Build your own path to a degree in global security with dozens of electives in contemporary security topics.
Students may also select a concentration option in Cybersecurity or Irregular Warfare, or opt for the shorter graduate certificate in Global Security and Competitive Statecraft. Concentrations and Certificates require 4 specialized electives in that subfield. All MA students must complete 30 credits (10 courses of 3 credits each). The only required courses are the introductory course, GSC 501 (War, Conflict and Security) and GSC 550, which is a final project that allows students to further explore their own topic of interest. The rest of the degree path is customizable, with students choosing their own electives to complete the 30-credit minimum.
Concentrations
MA in Global Security (Cybersecurity)
This nontechnical program focuses on the complex risks, threats, and modes of protection and response associated with cybersecurity. Emphasizing real-world case studies and taught by the world’s foremost leaders in cyber strategy, policy and planning, this concentration prepares students for a rapidly expanding field with a focus on the evolving relationship between cybersecurity and global politics.
MA in Global Security (Irregular Warfare)
A first-of-its-kind degree program at a civilian university, the concentration in Irregular Warfare builds student understanding of contemporary irregular warfare and how it fits within the broader geopolitical environment. Coursework focuses on current and future conflict domains including cyber, information & narrative warfare, economic competition, proxy war, counterinsurgency, great power competition, and other domains of irregular warfare and special operations.
Certificate in Global Security and Competitive Statecraft
This 15-credit graduate certificate is designed for learners pursuing career advancement or deeper knowledge of contemporary security issues who don’t need a master’s degree. Students begin with the core course, Global Trends, and complete the certificate with 4 electives, chosen from a list of topics focused on contemporary statecraft, conflict, and competition.
Course options
Explores the rapidly changing and highly complex geopolitical, technological and strategic context within which modern conflict occurs. Introduces the profound social, political, economic and cultural implications of the changing nature of war and conflict. Provides an overview of the historical background alongside some of the classic philosophical and military-strategic conceptions of war.
Reexamines several fundamental themes that run through the history of war and strategy, and discusses the increasing importance of nonmilitary 'soft power' in managing conflict situations. Also introduces the importance of regional knowledge in conflict as a critical operational competence.
Surveys the key issues and ideas associated with the future of warfare, including how the future of war has been visualized over time, new causes and changing domains of conflict, emerging technologies, competing US and adversary doctrines, lessons learned from recent conflicts and potential scenarios of future wars.
Critically assesses different definitions of war and armed conflict. Engages key theories used to understand conflict including realism, neorealism, liberalism and constructivism. Considers core issues in the field, linking empirical studies with explanations for what drives, sustains and resolves conflict.
Reviews key elements of the law of war, also known as international humanitarian law (IHL) and the law of armed conflict (LOAC) and reviews the systems through which the law of war is enforced, considering basic theoretical and practical issues regarding compliance.
Builds a foundational understanding of the complex system of formal and informal actors and structural forces that shape U.S. security policy. Examines the role domestic politics plays in the production of policy decisions and analyzes the critical institutions, actors, and relationships.
Offers several approaches to understanding the global politics of security, examining the structure of international security institutions and actors including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the United Nations' Security Council, peacekeeping missions, regional organizations, private military and intelligence contractors, and corporations.
Reviews key theories on the causes, justifications and structures of political conflict and the use of violence, including the problem of social order and collective action, and its link to the use of force.
Examines the implications of accelerating changes in military and security technologies, fueled by rapid developments in five core technology systems: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information and communications technology (ICT), robotics and applied cognitive science. Introduces the idea of ‘revolutions in military affairs,’ framing discussions about the strategic implications of new technologies from drones to cyber.
Provides a critical introduction to the field of post-conflict reconstruction and transitional justice, reviewing the tense and uncertain nature of post-conflict environments, and considering the difficulties of governance and reconstruction in the aftermath of conflict.
Provides a critical overview of the use of terror by governments, insurgents, and other non-state actors. Examines key theories regarding the causes, meaning, and impact of terror as a strategy by distinct groups, linking core ideas to case studies designed to ground the broader discussion of terror within specific contexts.
Broad overview of emerging global patterns as they relate to governance, security, and social order. Examines interrelated topics including: globalization; populist movements; the shifting of economic power from the global west to the global east; democratic backsliding, protests, and social unrest; and the weakening of state-society relations.
Overview of the principles and problems of cybersecurity including: new challenges posed by an interconnected world; key elements of internet architecture; cyber-attacks and cyber defense; public and private internet governance and protection; espionage; and cyberwar.
