By Allen Ruff. Once viewed by some as a “rising star” on the University of Wisconsin campus, historian Jeremi Suri announced in early May that he was leaving Madison to pursue his fame and fortune at the University of Texas-Austin. With him went the fortunes of the short-lived Grand Strategy Program which he founded as part of a broader network of strategic studies programs currently underway on select campuses around the country.
Over a year’s in depth look at the now defunct Wisconsin project has nevertheless provided a glimpse into the goings-on at one university in the network; one increasingly enmeshed in preparations for a “Long War” for US global power in the 21st century.
Back to the Future The University of Wisconsin-Madison was once a storied center of opposition to war and militarism, especially during the Vietnam era. Some aware of that not too distant past would have found the now-disappeared homepage for the UW Grand Strategy Program of interest. It stated that the project, while dedicated to instruction in the “grand strategy intellectual discipline,” the teaching of strategic thinking, also represented,
“… a new collaboration between the military and academic worlds and a means of overcoming the divisiveness and political polarization that have characterized the relationship since the Vietnam conflict…” [1]
What could be “new” about the collaboration, one could ask. After all, the military has had a longstanding presence at Wisconsin, maintained even through the height of the Vietnam-era antiwar protests that focused national attention on Madison. And why the interest in “overcoming the divisiveness and political polarization”?
True, Vietnam left some long lasting scars; for some a host of easily opened memory wounds. But were there no legitimate sources for the divisions and antagonisms on and off campus? If so, then why the desire implicit in the Grand Strategy statement to gloss over or erase the history of Wisconsin’s “war at home,”[2] the direct result of the UW’s complicity in that unpopular war?
For the “grand strategists,” the aspiring strategic planners hoping to strengthen the long-existing campus ties to the military and Pentagon largesse, Wisconsin’s longer history of opposition to war and militarism apparently was something to overcome. A close look at the Madison program has provided some clear sense why.
The UW Program, formally launched two years ago, seemingly opened a new era of direct military and national security state involvement at Madison. Never a stand-alone venture, the program under Suri, the now well-situated and well-connected foreign policy maven, was linked from the start to a nationally networked campus effort designed to train future generations of “academic warriors” [3] providing intellectual support, expertise and justification for the Long War.
Jeremi Suri and his intercollegiate associates, many with shared or similar academic backgrounds,[4] came of age in the post-9/11 world as a new breed of foreign policy intellectuals, conservative “realists” and “liberal hawks” alike, joined in a consensus of support for the global projection US power and American mission abroad. Willing and eager servants of power, many of them currently staff the academy’s imperial think tanks and classrooms.
They not only participate in the schooling of well-vetted “future leaders” tapped for the national security state bureaucracies and corporate world, but also assist in the longer term strategic planning and preparation of military officers for current conflicts and wars to come. Jeremi Suri’s story – not just what he set out to create, develop, and expand at Wisconsin, but his institutional ties and personal connections to the major players of the national grand strategy network – stands as a case study of not only this new breed but of the network to which they belong.
Suri from the Fringe to the Top?
Some were certainly surprised when the widely heralded UW “rising star” unexpectedly announced in mid-May, 2011 that he was leaving Madison for Texas. He had regularly stated how committed he was to the UW and how much he loved Madison; that they had become his “home.”[5]
Explaining his decision to leave, he mentioned the low morale at the university, divisive “attack politics” on and off campus, and his dismay over the ongoing fiscal assault on the UW system by Gov. Scott Walker as the reasons for his exodus.[6] Salary-doubling joint appointments as the “Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs” at Austin’s Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law — that increasingly high-calibered locus of power in the grand strategy network — along with the prestigious Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and the Texas history department proved to be an offer he could no longer refuse.[7]
Suri’s decision to leave Madison also may have had more to do with a desire to make history rather than write it and a drive to be close to power inspired in part, perhaps, by a close identification with the subject of his second book, Henry Kissinger.[8]
In the acknowledgements of his most recent work, he explained that in the aftermath of September 11th, he was “no longer comfortable leaving the application of history to others; that he was no longer “satisfied to separate study of the past from policy making in the present.”[9] His exit also may have had to do with a range of unanticipated obstacles hampering designs for the UW’s Grand Strategy Program.
