The Dearing Dialogue

Packer writes a bit on the use of Human Terrain Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan in his New Yorker blog on July 20th.  He sees a growing relationship between social scientists and soldiers, a mixture typically considered taboo in the past.  The professionalization of both sides of the spectrum, coupled with theoretical and practical “antagonisms” led to what Packer explains as “isolated American sub-culutres”. 

This year, the Army is actually deploying teams of social scientists with units in Baghdad and Afghanistan (…) The best soldiers I met in Iraq were eager to share critical views with professors and journalists. This past spring, when McMaster led a group of officials and private citizens to Iraq to assess progress there, he picked as one member an anti-war British political-science professor who happens to know a great deal about the country. Desperate times breed desperate measures. 

While the disconnect between American culture and military culture has often caused the military to be shunned from college campuses in the past, and created contempt amongst the military community (as international relations professor Andrew Bacevich often writes about), the divisions are becoming less prominent.  Both sides are beginning to realize the utiliy of the other and that moral and political compromises are essential towards forging a coherent plan of success in US foreign policy.  Packer is indeed correct when he ends: 

But a superpower can hardly afford to have its thinkers and its warriors despise and avoid one another.

Also see:  DNI Conference

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