Military Institutions “Teaching to a Military Audience: Keep It Simple, Keep It Real(ist)”

Valença discusses the pitfalls and strategies of teaching IR theories to military audiences. A peculiarity of military audiences is that they are interested in how the content they learn in class can be applied to their military profession and how to assess the decision making process. This chapter address such concerns. Valença shares his experience as a professor at the Brazilian Naval War College and provides a pragmatic approach to IR theories course to military audiences. By combining traditional IR approaches, Brazilian foreign policy case studies, and a little touch of a much needed critical perspective for Global South students, Valença bridges the gap between theory and practice and provides an IR course that offers the problem solving tools a military audience needs to strategize.