As the affable photogenic public face and ambitious articulate promoter for the Grand Strategy and related undertakings, Suri became the media’s UW-Madison “go-to guy” and “expert,” ever ready to offer up opinion and recommend policy suggestions on a full gambit of international concerns ranging from Europe, across the Middle East and Africa, to Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and China. He readily offered his thoughts on domestic issues as well and became a champion of the “New Badger Partnership“,” the stalled plan forwarded by the now–departed UW Chancellor Biddy Martin to sever the “flagship” Madison campus from the rest of the state university system and further privatize it.
Certainly prolific, Suri penned a cascade of scholarly and popular articles, regular blog site pieces and several books including a well regarded study on the global impact of the 1960s protest movements,the Kissinger biography, and a recently released selective history of US “nation-building,” as a “uniquely American creed…, part of American DNA.” [10]
He received his BA in history from Stanford in 1994 and his M.A. from Ohio University in 1996. It was at Ohio that he first studied with the central figure among today’s grand strategist academics and key architect of Yale University’s “Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy,” the conservative “dean of Cold War historians,” John Lewis Gaddis.[11]
Both Suri and Gaddis went on to Yale at approximately the same time in 1996-97 where Suri began his doctoral studies under the global historian Paul Kennedy, a co-founder and first director of Yale’s International Security Studies program (ISS). Arriving shortly after, Gaddis became an endowed professor of Cold War history and grand strategy while continuing as a Suri mentor.[12]
The hardworking ambitious student learned lessons that would serve him well as a foreign policy historian, if not ultimately at Wisconsin then elsewhere. After all, Gaddis had established himself as the major rightward critic of the 1960s left “revisionist” foreign policy historians, the influential “Wisconsin School of Diplomatic History” headed by William Appleman Williams at Madison.
Williams and his students challenged the standard interpretations on the origins of the Cold War by examining US post-war designs and culpability in the East-West conflict. Their broadened explorations of “empire as a way of life” challenged the ruling historical consensus on the benevolence of American globalism and reluctant interventionism abroad. In that sense, the Gaddis student’s arrival at the UW marked a somewhat ironic rightward turn for a history department long known for its dissenting scholarship.[13]
Suri made the climb from assistant to full professor in an unprecedented six years. Occurring in a department where tenure could normally take twice that long, it came to be applauded as “truly remarkable” by some, including the former UW Chancellor Biddy Martin.[14] He became an endowed professor in 2009 while starting that same year as the Director of the UW’s Grand Strategy Program.[15]
A number of well-positioned articles in the Madison press and elsewhere celebrated him as a nationally recognized up-and-comer and an award winning innovator, a public intellectual willing to force change in perceptions on and off campus. He spoke continuously about the need to “rethink” a UW system “based upon 19th century models” ill-prepared for its role as a national and international 21st century institution.[16]
Beginning in April, 2008, Suri and others including Prof. Paul Barford, the internet security specialist from UW-Madison Computer Sciences, began working to pull together a number of campus associates including faculty and administrators, well-placed representatives from the non-profit corporate funding font, the University of Wisconsin Foundation and the conduit for various campus research grants and start-up ventures, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). The diverse group also came to include assorted individuals not directly associated with the “university community”.
The informal network became the “UW-Madison JASONs”,[17] named after the national consortium of campus-based scientists, still in existence, which has worked on various classified projects for the Department of Defense and other Federal agencies since 1960.[18]
Setting about “…[T]o tackle problems of significant societal importance at the state, national and/or international levels,”[19] the group’s initiators organized a JASONs “kickoff luncheon” on October 7, 2008 to recruit additional members.[20]
Barford presented the gathering with an overview of the JASONs mission.[21] A discussion followed in which Suri emphasized “the importance of creating and sustaining the right social and intellectual space” needed to forward the group’s ideas and overall objective to reshape the university. He informed the gathering of an already existing interest in the effort at WARF and the Wisconsin Foundation.
The former UW Chancellor John Wiley, certainly the older, more experienced hand, voiced some caution. “We should also consider the types of opposition we might see to our results… [W]here [hard] scientific results are usually accepted, policy proposals from humanities and social science [sic] may receive more pushback.” Suri then introduced global strategy as a “potential area for JASON investigation” and described the strategic studies program already underway at Yale as an example to emulate. A general discussion of how such a program might look at Wisconsin ensued.
