This intensive summer Module has five goals. Firstly, it will provide students with a solid grounding in International Relations concepts and theories. It will flash out the strengths and weaknesses of key IR theories, using case studies. Secondly, this Module will focus on Great Powers competition and conflict over the past few centuries, which led to the birth of the field of International Relations and development of various IR concepts and theories. Thirdly, this course will provide students with a comparative approach which will help them understand the rise and fall of various international systems beginning with the Westphalian system. Fourthly, considerable emphasis will be placed on the period of classical European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries and informal American imperialism after World War II. Finally, the students will be introduced to the great debate about American decline and the end of the American century and the rise of a new international system?