Making it official

I'm already de facto on hiatus from blogging, so I might as well come out and say it: I'm not going to be writing much, if anything, on the Duck for a bit longer.

Our regular readers may have noticed my lack of posting lately, and that I haven't contributed anything of substance in an even longer period of time.

The short explanation: I'm about midway through my junior-faculty leave, and I'm swamped with work. My book is due on January 15th, and, being my normal self, I've got a lot of other stuff I need to finish. So thanks to the rest of the team--particularly Rodger and Peter--for keeping things afloat.

I promise I'll return to serious posting by late January.

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Clear Images Produce a Cloudy Picture

This week new information emerged in the ongoing mystery as to what Israel bombed in Syria several months ago—much anticipated satellite imagery of the suspect site. These pictures below, originally printed in the NY Times, are commercial imagery, analyzed by David Albright at the Institute for Science and International Security (pdf of his report here). They show the critical before and after pictures—before the strike and just recently.* The smoking gun?



Sort of. Its clear that something was there, and, interestingly, its clear that Syria doesn’t want to discuss it—they’ve apparently already cleaned the site, plowing over whatever they had initially build. As the NYT reported:

“It’s clearly very suspicious,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “The Syrians were up to something that they clearly didn’t want the world to know about.”

Mr. Cirincione said the photographic evidence “tilts toward a nuclear program,”

but of course, no one can be certain. There are some buildings, they layout of the before pictures bears some of the signs of a nuclear site, but we can’t see into the buildings and have no idea what went on there. The images, Albright told the NYT, are “consistent with being a North Korean reactor design.” But consistent is not certain.

Syria’s action—totally dismantling whatever was there—only serves to fuel the suspicion. Its clear they don’t want to discuss the specifics of the incident, it certainly suggests they have something to hide, and encourages speculation that they want this incident to just go away.

Thus the mystery grows. William Arkin of Early Warning sees three possibilities:

1. Israel actually did bomb a nascent Syrian nuclear program. The photos suggest as much. He is suspicious:

But, it's hard to believe that Syria, possibly with the help of North Korea, is stupid enough to think it could build a nuclear reactor and get away with it.

2. Israel thought it bombed a nuclear site, but acted on faulty intelligence and erred.

3. It’s a red herring, ‘cover’ for something else. But what?

I’m inclined to side with the possible nuclear site for a couple of reasons. First, this attack was a serious risk. Tensions between Israel and Syria had been rising recently. In authorizing this mission, Israel certainly had to appreciate the risk that Syria could and might retaliate—either directly across the border in the Golan or through Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Either would be costly for Israel and could easily risk war. So, I don’t think that this was an action Israel undertook lightly. They clearly thought that there was something extremely serious in Syria. The stakes are just a bit too high for them to have undertaken this for much less. Second, Syria clearly has something to hide. This situation is ripe for exploitation domestically and across the so-called “Arab Street.” They did offer a few faint protests, but where is the outcry? Where is the Syrian propaganda? The ‘cleaning’ of the site furthers this idea—Syria knows that this would be observable from overhead photography, and they cleaned the site rather thoroughly and quickly. Third, where’s the outrage? None of the other Arab states have said a thing. At one point in time, any Israeli attack on an Arab state would produce instant denunciations. Here? Nothing. Apparently some of Syria’s supposed friends aren’t all that upset. The only country to have said anything? North Korea. Finally, the US has been suspiciously quiet. Former Administration officials have intimated that it was a nuclear site and that North Korea might be involved. Its clear top US officials knew all about this strike and they have been unusually quiet about the whole thing. No confirmations, no denials.

How confident am I of this? Maybe a 4 out of 10.

Still, the only thing on which there is a clear consensus is that something significant happened about which there are more questions than answers.

Arms Control Wonk:

In short, we don’t know what the site was, what (or who) survived the strike, and where it is now.

Syria Comment:

There are many too many unanswered questions.

Arkin:

Until we see evidence that Israel bombed something, it's fair to assume that there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

Stay tuned until we get the next peek behind the scenes.