Suri informed those present that he knew of a Milwaukee benefactor, Sheldon Lubar, who might be interested in funding such a program at the UW [22] (Unmentioned in the meeting notes, at least, was the fact that Lubar just happened to be a business associate of the Yale GSP’s major backers (see below) and a former associate of the Bradley Foundation, the Milwaukee-based funding source of numerous arch-conservative efforts.[23]) Those in attendance unanimously ratified a motion to proceed with the creation of a proposal for a strategic studies project. [24]
The JASONs initially developed two cross-departmental, multi-discipline working groups. One, “Rethinking the Public University” (RPU), set about discussing plans for the cross-discipline restructuring and further integration of private-sector resources, “public/private” ventures, to enhance the UW-Madison’s position as a “world class research university.”[25] The second, the “International Strategic Studies Collaborative” (ISS), proposed by Suri, set a course “to prepare… society for the global challenges of the 21st century.”[26] The collaborative laid the groundwork for the GSP.
Suri had already begun assembling a strategic studies working group during the late summer of 2008. That team was headed by his new grad student, the recently retired Navy Captain, Scott Mobley, hired as the administrative coordinator for both the JASONs and the ISS. It also came to include William “Bill” Tishler, later described on the GSP homepage as a “media specialist.” [27]
Already in his early fifties when he enrolled as a Suri doctoral student in September, 2008, Scott Mobley officially began that same month as the coordinator for the UW JASONs and ISS. He started out in the U.S. Navy in 1974, graduated from Annapolis in 1978, and earned an M.A. in “National Security Affairs” at the Naval Post Graduate School at Monterey, CA, in 1987 upon completion of his thesis, “Beyond the Black Box: An Assessment of Strategic War Gaming.” Following years of duty abroad, in September, 2005 he became commanding officer of UW’s Navy ROTC program, where he taught naval science until April, 2008.[28]
Not your ordinary grad student, the Captain played an important role in all matters military for the JASONs and GSP. Working from a JASONs office centered at the UW Business School’s Grainger Hall, [31] he soon acquired the assistance of first one and then a second staff member.[32]
Support From the Troops?
Funding remained an ongoing concern for the ISS collaborators. At the JASONs March, 2009 meeting, Mobley presented a “vision” for the development of a certificate program in international strategic studies for “military officers and government officials” to be offered entirely online, as a step toward the creation of a Masters Degree program.
He spoke of plans then underway for an online summer pilot grand strategy course “to test the waters, [to] see what kind of interest there is in the military.” Suri added that the hope was to make the online effort broad in scope, multi-discipline, “not just a military topic” but “holistic,” since the “former dominance” of the US was not what it had been and there therefore was a need to study different forms of power.
Suri then pointed out that an accredited degree program was important since military personnel would then be covered by the GI Bill; that otherwise funding would have to be found. In some ways, the viability of the Grand Strategy Program came to hinge on DoD money.[33]
Together, the initial core group created an eight-week pilot course for the summer of 2009 that included on-campus undergrad lectures and an exclusive online option for “military, business and other adult students.” Mobley worked to redesign a non-credit online course previously offered by Suri to mold it into something appealing to the military. “In its earlier incarnations, the class was about foreign policy,” Mobley was quoted as saying. “We altered its focus to center on strategy, in addition to policy – that is, to how the country exercises material, human, and cultural power to help achieve its long-term objectives.”[34]
Suri’s “History of U.S. Grand Strategy since 1901” examined such topics as national power, territorial acquisition, market penetration, warfare, racial subjugation, and class conflict, among others. That first online grand strategy grad course had twenty-nine enrolled, twenty-two of which were reserve and active duty military officers serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere recruited with Mobley’s assistance.[35]
Encouraged by the response to their first attempt, the Grand Strategy planners added another course on “Problems in American Foreign Policy,” taught by the Political Science Department’s Jon Pevehouse in the summer, 2010.[36] With three online courses planned for the following summer session, Suri and company pitched a proposal for an accredited online “Capstone Certificate in Strategic Studies” to the UW administration in late 2010.
