Wired’s 2008 Smart list

[SWJED]

Wired’s 2008 Smart list

Wired Magazine’s latest issue lists the 15 people their staff believes the next President should listen to. Of particular interest to SWJ is the inclusion of Dr. Montgomery McFate. McFate a cultural anthropologist who works on defense and national security issues and is currently serving as the Senior Social Science Adviser for the US Army’s Human Terrain System Program in her capacity as a Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analysis.

From Use Anthropology in Military Planning by Wired’s Noah Shachtman:

… Traditionally, the military has relied almost solely on so-called hard sciences like nuclear physics and electronics. But as a simple regime-change operation in Iraq descended into a baffling counterinsurgency, it became clear that you can have the most advanced sensors, the toughest armor, the most precise GPS-guided munitions, but without any insight into the civilian population - or at least some sense of how they'll react to your moves - your war effort is sunk.

By 2004, McFate had made her way into the national security establishment as a researcher at Rand. (This despite an unusual background — she grew up on a barge in the San Francisco Bay and had hung out with well-known beat poets.) McFate's ideas (shared by a growing number in the military) caught the attention of the science adviser to the joint chiefs of staff. She then codified them in a pair of landmark articles in Military Review outlining a rationale and strategy for integrating the social sciences into national defense. Today she is the senior social science adviser for the Human Terrain System, a $130 million Army program that embeds political science, anthropology, and economics specialists with combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. "What you're trying to do is understand the people's interests," she says. "Because whoever is more effective at meeting the interests of the population will be able to influence it."…

More at Wired.

[William F. Owen]

She wrote on a cocktail napkin: "How do I make anthropology relevant to the military?"

Huh? In the true spirit of learning, and education, can someone direct me at a thread or some material that answers why Anthropologists have any operational utility at all? - and yes I am aware of the Human Terrain Teams, but are they working?

It's just that lots of insurgencies have been defeated without anthropologists, and none of the COIN texts, I respect ever mentions them. Thus the source of my curiosity.

[jmm99]

Before those with expertise weigh in on HTTs, I offer a little point to Wilf.

Anthropology = study of anthropos (man), with an emphasis on field work of a close and personal kind.

That sounds like what any good infantry soldier does as a matter of course. Know the enemy and discover what makes him tick - and then end the ticking.

So, I suggest that all defeated insurgencies have involved application of anthropology - we just don't call it that.

-----------------------------------------
There is, of course, a sound reason for excluding Ms. McFate from the list:

She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale University

http://www.usip.org/specialists/bios...es/mcfate.html

The degree from Yale is fine.

[Stan]

The good Doctor may have Jack to do with improving our COIN (God, I hate that term already), but she and others are making up for the Army's sad excuse of preparing soldiers to deal with strange people in foreign countries.

The Doctor has my vote. She and her counterparts are, in their own little way, saving soldiers lives.

Hmmm, wonder what she'd have to say about Tom

[Beelzebubalicious]

Or Tom's Abs....oh never mind.

I think JM99 hit it on the head. Anthropology, for better or worse, has become the vehicle for better understanding/awareness and interaction with the local population.

I work in international development. We do needs assessments, talk to our clients, figure out what they want/need (demand) and then try to design programs/projects to meet those needs. In the process of assessment you learn something, but more importantly, you develop relationships, respect and trust which you then use to move your programs/project forward. It's not anthropology, it's just good practice. International development practitioners have a different mission, though.

That's the difference, as stated by JM99

That sounds like what any good infantry soldier does as a matter of course. Know the enemy and discover what makes him tick - and then end the ticking.

The issue is the population is not the enemy, but the soldier does need to understand them and their needs and try to address them. Security is one need and it can be dealt with by getting rid of the enemy. But there are other needs that can be met and if you're honest and serious about meeting those other needs, maybe the population will help you with the security piece.

[jmm99]

means to me, three basic options

1. Convert

2. Contain

3. Kill

After reading the phrase "end the ticking" again, I can see where it would be perceived as heading to the 3rd option only.

So, the population is the enemy - and the population is not the enemy - and the population is in between - a paradox. How to discern ?

And, I think you all have a much tougher job than I have.

[William F. Owen]

The issue is the population is not the enemy, but the soldier does need to understand them and their needs and try to address them. Security is one need and it can be dealt with by getting rid of the enemy. But there are other needs that can be met and if you're honest and serious about meeting those other needs, maybe the population will help you with the security piece.

Sorry to have missed this, but...

