In the latter portion of the course we are going to consider a number of contemporary issues in international relations. Some of them are extremely broad (international political economics, war), others are just somewhat extremely broad (nuclear proliferation, terrorism). Either way, we are only going to scratch the surface of these issues. I would like to give you an opportunity to dig a little deeper into some issue in contemporary international relations. In this assignment I ask you to pick a topic of interest – it could be something like a specific event (a war between two countries, a nonmilitary conflict like Iran’s potential nuclear weapons, etc.) or something broader but thematic (global warming, the 2008 economic crisis). The key is going to be picking a topic that is narrow enough to deal with in an 2000-2500 word paper (that’s roughly 8 to 10 pages). Once you have your topic, you should use the paper to answer the following questions about it: