"In an absent-minded way the United States in Vietnam may well have stumbled upon the answer to wars of national liberation.' The effective response lies neither in the quest for conventional military victory nor in the esoteric doctrines and gimmicks of counter-insurgency warfare. It is instead forced-draft urbanization and modernization which rapidly brings the country in question out of the phase in which a rural revolutionary movement can hope to generate sufficient strength to come to power."
The invocation of history and "forced-draft urbanization and modernization" reminds me of the invocation of history by the Stalinists who destroyed a large part of the peasant class in the Soviet Union in the thirties, and the "forced-draft" ruralization by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (a mirror image of "forced-draft urbanization"), after the U.S. invasion of that country. Such people can have whatever political opinion they want: I do not regard these opinions as science, merely political opinions and their implementations. Note how the word "modernization" occurs in a paragraph like the above, as well as on the page with the famous "equations" and the "correlation of .50." Thus Huntington gives the illusion of setting a scientific stage for his statements, but only the illusion. He is in fact deeply involved in justifying and implementing the reality which he purports to describe.
4. In that same Foreign Affairs article, Huntington wrote, "The realities of the situation in Vietman will not please the extremists on either side. If properly perceived and accepted, however, they may provide some basis for accommodation and an eventual compromise settlement." The presumption of what "will not please the extremists" belongs to pop psychology and is a rhetorical thrust which scholars can evaluate in light of the above false evaluation of Vietcong strength, for instance. Who are the "extremists," by the way? Huntington does not specify. He also states:
"Spokesmen for the Administration, on the other hand, have in the past underrated the strength of the Vietcong and have ascribed to the Saigon Government a popularity which has as little basis in fact as that which the critics attributed to the NLF... The misplaced moralism of the critics has thus confronted the unwarranted optimism of the advocates."
Leaving aside the rhetorical thrust concerning "moralism of the critics," I note that Huntington's criticism of the Administration and his dig at the "unwarranted optimism of the advocates" is all the more absurd since some of his own opinions were no more than "misplaced optimism," as we see from the passage quoted in section 3. Indeed, Robert D. Putnam in his PS article states that Huntington was guilty of "misplaced optimism about the effects of American-sponsored forced draft urbanization' on the prospects for South Vietnamese resistance to the Communist insurgency."
5. There is evidence that the Foreign Affairs article is partly based on a report written by Huntington for the State Department in 1967. This possibility is mentioned by Putnam, and Huntington himself has written in a "response" to Marion Levy in Science (20 March 1987): "I have never made any secret of my work there [in Vietnam] as a consultant in the Policy Planning Council of the State Department. I subsequently published an article in Foreign Affairs based in large part on that study." But in fact, Huntington did make a secret of the connection between his published article and a "study" or "report" to the State Department, because the article makes no mention of being based on the study, or on work sponsored by the State Department, or any other Government agency.
In addition, despite the fact that Putnam wrote that the report is declassified, and Huntington also wrote that he "secured its declassification under the Freedom of Information Act," Huntington has failed to answer my request for a copy of this report (and related material), and I have also been unable to obtain the report under the Freedom of Information Act. Indeed, the State Department wrote me that release of "one of the documents" I asked for (the Huntington Report) "requires coordination with another government agency." (This agency may be the CIA, for whom Huntington has consulted in the past.) Thus Huntington is also misrepresenting in this instance.
Insiders like Putnam have been able to see that report. The availability of the work should be automatic, no questions asked. When a scientist reports on an experiment, or empirical conclusions, or a proof of a theorem, it is a standard of science that one is entitled to have the data on which the conclusions have been based, and a complete version of the paper. I wrote to the chairman of Class V to ask if he, or Class V, condones the failure to provide me with the material I requested from Huntington about his State Department Report in 1967, and I asked him to make that material available to me and to members of the NAS. The non-availability of Huntington's "report" or "study" has now become an independent issue, since scientists and the public are entitled to have first hand knowledge of a document which influenced public policy.