*On a side note, this imagery, in and of itself, I think is nothing short of amazing. Here you have what used to be the most precious intelligence gathering capability, limited to only a few space-faring states, now a commercial technology that anyone can use. While these images aren’t as high-quality as the best US spy satellites, they are pretty darn good and available to anyone who cares to buy them and learn the art of photo interpretation.

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Link roundup

If the US is going to win hearts and minds in Iraq, then it needs to avoid killing innocent civilians. So why are air bombings up fourfold in Iraq this year? Max Bergmann of Democracy Arsenal explores this question.

Eric Martin of American Footprints has a strong post on the (un)likelihood of Iran passing nuclear weapons along to terrorists. Moreover, if terrorists were serious about acquiring a bomb, wouldn't they try harder to get them from former Soviet sources?

Despite new revelations about Syria's "cleanup job," Jeffrey Lewis over at Arms Control Wonk remains skeptical that Syria had a worrisome nuclear facility.

And finally, a baseball link. Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post explains why brains counted more than bucks in 2007.

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O Captain! my Captain!

Twelve former US Army Captains published the "The Real Iraq We Knew" in the October 16 Washington Post:

Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it's time to get out.

There's a lot more after that start -- with the first-hand military and socio-political analysis building to an explicit call for quick withdrawal:

Even with "the surge," we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet -- moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts.

U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much "battle space," are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks -- on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war.

The only alternative to withdrawal, as I wrote more than two years ago, would be a truly dramatic escalation. The 12 captains conclude this is logistically impossible.

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

So, withdrawal it is (the Richardson plan, implemented ASAP).


Post title from Walt Whitman.

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Escalation: Turkey enters the war?

I've warned before that one danger of war is that it can escalate. The Iraq war could escalate to include Turkey, which claims that it will attack Kurdistan Iraq. From Monday's Times of London (it is already October 22 there):

Turkey will launch military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq despite frantic appeals for restraint from America and Nato, its Prime Minister has told The Times.

Speaking hours before the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, killed at least 17 more Turkish soldiers yesterday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey had urged the US and Iraqi governments repeatedly to expel the separatists but they had done nothing. Turkey’s patience was running out and the country had every right to defend itself, he said. “Whatever is necessary will be done,” he declared in an interview. “We don’t have to get permission from anybody.”

Last Wednesday, the Turkish parliament voted overwhelmingly to authorize such an attack.

And be sure that if Turkey attacks, there will be a fight.

Again, the Times of London reports:

The Kurdish regional government, which has a force of about 100,000 men, has promised to resist any incursions.

Turkey has an estimated 60,000 troops on the border with Iraq.

PM Erdogan sounds like he has fully embraced the Bush Doctrine:

“If a neighbouring country is providing a safe haven for terrorism . . . we have rights under international law and we will use those rights and we don’t have to get permission from anybody.”

Turkey is a NATO member state, but none of its allies seem sympathetic to the argument that Turkey is already under armed attack.

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Bush on WW 3

Did President Bush, at his October 17, 2007, press conference, threaten the world with war?

You decide:

Q But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?

THE PRESIDENT: I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.

But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.

And we'll continue to work with all nations about the seriousness of this threat. Plus we'll continue working the financial measures that we're in the process of doing. In other words, I think -- the whole strategy is, is that at some point in time, leaders or responsible folks inside of Iran may get tired of isolation and say, this isn't worth it. And to me, it's worth the effort to keep the pressure on this government.

And secondly, it's important for the Iranian people to know we harbor no resentment to them. We're disappointed in the Iranian government's actions, as should they be. Inflation is way too high; isolation is causing economic pain. This is a country that has got a much better future, people have got a much better -- should have better hope inside Iran than this current government is providing them.

So it's -- look, it's a complex issue, no question about it. But my intent is to continue to rally the world to send a focused signal to the Iranian government that we will continue to work to isolate you, in the hopes that at some point in time, somebody else shows up and says it's not worth the isolation.

Surely Bush doesn't think Iran would use a nuclear weapon against the US, does he?

If American and Israeli nuclear arms cannot deter feared threats from small new nuclear powers (like Iran would be), then these states should get rid of their nuclear weapons. They serve virtually no purpose other than deterrence against nuclear threats.

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UNAMI Report on Iraq: Dire, Grave Crises

On October 11, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) issued its 11th report (warning: pdf) on the human rights situation in Iraq.