The entire project took shape with the direct assistance of the History Department’s newly hired military historian, the recently retired Army Major John Hall, last stationed as a researcher at TRADOC’s Future Warfare Division.[41] Hall had worked under the command of the highly acclaimed warrior intellectual, the then Brigadier General H.R. McMaster[42] and the idea for involving a UW team to review the Capstone project came about when Hall sent an e-mail inviting him to come speak at Madison. Declining, McMaster asked if parties at the UW would be willing to conduct an informal review of the plan.[43]
Initially recommended by a History Department search committee headed by Suri, Hall had been hired the previous spring.[44] A West Point graduate with 15 years’ experience as an infantry officer, three years’ teaching experience at the Military Academy, and expertise in the study of counterinsurgency, he completed an Army-supported History Ph.D. at North Carolina while continuing in the service.[45]
The former army ranger hit the ground running. Acting above and beyond his first semester’s call to professorial duties, he served as the ongoing liaison for his TRADOC colleagues and the JASONs Capstone group. The Madison team met on four occasions to review and comment on a draft of the main document forwarded to Hall from Virginia, and for which he provided the initial overview.[47]
Show Me the Money
Usually viewed primarily as a generous philanthropist, Lubar also happened to be a business partner of the two men who bankrolled Yale’s Strategic Studies Program to the tune of $17.5 million, the former Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady and transnational tycoon Charles Johnson.
As Scott Mobley would put it later, “Without Roger Hertog’s support, we would not have been able to bring in …military officers.”[65] He went on to inform potential military applicants that some “limited financial aid” was available, however. By summer, 2010, “Hertog Fellowships” allowed service members to take selected GSP courses at no cost. [66]
Under the auspices of the Suri-led JASONs ISS collaborative, the former CIA analyst on Soviet Affairs and professor of international security studies at the National War College, Melvin Goodman, spoke as a “Hertog Visitor” before an exclusive gathering of JASONs invitees in January, 2009.[67] That March, Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, described as the “foremost writers on counter-insurgency in the Middle East today,” appeared as “Hertog Visitors” at a University Club luncheon.[68]
Olson previously served as Director for Low Intensity Conflict in the Department of Defense and was a senior analyst on Southwest Asia at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. His April, 2010 talk on the “Shape of the Twenty-First Century: Once and Future Threats” dealt with intelligence reform, counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, and drug control issues. [69]
A significant figure in the national strategic studies network, Gavin also holds an endowed chair in International Affairs at Lyndon B. Johnson School at Austin.
Eager to garner support for the strategic studies effort, Suri also invited UW-Madison Provost Paul DeLuca, a board member of the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, who attended the noon-hour discussion on a broad range of national security issues. [73]
Each undergrad team was assigned “mentors” to guide them in their tasks, some brought in with expenses covered by Hertog money. Among the advisers were several with interesting credentials, to say the least, all of whose names would come to appear as members of the UW JASONs. One was Marc Belson, already on board as a UW history graduate student. Listed online as a “Permanent Military Professor Fellow at [the] University of Wisconsin-Madison,” he was a Naval Flight Officer, a Graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School (“Topgun”) and holds a Masters degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.[82]
Previously a GSP online summer student, George Dryden worked as a civilian security advisor for the Department of Defense and was a “Senior Strategist at HQ Department of the Army” at the Pentagon when he flew in to act as a GSP mentor that November. He went to Afghanistan in 2010 as part of a senior advisory team assisting the Afghan Ministry of Defense and subsequently recommended other candidates for the GSP’s online courses.
From 2002-2005, he worked as a “senior manager” at Decisive Analytics Corporation of Arlington, Virginia, an employee-owned engineering company with contracts to the US intelligence community, the Missile Defense Agency, and the Department of Defense. He and Belson subsequently appeared on the JASONs roster, listed simply as “Department of the Army.”[83]
Perhaps the most interesting of the workshop “mentors,” at least of the ones for which some details are known, was Lieutenant Colonel Eric Rotzoll, a military man with intelligence community connections. As a Deputy Commander of a provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Zabul Province, Afghanistan in 2004-05, he planned and led civil affairs operations in support of counter-insurgency in the region. From 2006-2010, he worked as an “all source analyst” for Defense Department intelligence subcontractor, Northrop Grumman. Still with the military at that time, he also served from July 2008 to July 2009, as a Human Terrain Team (HTT) Leader in Afghanistan.[84]The HTTs came directly out of the Army’s warfare planning command, TRADOC, and were conceived to provide social science support to military operations . The teams, ostensibly comprised of privately contracted civilian anthropologists and other social scientists, have been assigned to each Army brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2007. Armed on patrol, such “academic embeds” have worked to provide cultural and social “human intelligence” or “humint” on various “locals” as part of the counterinsurgency effort in both countries.[85]
In January, 2009, an embedded journalist moving with a HTT unit on the ground in Afghanistan identified Rotzoll as “the man in charge” and “a former analyst for the CIA….”[86] No mere enlisted man, but an academically trained intelligence warrior, Rotzoll apparently brought a particular added expertise to the “Grand Strategy Workshop”. His name also subsequently appeared on the UW JASONs roster for 2009-2010, listed simply as “US Army”.[87]
Grandiose Strategy?
