The Liberal Arts and National Security

We had a great colloquium last night with Mark Conversino of the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base here in Montgomery. Dr. Conversino spoke on "The Liberal Arts and National Security," and I think he brought to the audience a new understanding of the value of liberal arts education in the "real world."

The abilities to think critically about the "big picture" and to "ask the right questions" about strategic issues are essential to success in the armed forces, particularly among senior officers. Dr. Conversino shared several anecdotes from recent military history and from his own experience that illustrated this principle. He noted that when Gen. Petraeus was trying to put Iraq back together, he didn't rely on technical specialists to determine his policies, but on "woolly-headed" academics who had voiced skepticism about the prospects for easy victory back in 2003. He pointed out the errors of those who assumed that the Serbs would "roll over" on Kosovo in 1999 as they had in Bosnia in 1994, not realizing that Kosovo played a much larger role in Serb national consciousness than Bosnia. He described the awakening his students had when confronted with the unanticipated vociferous opposition, based on cultural and historic ties, voiced by Russian officials over the proposed NATO membership for Ukraine.

In all of these scenarios, the skills acquired by study of the liberal arts enabled people to ask the right questions and potentially avoid the loss of life, while the absence of those skills, exhibited in the unawareness of cultural issues, etc., led to very negative consequences.

Everyone who attended spoke highly of the session. We hope that we will be able to collaborate with Dr. Conversino and the Air War College on more joint efforts in the future.