Abstract
In the early 1960s, Marine counterinsurgency expert Colonel T. N. Green reflected on the nature of the Cold War. He warned: “Two weapons today threaten freedom in our world. One—the 100-mega-ton hydrogen bomb—requires vast resources of technology, effort and money…. The other—a nail and a piece of wood buried in a rice paddy—is deceptively simple, the weapon of a peasant.” As new nations emerged from decaying empires—thirty-seven former colonies had declared their independence by 1960—Soviet political and ideological expansion appeared as threatening to the United States as nuclear arms. In the minds of policymakers, military men, and scholars, political instability and economic deprivation in the developing nations were powerful incubators for Communist revolution. To win the ideological battle, Greene argued, “the first essential is knowledge—knowledge about the enemy himself.” The Cold War drew the United States into areas long peripheral to U.S. military and diplomatic policy; as never before, the attitudes, beliefs, and frustrations of the peoples of the geopolitical periphery mattered in Washington. Senator J. W. Fulbright echoed Greene’s claim: “Only on the basis of understanding our behavior can we hope to control it in such a way as to ensure the survival of the human race.”1
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Notes
T. N. Greene, “Introduction,” in The Guerrilla—And How to Fight Him: Selections from the Marine Corps Gazette, ed. T.N. Greene (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962),
v. J. William Fulbright, “Preface,” in Sanity and Survival: Psychological Aspects of War and Peace, ed. Jerome D. Frank (New York: Random House, 1967), x.
Harold K. Johnson, “The Army’s role in nation building and preserving stability,” Army Information Digest 20 (November 1965): 13.
William A. Lybrand, “Foreword,” in Proceedings of the Symposium “The U.S. Army’s Limited-War Mission and Social Science Research” ed. William A. Lybrand (Washington: Special Operations Research Office, 1962), vii.
Joy Rohde, “Gray matters: Social scientists, military patronage, and democracy in the Cold War,” Journal of American History 96 (2009): 99–122. On social scientists’ dual commitment to liberal democracy and social control, see Hunter Heyck in this volume.
Noam Chomsky, et al., The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years (New York: New Press, 1997);
Ron Theodore Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military-Industrial Complex (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001);
and Mark Solovey, “Project Camelot and the 1960s epistemo-logical revolution: Rethinking the politics-patronage-social science nexus,” Social Studies of Science 31 (2001): 171–206.
On the World War II origins of Cold War social research projects and the intellectual and organizational problems such efforts created, see David C. Engerman, this volume. On the history and purpose of FCRCs, see U. S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, A History of the Department of Defense Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995). For SORO’s contract, see: U.S. Army, Official Contract, typescript, April 17, 1956, SORO-973 File, Box 10, Entry 1393, Records of the Army Staff, RG 319, National Archives, College Park. For SORO’s budget, see Revised Budget, March 1, 1956–June 30, 1957, typescript, n.d., File 10, Box 3, Entry 156, RG 319; and Kai Rasmussen to Orlando C. Troxel, August 16, 1962, SORO/Origins File, Box 1, Special Operations Research Office Papers, American University Archives and Special Collections, Washington.
On the history of American University, see John R. Reynolds and Joanne E. King, Highlights in the History of the American University, 1889–1976 (Washington: Hennage Creative Printers, 1976). On overhead costs, see “Budget, Fiscal Year 1958,” typescript, Special Warfare: RAC, 1957 (U) File, Box 2, Entry 156, RG 319; and “Contract No. DAHC-19–67-C-0046,” typescript, July 1, 1967, 6, DAHC19–67-C-0046 The American University (CRESS) Basic Contract and Modifications File, Box 10, Entry 1393, RG 319. On staffing, see
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Gene M. Lyons and Louis Morton, Schools for Strategy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), 243–245.
For this network, see Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Lyons and Morton, Schools for Strategy; and
Bruce L. R. Smith, The RAND Corporation: Case Study of a Nonprofit Advisory Corporation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).
On Simulmatics Corporation, see Joy Rohde, “The last stand of the psycho-cultural cold warriors: Military contract research in Vietnam,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 47 (2011): 232–250.
Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell, eds., The Policy Sciences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951). Ritchie Lowry to Theodore R. Vallance, May 6, 1966, SORO 1966 File, Box 2, Special Operations Research Office Papers.
Ritche P. Lowry, “Changing military roles: Neglected challenges to rural sociologists,” Rural Sociology 30 (1965): 222.
“Remarks of Feonard W. Doob,” in Proceedings of the Symposium “The U.S. Army’s Limited-War Mission and Social Science Research” ed. Fybrand, 236. Ithiel de Sola Pool, “Introduction,” in Social Science Research and National Security, A Report Prepared by the Research Group in Psychology and the Social Sciences, by Ithiel de Sola Pool, et. al. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), 14.
Paul A. Jureidini and John M. Ford, An Ethnographic Summary of the Ethiopian Provinces of Harar and Sidamo (Washington: Special Operations Research Office, 1964).
N. A. FaCharite and E. W. Gude, “Project Revolt,” Army Information Digest 20 (February 1965): 39–41. For an overview of the academic approach to revolution, see Harry Eckstein, “Internal wars,” in Proceedings of the Symposium “The U.S. Army’s Limited-War Mission and Social Science Research” ed. Fybrand, 250–262.
Daniel Ferner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe, IF.: Free Press, 1958).
Seymour Martin Fipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1960).
