Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Andrew Exum

Be sure to read the speech given on Monday by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Association of American Universities in Washington.

Since 9/11, the U.S. and its allies have been involved in two prolonged counter-insurgency campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are low-tech conflicts in which anthropological skills and language training are often more important than high-tech weapons systems.

But as David Ucko pointed out in the most recent Orbis, a quick study of defense spending priorities reveals that large, expensive weapons systems better suited for a future conventional war with China continue to soak up more funds than training and equipment tailored for the counter-insurgency fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. Department of Defense anthropologist Montgomery McFate is fond of pointing out that the amount of money spent by the Pentagon on social science research annually is equal to just two and a half F-22 fighter-interceptors—a weapons system Gates complains has yet to fly a single mission in Iraq or Afghanistan, while soldiers on the ground remain in dire need of better language skills and cultural training to help navigate the population-centric battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates also understands the Department of Defense needs the help of America’s academy to develop these language skills, regional expertise, and cultural knowledge. As such, he went before the Association of American Universities on Monday prepared to be humble, self-depreciating, and charming in his effort to woo an academic community whose members often have an uneasy relationship with the uniformed military services.

Inevitably, the speech turned to the Human Terrain Teams in use in Iraq and Afghanistan which have provoked a furious reaction from an anthropological community still scarred by Project Camelot and other Cold War misadventures. McFate herself has been relentlessly targeted by the self-appointed mandarins of the anthropological community who have threatened to blacklist any anthropologist who dares work for the Pentagon. Gates addressed the subject with typical good humor:

At times, the lexicon we come up with for new programs appears almost designed to induce maximum paranoia. In that vein, “Human Terrain Teams” follows in the proud tradition of initiatives like:
• The Office of Special Plans;
• TALON Reporting System; and
• Total Information Awareness.
In reality, there is a long history of cooperation—as well as controversy—between the U.S. government and anthropology. Understanding the traditions, motivations, and languages of other parts of the world has not always been a strong suit of the United States. It was a problem during the Cold War, and remains a problem.

It is hard to imagine Donald Rumsfeld giving such a speech, but perhaps that is unfair. Gates, as the former president of Texas A&M University, is uniquely prepared to address the grievances and grudges of academia while at the same time making it clear that America needs the help of its regional studies experts and language scholars to help it carry out operations abroad in a way that best protects the lives and welfare of the innocents. He was right to extend an “olive branch” (as one headline put it) to academia. It remains to be seen whether or not he and the nation’s uniformed services gain a reciprocal response.