[5] A November, 2009 piece quoted Suri as saying, “We [professors] shouldn’t seek outside offers unless we’re serious about leaving, and I’ve never been serious about leaving…” and, “The university has been good to me.” “I love living here,” he stated. “It’s a community where you can be involved in serious work, but in a comfortable place to raise kids, free of a lot of pressures and dangers of other areas. It’s filled with intellectual energy.” [Jennifer A. Smith, “Inside agitator:…,” http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=27349]
[7] Suri became the first “Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the Strauss Center,” named for Texas football coach, Mack Brown, currently the highest paid football coach in the country with a package from the University of Texas to the tune of $5 milllion dollars in 2009. (http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/mack-browns-salary-deemed-unseemly-121287.html)
In 2008, Suri resigned from the UW Athletic Board with complaints regarding lack of oversight and input over the university’s multi-million dollar program under the reign of former football coach and head of UW Athletics Barry Alvarez (http://host.madison.com/news/article_8745d4c2-66e6-52b8-b242-3eda613fc22c.html)
[9] Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama (New York: Free Press, 2011) 339.
[10] Power and Protest: global revolution and the rise of détente (Cambridge: Harvard, 2005). For a critical review, see: “Greg Grandin on Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest,” http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Grandin-Suri.pdf; Henry Kissinger and the American Centuryhttp://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674032521; Liberty‘s Surest Guardian: American Nation-building from the Founders to Obama http://books.simonandschuster.com/Liberty%27s-Surest-Guardian/Jeremi-Suri/9781439119129.
[13] Williams left Madison in 1968. His post as historian of US foreign policy was filled by his “Wisconsin School” student, Thomas J. McCormick, who was succeeded by Suri upon retirement. For Williams, see: Paul M. Buhle and Edward Rice-Maximin, William Appleman Williams: The Tragedy of Empire (Routledge, 1995).
[16] Jennifer A. Smith, “Inside agitator…, op.cit.; “The Future of American Universities” Global Brief (blog), September 5, 2010, http://globalbrief.ca/jeremisuri/2010/09/05/the-future-of-american-universities/ ; “Bringing knowledge and policy together” Global Brief (blog) April 28, 2010. http://globalbrief.ca/jeremisuri/2010/04/28/bringing-knowledge-and-policy-together/
[23] A former U.W. Board of Regents member, major Business School donor and philanthropist, and head of Lubar & Co., Inc., Milwaukee venture capitalist Sheldon Lubar co-chairs the overseas investment firm, Darby Overseas Investment, alongside former US Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas F. Brady and Charles B. Johnson who, together bankrolled Yale’s Grand Strategy Program with a $17.5 million, fifteen-year endowment. (http://www.darbyoverseas.com/darby/index.jsp?url=/about_us/board_of_directors and http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v35.n12/story100.html )
http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85856. The office space at Grainger Hall was acquired through the direct assistance of the former Business School Dean and current head of the UW Foundation, Mike Knetter. (Records in possession of authors.)
[36] Todd Finkelmeyer, “Classes on the go: Distance education becoming more popular” Capital Times (Madison), August 10, 2010, http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/university/article_1cd8cfc0-a3f5-11df-bd7d-001cc4c002e0.html. For Pevehouse: http://polisci.wisc.edu/people/person.aspx?id=1093.
[39] See, also: “Army Capstone Concept balances winning today’s wars with preparing for future conflict”, http://www.army.mil/article/26508/army-capstone-concept-balances-winning-todays-wars-with-preparing-for-future-conflict/ (Retrieved, 8/26/11). The Concept was adopted in April, 2010: Army “Operating Concept provides Capstone follow-up” http://www.army.mil/article/44058/.
[41] On Hall: http://www.news.wisc.edu/16498; “Empty Chair No More” Inside Higher Ed (August 13, 2011), http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/02/madison.
Hall’s job interview process was not typical since representatives of local veterans organizations, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, and the Wisconsin Historical Society got to weigh in on the search. Jenny Price, “The Tug of War,” On Wisconsin Magazine (Fall, 2010) http://onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/features/the-tug-of-war/; “UW-Madison makes an unlikely ally: the military” Associated Press, June 28, 2009; http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/latest-news/2009/jun/28/uw-madison-makes-unlikely-ally-military/
Hall was selected by a search committee headed by Suri which narrowed the pool of 33 applicants down to two, the Major and Jonathan Winkler. Currently at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, Winkler researches and teaches U.S. foreign relations, U.S. military and naval history, international history, security studies and strategic thought.
