American Foreign Policy
This course will provide a context for analyzing "The War on Terror." It will focus upon post-World War II US foreign policy and the cultural context in which it has been conceptualized and formulated. We will begin with a brief examination of the roots of this conceptualization, using as our text William Appleman Williams' classic study, Empire as a Way of Life. Here, we will explore the idea that has always been categorically rejected by mainstream US historiography: that empire lies at the very foundation of the U.S. and remains at the core of how it acts in the world.