Inside The Pentagon
by Jason Sherman
January 8, 2009

Jason ShermanThe Pentagon plans this year to expand a fledging program launched by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to foster cooperation between the military and social scientists in a bid to improve understanding of 21st-century security challenges and develop a cadre of experts to influence national security policy.

As soon as this spring, the Defense Department plans to solicit proposals from the academic community for new ideas on research projects to be funded under the Minerva Initiative, which last month kicked off with awards expected to total $50 million to a handful of social scientists on projects that will involve more than a dozen academic institutions.

"We hope there will be another Minerva solicitation," Thomas Mahnken, deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy planning, said in an interview.

Gates, a former college president, launched the Minerva Initiative last year with the goal of invigorating the type of collaboration between the Pentagon and academic institutions that thrived during the Cold War.

Just as the National Defense Education Act of 1950 encouraged the study of subjects like Marxism, Leninism and communism, yielding insights into the Soviet Union, Gates has handpicked new areas for research that he hopes will produce long-term results. These include Chinese military and technology studies; research that illuminates the perspectives of terrorists; research into possible disciplines required to deal with current and future security challenges; and religious and ideological studies.

On Dec. 22, the Pentagon awarded contracts to seven researchers working with 16 academic institutions. The National Science Foundation, which last summer partnered with the Defense Department on the Minerva initiative, is expected to announce another round of awards this month.

"We are certainly under no illusion that with these awards . . . we have met the secretary’s charge to us," Mahnken said, of the DOD and forthcoming NSF contracts.

Accordingly, the Pentagon is laying the groundwork for a broad area announcement inviting researchers to submit proposals that could be funded by the end of the year, he said.

Minerva awards, granted to historians, anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists, are expected to produce research papers, conferences and new archives of data, Mahnken said. The initiative also has important intangible aims, he added, including "establishing relationships with the broader, scholarly community that is working on these issues."

"This is long-term research and long-term capacity building," Mahnken said. "While part of the Defense Department will find the results of the research informative, this is not the type of research that we would expect -- or desire -- to have a short-term impact. Not on budget deliberations, not on current operations, not anything like that."

Another goal is a new crop of intellectuals who might consider working for the military.

"Ultimately what we would like to see is more folks -- today’s graduate students, today’s junior faculty members -- sometime down the line coming into government service, including Defense Department service," Mahnken said.

This undertaking is aimed at bolstering the military’s abilities to deal with challenges highlighted in the 2008 National Defense Strategy.

"The United States, our allies, and our partners face a spectrum of challenges, including violent transnational extremist networks, hostile states armed with weapons of mass destruction, rising regional powers, emerging space and cyber threats, natural and pandemic disasters, and a growing competition for resources," the strategy notes. "To succeed, we must harness and integrate all aspects of national power and work closely with a wide range of allies, friends and partners. We cannot prevail if we act alone."

In December, the Pentagon announced awards through the Minerva Initiative to Susan Shrink at the University of California, San Diego, to examine "The Evolving Relationship Between Technology and National Security in China: Innovation." Mark Woodward at Arizona State University won funds for a project titled "Finding Allies for the War of Words: Mapping the Diffusion and Influence of Counter-Radical Muslim Discourse."

Other winners include Patricia Lewis at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, who will examine "Iraq’s Wars with the U.S. from the Iraqi Perspective: State Security, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Civil-Military Relations, Ethnic Conflict and Political Communication in Baathist Iraq"; Jacob Shapiro at Princeton University, studying "Terrorism Governance and Development"; and David Matsumoto at San Francisco State University, who will research "Emotion and Intergroup Relations."

James Lindsay at the University of Texas at Austin also secured a Minerva contract to examine a project called "Climate Change, State Stability, and Political Risk in Africa"; and Nazli Choucri of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology won an award for his project, "ECIR -- Explorations in Cyber International Relations."

These awards were drawn from a pool of 211 proposals, an "astounding" response, Mahnken said, both in number and in quality. "There were a lot of very meritorious proposals; there is clearly strong demand."