Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey

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NPTG8650A-S15

SemNP Policymakng&IntelAnlysis

This course provides an overview of U.S. national security policy formulation and related intelligence analysis as these apply to the nonproliferation domain. It examines the foreign policy roles and powers of key governmental actors: the president, executive branch departments and agencies, and Congress. It also addresses the characteristics and foreign policy influence of non-governmental actors: interest groups, the media, and public opinion. With this policy context as backdrop, students will then delve more extensively into the role of intelligence analysis in addressing proliferation threats. The class will provide information about the organizations that make up the U.S. intelligence community; the process by which raw information may become an intelligence assessment; and the various pressures and dynamic existing within the intelligence community. The class will also examine several cases, such as the South Asian nuclear weapons tests, North Korean uranium enrichment activities, accounting for Iraq's WMD, and Iran's uranium enrichment development efforts, where the intelligence community appears to have failed or at least faltered. Using these case studies, we will examine the reality and the fallacies underlying this perception.
Course Reference Number (CRN):
20964
Subject Code:
NPTG
Course Number:
8650
Section Identifier:
A

Course

NPTG 8650

All Sections in Spring 2015 - MIIS

Spring 2015 - MIIS

NPTG8650A-S15 Seminar (Knopf, Sands)