A student of John Gaddis and Paul Kennedy, Winkler came out of the same Yale doctoral program that produced Jeremi Suri three years earlier. He excelled as an undergrad, completing his B.A. in 1997 at Ohio University at the time Suri and John Gaddis were there. Before Wirigh state, he taught elsewhere includinh the US Naval Academy. In 2009-2010, the U.S. Navy’s Naval History and Heritage Command funded his research in U.S. naval history. In 2010-2011 he held a faculty research fellowship in international security funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation. [“Jonathan Winkler” in “Faculty Search Report – Ambrose Hesseltine Faculty Chair in U.S. Military History, 16 February 2009” (Typescript photocopy. Acquired via WI Open Records request, re: John Hall. In possession of authors).; For Winkler, see: http://www.wright.edu/~jonathan.winkler/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Reed_Winkler.]
[45] Ibid.; Ryan J. Foley, “UW-Madison makes an unlikely ally: the military,” (June 28, 2009). http://history.wisc.edu/home/announcements/associated_press_miltary.pdf; UW-Madison hires military history professor,” (Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, April 1, 2009); http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/42267572.html. The work that helped Hall win his UW appointment, Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War, examined the US Army’s relationship with competing regional tribes in defeating Black Hawk in 1830s Illinois and Wisconsin. Publicity for the monograph featured a blurb from Hall’s TRADDOC commander, H.R. McMaster, which praised the study as, “… a must-read for those who want to understand better… the complexity of wars fought amongst indigenous peoples….” and “instructive as the United States and its allies confront tribal societies in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan while endeavoring to defeat transnational enemies and shape the course of local conflicts…” http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Defense-Indian-Allies-Black/dp/0674035186/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1299356458&sr=8-2-fkmr0
[54] Bruce Fellman, “Training the Next Leaders,” Yale Alumni Magazine (March, 2003), http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/03_03/grandstrategy.html; Gaddis, “What is Grand Strategy,” Duke University, February 26, 2009, the keynote address at a conference on “American Grand Strategy after War,” sponsored by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies and the Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy, http://www.duke.edu/web/agsp/grandstrategypaper.pdf
[56] Amy Dockser Marcus, “Where Policy Makers Are Born – A class at Yale with close Washington ties aims to expand to other schools ” Wall Street Journal, (December 20, 2008) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122973925559323583.html#articleTabs%3Darticle.
As of 2008, Hertog funded the Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy at NYU to the tune of over $2 million, $4.5 million to Princeton, $5.2 million to New York University’s law school, and $1.5 million to Yeshiva University. [Naomi Schaefer Riley, “Roger Hertog: ‘Free Markets and All That Stuff,” Wall Street Journal, (May 17, 2008). http://intermexfreemarket.blogspot.com/2008/05/roger-hertog-free-markets-and-all-that.html; David Skinner, “Roger Hertog,” http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/2007_Medalists.html#Hertog ]
Often favorably regarded as a respected and generous philanthropist, he has been a close business associate to others who have played a key role in bank rolling the GSP network, specifically the major backers of the “Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy” at Yale, former secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady and Charles B. Johnson. http://www.darbyoverseas.com/darby/index.jsp?url=/about_us/board_of_directors. For Lubar, see: http://www.lubar.com/team/index.cfm. On Brady and Johnson’s backing of the Yale GSP, see: “Where Policy Makers Are Born – A class at Yale with close Washington ties aims to expand to other schools ” Wall Street Journal, (December 20, 2008) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122973925559323583.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
[64] For Hertog and GSP support, see: “Philanthropist and UW-Madison join to develop new-generation leaders” University of Wisconsin-Madison News August 3, 2009 http://www.news.wisc.edu/16946 ; For media coverage of the online offerings, see Brian Mattmiller, “New history course on U.S. ‘grand strategy’ reaches out to modern military leaders” University of Wisconsin News, February 24, 2009 http://www.news.wisc.edu/16324; Todd Finkelmeyer, “Classes on the go: Distance education becoming more popular” Capital Times (Madison), August 10, 2010, http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/university/article_1cd8cfc0-a3f5-11df-bd7d-001cc4c002e0.html.
