Vietnam, a war for which the civilian strategists had not prepared and on which they had relatively little of value to say, marked the end of the “golden age” of strategic studies. Just as the arrival of mutual assured destruction and a period of relative calm took the urgency out of the Cold War, Vietnam “poisoned the academic well.”43 Colin Gray charged the civilian “men of ideas” with being overconfident about the ease with which theory might be transferred to the “world of action.” The prophets had become courtiers, living off their intellectual capital. Their “dual-loyalty” to the needs
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