Concur that the population may not be the enemy and the security of the population is the primary mission. As I have said before, it makes sense to also prevent death and suffering, as part of the military mission, but I cannot see why the military should be meeting the other social needs.

If soldier are ensuring my safety, do I really want their resources, time and energy to be building or even guarding the new school?

Again, if deployed Anthropologists help the physical security/health situation then I am all for them. Anything beyond that leaves me confused.

[NoahShachtman]

Huh? In the true spirit of learning, and education, can someone direct me at a thread or some material that answers why Anthropologists have any operational utility at all?

While McFate may have written only about "anthropology" on that cocktail napkin, I think the real question is how can the broader social sciences contribute to military efforts. And I think most COIN practitioners would agree that securing the population is awfully hard without a knowledge of the local history, economy, and political and cultural contours.

"Anthropology" may not be mentioned in FM 3-24, or other COIN texts. But the social sciences sure are. Like JM said, "all defeated insurgencies have involved application of anthropology - we just don't call it that."

nms

[William F. Owen]

While McFate may have written only about "anthropology" on that cocktail napkin, I think the real question is how can the broader social sciences contribute to military efforts. And I think most COIN practitioners would agree that securing the population is awfully hard without a knowledge of the local history, economy, and political and cultural contours.

"Anthropology" may not be mentioned in FM 3-24, or other COIN texts. But the social sciences sure are. Like JM said, "all defeated insurgencies have involved application of anthropology - we just don't call it that."

nms

Jmm99 and Noah,
I take conflict as Human Centric.

Clausewtiz basically took the study of war to be the study of people. All the great military theorists have basically taken the same line (which is how to separate them from the technophiles, and agenda monkeys).

Military thought is a "social science". I would like it to be based a little more on some empirical study, but that's my thing - yes, I am that boring!

I am sure one or two anthropologists, psychologists, and other "human science" folk can help, and if they can make useful and explicit statements that make operations more effective, then great, but didn't we already do this? The British Secret Service recruited T.E. Lawrence, because he knew and had worked with the Arabs. Haven't US Special Forces studied languages and cultures for 40 something years. I know old time USSF guys who speak Lao, Thai, Chinese and even some tribal languages.

A sound study military told us what worked. People like Foch wrote it all down - then we suddenly discovered Manoeuvre Warfare! - instead of suggesting people read Foch.

[selil]

Jmm99 and Noah,
I take conflict as Human Centric......A sound study military told us what worked. People like Foch wrote it all down - then we suddenly discovered Manoeuvre Warfare! - instead of suggesting people read Foch.

Mostly all true. Yet in the 1970s through the 1990s the military of the United States basically turned its back on all things academia and social science. In fact after having read the special issue from Academic Questions on the military that has been the case since the beginning. The military has always had a hard science bend to it, and in fact the academies and land grant colleges were engineering and "hard" science institutions (Hence why they are A&M or Tech).

I'm not sure we can just throw Foch up as the answer to all questions anymore than we should be willing to do so with Clausewitz. The reality is an ongoing discussion is a creative endeavor and any discipline without a body of literature is in peril.

[William F. Owen]

I'm not sure we can just throw Foch up as the answer to all questions anymore than we should be willing to do so with Clausewitz. The reality is an ongoing discussion is a creative endeavor and any discipline without a body of literature is in peril.

Concur. I merely cite Foch in defence of MY opinions of MW. Foch without Clausewitz is like Pizza without mayonnaise. Both are required to ruin your shirt and upset your wife!

[120mm]

Mostly all true. Yet in the 1970s through the 1990s the military of the United States basically turned its back on all things academia and social science. In fact after having read the special issue from Academic Questions on the military that has been the case since the beginning. The military has always had a hard science bend to it, and in fact the academies and land grant colleges were engineering and "hard" science institutions (Hence why they are A&M or Tech).

I'm not sure we can just throw Foch up as the answer to all questions anymore than we should be willing to do so with Clausewitz. The reality is an ongoing discussion is a creative endeavor and any discipline without a body of literature is in peril.

It seemed to me that the "back turning" was mutual. Universities and colleges worked as hard as possible to make campuses an unfriendly place for the military, by and large, except when it came to accepting military dollars.

I think we can find more parallels of inbred ideas and groupthink as well between modern college campuses (campii?) and the "Big Army." I submit that both institutions have suffered from this self-induced separation, and are just now coming to grips that they have to make this marriage work.

I recently had lunch with a group of grad students from two different Universities and was struck by how scientific and unbiased they appeared, compared to the raging Marxist idealogues I went to school with in the mid-80s. Or the "the only solution is to kill all the White Men" students I met in the mid-90s.