Secretary Gates on Academia and the Military
04.20.2008 at 02:02pm
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates 14 April 2008 speech to the Association of American Universities.
Topics included the state of relations between academia and the military, Human Terrain Team anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Minerva consortia to promote research relevant to national security, China, Iraq, religion and ideology, an ROTC initiative to improve foreign languages in the military, and what universities can do to support veterans.
The full transcript can be found here.
Does anyone have an expert opinion on the prognosis of the Human Terrain Terrain experiment? Does anyone see it surviving in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? Or, should DoD, DoS, USAID, etc., rely more on pre-conflict sociological analysis (e.g., don’t field HTTs, rather focus on trying to understand areas of potential conflict before entry)?
“A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking being done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”
– Thucydides