The tenth annual Marshall Plan Chair for Austrian and European Studies in the academic year 2009-2010 will for the first time be a diplomat-in-residence. Dr. Peter Moser, a retired diplomat and distinguished former Austrian Ambassador to the United States, Japan and Korea will serve as Marshall Plan Chair and teach the following courses during the Fall semester of 2009 as UNO’s first diplomat-in-residence.
HIST 4380/G Europe’s Quest for Power and Peace: European Diplomatic History 1815-1914
This lecture course will examine the evolution of the international system from the end of Napoleon`s drive for European hegemony to the onset of World War I. During the “long” nineteenth century the modern world was created with dramatic demographic, political, economic, social and cultural transformations.
This course will address the changing meaning of the European and international balance of powers, the nature of nation-state actors and the passage of the international system from European to world politics. The expansion of Russia in the Far East, along with the emergence of the United States and Japan as great powers, unleashed an age of imperialist competition with the older European powers for global hegemony. World War I had its origins in classic great power rivalries within Europe, but spread onto the global arena.
Readings:
Paul Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Vintage Pb 1989;
Norman Rich. Great Power Diplomacy 1814-1914. New York: McGraw Hill Pb 1991;
Katherine Anne Lerman. Bismarck (Profiles in Power). London: Longman Pearson Pb 2004;
James Joll and Gordon Martel. The Origins of the First World War (Origins of Modern Wars). 3rd ed. London: Longman Pb 2006
HIST 4991 The Practice of Diplomacy
POLI 4990 Special Topics: The Practice of Diplomacy
Regular diplomatic relations between states came into being with the emergence of a relative stable system of European powers with Great Power supremacy being recognized in the “concert of nations.” The Vienna Congress of 1815 created the first international set of rules for the status, the tasks and the working conditions of professional diplomats. This course will address the changes of the practice of diplomacy reflecting the collapse of the European centered system and the emergence of a global power system. The challenges of the changing diplomatic arena required new methods in the recruitment of professional diplomats and demanded new skills from practitioners.
Today the practice of international diplomacy embraces a wide and comprehensive field of bilateral activities between states and increasingly the growing role of international organizations and multilateral diplomacy (United Nations, European Union). New ways of modern communications have left a deep impact on today´s practice of diplomacy. Next to the tradition of the diplomatist as an official public servants, increasingly "non-govermental organizations" (NGOs) and other pressure groups play a key role in the international arena as do private non-state actors.
Readings:
Paul Gordon Lauren/Gordon Craig/Alexander L. George: Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Challenges of our Time. New York: Oxford University Press 2007 Pb;
G.R.Berridge. Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger. 2nd Palgrave Macmillan Palgrae Pb; Henry Kissinger. Diplomacy, New York: Touchstone Pb 1994