Academics and Soft Power

Pentagon To Consult Academics On Security
(New York Times)…Patricia Cohen, June 18, 2008

Eager to embrace eggheads and ideas, the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation’s brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism.

But if the uncustomary push to engage the nation’s evolutionary psychologists, demographers, sociologists, historians and anthropologists in security research — as well as the prospect of new financial support in lean times — has generated excitement among some scholars, it has also aroused opposition from others, who worry that the Defense Department and the academy are getting too cozy.

Mr. Gates has stressed the importance of devoting resources to what he calls “ ‘soft power’, the elements of national power beyond the guns and steel of the military.”