Academic Course

This course focuses on the international aspects of security challenges, blending a look at relevant international law precepts with a practical understanding of the international context in which certain challenges arise.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to discuss and evaluate theories of international relations; analyze destabilizing factors in the region and their implications on GCC countries; evaluate the approaches and methods used to face these challenges, particularly the social and economic dimensions; and assess the significance and nature of international law and governing theories.

The United Arab Emirates, like all nations, faces challenges in providing the best opportunities for its people to reach their potentials. This course is designed to examine public and private efforts to create and enhance competitive social and economic environments.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to describe and discuss UAE human and natural resources infrastructure; evaluate human and natural resources issues in the UAE and how they affect national security; and analyze the impact of human and natural resources issues on national security.

This course examines the origins of modern strategy, using great strategic thinkers to examine the relationship between strategy and policy.

Upon successful completion of the course students will be able to discuss and evaluate the components of strategies and their application in different settings; apply elements and tools of strategy to selected case studies; and create a framework for setting up a national strategy.

This course addresses the challenges of strategic leadership. The concept of strategic leadership serves as the framework and provides underpinnings in four specific areas: (1) strategic leadership concepts; (2) strategic leader competencies; (3) organizational change; and (4) creating resilient and effective organizations. The key ideas of the course are designed to establish an understanding of environmental complexity, leader competencies and skills, meeting ethical challenges, leading change and transformation, and enhancing critical thinking.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to recognize and define aspects of leadership required at the strategic level; evaluate the strategic leadership skills (interpersonal, conceptual, and technical) necessary to sustain innovative and agile organizations in a multinational environment; and evaluate the role of strategic leadership in leading the organization through the change processes necessary to realize the strategic vision.

The course aims to help students examine and understand modern national economies, including potential threats and opportunities, how they are integrated into the regional and global economies, and how they may be affected by recent economic trends and international relations relating to trade. In sum, students will comprehend the importance of national economy as an element of national power/statecraft.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to evaluate theoretical and practical issues of macroeconomics and microeconomics, including national income accounts such as GDP, inflation and deflation, growth and stagnation, and regulation; explain the internal pillars of the UAE economy and how the national economy is integrated externally into the GCC and global economy, especially with respect to natural resources; analyze the potential impact of conflicts on the global economy; and analyze the uses of economic concepts for strategy.

This course will enable students to apply the basic concepts of International Relations through specific case studies. Students in the course will also analyze the role of the diplomatic instrument of national power in serving national interests.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to describe, discuss and analyze major concepts of international relations, of both scholars and practitioners; apply basic concepts of diplomacy to new international situations and events; analyze the roles, tasks, and interests of international alliances and NGOs; understand the pillars of IR built on international law, including the role of military power; and understand the use of diplomatic power to achieve state goals.

This course examines defense components in the United Arab Emirates and the importance of cooperation in comprehensive national development.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to evaluate the roles of Armed Forces, Police, and Civil Defense in the UAE in the management of defense resources; identify UAE defense components and analyze their role in the comprehensive national development (including internal security and crisis and disaster management issues); synthesize a framework to evaluate defense components in a manner that serves national decision-making; and understand the participation of UAE Armed Forces in peacekeeping and humanitarian aid operations at regional and international levels.

This course examines the impact of information tools and cyber instruments on policy and strategy. In addition, this course aims to explore the impact of social media, weaknesses in cyberspace infrastructure, the challenges of managing information, and the difficulties in dealing with cyber warfare threats and activities. The course will also include an examination of the application of traditional laws of armed conflict to the new cyber domain. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to articulate a current perspective on information and information communication technologies and bring that perspective to bear to respond to future threats and opportunities. They will be able to examine and analyze issues relating to the organization of the Internet and of governments’ response(s) to information and cyber threats, and explain and discuss concepts relating to the private sector and civilian government engagement in cyberspace.

This course examines the general concepts of crisis management and strategic planning, based on potential threats from human intent, accidents, and natural causes. The course seeks to support students’ skills in crisis action planning, and joint action and decision-making. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to describe, discuss and evaluate theories and concepts relevant to crisis management; explain, apply and analyze nationallevel strategic planning for crises, especially in the UAE; employ available national resources at the strategic level within a coordinated planning environment; make decisions effectively in crisis situations; and work with the media effectively in crisis situations.

