Worst-case scenarios are a teaching tool for this national security studies expert.

Volker Franke doesn't expect to see “Terrorism and Peacekeeping” on the New York Times bestseller list. The associate professor of Political Science and International Studies and one of his students wrote one of the chapters, and Franke edited the nearly 300-page compilation of national security case studies.

The book, Franke's third, will certainly be used to prepare and rehearse officials, policymakers and students in varied areas concerning national security. Professors may use it for class discussions in conflict resolution and terrorism.

But Franke sees its greatest value with the high-level military and civilian participants in programs such as the National Security Studies based at Syracuse University, where he directs the case-study program that provides training and practice to officials in whose hands U.S. security rests.

Justin Reed '03 co-authored the chapter “Squeezing the Balloon: Plan Colombia and America 's War on Drugs.” Reed worked closely with Franke during his four years at McDaniel, and the case study began as Reed's honors thesis.

Professor and student have kept in contact the past two years, although Reed is in Tucson working with special-needs students at Catalina Foothills High School there. He begins graduate studies in International affairs at the University of Pittsburgh in August.

The Franke-Reed case study focuses on the drug war in Colombia, while other issues in the book include the Peru-Ecuador border dispute, peacekeeping in Bosnia, the U.S. response to the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings, the Iraq Liberation Act, and difficulties with building a U.S.-Russian space station.

None of the studies offers easy answers.

“Although the cases collected in (the) volume revolve around national security-related policy questions, they also illustrate more general policy dilemmas and are designed to stimulate discussion of those issues inside and beyond the classroom,” Franke writes in the introduction.

However, resolution of the cases presented in the book is solely at the discretion of the reader.

“(The cases) present evidence in support of both – or more – sides of a policy argument and will often leave readers with some discomfort in terms of how dilemmas should be resolved,” Franke's introduction continues.

“Terrorism and Peacekeeping,” published by Praeger, is available in the McDaniel College bookstore and Amazon.com.

For more information, contact Peggy Fosdick, director of communications, at 410-857-2293.