MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

The United States has a remarkable capability for projecting power, and it energetically pursues its interests abroad. It deploys forces around the world. It vastly outspends all other nations on defense, intelligence, and diplomacy. It boasts a technologically sophisticated and highly professional military. It maintains a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. And it enjoys the blessings of geography, with oceans to the east and west, and friendly neighbors to the north and south. No other nation has ever enjoyed such a preponderance of power and a surplus of security. 

Yet a sense of insecurity abounds. Policymakers issue ominous warnings and the headlines scream bad news. Terrorism threatens stability in the Middle East. Russian ambitions threaten the peace in Europe. The rise of China threatens the balance in Asia. We also worry about security risks that are outside the realm of normal great power politics: global pandemics, transnational drug networks, and human trafficking. All of this adds to the feeling that things are not so safe after all.   

How do we make sense of this peculiar era? Are world politics more or less stable than in the past? Is the United States more or less secure? Do international problems affect U.S. interests?  If so, how? And what, if anything, should the United States do to solve them? 

SAS@SMU is an undergraduate teaching and research program at the Tower Center for Political Studies, as well as a hub for public discussions about strategy and international security. The program combines insights from security studies, which deals with fundamental questions about how states try to make themselves safe; and strategic studies, which deals with the use of violence to achieve political goals. Undergraduates take a suite of courses that delve deeply into these issues. They read classical strategic theorists like Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Thucydides, as well as modern international relations scholars. Along the way they also read a great deal of history. Successful students will leave the program with a broad theoretical and historical foundation to inform their judgment about contemporary security affairs.

As with the all programs at the Tower Center, SAS@SMU is animated by practical policy dilemmas. It addresses a range of current security issues, including everything from the grand strategy of great powers to the causes of militant violence in distant civil wars. Our faculty includes specialists on nuclear weapons, intelligence, and regional studies. Students learn from a combination of leading academics and faculty with vast diplomatic, military, and foreign policy experience. And because the program is problem driven, it is interdisciplinary by design. We encourage students to seek insights from political science, history, economics, engineering, and any other field that can help them develop ideas about important security problems.

While the principal mission of the program is undergraduate education, SAS@SMU is also a center for public debates. It organizes the annual Tower Center National Security Conference each fall, which has become a signature in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The program hosts a steady stream of public events featuring leading scholars and practitioners, including policymakers, military leaders, diplomats, and intelligence officials from the United States and abroad. Finally, we support research and provide opportunities for SMU students and faculty to present their findings in regular seminars. 

Joshua Rovner
John G. Tower Distinguished Chair in International Politics and National Security