Two online pilot courses, for pre-approved grad students, were taught during the summer, 2010 – A repeat of Suri’s “History of Grand Strategy” and one on “Problems in American Foreign Policy” taught by the political science department’s John Pevehouse. Listed as “Course Coordinator & Military Liaison,” Scott Mobley answered FAQs for interested service personnel regarding “Courses in Strategic Studies” as part of the recruitment process. http://grandstrategy.wisc.edu/courses/FAQ.html. (Downloaded 8/26/11.) An additional online course was added for the summer, 2011: “The American Military Experience” taught by John Hall. (http://grandstrategy.wisc.edu/courses/index.html).
[65] “Grand Strategy Program Develops New-Generation Leaders” http://wage.wisc.edu/outreach/government/?Id=278
Suri, on October 31, informed his assistants, Mobley and James McKay that the Fetzers would be visiting his Grand Strategy seminar, coming from Chicago on November 16th; that he had talked with Wade Fetzer earlier in the week and that the former Goldman Sachs exec and UW Foundation BOD member had “given lots of money to the university,” and was “VERY (emphasis, Suri’s) interested in helping the Grand strategy program.” Noting that, “This is a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY (again, Suri) for our program, he gave instructions to arrange a luncheon at the UW University Club and sent a list of guests to invite.
The list included the GSP/JASONs insiders: John Hall, Debbie Sharnak, Mark Belson, Jon Pevehouse, Paul Wilson, Andrew Seaborg, Hal Burris, and Bill Tishler. The tentative list also included UW Chancellor Biddy Martin and Dean of Letters & Sciences, Gary Sandefur, who Suri personally invited. [Email: “Wade Fetzer visit,” From: Jeremi Suri, To: Scott Mobley, James McKay; CC: John Hall, October 31, 2009 (Photocopy: In possession of the authors.)]
According to the invitation, the purpose of the event officially sponsored by the “JASONs International Strategy working group” was to “encourage a free-flowing dialogue with the Fetzers on topics dealing with US grand strategy, foreign policy, national security, and international monetary relations.” [E-mail: “UW JASONs- Wade Fetzer Luncheon Invite,” from James Shelley McKay, To: [List], November 2, 2009. (Photocopy. In possession of the authors.)]
In a note following the meeting, JASONs co-founder Paul Barford commented to Suri and Mobley that, “Having Fetzer visit the Jasons is huge.” Speaking of hopes to hold a future “Jasons Summit” at the Kohl Center, the UW’s sports arena,” he suggested that an advisory committee for such an event should include “alumni like Wade, interested parties like [Roger] Hertog and national figure or two” in order to, “[take] the Jasons and by extension the University to the next level.” [E-mail: “Thoughts after the Fetzer meeting today,” from: Paul Barford, To: Jeremi suri, CC: Scott Mobley; November 16, 2009. (Photocopy. In Possession of the authors.)]
With Gavin’s visit in the works, Suri informed Mobley that Roger Hertog money would be used to cover part of the costs and that assistance would also come from WARF, via the offices of Carl Gulbrandsen. Suri stated he would add WARF’s name as a sponsor of the event, but thought that “Carl wants to keep his support quiet.” Mobley, when placing a formal request to WARF CFO, Chris Winslow for the Gavin visit, repeated that concern. The fall series simply became the “Hertog Distinguished Visitors” series. [E-mail: “Frank Gavin’s Visit to Madison,” From: Jeremi Suri, To: Scott Mobley, July 26, 2009; “Frank Gavin Visit,” From: Scott Mobley, To: Chris Winslow [CFO, WARF], CC: Jeremi Suri, August 3, 2009. (Photocopy. In Possession of the authors.) ]
An examination of the discussions and arrangements leading up to his campus appearance on September 24, 2009 reveall some of the informal workings of the UW JASONS/Grand Strategy Program.
[Also: E-mail threads, From: Jeremi Suri, Scott Mobley and others, To: [list], re: “UW JASONs Event: Luncheon with Frank Gavin,” etc., (September 6-22, 2009) (Photocopies. Acquired through WI Open Records request, UW JASONS. In possession of authors.)
[73] The mission of the Madison-based Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, “is to enhance Wisconsin’s ’position to attract and retain research and development grants from federal government agencies for the purpose of conducting sensitive, classified or non-classified academic and business research and development and related development work…. The WSRC will facilitate R&D projects involving academic research institutions and companies in Wisconsin in concert with federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense/DARPA, the Department of Agriculture and related federal agencies. WSRC works with Wisconsin companies and academic institutions to secure federal and research dollars.”
