Simulation : The National Security Council

1985 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 3-4
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Simon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
High Risk ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Security Council ◽  
Gulf Region ◽  
College Course ◽  
Term Papers ◽  
Global Events

In the spring of 1981 I designed and taught what I considered, at the time, a "high risk" seminar for seventeen junior and senior political science majors. There were to be no textbooks, no lectures, no examinations and no term papers, those hallmarks of the traditional college course. Nevertheless, when the thirteen week course was over, the students were exhausted and claimed that they had never worked so hard in their college careers.The adventure that my students (and I) undertook was a semester long simulation of the United States National Security Council (NSC), dealing with actual global events as they happened. As Washington dealt with a problem, we dealt with the same problem. The simulation was initially offered during the deteriorating situation in Iran and instability in the Gulf region.

scholarly journals Making Circles of Steel and Castles of Vanity Possible: The Cold War in theLongue Duréeof “Modernity”

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 1019-1029
Author(s):  
Michael H. Bodden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
National Security Council ◽  
Defense Department ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

Alfred McCoy's paper offers a masterful analysis of the way in which the Philippines, and more generally Southeast Asia, were used as base and laboratory for extending US dominance—its hegemony—in the twentieth century, and in particular the Cold War era and its aftermath. He offers a succinct summary of the way in which US organs of global domination—the National Security Council, the CIA, the Defense Department—worked throughout the developing world and in Europe to ensure compliant, anti-communist regimes during the Cold War period, which also meant that more than once the United States was thwarting democracy in a number of locales and thus casting its own ideology of democratic progress and prosperity into doubt.

scholarly journals Leverage

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Thomas Hayden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Security Council ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The U.S

This article studies the connection between U.S. military aid to the Afghan Mujahedeen during the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) and the rise of Islamist militias in Afghanistan during the 1990s. Funding for the Mujahedeen during the conflict exceeded over $3 billion between the Carter and Reagan presidencies, and these funds were later used by Islamist insurgents during the Afghan civil wars. However, the reasons behind the U.S. support is poorly understood. The article explores U.S. State Department and National Security Council documents to suggest that U.S. aid for the Mujahedeen was primarily given to repair US-Pakistani relations and humiliate Cold War rivals rather than to support an independent Afghanistan. The article argues that contemporary foreign policy goals incensed the United States to fund the Islamist organizations that would be Al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.

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