The report is filled with bad news -- and not much good news.

For example, the "dire" situation in Iraq poses "devastating consequences for the civilian population....

Daily life for the average Iraqi civilian remains extremely precarious. The violence remains in large part indiscriminate.... UNAMI’s findings, based on its monitoring and research activities, suggest that the human rights situation in Iraq remains grave."

New insurgent-related violence is exploding in Kurdistan and millions of Iraqis have fled the country:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that some 2.2 million Iraqis are currently refugees abroad, around half of whom are in Syria.

Even more are internally displaced:

Inside Iraq, the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, Cluster F (Refugees, Internally Displaced Persons and Durable Solutions) estimates the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to be over one million, in addition to more than 1.2 million remaining displaced or transferred before 2006. Taking into account the many families that failed or were unable to register as IDPs with the Ministry of Migration and Displacement, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society or UN agencies through their local partners, the overall extent of displacement is likely to have been underestimated.

There's still more bad news.

For instance, the Iraqi and US governments come under attack for their secrecy.

UNAMI regrets that for this reporting period, it was again unable to persuade the Government of Iraq to release data on casualties compiled by the Ministry of Health and its other institutions. UNAMI continues to maintain that making such data public is in the public interest.

...US authorities still do not see fit to allow public monitoring of MNF detention facilities by independent human rights monitors, including those of UNAMI.

...UNAMI sought on several occasions to obtain overall mortality figures from Iraqi official sources, notably the Ministry of Health and its related institutions. UNAMI also urged the reversal of the ban imposed in February 2007 by Government of Iraq representatives on the release of this data.

On the "hearts and minds" issue, UNAMI reported scores of documented cases of US military attacks killing innocent civilian bystanders. The US military just released files about 100s of such attacks.

Moreover, a substantial part of the report is about the status of the very large number of detainees held in Iraq by various authorities. The report explores various judicial rights -- and even the death penalty.

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Sarah Sewall and COIN

This past week, I've read Sarah Sewall's name three times in different magazines and blogs.

Perhaps you are asking, who is Sarah Sewall?

Well, Sewall is director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I first heard her name more than 20 years ago when I worked briefly at Center for the Defense Information in DC -- a left of center think tank that studies the military. Sewall also interned at Institute of Policy Studies. She must have worked at IPS when Michael Klare ran the Program on Militarism and Disarmament.

So, what's up with Sarah Sewall these days? Why would she suddenly appear on the blog radar?

First, on October 4, Dan Drezner blogged about the foreign policy wonks who are advising various presidential candidates. Click on his link to a William Arkin piece in The Washington Post and you'll find Sewall listed as an Obama advisor. She and better-known colleague Samantha Power are helping the campaign in various ways. Sewall seems to approve of Obama's plan for "military disengagement" from Iraq.

OK, that seems pretty normal for someone working on human right at the JFK School.

Then, in a book ad in The Atlantic Monthly, I noticed something a bit different. Sewall wrote the introduction to the University of Chicago Press 2007 edition of The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. This is au courant -- General David Petraeus coauthored the foreward. This link seems to be a free sample.

Writing an introduction for the manual is perhaps not surprising, given that Sewall was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance from 1993-1996.

However, the third mention is definitely much more unusual.

Sewall was excoriated by Tom Hayden in The Nation last month for her defense of "the new counterinsurgency."

the Petraeus plan draws intellectual legitimacy from Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, whose director, Sarah Sewall, proudly embraces an "unprecedented collaboration [as] a human rights center partnered with the armed forces." Sewall, a former Pentagon official, co-sponsored a "doctrine revision workshop" at Fort Leavenworth that prepared the Army and Marines' new counterinsurgency warfighting Field Manual.

Hayden, the famous foe of the Vietnam war and former spouse of Jane Fonda, continues:

Yet Sewall of Harvard's Carr Center suggests that intellectuals have a moral duty to collaborate with the military in devising counterinsurgency doctrines. "Humanitarians often avoid wading into the conduct of war for fear of becoming complicit in its purpose," she writes in an introduction to the Field Manual. In a direct response to critics who argue that the manual's passages endorsing human rights standards are just window dressing, she adds, "The Field Manual requires engagement precisely from those who fear that its words lack meaning."

