Amid all the doom and gloom about declining U.S. power and respect abroad, Americans can take solace in the fact that their university system remains the envy of the world. But at a time when the United States faces a host of new challenges-from the Arab Spring to the global financial crisis-does anyone in power care what the academy thinks? A small circle of scholars makes their views known in op-eds and blog posts, or by taking sabbaticals inside the Beltway, but the views of most academics remain unheard in Washington.
So what does the Ivory Tower think about the pressing issues of the day? Below are some highlights of our 2011 survey of international relations scholars at U.S. universities. This year, for the first time, we also separately surveyed practitioners who have worked on national-security issues within the U.S. government-the people who run America's foreign-policy machine. And from global warming to the rise of China, we found that the academics and the policymakers don't always see eye to eye.
Top Foreign-Policy Problems Facing the United States
IR scholars take a broad view of the most important foreign-policy issues facing the United States. Thirty-two percent think this shortlist includes the rising power of China, up from 23 percent in our 2008 survey. Another 32 percent of academics rank the Arab Spring among the top three. But concerns about the global economy and monetary regulations, including the global debt crisis and the euro's collapse, loom large.
Practitioners are even more alarmed than scholars about the rise of China, with 42 percent listing it as one of the most important issues facing the United States today and 54 percent regarding it as a pressing issue in 10 years. More policymakers than scholars worry about the global debt crisis, while the Arab Spring makes the list of the top three problems. But some security concerns remain more salient for policymakers than for scholars.
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MROCK
12:20 PM ET
January 4, 2012
Hindsight...
Interesting that scholars approved the use of force in Libya after the fact to prevent massacre and remove a leader that willingly killed his people, but overwhelmingly do not support the use in other instances. Evidence of political bias, shortsightedness, or simply pacifism?
the Libyan Gaddafi regime had even willingly given up their WMD program and had been cooperating with the US, so do scholars simply not have any sense of quid pro quo foreign relation negotiations? Syria has provided many of the weapons and soldiers that have killed our soldiers in Iraq, but they deserve more deference than Gaddafi?
They'll support preventing atrocities in Libya, but not genocide in Sudan? Liberia is a great case of how we've intervened decisively and with little cost, yet yielded a result of a democratic, successful country.
This article provides pretty strong evidence for why I do not support most scholars. The common sense of all of them put together wouldn't add up to a hill of beans.
HECTORGREG11
11:48 PM ET
January 6, 2012
serious differences
Not sure who to trust here, because the educators are more idealists and one would think the politicians are more realists, but I think they plan too much to get re-elected than anything else and the country tends to suffer. You can see clearly from the graph that the politicians work more in fear mongering than anything else and they have lost their grip on reality...there is so much wrong with this country that I do not think that this list is all conclusive, but it is a good start nonetheless autorepairaustintx.org, maybe me might get one of these items fixed this year but most likely we will have more problems next year, but at least there are some signs of improvement on some of these issues.
GRANT
1:44 AM ET
January 8, 2012
It's predictions on things
It's predictions on things like war that I question. Obviously you can safely predict that Canada and the U.S won't go to war any time in the near future and you can also say that Sudan and South Sudan will probably go to war in the near future, but to say whether or not China and the U.S will go to war in the near or distant future? That's impossible. An IR scholar in the 1950s would probably have said that they would whereas an IR scholar in 1972 would almost definitely say that they wouldn't. The world simply changes too much for us to make predictions based on anything other than geography and natural resources. Mexico is weak and has great instability now, but a century ago the same was true for China. China has a large and fairly well equipped military now but seventy years ago the same was true of Japan. In the soft sciences nothing is definite.
DAMMAN
4:39 PM ET
January 12, 2012
Ohh
OMG, China is in TOP, strange.
huge population and huge result??
regards
Valuation
YARINSIZ
9:36 AM ET
January 27, 2012
Not sure who to trust here,
Not sure who to trust here, because the educators are more idealists and one would think the politicians are more realists, but I think they plan too much to get re-elected than anything else and the country tends to suffer. You can see clearly from the graph that the politicians work more in fear mongering than anything else and they have lost their grip on reality...there is so much wrong with this country that I seslichat do not think that this list is all conclusive, but it is a good start nonetheless autorepairaustintx.org, maybe me might get one of these items fixed this year but most likely we will have more problems next year, but at least there are some signs of improvement on some of these issues.