Examines contemporary cyber threats and trends, including: hacking and data breaches; protecting critical infrastructure on a state and federal level; the complex global threats posed by cybercrime; the risks associated with rapidly expanding social media and interconnectedness; and key legal and ethical issues associated with cybersecurity policy.
Provides a critical overview of central ideas, concepts and terminology for better engaging of cybersecurity preparation and resiliency as a key element of global security. Engages the special challenges raised by attribution and outlines how to conceptualize and ensure whole system resiliency.
Introduces key institutions in cyber policy and regulation, central concepts of threat analysis, issues of cybersecurity strategy, and ways to conceptualize the future of cybersecurity. Examines the complex interplay of governmental, intergovernmental, commercial, and non-state actors engaged in cyber threats and protective action.
Examines how states employ measures short of war to gain strategic advantage while avoiding the costs and risks of major armed conflict, including the variety of irregular warfare approaches to competitive statecraft. Explores irregular warfare campaigns and the implementation of competitive strategies to determine why they succeed or fail.
Narrative conflict – or conflict over the meaning of information – has become a central aspect of modern warfare. Examines how narrative shapes identities, the crucial role this plays in cohesive societies, and how it’s used in contemporary warfare to undermine an adversary’s foundational institutions.
Explores the strategic theory, history and operational art of borrowing armies to fight in another country’s civil war and the use of coercive diplomacy and irregular warfare to shape military and diplomatic outcomes, and examines how changes in technology are likely to shape such conflicts in the near future.
Reexamines the interplay of war and peace during the era of the modern nation-state. Adopts a theory-history-practice approach, employing the concept used by the U.S. Department of Defense in framing great power competition for strategic study and operational praxis. Using this competition-continuum framework, it explores the present era as a global strategic inflection point crossing into great power competition.
Special Topics Courses
The rules-based international system built by the United States is now under threat in three regions – Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Each of these challenges has in common the need for a sophisticated mixture of deterrence and diplomacy. This course examines the dynamics that drive today’s power competitions and dissects cases of competition, conflict, and warfare in the current era.
Governments, corporations, institutions, and people all use information to advance or hide their interests or actions. Major events often span borders and involve multiple organizations and communities. To assemble all the puzzle pieces into a coherent picture, investigators need to be skilled hunters of digital information. In this course, you will learn how to think like a digital detective through the systematic use of tools, tricks and methods for sleuthing out who, what, when, where, how and why in the post-truth world.
The dense, cluttered, heavily populated, highly connected urban environment has become the default setting for much of conflict—whether understood as warfare, social conflict, crime, or economic and political unrest—in the 21st century. Through this course, students will develop an understanding of key ideas in urban security, as well as current debates around the future of conflict in cities.
Frames the link between global stability, national security, and economics in the context of competition between the world’s predominant power and its rising one. Examines the ways this competition plays out through geoeconomics, weaponized interdependence, economic statecraft, and more. Also explores economic security risks in key sectors, including leading edge technology, food supply, rare earth elements, and energy.
Since the end of the Cold War the US and the West have maintained an unequivocal dominance of the conventional military realm. Today, would-be adversaries have adapted the ways in which they seek strategic geopolitical objectives. This course provides a framework for understanding adaptation and innovation, illustrating them through case studies including China, Russia, Iran, and more.
Explores the impact of armed conflict on civilian populations and in turn how harm to civilians can impact security. Examines the interventions, policies, and practices designed to protect civilians and consider what the future holds for waging war in, around, and among non-combatants.
Provides an overview of biosecurity with a focus on its relationship to broad national and international security issues and to fundamental shifts in conceptualizing safety and resilience in a globally interconnected world.
Examines the major theoretical and policy-oriented questions arising from the post-Cold War emergence of a global movement for criminal accountability in the wake of ethnic conflict, armed conflict, and mass atrocity.
Reviews the politics, history and culture of “Greater Eurasia," treating this region as an extended "encounter zone" between imperial powers and the western world. Armed conflict over borders and sovereignty has redrawn alliances, displaced populations and fueled corruption. This course examines the linkages, points of comparison, and attributes that drive diplomacy, trade and conflict within this critical area and beyond its borders.
GSC 550:
+ indicates course is part of the Irregular Warfare concentration
^ indicates course is part of the Cybersecurity concentration
* indicates course is part of the Certificate in Global Security & Competitive Statecraft