One would think that past experiences with death squads indirectly supported by the United States, as in El Salvador in the 1980s, or the recent exposure of abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan's Bagram facility and Guantánamo, would justify such worries about complicity. But Sewall defends Harvard's collaboration through a pro-military revisionist argument. She says, "Military annals today tally that effort [the war in El Salvador] as a success, but others cannot get past the shame of America's indirect role in fostering death squads." Can she mean that the Pentagon's self-serving narrative of the Central American wars is correct, and that critics of a conflict in which 75,000 Salvadorans died--the equivalent of more than 4 million Americans--most of them at the hands of US-trained and -equipped security forces, including death squads, simply need to "get past" being squeamish about the methods? Instead of churning out self-deluding platitudes about civilizing the military, Harvard would do well to worry more about how collaboration with the Pentagon impairs the critical independent role of intellectuals.

In his last paragraph, Hayden accuses Sewall of being someone who urges us to "get past the shame of death squads."

Ouch.

In response, Sewall had some comments for the Harvard campus paper:

“The Carr Center’s mission is to make human rights principles central to the formulation of public policy,” Sewall said. “Civilian protection in war is premised on core human rights and has become a cornerstone of international humanitarian law. Helping to ensure that international humanitarian law is fully embraced in military doctrine will contribute to human rights protection.”

...“How can you hope to change the conduct of war without engaging those who practice it?” Sewall said. “We should all hope to live in a world without war, but there are many steps we can take to minimize war’s horror along the way.”

Actually, Sewall's response seems pretty reasonable to me, given civilian casualties -- though I do worry about COIN strategy.

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Like watching cats play with a mouse...

If you're the type that roots for the cats.

And just keep reading through the first dozen or so comments. Takes me back to usenet days of old.

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Securing Our Survival

The University of Pittsburgh's Ridgway Center is hosting "Securing Our Survival," a conference starting tomorrow that focuses on nuclear proliferation -- and global climate change. You can watch the events on-line and ask questions of the speakers. The program begins Friday morning at 9 am ET and continues through the day and into Saturday.

Joseph Cirincione talks at 9:30 am, Bill Hartung at 10:30, and Jon Wolfsthal at 1 pm.

If you wonder why the hosts are combining global warming and proliferation, consider that nuclear power is presented as an alternative to fossil fuels -- but comes with the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.

For some pre-conference press, listen here, watch this (continued here and here), or read this.

Note that Ridgway also started a new blog -- Security Sweep. My friend Gordon Mitchell has a few new posts there now. He's going to be live-blogging the conference and would be the one to contact with real-time questions.


Note: Please do not simply ask Gordon why he spent $73 (of a $260 budget; that's nearly 30%) on Andy Marte, Ryan Shealy, J.D. Drew, Milton Bradley and Jeremy Sowers in our AL fantasy baseball auction earlier this year.

After all, those players helped produce a solid 9th place team.

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An enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mystery...

...if anything happened at all (?)

The mystery raid by Israeli planes against some sort of target in Syria last month continues to confuse and mystify. The just as it starts to get quiet and recede into the background, a new series of facts emerge to renew interest in the event. Just as a semi-coherent account starts to emerge, something else comes out that throws a spanner into the whole works.

Today is no different.

To recap: Some Israeli planes crossed into Syrian airspace and did something. Neither Israel nor Syria really want to discuss it all that much, except for the fact that neither can really let it go. The initial speculation was that Israel did strike some target in Syria, either a nuclear site (supplied by North Korea), or a missile site, or some sort of Hezbollah related arms shipment / cache. The nuclear angle remains highly debated, in no small part as blowback from the Iraq WMD fiasco.

Now we learn a couple of interesting things. First, it seems clear that Israel thinks it was hitting a nuclear related site. Second, the Bush Administration knew of this, but was deeply divided as to the credibility and significance of the intel. Third, the attack revealed a new military capability to disable Syrian air defenses. Finally, nothing happened at all.

