Final Exams!

Here is my fall 2010 National Security Policy final exam:

Answer one of the following three questions. Your exam is due in two hours.

1. The Obama administration has pursued a “reset” of relations with Russia. What security dividends, if any, has this reset paid? What costs has the reset incurred to the United States? How important to the US is a good relationship with Russia?
2. Outline the pitfalls associated with the use of military force in response to North Korean provocations. How should the US and its allies (Japan and South Korea) evaluate the utility of force in their relationship with North Korea?
3. Discuss the costs and benefits of a long-term NATO commitment to Afghanistan. How important is it that the US achieve its preferred objectives in Afghanistan, and what should those objectives be?

The exam takes the form of (and is designed as preparation for) a minor MA field exam in National Security. National Security majors have to answer two of four questions. The questions are typically tailored with the specific interests of the students vaguely in mind (a China specialist is likely to receive a China question), but also reflect the idea that students graduating with a national security credential should have some baseline knowledge of the most important problems and issues.

The full comprehensive normally involves two major questions, one minor, and two "professional," with the latter being drawn from the general Patterson curriculum, and from current events. Students have eight hours to write on those five questions, and must defend their answers in a one hour oral exam.

It's a fun process. My column this week at WPR is about the archipelago of foreign policy schools in the United States, and is the first in what should be an intermittent series of columns about graduate foreign policy education.