The Blind Oracles of Statism

"The author's analysis destroys many longstanding shibboleths about the importance of academic thought in the world of policymaking, and the book is unnerving in its revelations of such thinkers' pretensions. Bruce Kuklick begins by sketching the history of U.S. infatuation with expert knowledge in the twentieth century and argues that in the field of national-security policy this orientation flourished after World War II. Among scholars, those at the RAND Corporation are perhaps the best known. Also in this tradition but differing in important respects have been the academicians housed at centers for national-security studies established in the late 1950s and early 1960s."