The Israeli government was seriously concerned with what it assessed as a significant nuclear threat from Syria. Its a situation they had been watching closely for some time and they were determined to take action:

[C]urrent and former American officials said Israel presented the United States with intelligence over the summer about what it described as nuclear activity in Syria. Officials have said Israel told the White House shortly in advance of the September raid that it was prepared to carry it out, but it is not clear whether the White House took a position then about whether the attack was justified.

One former top Bush administration official said Israeli officials were so concerned about the threat posed by a potential Syrian nuclear program that they told the White House they could not wait past the end of the summer to strike the facility.

Last week, Turkish officials traveled to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the Israeli dossier on what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear program, according to a Middle East security analyst in Washington.

The question, of course, remains--how good is this Intel that the Israelis have? Following the massive intelligence, analytical, and policy failure on Iraq's WMD program prior to the invasion, some folks are rightly skeptical. This includes members of the Bush Administration who were briefed on Israel's concern. Some US officials described the Israeli intelligence on the Syrian facility as "jaw dropping." But, as usual:

The debate has fractured along now-familiar fault lines, with Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative hawks in the administration portraying the Israeli intelligence as credible and arguing that it should cause the United States to reconsider its diplomatic overtures to Syria and North Korea.

By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her allies within the administration have said they do not believe that the intelligence presented so far merits any change in the American diplomatic approach.

“Some people think that it means that the sky is falling,” a senior administration official said. “Others say that they’re not convinced that the real intelligence poses a threat.”

Several current and former officials, as well as outside experts, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the intelligence surrounding the Israeli strike remains highly classified.

Besides Ms. Rice, officials said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was cautious about fully endorsing Israeli warnings that Syria was on a path that could lead to a nuclear weapon. Others in the Bush administration remain unconvinced that a nascent Syrian nuclear program could pose an immediate threat.

Reading between the lines a bit, I think that the key dispute inside the administration is less over the substance of the intelligence--a Syrian weapons facility developing new capabilities for Syria--and more over the policy (US policy in particular) implications of that fact. In other words, how should the US ascribe meaning to this 'fact.' Should the US change course, and alter policies or should the Administration let it roll like water off a duck's back.

Third, Israel apparently deployed a new electronic warfare capability that disabled Syria's Russian built air defense system. According to Aviation Week:

U.S. aerospace industry and retired military officials indicated the Israelis utilized a technology like the U.S.-developed “Suter” airborne network attack system developed by BAE Systems and integrated into U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle operations by L-3 Communications...

The U.S. version of the system has been at the very least tested operationally in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last year, most likely against insurgent communication networks. The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions where approaching aircraft can’t be seen, they say. The process involves locating enemy emitters with great precision and then directing data streams into them that can include false targets and misleading messages that allow a number of activities including control.

This is cutting-edge stuff, not something you roll out for a training exercise or routine interdiction. Its signaling that a) this is important and b) those new state of the art Russian air defense systems you're investing in (Syria, Iran) aren't quite as good as advertised...

But finally, all this may be moot-- Syria is now saying that nothing happened--a Syrian government official, leading journalists to the alleged site said:

“There was no raid here — we heard nothing,“

Though Syria initially protested the raid, they have backed off significantly, downplaying the event.

President Bashar al-Assad, in a recent interview with the BBC, played down the Israeli raid, saying that Israeli jets took aim at empty military buildings, but he did not give a specific location. His statement differed from the initial Syrian claim that it had repulsed the air raid before an attack occurred.

There's nothing to see here, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

What's Syria got to hide?

It remains a mystery wrapped in a riddle shrouded in an enigma....

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Expert advice

There's nothing like a combat situation to sharpen ethical dilemmas to their most extreme point. For instance: the US military's use of anthropologists in the course of their operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the New York Times reports, an experimental Pentagon program is embedding "anthropologists and other social scientists" with combat units in the field, and utilizing their professional expertise to alter both strategic and tactical courses of action. The goal here, at least on the part of the Pentagon, is of course to increase the effectiveness of their efforts to control the situation on the ground; some of the embedded scholars think of their work as transforming and humanizing the military, while other scholars accuse them of (in effect) selling their souls and compromising their professional integrity for political ends.

I'd be lying if I said that I thought there was a simple solution to dilemmas like this. In its broadest form, the question "if I have knowledge that can help some actor accomplish goal X, and if the actor is willing to pay for my knowledge and expertise, is it okay for me to sell my services to them?" has bedeviled the social sciences since their inception. No one has a fully satisfactory solution, which is not surprising when you consider the fact that the dilemma goes right to the constitutive heart of the social sciences -- indeed, the sciences, but the dilemma is more acute with the social sciences -- as distinct modes of knowledge-production.

Let me start, as I so often do when questions like this come up, with Weber. Weber draws an important distinction between wissenschaft ("science") and politik ("politics") in a pair of essays treating each of these as a "vocation." What distinguishes these two orientations is their ultimate goal: the politik orientation is all about achieving results, while the wissenschaft orientation is all about generating knowledge that is in some sense valid. From the fact that Weber treats these separately and somewhat in opposition, one might conclude that he regards these two orientations as complete incommensurate, but that would be a misreading of Weber's entire analytical stance. Politik and wissenschaft are, rather, ideal-typical notions, and as such can be found in almost every concrete activity to one degree or another; it's the precise mixture that is important, since there is a tension between the orientations that has to be worked out in various concrete ways.

Consider, for instance, the difference between trying to learn something about social movements (wissenschaft) and seeking to participate in and advance the cause of a social movement (politik). Although there are certainly relatively clear examples of each of these orientations -- the pure scholar and the professional activist -- there are also a whole bunch of intermediate cases, such as the research department of the social movement or the movement organizer who also holds a faculty position at a university. At each point among the continuum between politik and wissenschaft, the choice between a focus on concrete results and a focus on logical consistency imposes itself, because a preference for one implies a devaluing, however slight, of the other. Do we achieve our desired reforms, even at the cost of some degree of precision or coherency, or do we insist on coherence at the cost of results?

Politik versus wissenschaft, then, is a continual issue rather than a categorical distinction. Rather than there being inherently politik or wissenschaft activities, there are politik-or-wissenschaft decisions to be made all the time. Applied to the matter at hand, this relieves us of the error of assuming that there is something called "anthropology" (or "social science") that is inherently wissenschaft. Instead, there is a set of aims and goals, and an arrangement of resources and capacities designed to meet particular goals, both in the academic university setting and outside of it. Within the university, the preference is ordinarily given to the wissenschaft disposition, so people are rewarded for the theoretical sophistication and disciplinary integrity of the ways that they generate knowledge rather than the wider effects that their knowledge might provide. It is this arrangement, rather than "anthropology" or "social science" themselves, that is wissenschaft.

Hence, the first question is: what is the goal of the military operations in which these anthropologists are now involved? Clearly it isn't to produce scientifically valid knowledge about the lives of people on the ground, even of some of these embedded anthropologists are actually conducting covert participant-observation studies. Instead, the goal is to improve the efficacy of military operations, by relying on the anthropologist's professional expertise on matters like the structure of social conflict and the importance of cultural norms. So it's an overall politik goal rather than a wissenschaft one; the addition of the anthropologist to the mix does not really have the potential to pull the entire professional activity of the military unit towards social science, even though it might produce a better (both in the ethical sense and in the practical sense) set of professional activities overall. The embedded anthropologist -- like, I'd say, the embedded journalist -- serves a military purpose rather than a purpose that is strictly governed by the professional norms of their non-military occupation.

In this way, both the embedded anthropologists and their professional critics are somewhat missing the point. The senior science adviser to the program embeedding the anthropologists is quoted in the article as claiming to be "anthropologizing the military," a ludicrous claim if by "anthropologizing" is meant "turning the military into an anthropological organization." That would mean, in effect, transforming the current military into Starfleet, and I cannot for the life of me see how simply embedding a few social scientists with combat units is going to accomplish that goal. As long as the main job of the military is to destroy targets and hold territory, there is no way that any military-affiliated knowledge-production enterprise can ever be anything but an adjunct to the overall politik sensibility and orientation of the enterprise.

