My name is Adam Quinn I’m a senior lecturer
here at the Political Science and International
Studies Department my research is on the United
States on International Politics and bringing
those two things together on United States
Foreign Policy. I'm working right now on some
publications about the power of the United
States and the International system its military
strength it's economic strength its political
strength in the international system and about
the issue of the rising powers and how the
United States is going to maintain its position
as the leading power in the international
system over the course of the years and decades
to come. I'm also interested in the domestic
politics of the United States in particular
and how that connects with its foreign policy
there are a lot of arguments within the United
States about the kind of world power that
it wants to be should it be a nationalistic
power that's trying to increase its own wealth
and its own military strength relative to
others or should it be trying to build a world
order that's much more liberal in its characteristics
and spread its ideological ideas around the
world what is the national interest of the
United States is not something that is already
objective and decided it's something that
Americans fight about amongst themselves a
lot and I’m very interested in those arguments
and how they relate to the foreign policy
that it then pursues in the world. I teach
a couple of modules within the department
both on United States foreign policy one for
undergraduates and one for people taking our
MA programme it's called Contemporary United
States Foreign and Security Policy for undergraduates
and US Foreign and Defence Policy for our
MA students that covers a lot of really contemporary
issues in regards to US foreign policy today
we talk about American policy in the middle
east nuclear proliferation terrorism relations
with Russia relations with china relations
with European allies new threats like cyber
security etc. and we try to keep that as up
to date as possible these are all moving issues
changing all the time in the news and I keep
very much up to date with that I’m on social
media a lot sharing articles for the benefit
of the students as we go along sometimes I
even write things online or appear on radio
or TV myself to talk about some of these things
so we try and make sure that it's really up
to the minute and a discussion of the current
policy dilemmas facing US policy makers but
we also try to put those things into context
on the modules to try and make sure that the
people doing the module come away with a sense
of the history of the United States with relation
to a lot of these issues that they understand
the institutions that are used in the making
of US foreign policy so that we don't all
obsess about the president we know that there
are a lot more actors in the American system
and we also try to think about the long term
driving factors of American foreign policy
the economic drivers the ideological drivers
the quest for security and power these things
that over the longer term we can see shaping
the United States relates to the particular
issues that come up so I hope that by the
time people come away from taking these modules
they are able to really arrive a decision
about what they think about some of these
issues that are more mature and informed and
consistent than the ones that they would have
started out with and that they can develop
the ability to think in a critical and informed
way about some of these things that people
are talking about around them.
