There's still time to sign up for my graduate course, Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future. Taught on Thursday nights at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, the course is the only one of its kind. It's designed for intelligence officers, military officers and diplomats, but (almost) anyone is welcome to sign up. My Foreign Propaganda class is over-subscribed.
Students will study the ancients: Kautilya of India, Sun Tzu of China, Aristotle and Thucydides of Athens, Virgil of Rome, as well as the ancient Hebrews and Persians and even Attila the Hun. Then we go over the political warfare of the Crusades, medieval and Renaissance Europe (especially Niccolo Machiavelli, who likewise studied the ancients), and six hours of intensive lectures on the political warfare of the American Revolution.
American warfighters will benefit from mastery of Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin's political warfare strategies and tactics; we've helped incorporate them into operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Finally, we study more modern political warriors, including the culturally subversive Antonio Gramsci and - this year, for the first time - community organizer Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals.
My students often say that this is a grueling course with a massive amount of reading - and they're right. It's my toughest course and my favorite one. To sign up, inquire directly at www.iwp.edu, and tell them I sent you. Registration is still open for the fall. The course meets from 6:30-9:30 on Thursday evenings, starting September 3. The course website is www.politicalwarfare.us and contains course information, readings, and class assignments. That site will be password protected once the course begins, so take a peek at it now while you can.
(Image of Niccolo Machiavelli courtesy of my friends at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich)