Seminar: Transnational Security Threats

This course provides a comprehensive overview of transnational security threats and why states and international organizations must anticipate the evolution of these threats to national governments, international institutions, elements of civil society, and economies. In addition to transnational security threats to traditional nation-state power structures, students examine the impact of such threats on contemporary concepts of sovereignty, international law, and human rights. Topics investigated include WMD proliferation, violent extremism, criminal-terrorist infiltration of legitimate commerce, trafficking in persons, environmental degradation of the global commons, pandemic disease, conflict over natural resources and energy, destabilizing migration of large groups of people across internationally recognized boundaries, and the effects of regional economic crises on global financial markets. Finally, students formulate and evaluate national security policy options that mitigate the effect of expanding globalization driven by technological advances that continue to outpace existing national and international rulesets and norms.