DSPO 27A78 - Industry and War, the political economy of American Military Power

Can a country fight a war it can no longer build for? This course uses the defense-industrial question as a lens onto American power: how the United States built, hollowed out, and is now attempting to rebuild full capacity to manufacture military capability at scale. Beginning with the theoretical relationship between industrial power and war in international relations, and running through WWII mobilization, Cold War confrontation, post-Cold War retrenchment, the failures of Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and ending with today’s great-power competition with China and the operational stress tests of live conflicts, students trace the links between industrial strategy, geopolitical ambition, and domestic political economy.

The course covers the full cycle: IR theory and the industrial variable; the founding of the US military-industrial complex; deindustrialization and military overreach; the emergence of a new tech-billionaire defense layer; the fight for critical minerals; the Iran case as a live stress test; the politics of tariffs and industrial policy; the transatlantic relationship; ITAR and technological leverage; the US-China industrial competition; and Europe’s attempt to rebuild sovereignty. No prior knowledge of defense or economics is required. Students are expected to follow current events and engage critically with readings drawn from policy journals, think tanks, and quality press.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Apply basic IR theories to the relationship between industrial capacity and war
• Trace the historical arc of the US defense-industrial base from WWII to the present
• Explain the strategic consequences of American deindustrialization and military overreach
• Analyse the emergence of dual-use civilian infrastructure as a military capability layer
• Assess the politics of tariffs, procurement rules, and industrial policy in the US context
• Understand the transatlantic industrial relationship as a structured dependency
• Evaluate the US-China competition through an industrial and resource lens

-Also evaluate the role of the EU in building a resilient defense industry including for NATO

• Construct a coherent analytical argument about a defense-industrial policy question in written form