Warriors or Peacekeepers?: Building Military Cultural Competence 3030367657, 9783030367657

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Kjetil Enstad Paula Holmes-Eber  Editors

Warriors or Peacekeepers? Building Military Cultural Competence

Warriors or Peacekeepers?

Kjetil Enstad  •  Paula Holmes-Eber Editors

Warriors or Peacekeepers? Building Military Cultural Competence

Editors Kjetil Enstad The Military Academy Norwegian Defence University College Oslo, Norway

Paula Holmes-Eber Jackson School of International Studies University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-36765-7    ISBN 978-3-030-36766-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

I have been around for more than 60 years, 40 of them as a leader for large and small units at home and abroad in national settings as well as in complex international operations. The ability to fulfil your mission and thereby support the overall operational objectives is the most important measure of success for a leader. The Norwegian Armed Forces has a saying that expresses a subtle but critical success formula: “strive to accomplish your mission while also taking care of your men and women.” To live by that saying means to understand culture. When I have led conventional units and had the responsibility for training and equipping Special Forces, it has struck me that “culture eats structure for breakfast,” as the saying goes. Having a well-functioning unit where leaders on all levels are trusted, trust the team, seek responsibility, and take initiatives is a question of culture. So this is what has become for me the most important elements in leadership: responsibility, integrity, mission focus, and care for one’s colleagues, superiors, and soldiers. A culture characterized by these values is a culture that creates a short vertical distance in the unit, that nurtures the differences that create strength and the ability to find good solutions and that stimulates objections and gathers around a common goal once decisions have been made. Such a culture creates good units. However, there is another dimension of culture, which now, more than ever, is key to military operations: How do we meet foreign cultures? It is all too easy to step wrong, and if we do, we create conflict and reduce our chances of success, thus failing to fulfil mission objectives. I have stepped wrong myself, and I have witnessed many mistakes in my career. I remember well my own dread after having given a speech in the Middle East and one from the audience made me aware of the fact that I had shown the students the soles of my feet when I crossed my legs on stage. While this was a minor transgression, the military leader will encounter much more difficult dilemmas: it was hard for me to accept during one of my missions that dialogue had to continue, even when it dawned on me that extreme violence against women and children as a way of sending a message to opponents and to civilians was seen as both natural and necessary for my counterpart.

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Foreword

We must therefore study and learn about culture, generally, as well as related to the specific deployment areas. This is a book about conditions for learning about culture, how one can learn about culture, and about the place of cultural understanding in military organizations as well as during operations. The book offers insight on what cultural understanding actually means. Thus, it is an important book. Unit culture lays much of the foundation for how we meet foreign cultures, not least as it can stimulate or inhibit critical examination of the world around us and reflection on the central questions of our times. Therefore, my advice to military leaders is never to stop reading, learning, and discussing the important aspects of your profession! This book can inspire such learning and discussions. Oslo, Norway  General (Ret.) Robert  Mood 2019

Acknowledgments

This volume grew out of a conference entitled “Teaching Culture at Military Academies” in Oslo, Norway, in the fall of 2017. Academics from military educational institutions in many different countries responded to the invitation, and the papers, the discussions, and not least the convivial atmosphere among the participants during these couple of days in the dark Norwegian autumn prepared the ground for this book project. We are immensely grateful to Hans Kristian Felde and Ole Martin Stormoen for their help in organizing the conference and to the Norwegian Military Academy for funding it. We are also indebted to Brendan MacBride for his invaluable help in proofreading the manuscript, and we would also like to thank our editor at Springer, Annelies Kersbergen, for her flexibility and her prompt and precise answers to all our queries as we prepared the manuscript. Oslo, Norway  Kjetil Enstad Seattle, WA, USA  Paula Holmes-Eber

