A01=Ron Theodore Robin
Aftermath of World War II
Anti-Americanism
Anti-capitalism
Anti-communism
Anti-intellectualism
Armistice
Author_Ron Theodore Robin
Authoritarianism
Behavioralism
Behavioural sciences
Bernard Brodie (military strategist)
Category=JMAL
Category=JPS
Category=JWKF
Category=NHT
Clash of Civilizations
Cold War
Communism
Communist propaganda
Counter-insurgency
Counter-revolutionary
Creation myth
Criticism
Culture war
Decolonization
Demoralization (warfare)
Deterrence theory
Disenchantment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Explanation
Ideology
Incest
Insurgency
Korean conflict
Mind control
Narcissism
National security
Nazism
Nuclear strategy
Nuclear warfare
On Thermonuclear War
Oppression
Political apathy
Political censorship
Political commissar
Political science
Politics
Prisoner of war
Propaganda
Proxy war
Psychoanalysis
Psychological warfare
Racism
RAND Corporation
Reprisal
Science
Scientism
Social science
Society of the United States
Sociology
Sovietization
Strategic bombing
Subversion
The Wehrmacht (documentary)
Total war
Totalitarianism
Un-American
Viet Cong
War
War economy
War effort
War of ideas
Warfare
Weapon of mass destruction
World communism
World War II
Product details
- ISBN 9780691114552
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 26 Jan 2003
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government enlisted the aid of a select group of psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists to blueprint enemy behavior. Not only did these academics bring sophisticated concepts to what became a project of demonizing communist societies, but they influenced decision-making in the map rooms, prison camps, and battlefields of the Korean War and in Vietnam. With verve and insight, Ron Robin tells the intriguing story of the rise of behavioral scientists in government and how their potentially dangerous, "American" assumptions about human behavior would shape U.S. views of domestic disturbances and insurgencies in Third World countries for decades to come. Based at government-funded think tanks, the experts devised provocative solutions for key Cold War dilemmas, including psychological warfare projects, negotiation strategies during the Korean armistice, and morale studies in the Vietnam era. Robin examines factors that shaped the scientists' thinking and explores their psycho-cultural and rational choice explanations for enemy behavior.
He reveals how the academics' intolerance for complexity ultimately reduced the nation's adversaries to borderline psychotics, ignored revolutionary social shifts in post-World War II Asia, and promoted the notion of a maniacal threat facing the United States. Putting the issue of scientific validity aside, Robin presents the first extensive analysis of the intellectual underpinnings of Cold War behavioral sciences in a book that will be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the era and its legacy.
Ron Robin is Professor of History and Dean of Students at Haifa University in Israel. He is the author of "Enclaves of America: The Rhetoric of American Political Architecture Abroad" and "The Barbed Wire College: Reeducating German POWs in the United States during World War II" (both Princeton).
