Saltzman Institute Selected to Receive $1.5 Million Minerva Grant

Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies members Robert Jervis and Gregory Mitrovich have been selected to receive a $1.5 million grant issued by the Department of Defense’s Minerva Initiative for their project, “Culture in Power Transitions: Sino-American Conflict in the 21st Century.”

Partnering with the University of Notre Dame and the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, the three-year project will examine how the United States and China will use “culture” as a means to advance their security interests and wage their hegemonic competition in the 21st century.

The project will employ long-range historical analysis to generate qualitative case studies and a statistical dataset derived through the use of computer-aided text analysis of attempts by both states to use culture to achieve their high-level national security ambitions. They will compare the importance of culture in America’s rise to power in the 19th and 20th centuries with China’s rise today, paying special attention to the responses of the international community.

The project will seek to develop a theoretical framework with which to assess the strategic implications of cultural expansion and cultural conflict in the 21st century.

— courtesy Saltzman Institute