This is an introductory undergraduate course in international relations. It aims to address both empirical issues and fundamental theories/concepts related to international relations. It is particularly appropriate for first-year students who took Introduction to Political Science.

It is a daunting task to provide a short, accessible introduction to such a complex topic as “international relations.” The discipline of international relations is to study the relations between states. In order to generalize about the relations of over 190 states, all different in size, power, and other attributes, and all acting against the backgrounds of their individual national traditions, it is necessary to have at least some working general hypothesis or model. It is also increasingly concerned not only with the different states and their interactions but also with the study of international society as a whole and of its institutions and processes.

The ultimate goal of this course is to detect the main directions of the times we are living in. Some call it the post-Cold World War Era; others the era of globalization. In so doing, we would have to look at: main actors (state and non-state), foreign behaviors of those actors, the international system (bi-polar, multi-polar, hegemony, or empire), international organizations (the UN and EU), world economic problems today, and world ecological problems (environment and resources).