The last course meeting was also devoted to a discussion of the future, drawing heavily on Steel and student responses to him. Temptations was a good choice to end the course for at least two reasons. The book and the thinking it generated, in other words, gave the students the opportunity to apply their knowledge to issues and circumstances outside the realm of the course. This reopened a consideration of the way in which public concern in the areas of human rights violations can have an impact, in comparison to the effect of economic and business interests on issues such as copyright protections. In pursuing this line of reasoning further, the students also had to reconsider the processes and actors of foreign policy.
Public opinion has a different role in foreign policy making than in domestic policy, for instance.
So too do the news media. A reconnection of foreign policy and domestic policy means that these actors will perform differently from before in the processes of policy making. Throughout the course we had applied, among other things, insights about the way that bureaucracies work to a wide range of foreign policy decisions and implementation. In considering some of the issues that Steel raised about the need to cut military spending some students wrote or spoke about the barriers to substantial spending reductions that result from bureaucratic resistance to budget cuts, the maintenance of bureaucratic essential missions, and the professional self-interest of bureaucrats. Clearly, the students made arguments of varying cogency, coherence, and persuasiveness, but they did gather and use argumentation and evidence from throughout the course and their own experience to fashion an explanation of specific policy issues and the relevant processes and actors that would be involved.