A State Department memorandum at the time showed that the State Department reacted partly in a favorable way to Huntington's "study" as when the memorandum states: "We agree with much of his analysis of the present situation..." But the State Department also expressed a serious reservation, namely, "There is a major point in the study about which Huntington is not clear: nowhere does he suggest how or when' elimination of the Vietcong forces and the retreat of the North Vietnamese regulars can be brought about to establish the preconditions which he describes for ac-
Serge Lang is a professor of mathematics at Yale. commodation with isolated Vietcong Hamlets."Thus in this instance, the State Department sawthrough Huntington's verbiage, and that memorandumgives further evidence that Huntington's politicalopinions have "no basis in fact."
III
David Singer, professor of political science atthe University of Michigan, has written to me andother colleagues that Huntington "should not be amember of the NAS, even if it is Class V," on thegrounds "that he has neither the knowledge nor theinterest necessary to conduct [scientificresearch]," that he has an "ideological outlooksufficiently parochial to question hisidentification with the world-wide scientificcommunity," and that Huntington lacks competencein "matters epistemological." As Singer suggests,one can leave aside the claim made by Putnam inhis PS article, that Huntington is"avowedly patriotic." The quality of scientificdoings does not depend on their being "patriotic" buton the factual documentation and accuracy.Huntington gives evidence that he confuses thetwo. For instance, when writing about TheSoldier and the State (one of the books uponwhich his reputation as a political scientist isbased), and its reception in the 1970s, he states:"Some indications of this trend in the directionof a more conservative realism compatible with theprofessional military outlook were brieflysketched in the final chapter of The Soldierand the State. Indeed, the publication ofThe Soldier and the State, with itsunabashed defense of the professional militaryethic and rejection of traditional liberalism, wasitself evidence of the changing intellectualclimate." A scientist does not give an "unabasheddefense" of the object of his study.
To what extent can the criticisms that I andsome others have leveled against Huntington'sworks be equally well applied to others inpolitical science, whether in or out of the NAS?
Some social scientists of the Academy, inanswer to the critics, have tried to make a casethat "ambiguity" is inherent in the socialsciences. For example, an anonymous member ofClass V told the Harvard Crimson reporter(13 March) that the critiques of Huntington's workas pseudo-science by hard scientists in theAcademy reflect their psychological inability toaccept ambiguity. "I don't know that any socialscientist would meet their standards. They arepsychologically angered by it. They are people whowant certainty," the member is quoted as saying."They have no tolerance for ambiguity." Whoeverthe member was, his statement is very similar tothe statement by Seymour Martin Lipset, that "tobe a social scientist, one must have a hightolerance for ambiguity" (The File.)Readers can evaluate the pop psychology about"ambiguity" in light of my previous analyses.
As for Lipset, readers can also refer to hisunambiguous statement in Political Man,containing the sentence, "This change in Westernpolitical life reflects the fact that thefundamental problems of the industrial revolutionhave been solved." Lipset was writing in 1960. Wasit a fact? Was it perceived as fact? By whom?When? Does Lipset or Huntington know thedifference between a fact, the perception of afact, an opinion, and what is neither? The abovesentence occurs on a page speckled with footnotes,which make it appear as if this particular opinionis rooted in scholarship. But all the footnotesdocument is the statement: "In 1960, a prevalentopinion in Western society was that thefundamental political problems of the industrialrevolution have been solved." Lipset is a pastpresident of the APSA, and is a member of the NAS.Is Lipset a "scientist?" If not, what is he doingin the National Academy of Sciences? And whatwould S.P. Huntington be doing in the NAS ifelected?
I generalize only with caution. I have noquantitative measurement as to how many people insociology or political science are purveyors ofpseudo-science, like Huntington and Lipset. Awidespread uncritical acceptance of Huntington'sworks, his eminence in his field, and hisnomination by Class V indicate that he is not anisolated phenomenon. As Edward Anders, a member ofthe geophysics section of the Academy has written:"Though there are many excellent people in [ClassV], I have repeatedly had misgivings about some ofthe candidates in in social and political science,and less frequently about those in psychology andeconomic science. My suspicions have been amplyconfirmed by the Huntington debacle. Any sectionthat nominates poorly qualified candidates lackseither good candidates or good judgment. Theproper punishment is to reduce their quotas."
Like Anders, I do not wish to condemn allmembers of the disciplines of Social or PoliticalScience. But if many people in those fields putout defective works like those of Huntington, thisdoes not make those works any better