In addition to Seaborg and DeLuca, those attending the smaller Gavin meeting included members of the ISS working group, some of whom would also comprise the UW Grand Strategy inner circle — UW JASONs co-founder Paul Barford, Computer Sciences’ Paul Wilson; military historian, John Hall; geographer Kris Olds; Madison businessman, Harral Burris; and history grads students Debbie Sharnack, Robbie Gross and ex-Navy man Marc Belson.
[77] Suri confirmed that Hertog money would be used to cover the costs of travel, lodging and meals for those military personnel, former online students, who Mobley invited to the workshop. (E-mail: “Nov. Grand Strategy Workshop,” From Jeremi Suri, To: Scott Mobley, CC: James McKay, September 26, 2009. ( Photocopy. Acquired through WI Open records request. In possession of authors.) Additional costs for the workshop came from UW JASONs funds. (E-mail thread: “Draft Invitation for the Grand strategy workshop, 6-7 Nov. 09,” (From: Jeremi Suri, To: Scott Mobley, CC; James McKay, Oct. 16, 2009. Photocopy in possession of authors.)
As was often the case with “special guests” that Suri brought to campus, Feaver also gave a talk at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. The evening before the GSP workshop, Feaver spoke on “Civil-Military Relations and the Surge Decision,” the 2007 Iraq “surge” which he helped craft as Special Advisor at the National Security Council under George W. Bush. (https://www.google.com/calendar/event?eid=c2Qzc2o4cWZ1MGF0MTZ2b3Z0aG01bmdlaTAgZTZuaW5kMGZhMnVmb2NnOTM4ZmVtN242YWNAZw&ctz=America/Chicago.) Just before meeting with the GSers, he also spoke on a “A View from Inside President George W. Bush’s National Security Council” to a special off-campus breakfast gathering of the exclusive Madison Committee on Foreign Relations. (http://wage.wisc.edu/events/archive/?ID=636) The additional talks given by Suri invitees often received stipends provided by the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE).
[82] A list of the workshop “mentors” for the two scenarios appears in “Grand Strategy Workshop, 6-7 November, 2009”; Powerpoint slide # 37, “Team Assignments”. (Photocopy facsimile. Acquired via WI Open Records request, UW Grand Strategy Program. In possession of the authors.)
An employee with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) with several years’ experience in DoD security cooperation efforts in Europe/Eurasia, Dryden worked in Kabul as a senior advisor with the Ministry of Defense Advisors (MoDA) program. (Victoria Colette Reynolds, “Reality on the ground – Deployment brings greater insight into implementation on the ground” (Policyweb Blog, Nov. 11, 2010); Reynolds, “Guiding global partners, shoulder to shoulder – DoD civil servants advance the mission beyond borders, via the MoDA program” (Policyweb Blog, Nov.18, 2010) http://aidacopy.com/Documents/MoDA%20spotlights_PDF%20no%20links.pdf (Retrieved 12/21/10). “George Dryden” http://www.linkedin.com/pub/george-dryden/b/98a/3ab (Last retrieved, 9/16/11.)
MoDA was “designed to forge long-term relationships that strengthen a partner state’s defense ministry. The program matches senior Department of Defense (DoD) civilians with foreign counterparts in similar defense specialties. Ultimately, the MoDA program helps partners build core competencies that support effective and accountable defense ministries…” [http://www.cpms.osd.mil/expeditionary/cew-list.aspx?jFil=3]
[84] Rotzoll was a US government “military analyst” between September, 1999 and November 2006. From October 2002 to September 2003, he served as the “civil affairs team leader” of a provincial reconstruction (PRT) team in Bamian province, Afghanistan. His activities included reconstruction projects, and political engagement with government and local leaders and earlier worked in direct support of join US Special Forces-Afghan Army combat operations. On Rotzoll: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eric-rotzoll/15/64b/572 (Retrieved, 08/04/11); http://www.classmates.com/directory/public/memberprofile/list.htm?regId=7311165995.
[85] An extensive critical literature on HTTs in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere exists, due to their controversial nature. In part that has grown out ethical questions raised by the use social scientists in counterinsurgency operations. Some have pointed out the direct lineage to Vietnam era efforts, such as the notorious “Phoenix Program”. See: David H. Price, Weaponizing Anthropology (Counterpunch: 2011) and Roberto J, Gonzales, American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain (Chicago: 2009).
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