One of my political science electives at Clark was a course on US National Security. The course focused on exploring America's national security policies and actions through a lens of international relations theories. The course involved reading a lot of established literature on the subject, and writing argument analyses. One of the articles I read and analyzed was Richard Betts' article “The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of Terror,”. In my response, I analyzed his argument and evidence, discussing its strengths and the considerations that must be accounted for when applying it to contemporary contexts.