On the other hand, the scholarly critics of the program -- at least according to the article, since I have not seen the letter than some of them are circulating, not being an anthropologist myself -- seem to be focusing on the political goals of the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, accusing those who participate in this program of covertly supporting imperialism and brutal occupation. Sure, sure -- but that's a critique of the military operation, not a critique of the embedded anthropologists. Indeed, such a critique could justly be leveled at virtually every academic in the United States, inasmuch as we a) train students who may end up in the military or the government; b) give any advice to policymakers about the means rather than the ends of their policies; and c) benefit from a preferential tax code that allows universities to operate as non-profit enterprises while amassing millions of dollars in endowments and other resources. No one has completely clean hands, even the academic critics of the administration's policies, and it's ludicrous to pretend that any of us do.

As Stuart Kaufman and I argued elsewhere, the only way to retain some measure of scholarly-professional (wissenschaft) integrity when giving policy advice is to take ends as given and focus on means. I probably should have added: and to remain at least nominally separate from the government, in the sense of not being employed by an agency dedicated to overtly politik goals. There is no way that an embedded anthropologist can meaningfully claim to be operating as an anthropologist when giving advice to her or his unit -- they've become experts rather than scholars, and unless we are willing to argue for a direct transfer of scholarly knowledge into the applied sphere of practical action (something I am very unwilling to do, not in the least because such a position presumes that scholarly knowledge is a good deal more universally valid than it has ever proven to be) we have to admit that the individual applying her or his analytical skills and base of knowledge to improve the efficiency of a practical operation in a specific situation is doing something radically different than the same individual working to improve our knowledge of that situation.

Hence: I am not sure that there is any problem whatsoever, and I can even see the benefits, of having an anthropologist (or some other social scientist) in a combat unit. Indeed, having a little bit of local knowledge about the region one is patrolling or occupying is probably a good thing -- imagine the alternative. [Oh, wait, we don't have to imagine that; we can just look at Iraq and see what happens when one invades without an adequate knowledge of on-the-ground conditions.] And the critical analytical disposition that one presumably (hopefully?) cultivates through advanced study in the social sciences would be a great asset, both to the unit and to the military as a whole. Also, given the interrelationship of facts and theories -- since there is no such thing as a perspective-less fact -- means that the introduction of certain facts has the potential, however small, of eventually (if given the proper institutional support) imparting the more humanistic, relational perspective of the cultural anthropologist to other members of the military. But this is a long-term goal, and it would require a lot more than simply putting some social scientists in uniform and deploying them to combat theaters.

At the same time, it would be deeply problematic if the entire anthropological profession became a training arm for military operations, since that would mean the end of anthropology as a social science. The social sciences are always in danger of this kind of annexation to one or another political program, and the government and the military, as large funding agencies, have perhaps a disproportionate chance of influencing how a given social science develops. It is therefore important to retain the institutional autonomy of the wissenschaft orientation, and to be somewhat vigilant about doing so. But simply saying "don't collaborate" is insufficient to do that. Instead, care has to be taken to point out -- As Robert Gonzales does in the June issue of Anthropology Today (couldn't find a free online version of this, sorry) -- that what the military is doing does not count as scholarship.

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A downside of a shorter Ph.D. program

Interesting article in the New York Times about efforts to reduce the amount of time that it takes to get a Ph.D. While I have no objection to many of the strategies discussed -- give students guaranteed funding for five years, dissertation-writing groups, a culture in which advisers actually check up on how their students are coming along -- this line about the impact of increased funding gave me pause:

That means students need teach no more than two courses during their schooling and can focus on research.

On one hand, sure, that probably helps people finish faster. But at what cost? The article depressingly, if not uncharacteristically, points out that many universities benefit from the cheap labor of Ph.D. students teaching undergraduate classes, and links this on the student side to the need for students to finance their educations somehow -- as if the primary benefit here was a financial one.

I think this is a short-sighted perspective on both counts. Yes, universities benefit financially if they use Ph.D. candidates to teach classes, since Ph.D.s cost less than tenure-line or even most temporary faculty, but they also benefit in that young teachers just starting out can be some of the most dynamic presences in the classroom. Everything is new and fresh -- there's no possibility of getting bored with one's material, since one won't have taught it for decades already. And those Ph.D.s can also be the sources of classroom innovation for the same reason: they don't yet have bad classroom habits to break, so they may be more easily able to experiment with novel techniques and technologies.

