ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that anthropologists can contribute importantly to international security studies by illuminating the roots of discontent among people, whose desire for change has little to do with the Soviet and American ideological and economic agendas. It shows how social and cultural factors impinge on military perceptions of world events, and which therefore influence strategic and foreign policy decisions. The military sociologist, Morris Janowitz, discusses the "pragmatic" versus the "absolutist" schools of military thought, which have divided individuals in the military and defense communities for decades, if not longer. In the Cold War political environment of 1947 the National Security Act was formulated, providing the bureaucratic framework for direct military participation in the formulation of foreign policy. Military officers say such things out of a type of loyalty to the state that has become outmoded in the nuclear era— their best and most honorable intentions to the contrary, notwithstanding.
