KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Two years after its formation, a controversial military program to embed civilian social scientists inside combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan is scrambling to recover from a string of crises. How the so-called “Human Terrain System” responds to a spate of combat deaths and a disastrous employee pay cut will determine whether the program survives in its current form. Human Terrain System, headquartered at Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas, is the brainchild of Montgomery McFate, a Harvard- and Yale-trained anthropologist. In a series of journal articles(.pdf) in 2005, McFate outlined the basic shape of what would become HTS. [...]
Last week, the European Union (EU) filled the two new positions established by the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty — president of the European Council and EU high representative for common foreign and security policy. Most of the press coverage following the appointments has focused on the personalities of the individuals selected for the jobs. But this preoccupation with personalities risks obscuring the more profound implications of the EU’s first steps toward implementing the treaty’s provisions. Commentators have generally disparaged the selection of Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as president and Britain’s EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton as foreign policy [...]
Over the course of its long history, America has experienced numerous religious “awakenings,” certain of which served as important precursors to the American Revolution, the abolition movement and Civil War, the Progressive Era (1890-1920), and the Civil Rights Movement. In effect, each “great awakening” served as a populist wellspring for radically new rules within our society, our economy and our political system. By most expert accounts, the world today is experiencing its own significant “awakening” of religious fervor, one triggered — in my opinion — by globalization’s rapid expansion around the planet over the past three decades. By penetrating previously [...]
