Three wars, a weak economy and a massive federal budget deficit. This is no time for cliquishness between science geeks, tough guys and political pros. But the cultural chasm between all three is growing more severe, warn two national security professors at the Naval War College.
A trip to most university campuses will testify to the Balkanization. Engineering students are hived off in separate facilities, distinct from the liberal arts education that tomorrow?s political elites tend to prefer. And if military outreach like the Reserve Officers Training Corps is even allowed on campus, it?s too often disconnected from either.
Specialization is a necessary part of education and professional development. But it may be going too far, argue Joan Johnson-Freese and Thomas M. Nichols, forming ?tribes? with separate values. ?Scientists and engineers focus on hard facts and universal methods, while political experts are driven by contingency and possibility,? they write in World Politics Review. ?Military officers are a third tribe, who from their early commissioning develop loyalty to their services and to the uniformed ethos.?
That leads to dangerous and expensive imbalances between what politicians expect, what engineers can deliver and what troops have to endure. Johnson-Freese and Nichols? case studies: nukes, space policy and missile defense.
The country isn?t as space-mad as it was during the Cold War, so it doesn?t invest as much in astrophysics. But there?s a strategic and military argument for militarizing space, leading politicos and military figures toward the extreme of seeking ?total control? of space. That can ?tempt supporters to ignore pesky impediments like the laws of physics,? the two professors write, ?which they assume can be solved by people they respect but whose expertise they do not understand.?
Technical expertise gets short shrift in the nuclear and missile defense debates, too, they contend. No one?s asking an engineer ?if missile defense is a viable solution to the horrific threat of nuclear warheads carried on missiles, and political analysts do not care about the difficulties involved in developing hardware.? That?s a recipe for a president relying ?on a system that technical experts cannot assure him will work but that political advisers insist must be brandished.?
But it?s not always a case of science-illiterate politicians setting unrealistic goals. During the Cold War, missile experts were fluent in the language of throw weights and trajectories of a Soviet weapon but ?knew little about the leaders who would launch it.? Today, they don?t know how to sell their products inside the bureaucracy or make a technical case to the public.
Johnson-Freese and Nichols wrote a short polemic. Consequently, it doesn?t tell the full story. Often, the military is a bridge between the geeks and the politicos. The Navy?s made a big push to promote so-called STEM education ? science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the stuff you need to know to design a better hull or build a laser weapon. And it?s a leader in promoting awareness of global warming, emphasizing that melting icecaps are creating new sea lanes that will change the global economic and strategic landscape. Whatever the woes of the Army?s Human Terrain System, it still represents a concerted effort by the Army to branch out into anthropological and social fields that were alien to it in the past. And the interplay between the military and politics is a never-ending Constitutional dynamic that all sides, appropriately, scrutinize.
That still leaves politicians largely distant from technical experts. There?s no easy fix. But Johnson-Freese and Nichols warn starkly that it?s not a luxury the nation can afford.
Photo: U.S. Air Force
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Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/04/if-geeks-troops-and-politicos-dont-unite-were-all-gonna-die/
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