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MIL THEORY GOES MAINSTREAM

It’s rather nice to see the esoteric theory topics I kick around here in conjunction with sites like The Small Wars Council, DNI, Tom Barnett and John Robb’s blogs and the circle of related bloggers, are penetrating the mainstream press. Some recent examples:

William Lind in UPI

Max Boot citing the Small Wars Journal

“War without limits” by Christopher Shea in the Boston Globe (hat tip to Dr.Ralph Luker)

Thomas Barnett’s frequent appearances in columns by David Ignatius going back several years

This is a good thing. While there is a healthy tendency in our online alternative defense thinking community to disagree, at times caustically, there is a shared consensus that the current structure, strategy and appropriations process for America’s armed forces are ill-suited to the challenges facing the United States.

Change is required and change will only come when the ideas that we have been batting around on blogs, discussion boards and ( in a few instances ) books, penetrates the mass media and gets into the minds of the political class and the voting public. Maximizing attention on the ideas, rather than being distracted by infighting or loose cannon comments, is the route we need to go.

ON ANTHROPOLOGY AND WAR

Historians, with their methodological emphasis on documentary evidence tend to look somewhat askance at the other social sciences, excepting economics and political science ( in that order). Back in my graduate student days I recall my professors treating economic studies with seriousness, poli sci articles with some respect and cracking jokes at the expense of sociology.

Anthropology, on the other hand, was summarily ignored. Unfortunate for me, as the discipline has as much practical application on matters of societal analysis as does history, economics or psychology. Studying WWII is enhanced by reading OSS psychological profiles of top Nazi leaders or Ruth Benedict’s classic -and aptly named –The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.

One of the more interesting characters on The Small Wars Council is Dr. Marc Tyrrell, a professional anthropologist, whose insights I have found well worth reading on many a thread (like this one on “Military Totemism” – how’s that for an esoteric topic?). Well, The Small Wars Journal has an article by Dr. Tyrrell this quarter entitled “Why Dr. Johnny Won’t Go To War: Anthropology and The Global War on Terror“(PDF). Tyrrell puts the field of anthropology and the influence of Franz Boas ( Benedict’s mentor, also Margaret Meade’s and the father of the standard social science model and cultural relativism) into the context of the war on terrorism. An interesting piece from which learned a few things, an excerpt:

“Boas combined very strong methodologies and a sound theoretical basis with a ruthless political outlook in his drive to professionalize North American Anthropology – a discipline that he and his students ended up controlling….by the end of WWI. This institutional control….decreased importance of Anthropology as an intelligence source, led to a total reformatting of the ethics of research.”

Read the rest here.

WAR IN A WEB 2.0 WORLD

From the Hoover Institution – ” War 2.0” by Thomas Rid. Courtesy of The Small Wars Council.

Yes, yes, posting has been light this week due to my fighting off a bad cold and doing some other writing on the side. Things should be back to normal soon.