This course draws all other courses and themes taught at NDC together in a climactic national security capstone practical exercise. This course reviews the elements/components of strategy – ends, ways and means – and develops critical thinking skills of students. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to apply critical and strategic thinking skills to national security challenges; synthesize themes taught about how domestic, national, transnational and international factors shape policy and strategy; and demonstrate competence to orchestrate all instruments of national power (diplomatic, military, economic, and information/cyber) to resource strategy.

This course is designed to examine the fundamental changes in the regional landscape, and will also discuss how global powers (the United States, European Union, Russia and China) have responded to unprecedented national and transnational developments since 2011. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to identify and evaluate current destabilizing factors and challenges to the UAE and the GCC region; and analyze contemporary controversial issues within the prevalent strategic context.

This course balances the goals of analysis and decision-making by applying research methodologies to strategic problems.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to create a research plan using the general approach of the scientific method to evaluate a selected security issue; apply as may be useful social science research approaches to support decision-makers at different levels; understand how the choice of methods shapes the generation of knowledge for policy-making and implementation; choose effective methods for communicating findings and recommendations serving decision- and policy-making; and create a capstone project.

The major academic product of the program is designed to enable students to create a research plan to evaluate the security environment, and the behavior of actors, and security decisions; apply as may be useful social science research approaches, including quantitative and qualitative analysis, case studies, cost-benefit analysis and tools, such as concept mapping, to support decision-makers at different levels; improve effective methods for communicating findings and recommendations focused on serving decision- and policy-making; and to create a capstone project for potential government use.

This course requires participants to analyze other nations' national security approaches to current issues and compare those approaches to the strategies of the UAE. During this course participants will travel internationally to meet with senior government officials, visit Ministries, Universities and Think Tanks, and evaluate the country-specific approaches they analyze for possible utility for the UAE. Prior to the travel period participants will have studied the national and regional context of the nations to be visited to understand the conditions under which those nations develop their approaches to national security. Upon completion of this course participants will brief the results of their evaluation and will have at least one of other national model or framework from which to develop approaches to national security issues during their future service.

This course uses an ongoing case study as a heuristic to identify and critique the moral theories and legal regimes that govern the conduct of modern war. Students will be introduced to the normative principles and sources of the law of armed conflict—the lex armorum, the Lieber Code, the Hague Conventions, the Geneva Conventions, other treaties and customary international law relating to means and methods of warfare, and relevant domestic and international caselaw—that authorize the use of force and permit combatants to kill lawfully while at the same time protecting categories of persons and objects. Through an analysis of war objectives and of specific issues arising in the conflict, including allegations of disproportionate attacks, deliberate attacks on civilians, the use of impermissible weapons and tactics, collective punishment of civilians, destruction of cultural property and infrastructure, and violation of the rights of detainees, students will learn that the creation, interpretation, implementation, observance, and adjudication of law generally and of the law of war particularly is a political process that, like all political processes, is governed by strategic interests and considerations.

This elective teaches negotiation theory and its practical application. Negotiation is one of the most important instruments in conflict resolution and is used routinely by all humans to resolve conflict and potential conflict successfully. Negotiation integrates the diplomatic and information elements of power and entails the use of these instruments to increase the information available, reduce the costs associated with decision making, discover new strategic options, identify threats and opportunities, and obtain objectives more effectively and efficiently. As such, it is a crucial tool in the strategist's arsenal. Negotiation skills are learned by understanding strategy and theory, and students will have the opportunity to experiment through classroom exercises and simulations. The class will encompass a combination of readings, discussion and in-class exercises in which students will conduct negotiations and roleplay. In-class negotiations will draw from many potential scenarios, including business transactions, international disputes, and labor and contract negotiations. Students will be evaluated based on class contribution, self and peer review and results achieved in the mock negotiations.

This course examines the history and theory of compulsory military recruitment, and then asks participants to analyze contemporary national service and compulsory military recruitment in other countries around the globe. The course begins with a survey of conscription, nationalism, democracy, and labor economics, and then examines two historical case studies with relevance for the UAE: Brazil and Switzerland. The last half of the course will consist of participant presentations on national service and compulsory military recruitment systems around the world today. Countries examined could include Finland, Russia, North Korea, Albania, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Vietnam, among others.

