Activity Eight

This activity is to accompany Unit Three of the Curriculum Guide.

Incorporating the C.E.L.s:

• Independent Learning
• Critical & Creative Thinking
• Personal & Social Values & Issues

Concepts Application Lesson for:

• National Sovereignty
• Expressions of Power
• Policy Options
• Consequences

This concept application activity allows students to investigate how the consequences of past policy decisions affect how governments make future policy decisions. The historic context for this activity is postwar Europe. The activity also permits students to compare contemporary events/policies to historic events/policies.

Knowledge Objectives

The student will:

• know that national sovereignty and the well-being of the nation is of primary importance to national leaders when defining policies and determining policy options;
• know that foreign policies are influenced by domestic considerations;
• know that power may be expressed by nations through a number of mechanisms including the use of force, the use of influence, and economic/monetary actions; and,
• know that the consequences of specific policy options will influence the formation of policies and actions taken by governments.

Skills Objectives

The student will:

• practise identifying connections, interactions and arrangements of parts;
• practise developing criteria that may be used to evaluate other situations;
• practise describing cause and effect relationships; and,
• practise using grids to organize information and to analyze the similarities and differences between two concepts.

Values Issues

The student will:

• discuss whether it is "morally" justifiable for one nation to attempt to impose its values, economic and political policies, on another nation;
• discuss whether the success of a particular political/economic system instituted in one nation will guarantee the same success in another nation;
• discuss conditions that make it difficult to successfully apply a particular political-economic system in different nations; and,
• discuss whether it is more justifiable for a nation to use economic controls/influences rather than military force to influence/control the affairs of another nation.

Outline of the Activity

Have the students discuss how a nation can demonstrate its power. Note that military force is only one instrument of national power.

• Discuss whether military force is more effective than economic aid in preventing communist takeovers of economically distressed nations. Use several contemporary examples from Latin America and Asia.

Review the economic and political situation throughout most of Europe in 1945. Discuss the following issues:

• Why were the communist parties of many European nations popular after the war?
• Why were traditional forms of economic and political organization discredited after the war?
• What would be the best strategy to meet the needs of the European populace and to reduce the mass appeal of communism?
• Is it "morally" justifiable for one nation to impose its economic/political/cultural system on another nation?

Have the students prepare grids showing the short-term and long-term implications of using military and economic options to meet the needs of Europe in 1946.