global terrorism as one of the most serious an imminent security threats of the contemporary world. They will analyse the most spectacular terrorist attacks after the 11/9 and they will discuss them in the light of the strategy of communication.

A big attention will be payed to the balance of the 43rd President of the USA, namely to his Global War on Terror (Afghanistan and Iraq), to its positive as well as negative consequences for the USA, as well as for all the Western world. After, the vision of the nuclear weapons free world (presented by the 44th President of the USA) will be discussed.

The course will culminate by the crisis of the international security relations which happened after the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Within this framework, the history of the process of the NATO enlargement will be openly discussed.