For over thirty years the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has been a forum for member countries to discuss common interests and regional challenges. Based in Abu Dhabi, the GCC is of particular interest to the UAE and offers a means for the UAE to achieve its national objectives. The purpose of this elective is to provide students with an opportunity to understand and analyze the opportunities and challenges of the GCC and then assess that will be required for future union. This course will also enable participants to understand and evaluate the opportunities of the UAE within the GCC. During the course each participant will develop a short briefing on a topic of import to the GCC.

This course explores the resourcing of strategy into the national budget. All strategies must be executed by government entities that plan, program, develop, and execute sub-strategies to meet national interests. Today’s decisions on force planning will fundamentally influence future strategy and force posture. Done well, such decisions and choices are a powerful investment in the future, done poorly, such decisions can bankrupt a nation. This course requires participants to think about resource decisions in a strategy driven way and will require an analysis of the UAE defense posture to link strategy to requirements and acquisition decisions.

Geography is deeply intertwined with Strategy, and any understanding of the context within which one is making or implementing strategy requires that he have some knowledge of Geopolitics. This is particularly true today, when competing forces seem to diminish and magnify the significance of geography. This course is designed to assist participants in developing an understanding of the significance of geopolitics, an ability to relate its broad lessons to the UAE’s own strategic environment, and to think strategically about how to best utilize this knowledge in pursuit of the UAE’s national interests.

This course is designed to give selected participants the opportunity to study the military profession, its ethos and standards of conduct, and its role in modern society, in order to gain a better understanding of the national security environment. Participants in this course will be required to write a short paper on the profession and discuss their findings to their fellow students during weeks nine and ten of the course.

The purpose of this course is to introduce participants to past and present non-traditional strategic leaders, largely from the Islamic world and Asia, to understand how these leaders applied or misapplied the elements of strategy to achieve their objectives. We look at range of leaders, starting with possibly the most famous strategist in the business world, and of Arab decent, Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs. We also look at the strategic approaches of H.H. Vice-President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Saladin, Khalid Ibn Waleed, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Gandhi, Mao and former leader of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew. This elective course gives the participants an opportunity to apply models of strategy used throughout the academic year to non-traditional strategists in areas of military, economic and political aims. It also provides participants an opportunity to compare and contrast the strategic approaches of different leaders.

This course is designed to give selected participants the opportunity to create a guided analytical study of a current strategic problem in order to develop proposed solutions for possible implementation by government officials. Students will have to select a faculty mentor and gain the approval of the Dean of the College to enroll in this course. Once approved, the participant will develop a working thesis and a plan of research and investigation in order to analyze the issue of concern and create potential solutions; the participant will be required to write a 10-15 page policy recommendation, brief findings to the faculty mentor in week nine, and then brief the results of the study to selected faculty and staff during week ten of the elective.

This elective uses cases drawn from past military campaigns to examine the employment of the military instrument of power in order to meet strategic aims. The conceptual frame is that area between strategy and operations, or between the outcome intended by the national leadership and the result obtained through military action. Rather than conducting a cursory examination of many different campaigns, you will focus on one famous example, as method of learning critical models and creative solutions to campaigning problems, and from there further learn by exploring cases relevant to contemporary operations. Finally, you will develop an operational concept, using the skills developed over the elective, for a hypothetical campaign against a contemporary threat. The elective begins by introducing the idea of the campaign, and explores fundamental concepts about time, space and forces in relation to higher objectives. From there, it introduces operational planning and decision-making models as a method for examining a series of classical cases drawn from the Peloponnesian War. You will then apply these models to the study of more modern campaigns, which required cooperation among air, land, sea and special operating forces, in conventional and unconventional wars. The elective concludes with a practicum on decision-making models introduced at the outset, which you already will have used to explore the historical cases.