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Contents

Introduction: Culture and the Military ��������������������������������������������������������    1 Kjetil Enstad and Paula Holmes-Eber Part I The Value of Developing Cultural Competence in Military Leaders Cultural Intelligence as Part of an Officer’s Virtue��������������������������������������   11 Danic Parenteau Civilians Under Attack: Diverging Threat Perspectives������������������������������   23 Sine Vorland Holen The Errors Clausewitz Made About Culture in War (and How a Clausewitzian Approach Can Solve Them)������������������������������   41 Youri Cormier Part II Lessons Learned in Teaching Cultural Skills in Military Contexts Understanding Cultural Differences: The Limitations of ASCOPE/PMESII ����������������������������������������������������������   59 Kjetil Enstad Unlearning “Stranger Danger”: Developing Cultural Competence in Canadian Military Professionals Through Collective Learning and Self-Reflection��������������������������������������������������������������������������   75 Vanessa Brown and Alan Okros Culture as Operational Enabler: Training Danish Officers to Understand the Interaction Between Cultural Dynamics and Military Operations����������������������������������������������������������������   97 Rikke Haugegaard

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Contents

Combining the Teaching of Intelligence, Arabic, and Culture at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School����������������������������������������������  117 Stine Beate Dahle and Idun Myrflott Mostulien Intercultural Competencies in the Bundeswehr: Officer Training and Mission Realities����������������������������������������������������������  139 Maren Tomforde Teaching Gender, Teaching Culture: A Comparative Study of Gendered Dilemmas in Culturally Complex Situations��������������������������  161 Laura Masson and René Moelker Part III Organizational Change: When Military Culture Meets Cultural Competence Anthropology in the Bunker: Teaching Transcultural War at the US Naval War College��������������������������������������������������������������������������  185 Montgomery McFate Redefining the Past to Become the Present: Culture Policy and U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training������������������������������������������������������  205 Paula Holmes-Eber Teaching Cultural Competence: Lessons Learned from Seven Countries��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  225 Paula Holmes-Eber and Kjetil Enstad Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  231

Contributors

Vanessa  Brown  Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security, Toronto, Canada Youri  Cormier  Conference of Defence Associations Institute, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Canada Stine Beate Dahle  Norwegian Defence Intelligence School, Oslo, Norway Kjetil Enstad  Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway Rikke Haugegaard  Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen, Denmark Sine Vorland Holen  Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway Paula Holmes-Eber  University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Laura Masson  National University of San Martín, San Martín, Argentina National Defense University, Buenos Aires, Argentina Montgomery McFate  US Naval War College, Newport, RI, USA René Moelker  Netherlands Defense Academy, Breda, The Netherlands Idun Myrflott Mostulien  Norwegian Police Immigration Service, Oslo, Norway Alan Okros  Canadian Forces College, Toronto, ON, Canada Danic Parenteau  Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean (CMR Saint-Jean), SaintJean-sur-Richelieu, Canada Maren Tomforde  German Command and Staff College, Hamburg, Germany

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List of Figures

Teaching Gender, Teaching Culture: A  Comparative Study of  Gendered Dilemmas in Culturally Complex Situations Fig. 1 Bloom’s (1965) taxonomy and the intensity of contact with cultures not one’s own������������������������������������������������������������������  167 Fig. 2 The importance of gender in cultural complex situations. By sex����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  173

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List of Tables

Understanding Cultural Differences: The Limitations of ASCOPE/PMESII Table 1

The ASCOPE/PMESII framework with the keywords for each category���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   61

Culture as  Operational Enabler: Training Danish Officers to  Understand the Interaction Between Cultural Dynamics and Military Operations Table 1 Table 2

Written online learning module assignment: Exchange�������������������  111 Field exercise in Roskilde, Denmark������������������������������������������������  113

Combining the Teaching of Intelligence, Arabic, and Culture at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Course of study, NORDIS full-time bachelor’s degree program���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  121 Beginners’ level modules in Arabic language taught at NORDIS����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  128 Module 6 at the advanced level in Arabic language taught at NORDIS������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 129

Intercultural Competencies in the Bundeswehr: Officer Training and Mission Realities Table 1

