An Urgent Call to Re-Introduce Military and Diplomatic Studies in Academia

“Ignorance of military history is, quite literally, ignorance of the reason why most lines on the map are where they are. Often, the line – a border – indicates where one or another army stopped moving forward.” …Nathan Greenfeild

The spectacular collapse of Afghanistan’s military which allowed Taliban fighters to advance across the country so quickly ultimately taking the capital of Kabul was catastrophic to the United States as a nation, but to those who served, and families of the fallen was far more personal.?There are many individuals and organizations which deserve criticism and accountability for the obvious failures.?Their actions resulted in a series of reckless decisions based on poor assumptions of reality, misguided reliance on the Taliban, and continued belief in a naive world view, contrary to the advice of military leadership on the ground. America’s 20-year commitment to the Afghanistan people, government and security forces has come to a humiliating end. After nearly two decades, more than 6,000 American lives lost, over 100,000 Afghans killed and more than $2 trillion spent by the U.S. taxpayers, the spectacular, seemingly, slow motion train wreck of our exit could have been avoided.?The 20 years spent in Afghanistan was due to the strategic failure of multiple administrations from both parties.??The questions which haunt many of us that have served, not just in Afghanistan, but, in multiple theaters and campaigns in what was known as the Global War on Terror (GWOT), is how was the obvious, the known, was unknown to so many in positions of leadership.?The lack of any understanding, tactical clarity, or strategic vision was startling.

Our nation, its citizens, and the men and women who deployed to Afghanistan are owed answers to these question of how our country came to this point and why things went so very wrong.??Moreover, to our military leaders, policy makers, and elected officials, how is it, America found itself moved to decisions made without consideration or consultation with allies or the people most directly involved in 20 years of sacrifice? And why the basic challenge in Afghanistan has been conceived and presented to the American public as a false choice, either total control of the entire country or a total withdrawal.?

These questions and many others reveal intellectual limits and should be evaluated to help not only digest current events in Afghanistan, but also place in context larger national security issues.?However, the institutions which would have been, historically, best suited to study these questions exist only as a shadow of their former position.?Tragically, military, diplomatic, and more broadly national security studies at colleges and universities, where these questions should be considered in unbiased, academic, debates between scholars, military professionals, and policy practitioners has virtually disappeared.?

Regrettably, in centers of learning across the U.S., study of the past in general, and conflict, in particular, has declined drastically.?For instance, history now accounts for a smaller share of undergraduate degrees than at any time since 1950. As an example, in 1970, 10% of American male and 5% of female students were history majors, today the percentages are now less than 2% and less than 1%, respectively. History studies peaked in the late 1980 when 13% of graduates were history majors.

The number of security studies courses offered at universities and colleges today has plummeted by 30% since the end of the Cold War, according to a study of the nation's top schools by the Smith Richardson Foundation. So why are there less courses offered to students in colleges to help avoid the kinds of calamitous results of Afghanistan?

There appear to be multiple reasons for the erosion of military and diplomatic studies in the U.S. academe.??"The reason for the latest drop, anecdotally, appears to be that professors are retiring without replacements," according to Marin Strmecki, Director of Programs, at Smith Richardson. "It also appears that there's an accelerating trend in political science and history that are making these courses increasingly irrelevant."?Likewise, ROTC programs are in significant decline as well.?Since 1990, the number of Army training corps on college campuses around the country dropped from a high of 413 to 269 programs in 2020, about the same number as 1964, before the Vietnam War.

While true, the number of military and diplomatic professors has dramatically dropped, this is a symptom, rather than the cause of the disease. The most troubling decline in military and diplomatic studies is due to a developing revulsion to studying the history of warfare, its causes and effects.?This phobia prevents students from exploring the violent past, denying academic institutions from teaching or even allow their universities to host speakers of military history. Some administrators and faculty members have decided, incorrectly, history and national security studies is “warmongering”. This erroneous belief has metastasized into the study of international relations as well. Less than half of all history departments, in the U.S., now employ a diplomatic historian, compared to 85% of departments in 1975.

The study of military and diplomatic history is seen as “politically incorrect” Joseph Glatthaar, professor, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says.?Or, as Yale University’s Paul Kennedy wrote in a recent Bloomberg article, “military history is seen as the most noxious of ‘dead white male’ subjects.”?Or, Tami Davis Biddle, a professor at the U.S. Army War College, has written, “unfortunately, many in the academic community assume that military history is simply about powerful men — mainly white men —fighting each other and/or oppressing vulnerable groups.”?Biddle continues, “The U.S. military does not send itself to war. Choices about war and peace are made by civilians — civilians who, increasingly, have no historical or analytical frameworks to guide them. They know little or nothing about the requirements of the conducting war… the logistical, geographical and physical demands of modern military operations.”?

Some academics, policy makers, and a number of senior military leaders, reject the intrinsic idea that destructive and ruthless dominance is somehow not part of the human condition. Today, for the modern academic, humans are universally rational and peace loving, if only the external constraints, ignorance, poverty, parochial ethnic and nationalist loyalties, the oppression of priestly and aristocratic elites could be removed. Then, people will “naturally” progress to their true interests like peace, freedom, and prosperity will be achieved not by force but by international trade, economic development, democracy, and non-lethal transnational institutions that can adjudicate conflict and eliminate war.?

Tragically, and more realistically, war is not likely to be removed, from our future any more than pandemics.?As sure as one virus is identified and defeated, another more deadly, spreads and ravishes humanity.?Administrators and faculty that reject the study of war are condemning future generations to further misery and despair.?America’s universities should be condemned for their lack of foresight.?

Those of antiquity, realized, in conflict heroic and selfless deeds valuable of remembrance and reflection are achieved. The ancients understood as well, commemoration of these achievements by those “who knew their duty and had the courage to do it,” as Pericles said of his fellow Athenians, creates models of virtue and honor for subsequent generations to study and emulate. Only in that way can a civilization survive in a world of increasingly limited resources and ruthless aggressors.

War and its horrors will always be with us, along with its unavoidable suffering and cruelty, “such as have occurred and always will occur as long as mankind remains,” as Thucydides writes. And if we cherish our way of life, with all its freedoms and human rights, its prosperity, and its opportunity, we will at times have to make the awful decision to send our citizens to fight, kill, and die to defend that way of life from those who want to destroy it.

The more citizens know about conflict and its consequences, the better equipped our nation will be to make informed choices and avoid national tragedy.

Author: J. David Pinkston

The views presented in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of Defense.

1.??????David Abel, “Waning Interest in the Art of War”, Baltimore Sun, originally published in the Boston Globe, 25 March 2001

2.??????Nathan M. Greenfield, Why is military history in retreat at universities? 06 March 2021

3.??????Max Hastings, American Universities Declare War on Military History, 31 January 2021

4.??????Margaret MacMillan, If You Want Peace, Study War, 11 January 2021

5.??????Bruce Thornton, Why Should We Study War?,?Hoover Institute, 26 November, 2013