American Foreign Policy
Day and Time:
This course offers a deep dive into contemporary U.S. foreign policy, focusing largely on the time period from September 11, 2001 to the present. We will open by examining the foreign policy of the current administration, then trace the origins of the postwar liberal world order and how it influenced U.S. strategy. From there, we will examine the choices that remade the U.S. role after 9/11: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the campaign against ISIS, the expansion of military and executive power, and the tools of intelligence, drones and AI. We will also ask what an ethical foreign policy looks like, including the place of democracy promotion. By the end of the course, students will be able to compare and contrast the strategies of successive U.S. administrations, weigh the trade-offs policymakers faced in historical context, analyze how the executive, Congress and the courts shape the making and execution of foreign policy, and offer constructive recommendations for how future administrations can design better strategies and tools.
Leslie Thompson
Leslie Thompson is a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for the Application of Grand Strategy and the founder of Arx Advisors. Throughout her career, she has advised U.S. government officials, congressional leaders, academic institutions, and private organizations on complex geopolitical and security challenges. From 2025 to 2026, Thompson was a Senior Fellow with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advising the Committee on the Middle East, North Africa, and counterterrorism policy Until 2026, Thompson also served as member of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff. She also spent nearly a decade coordinating U.S. policy responses to the conflict in Syria and was awarded a prestigious fellowship at Harvard Business School for emerging leaders in 2020. Prior to joining government, Thompson advised private-sector clients in the United Arab Emirates on regional political and security dynamics, and she conducted research on conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and governance issue from 2008-2011 at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Thompson holds a Master of Arts in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Davidson College. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2006.