German contingents to international missions����������������������������������  144

Teaching Gender, Teaching Culture: A  Comparative Study of  Gendered Dilemmas in Culturally Complex Situations Table 1 Table 2

‘The importance of gender during deployments is …’ By sex, by country. In percentages����������������������������������������������������������������  173 ‘Because of this training I better understand gender issues and cultural values.’ By sex, by country. In percentages������������������  174 xv

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Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6

List of Tables

‘The best way to gain gender awareness in culture lessons can probably be achieved.’ In percentages���������������������������������������  175 ‘The best way to solve complex gender problems in conflict situations is to…’ By sex. In percentages�����������������������������������������  176 ‘When I am confronted with puzzling situations where gender is involved that are against my moral norms …’ By sex, by country. In percentages����������������������������������������������������������������  176 Cultural competences by sex. In percentages�����������������������������������  178

Introduction: Culture and the Military Kjetil Enstad and Paula Holmes-Eber

Abstract  The soldier’s expertise is war. War, according to Carl von Clausewitz, is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will” (von Clausewitz C, On war. Everyman’s Library, London, 1993, p.  83). It is a realm of expertise that puts extreme physical and mental demands on a person. It has long been accepted, however, that the “soft skill” which is commonly referred to as cultural competence, is an integral part of soldiering in today’s military operations. What cultural competence means in a military setting is the topic for this book, and this introduction summarizes and discusses some of the main issues raised in subsequent chapters.

The soldier’s expertise is war. War, according to Carl von Clausewitz, is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will” (Clausewitz 1993, p. 83). It is a realm of expertise that puts extreme demands on a person, and every soldier is conscious of the solemn nature of his or her profession. It is perhaps small wonder, therefore, that soldiers sometimes scoff at the idea that an understanding of the role of culture, intercultural competence, and “cultural awareness” are integral parts of soldiering. Cultural awareness, a “soft skill”, is, perhaps, perceived as the expertise of kind-­ hearted people, who might, in the words of Clausewitz, think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst. (1993, pp. 83–84)

This clausewitzean notion of war and the nature of soldiering constitutes the core of most soldiers’ identities. K. Enstad (*) The Military Academy, Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] P. Holmes-Eber Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_1

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However, militaries today are not called upon exclusively to wage war. The second largest force currently deployed, some 78,000 soldiers and 25,000 civilians, is the UN peacekeeping forces in 14 different countries (Autesserre 2019, p.  101). Deploying with blue helmets to these war-torn regions means nothing less than transforming states and societies. Peacekeepers set out to protect civilians, train police forces, disarm militias, monitor human rights abuses, organize elections, provide emergency relief, rebuild court systems, inspect prisons, and promote gender equality. And they attempt all of that in places where enduring chaos has defied easy solution; otherwise, they wouldn’t be there to begin with. (ibid.)

War, as Clausewitz so precisely describes, is an extreme and extremely difficult business, but so are the range of other tasks militaries today have to take on. These tasks depend on understanding complex social, historical, and political dynamics, and interacting with numerous actors with a range of motives, interests, and ambitions. Militaries around the world have therefore come to realize that, in the words of General Petraeus, “knowledge of the cultural ‘terrain’ can be as important as, and sometimes even more important than, knowledge of the geographic terrain” (Petraeus 2006, p. 8). Culture, therefore, plays a role in military operations whether these are conventional operations, counterinsurgency operations, peace and stability operations, or any other on the spectrum of operations where militaries are engaged today. This book addresses the complex questions about the role of culture in militaries and in military operations. Some of these questions are of a fundamental character: Why is culture relevant? What should culture skills and qualities be? What is the nature of military operations and what role does culture play? Other questions are of a practical nature: How does military (organizational) culture affect the teaching and, not least, the acquisition of culture and cultural competence? What is the institutional support for such questions in military institutions? How does one teach culture in military educational institutions? In 2017, the Norwegian Military Academy invited teachers from military educational institutions across Europe and North America to a conference in Oslo under the heading “Teaching culture at military academies”. The papers and discussions over the 2 days of the conference were rich and interesting. The reason for the stimulating conversations, we believe, was the varied backgrounds of the participants and contributors. The papers addressed not only questions of how one should teach culture to budding officers, which was the organizers’ idea behind the conference, but also the more fundamental questions about culture, cultural awareness, and cultural competence in a military setting. This book is an outcome from this conference, and the uniquely international nature and the wealth of perspectives from the conference are reflected in the chapters in it. Part I of the book offers three different theoretical analyses on the value of developing cultural competence in officers. These three chapters may seem disconnected at first glance, but they reflect the multifaceted nature of culture. In The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Geertz describes culture as “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and

