Geopolitical Conflict & Security

Goals

Analyze sources of international conflict through multiple theoretical frameworks. Understand strategic competition, security dilemmas, and escalation dynamics. Evaluate conflict resolution mechanisms and evolving warfare in the technological age.

Why these books

Mearsheimer argues that the anarchic structure of the international system compels great powers to compete relentlessly for dominance. Because no authority exists above the state, nations can never be certain of each other's intentions and must pursue maximum power as the only reliable guarantee of survival. Conflict is therefore not a failure of diplomacy or leadership — it is the system working as designed. His prediction that China's rise will produce serious confrontation with the United States remains the book's most contested and discussed legacy.

Where Mearsheimer sees conflict as structurally inevitable, Kagan focuses on what prevents it. The liberal international order — open trade, democratic alliances, American-backed security guarantees — did not emerge naturally. It was constructed after 1945 at enormous cost, and it requires constant tending. Kagan's central warning is that the order is more fragile than its beneficiaries understand: pull back American engagement, and the jungle of great power rivalry, nationalism, and authoritarianism returns quickly. Order is the exception in history; disorder is the default.

Nye examines how power itself is changing in the twenty-first century. Hard power — military force and economic coercion — remains relevant, but is increasingly insufficient on its own. Soft power (attraction, legitimacy, cultural influence) and cyber capabilities are reshaping what it means to win. Nye introduces the concept of "smart power" as the ability to combine these tools effectively. His work is essential for understanding why dominant military states can still lose influence, and why non-state actors and small nations can punch far above their weight.

Haass offers the most practically oriented book in the set — less a theoretical argument than a literate practitioner's guide to how the international system actually operates. Written for a general audience, it surveys sovereignty, diplomacy, trade, human rights, and the major regions of strategic importance. Haass is skeptical of both Mearsheimer's fatalism and Kagan's liberal optimism, arguing that outcomes depend heavily on the choices governments make. It functions as a useful anchor that grounds the more theoretical texts in real-world institutions and constraints.

MacMillan steps back furthest, examining war not as a policy problem but as a persistent human phenomenon. Drawing on history, anthropology, and culture, she explores why humans have always fought, how war and society shape each other, and what the changing character of warfare reveals about civilization itself. She neither glorifies nor moralizes — her approach is analytical and historically grounded.

These five books form a coherent intellectual arc. MacMillan establishes the deep historical roots of conflict. Mearsheimer explains its structural logic in the modern state system. Kagan asks what — if anything — can hold that logic in check. Nye shows how the tools of competition are evolving. And Haass translates all of it into the practical realities of foreign policy. Read in sequence, they take students from why war exists to how it is conducted to whether it can be managed — which is precisely the journey the course's learning goals are designed to make.