Whenever we think, we do so for a purpose, from a given point of view, using assumptions that lead to implications and consequences. We use data, facts, and experiences to draw inferences and make judgments based on concepts and theories, to answer a question or to solve a problem. We follow this chain of reasoning whether we are carrying out routine day-to-day intellectual tasks or making momentous decisions that will have strategic implications for the security of the nation. To become effective strategic thinkers, participants should understand elements of reasoning, have an informed view of intellectual standards, and develop essential thinking skills. They should be familiar with their own intellectual styles, and be able to identify the intellectual styles of others. However, it is not enough for a strategic thinker to understand fallacies in logic or idiosyncrasies among staff or senior leaders. Strategic thinking must inform, and enable, effective decisions. Participants should learn to weigh evidence and to make arguments that will inform such decisions.

This course will study the disciplines within counter-violent-extremism scholarship, strategies, and policies. This course will not be a survey of violent extremist organizations—although each Participant will choose one for her/his final course paper and presentation. Why after 15 decades of fighting certain violent extremist groups—whether Hezbollah or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—do we still not have a cogent worldwide or even regional strategy to defeat such groups? From the jungles of South America to those in the Philippines, allied governments continue to struggle to defeat violent extremist organizations especially regarding civil-society-centric approaches. This course will study strategic hypotheses along with strategic successes of counter-revolutions and government efforts that may help to inform more effective future policy to enduringly defeat some streams of violent-extremist growth, influence, incursion, and strength.

This course examines the concept and terminology and theories of military strategy, which provides an opportunity for learners to grasp military strategy and military policy with a focus on the role of the armed forces in maintaining national interests, and methods of making strategic military decisions to contribute to national security. Note: Arabic language course.

The purpose of this elective is to provide the course members with a detailed appraisal of the role played by nuclear weapons in world politics, with an emphasis on the implications for the UAE national security. More than six decades after their invention, nuclear arms shape the international security environment more than any other arsenal. They trigger arms races in several regions of the world, they still constitute a central part of global power plays between the US, China and Russia and they also represent a major component of alliance politics through the mechanism of extended deterrence (e.g.: NATO or US-Japan Treaty). Overall, understanding the role of these weapons does not only help to read technical or operational implications but it allows us to grasp national security strategies and potential regional conflicts.

Information is a critical component of a nation’s strength and an essential instrument of its national power. The information instrument is broadly understood to include intelligence, public diplomacy, cyber power, and even the strength and resilience of a country’s civil society and information economy. The role of the media is crucial to all of these capabilities and an informed professional media is a national asset. Governments regulate and defend telecommunications networks and play a large role in providing the technical and legal environment in which media production can flourish. Beyond governments, the overwhelming majority or information and communication originates in civil society, as technology enables individual citizens to receive virtually unlimited information with almost no time delay from around the world. The technology, law, and policy underlying all of these activities in cyberspace is complex and rapidly changing, providing great rewards for the agile and informed -and posing great threats to governments and civil actors which are not. The United Arab Emirates has made large investments in these areas, and is poised to reap even larger benefits in the near future. This course examines the use of information and the media as crucial tools in national security in information collection, public diplomacy, cyber activities, and in a vibrant information society of informed and connected citizens.

Ever wonder why US generals fondly refer to the UAE as “Little Sparta?” It comes from Greek historian Thucydides. In this elective we take a deeper look at two pillars of Western strategy: Thucydides (author of the Peloponnesian War) and Machiavelli (author of The Prince). Thucydides’ account of the Greek civil war between Athens and Sparta is required reading for any serious student of international relations and anyone aspiring to be a geo-political strategist. Studying the dynamics of this war will provide insights into the minds of those involved in great power statecraft, including the thinking of George Bush’s justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, Mao’s revolution in China, the US decision to wage war in Vietnam, and Barak Obama’s pivot to Asia. During the second half of the elective we study Machiavelli, who provides insights into the statecraft of small princedoms operating in an environment of republican sentiments, great power rivalry, foreign power hegemony and competing religious authority. This elective is not for the casual listener, as there will be a lot of required reading. Since many participants might be unfamiliar with the historical context of these two strategists, the majority of the readings and lesson discussions will be in Arabic.

This course will explore classic and contemporary issues in international security through the media. The class will examine the origins of war, international terrorism, just-war theory, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. More broadly, the course will critically analyze central issues of human nature, wartime experiences, heroism, national identity, and the conception of the “other” through film and other forms of media. The goal of this elective is to prompt participants to examine their own assumptions historical narratives of security and recognize the relationship between culture, international relations, and security.