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develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (p. 89). Thus, the different practices and beliefs governing notions of “threat”, for example, and approaches to dealing with threats in military organizations and in the security-studies communities are culturally determined practices and beliefs, as Holen argues in her chapter. She observes that notions of threat are very different in a military context and in military planning processes from those in peace-and-security studies. Militaries think in terms of actors, whereas the peace-and-security discourse treat threat in terms of context. She proposes that protection of civilians in practice may be improved if these different conceptions of threat inform each other. Thus, Holen shows how “knowledge about and attitudes toward” threat are culturally determined and perpetuated in a field of discourse. Yet she claims, importantly, that it can be developed to improve military and civilian practice in conflict areas. In the field of military theory, which aims to provide the most coherent theoretical basis for military practice, the most influential inherited conceptions can arguably be traced back to Carl von Clausewitz. Cormier argues in his chapter that the traditions of reading Clausewitz have emphasized certain aspects of his work while overlooking others, and historical developments shape and reshape the reception of his magnum opus. Many readings, Cormier points out, have criticized Clausewitz for being too state-centric and unconcerned with the role of culture. However, in certain respects, Cormier argues, Clausewitz overstated the role of culture and fell into outright stereotyping. However, it is possible, he claims, to delineate from Clausewitz a cultural theory of war with relevance and to our present-day fight against insurgencies. Going back to Geertz’ definition and the crucial inclusion of the notion of development in culture, we see that Cormier and Holen both seek to develop the culturally situated concepts in militaries, Holen with impulses from the outside, and Cormier through a novel perspective from within. The cultural situatedness of knowledge and attitudes to life has further implications, too. To say that knowledge is never culturally neutral, but a “system of conceptions”, challenges our approaches to military training in cultural competence in fundamental ways. Cultural competence can never be reduced to a body of factual knowledge (“Ganesha is one of the most widely worshipped deities in Hinduism”) nor to sets of specific practices (“Never offer to shake hands with your left arm”). Parenteau addresses the problems of the situatedness of cultural expressions and argues that cultural competence is best understood not as a body of knowledge or a set of skills, but as a question of cultural intelligence and officer virtue. Cultural competence or cultural intelligence is, he says, “a firm and constant intellectual and practical disposition, nurtured by values, that guides the behavior of someone in any complex situation”. The notion of cultural competence as something that goes beyond factual knowledge and something that is not limited to practical skills, underpins many discussions in this anthology, and perhaps most clearly in Part II, which addresses questions about culture as a subject in officer education and soldier training. The word “education” may conjure up images of students acquiring knowledge contained in books. However, competence in a military setting, as in all professions, is the ability to employ knowledge, skills and personal experience to respond adequately to specific

