This chapter illustrates the results of the intersection of disciplinary and international security dynamics through exploring the relationship between social science and policymaking in war- and peacetime. The former suppresses disciplinary inclinations to favor internal disciplinary agendas that lead social scientists to eschew policy relevance. However, during peacetime, social science disciplinary dynamics led them to disengage with practical policy issues. This was the direct result of the effort to make the discipline more scientific, as the distinction between “basic” and “applied” research had become one of the most important ways of distinguishing whether a scholar was doing science or not. Of course, many social scientists remained eager to find a way to square the circle between professionalization and practical relevance. To do so, they reassured themselves with the notion that the results of pure research will just trickle down and inform concrete policy decisions without their directly engaging with policy issues.