Ted Gurr, “A causal model of civil strife: A comparative analysis using new indices,” American Political Science Review 62 (1968): 1105.
On Project Feader, see Department of the Army, Office of the Chief of Research and Development, Report of the Eleventh Annual Human Factors Research and Development Conference (Washington: Department of the Army, 1965), 349.
Harry Eckstein, A Theory of Stable Democracy (Princeton: Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center of International Studies Research Monograph 10, 1961), 47.
Donald F. M. Blackmer, The MIT Center for International Studies: The Founding Years, 1951–1969 (Cambridge, MA: MIT CIS, 2002), 192–199; Elinor Langer, “Foreign Research: CIA plus Camelot equals trouble for U.S. scholars,” Science, June 23, 1967, 1583–1584; Robin, Making of the Cold War Enemy; Solovey, “Project Camelot and the 1960s epistemological revolution.”
Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Defense Department Sponsored Foreign Affairs Research: Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Part I, Ninetieth Cong., Second sess., May 9, 1968, 20. For similar sentiments among elected officials, see Wayne Morse, “Dangers in government sponsorship of research on foreign policy and foreign areas,” Background 10 (1966): 123–130.
For the civilianization of social science, see Mark Solovey, “Senator Fred Harris’s National Social Science Foundation Proposal: Reconsidering federal science policy, natural science-social science relations, and American liberalism during the 1960s,” Isis, forthcoming March, 2012. On social scientists’ ethical debates, see: National Academy of Sciences, Division of Behavioral Sciences Advisory Committee on Government Programs in the Behavioral Sciences, Foreign Area Research: A Conference Report (Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, January 1967);
Ralph Beals, The Politics of Social Research: An Inquiry into the Ethics and Responsibilities of Social Scientists (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969); and Bryce Nelson, “Political scientists: More concern about political involvement, ethics,” Science, September 13, 1968, 1117.
For a sanitized version of AIR’s history, see John C. Flanagan, “The American Institutes for Research,” American Psychologist 39 (1984): 1272–1276. On the creation of the project in Korea, see the materials in 1303–1301 Korean Research Unit (65) Folder 2 File, Box 2, Entry 1295 C, RG 319. On its extension to Thailand, see Mark Mobius to Kenneth Karcher, March 24, 1967, 1303–1301 Thailand 1967 File, Box 2, Entry 1295C, RG 319.
On the continuation of SORO’s research, see: Doris M. Condit, Modern Revolutionary Warfare: An Analytical Overview (Kensington: AIR, 1973);
R. D. McLaurin and Suhaila Haddad, The Political Impact of U.S. Military Force in the Middle East (Washington: AIR, 1977); and
Ralph B. Swisher, Military Civic Action, 3 Vols. (Kensington: AIR, 1972).
Daniel S. Greenberg, “IDA: University-sponsored center hit hard by assaults on campus,” Science, May 17, 1968, 744–748. Judith Coburn, “University contractors cut ties with CRESS, HumRRO, Army’s two main centers of social, behavioral research,” Science, May 30, 1969, 1039–1041. Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 241–249.
Lorna Hahn, Look Again: Better Policies are Possible (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1996), 52.
On Jason, see Eric Wakin, Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1992), 54–55. “Kaufman, Howard Keva,” in American Men and Women of Science: Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Jaques Cattell Press, Twelfth Ed. (New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1973), 1196; and
Jasper Ingersoll, “Howard Keva Kaufman (1922–2000),” Journal of Asian Studies 60 (2001): 1247.
See for example: William E. Hazen and Abraham R. Wagner, Israeli Perceptions of American Security Policy: Current Trends and Future Alternatives (Alexandria: Abbott Associates, 1976);
R.D. McLaurin, Military Operations in the Gulf War: The Battle of Khorramshar (Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD: Human Engineering Laboratory, 1982), Technical Memorandum 13–82; and
Phillip P. Katz and R.D. McLaurin, Psychological Operations in Urban Warfare: Lessons from the 1982 Middle East War, (Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD: Human Engineering Laboratory, 1987), Technical Memorandum 12–87.
For the continued SORO paradigm in Asian studies, see: Lawrence E. Grinter, “How they lost: Doctrines, strategies, and outcomes of the Vietnam War,” Asian Survey 15 (1975): 1114–1132;
Lawrence E. Grinter, The Dragon Awakes: China’s Military Modernization, Trends and Implications (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, Air University, 1999); and Hahn, Look Again. For “technicians rather than scientists,” see Nelson, “Political Scientists,” 117–118.
For the persistence of 1950s-style anticommunist social science, see for example: Michael Charles Conley, The Mechanics of Subversion (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1977);
Phillip P. Katz, “Psychological aspects of military action: A critical survey,” in National Security: A Modern Approach, ed. Michael PL Louw (Pretoria: Institute for Strategic Studies, University of Pretoria, 1978), 179–186; and
Daniel C. Pollock, ed., The Art and Science of Psychological Operations: Case Studies of Military Application (Washington: Department of the Army, 1976).
Lisa Anderson, Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 62–63, 86.
Yaron Ezrahi, Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), Part III.
Cf. Roger L. Geiger, Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Leslie, Cold War and American Science, 233–256.
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© 2012 Mark Solovey and Hamilton Cravens
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Rohde, J. (2012). From Expert Democracy to Beltway Banditry: How the Antiwar Movement Expanded the Military-Academic-Industrial Complex. In: Solovey, M., Cravens, H. (eds) Cold War Social Science. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137013224_8
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