As for the students: the primary benefit of teaching while still a Ph.D. candidate is that hopefully that experience will make you a better teacher once you get your degree and move out into a more permanent job! When one is a professional academic, which is still what I think a Ph.D. in basically anything but the natural sciences (where there's a well-established pure lab research track) is actually for, your actual day-to-day job is -- this should not come as a big surprise -- teaching students. Is it too much to ask that Ph.D. candidates perhaps get a chance to learn how to do the thing that they're going to be doing for the rest of their professional lives, and to learn that while they're, you know, in training? All of this reinforces the attitude that the academics are scholars first and foremost, that Ph.D. training is purely about acquiring research skills and experience, and and that teaching -- especially undergraduate teaching, because how often do you see departments offering Ph.D. students the opportunity to teach graduate seminars? -- is something that can be safely externalized onto untrained students and overworked adjuncts. And that's depressing, both for the undergraduate students who are paying for the experience of attending institutions where their famous faculty never see them because they're always out doing research, and for the Ph.D.s socialized into a culture where teaching is decidedly secondary, a culture they can and will then bring with them when they are hired elsewhere.

What I'd much rather see is something like the famous Contemporary Civilization program at Columbia, in which Dan and I both taught, where Ph.D. students are selected to teach their own section of the famous Plato-to-NATO course that is required of all undergraduate students in their sophomore year. These preceptors -- from the Latin for "not a professor so not paid as much" -- teach alongside members of the permanent faculty, many of whom are quite senior; they also participate in weekly seminars designed to help them develop into better classroom teachers. Thus graduates of Columbia who have taught in "CC" are not only junior scholars, but junior teachers. If CC had only paid enough that I didn't have to maintain another adjunct gig downtown at NYU, that would have been perfect: learn to teach and work on my dissertation, without having to worry about where the grocery and rent money was coming from.

I just hope that the push to have students finish their Ph.D.s quickly doesn't end up exacerbating the split between teaching and research even further -- and doing this by further denigrating teaching. In the modern academy, any effort to value and enhance undergrad teaching faces enough challenges as it is; it doesn't need any more.

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Mearsheimer on Colbert

Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is on "The Colbert Report" right now. Check out the video here.

As you might expect, the scholar is promoting his latest book on the Israeli lobby. Perhaps you remember the earlier article.

Why Colbert?

Maybe Mearsheimer, in his critical theory mode, buys into the comedy of great power politics?

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Playoff time is here

Its a great day here at the Duck, as the playoffs begin and my team, the Cleveland Indians, are front and center, tied for the best record in all of baseball, as the home team hosting the Evil Empire, better known as the Yankees.

Hope springs eternal in Cleveland. Our team, ranked second in the ESPN misery index of suffering baseball fans, is now a very likable, exciting, group of players, led by Grady Sizemore, Victor Martinez, CC Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, and Pronk, perhaps the best nickname in all of baseball. I'm here to give the baseball loving IR world a little dose of Cleveland Rocks.

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I just can't seem to get enough of you

I was planning to blog on the Ukrainian elections today (exit polls show a very slim lead for Yulia Timoshenko's party, but both sides claim victory), but, well, things get in the way.

Like these headlines:

"Putin eyes prime minister's job"
"Putin Says He Will Run For Parliament"

United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya)--the Kremlin-approved dominant political party in Russia--kicked off its election campaign this morning with a party conference. It was widely announced that Putin would attend this meeting, which is not unusual--he has attended past United Russia conferences, though he is not technically a member. The surprise, though, was his announcement that he would top the party list; as a result, he would be entitled to a seat in the Duma (though he may not actually to claim his seat as long as he is a sitting president). He also said that the possibility of becoming prime minister is a "realistic idea" that he has already been thinking about.

I can't say as I'm shocked to learn that Vladimir Vladimirovich has a plan to keep hold of the center of power in Russia. Although he's constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms, he's wildly popular in Russia, and few really expected him to leave political life. The current scenario favored by Kremlin watchers is that Zubkov will run for president, while Putin will take the prime minister's seat. However, technically, the
prime minister's powers are significantly less than the president's. Would Putin be content to play second fiddle? Does he trust Zubkov enough to be mere puppet, even though he would hold the legal reins of power?

We'll just have to wait and see.

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