Your assignment is to explain a historical or current event in IR using the course concepts, models, and theories. Choose an event you wish to explain. Why did this event come about? Why did it unfold as it did? Answer these questions using IR concepts, models, and theories. Make a theoretically informed argument about the most powerful influences on state (and other actors, as relevant) behavior during this event. This argument must answer both of these questions: Why did this event come about? Why did it unfold as it did?
You will likely achieve clarity if you structure your paper to answer these questions. The theory/ies you choose will explain the causes of the event and/or how the event unfolded. Unfolded means how the event developed over time once it began. Example: the Cuban Missile Crisis after it began.
Make sure all of your evidence serves the task of speaking to (for or against) your answer.
This is a diagnostic paper, not a prescriptive paper. The diagnostic tools are the theories we covered in class.
Examples of events include but are from limited to the outbreak of a major war, responses to ethnic conflict, development initiatives, and creation and/or demise of major international institutions or treaties.
Spend some time in your paper developing the logic of your argument. Spend the most time providing evidence for your argument. Think hard about what kind of evidence will best support your argument. Spend some time discussing the most prominent contending explanations and explain why yours is the most persuasive. Argue clearly, but do not be over-simplistic. Use facts. Avoid assertions.  Avoid adjectives and adverbs. You will need to do independent research as none of our readings provide enough data to make a convincing argument that answers the above questions. 
ESSAY REQUIREMENTS
You are required to have six pages minimum of text, then a bibliography. You are required to quote material from at least six books or academic journals that you found in the library. Academic journals are defined as those containing at least 10 foot/endnotes per major article. Feel free to consult other sources; this is a minimum requirement.
Please note the following: Your paper is to be a scholarly analytical research paper which contains a firm thesis or research question and employs systematic argument, evidence, and analysis in support of your thesis. You are not writing an opinion piece and you are not blogging. You are expected to use MLA format for footnotes, or endnotes, and bibliography. Your bibliography should be drawn primarily from scholarly books, journals, articles and chapters, NOT journalistic or non-academic online resources.