Modernization Theory is Hokum.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I fully agree that it is not the Army's job to engage in social engineering, and I'd take it a step farther and say that any attempt by the US government to engage in social engineering, through any agency, should be viewed with great suspicion.

But governments do it all the time. They do it through inoculation programs that skew the population density. They do it through the tax code that favors married couples or by deciding who can marry who. They do it through any number of rules that regulate your life "for the better". They don't call it social engineering, but the result is the same.

So is the social engineering the Army is directed to do just "the continuation of policy by other means"?

Isn't it our policy to spread democracy?

If it is, isn't it our job to mold the population of our target country/population; to till the soil so that it can accept the seeds of representative government?

While I don't like it, I am not sure I can make a cogent argument against it.