On December 14, 2017, American scholar Paul M. Cole, PhD, visited the SIAS and gave a lecture on “The Role of Think Tanks in US Defense Policy Formation” .

Mr. Cole’s think tank experience includes the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace（CEIP）, the Center for Strategic and International Studies（CSIS）and the RAND Corporation. He was recently a Visiting Research Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University. His research area includes security, force and diplomacy in Europe, Russia and East Asia. Clients have included the World Bank, the UN Development Programme, US Agency for International Development（USAID）, governments and parastatals, as well as private corporations. 

In his lecture, Mr. Cole analyzed how the US government and Congress transform abstract authority into concrete foreign and defense policy from the perspective of power sources, and how state-sponsored think tanks, independent think tanks, for-profit think tanks and foreign agents in America exert influence on US foreign and defense policy. He noted that since the 1980s, US think tanks have run into problems in their transformation from professional academic institutions to policy advocacy organizations, for instance, their neutral and objective stance is undermined. Furthermore, their researchers always pursue “scientific” research but ignore cultural connections of national security, and this has led to a disconnection between theories guiding US foreign policy and the real world situations.