You never know what you’ll stumble on perusing Pentagon contracts. On Monday, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said it is planning to hire Vanderbilt University’s Latin American Public Opinion Project to survey 25 nations in Latin America.
Why? Well, it seems U.S. Southern Command (guess it lacks folks in the region) has asked the NPS’s Center on Contemporary Conflict to ask Latin Americans “about the perception of the U.S. military, military institutions throughout Latin American and the Caribbean, the relations between countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with China, Russia, Iran, and Israel, and domestic government’s capabilities to deal with crime, gangs, and drug traffickers.” (Battleland is sure the omission of North Korea is a clerical oversight.)
There will be special emphasis on Argentina and Chile (guess we also lack sentient defense attaches in Buenos Aires and Santiago). Ultimately, Vanderbilt will produce a 75-page “written” report detailing its conclusions.
The contract will go to Vanderbilt on a sole-source, no-bid basis, because the government wants to compare 2012’s survey data with earlier surveys done by the Nashville school. For that reason, Stanford University, the Universities of California at Berkeley and San Diego, and Gallup, were found to be lacking. In fact, they weren’t even asked if they might be interested.
The contracting officer will ensure Vanderbilt is paid a “fair and reasonable” price for its work, although the estimated contract amount – and the names of the four officials who will approve it – all have been redacted from the proposed contract announcement.
Make no mistake about it: contracts like this reveal the nation is teetering precariously on the ragged edge of military ruin.