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situations in order to reach some objective. This means that ­professional practice is the measure of relevance for the learning activities in educational settings. This realization resonates in different ways in all the chapters in Part II. Dahle and Mostulien discuss how learning Arabic, being exposed to cultural expressions from Arabic-speaking countries, and gaining an understanding for the cultural assumptions inherent in a language can inform military intelligence work. The authors, one with a background form language studies and one from intelligence analysis, explore ways in which language and culture training and intelligence training can be combined to become a comprehensive intelligence education. The combination of language and culture training and intelligence training, they argue, are preconditions for intelligence personnel’s ability to assess “critically and continuously […] one’s own assumptions in the pursuit of providing the best possible decision support.” Thus, their argument shows how cultural competence for intelligence officers presupposes the ability to remain open to cultural otherness, on the one hand, but on the other hand, requires the competence to translate this otherness into concrete intelligence products. They suggest that a comprehensive approach to teaching language, culture and military intelligence could institute military intelligence as a profession. In a similar vein, Haugegaard discusses how culture can become an “operational enabler”. Taking the elective module entitled “Culture as Operational Enabler” from the MA program at the Royal Danish Defence College as a point of departure, she argues that theoretical perspectives from anthropology become relevant by utilizing the students’ own operational experiences as empirical data for theoretical reflection and discussions. Furthermore, a practice-oriented approach to learning through various games, activities, and practical exercises ensures the connection between academic cultural theory and military operational analysis, she argues. She summarizes the experiences from this MA module in four lessons learned, all of which in different ways concern the links between theoretical knowledge and practice: First, students seem to benefit from engaging with actual academic research on culture in military operations. Second, writing is key to developing analytical skills. In Haugegaard’s own words: “qualified thinking about culture starts when officers begin to write.” Third, games, especially with a competitive element, are suitable learning tools in a military setting. And finally, using research methodology from anthropology as practice-oriented approaches to learning helps officers understand cultural complexity. Masson and Moelker also find clear benefits of past operational experience in their investigation of the effectiveness of different didactic approaches to developing cultural awareness and cultural competence. Their data stem from two workshops, one held in Argentina and one in the Netherlands, where officers and civilians in the former workshop, and cadets in the latter, were presented with different culturally complex and gendered cases. While the quantitative measurements and analyses from the workshops represent the unique contribution to this book, their study is not focused exclusively on the workshop experiment. Masson and Moelker frame their discussion in a broader discourse on culture and gender and recognition of the social position of the Dutch and Argentinian militaries. Their study thereby ­provides

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another perspective on the complex links between knowledge, culture, education and the military profession. Tomforde analyzes these links in the German context drawing on rich anthropological research and long personal experience from the Bundeswehr, the German Armed Forces. The introduction of intercultural competencies in training in the Bundeswehr from the year 2000 was a response to encounters with “large cultural difference and intercultural challenges”. Tomforde shows, however, that the acquisition of intercultural competencies is affected by the individual officers’ professional experiences, the organizational culture and core philosophies, and even the weight of the broader national history. Her finding that German soldiers and officers perform relatively well, despite the structural and epistemological challenges intercultural competence training faces in the Bundeswehr, is especially interesting as it highlights, as other chapters do in different ways, too, the problem of isolating cultural competence from other competencies, professional identities, and organizational and national cultures. Geertz’ definition of culture as a “system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form”, which we quoted above, indicates how cultural competence relates to questions of epistemology in important ways. This means that teaching culture must address the very nature of knowledge and beliefs. Enstad thus critiques the idea of approaching a culture with a framework for analysis, the ASCOPE/PMESII framework, and the idea of using this framework to enable officers to analyze culture as a factor in military operations. Our concepts carry cultural assumptions, he argues. A distinction, e.g. between a “political organization” and a “religious organization”, may be natural in some societies, whereas in others it may be almost meaningless. He therefore advocates, first, promoting theoretical rather than factual understanding. Second, he claims that a true Socratic method in which teachers as well as students recognize their limitations in understanding cultural differences, and finally, he suggests that the arts may lead to understanding in ways that rational discourse cannot. In a related fashion, Okros and Brown identify a prominent cultural assumption in Canada, encapsulated in the phrase “stranger danger”, that is an impediment to cultural understanding, and discuss how the pedagogical philosophy known as heutagogy may aid in dismantling this cultural assumption in officer training. Heutagogy, also called self-determined learning, aims to enable autonomy, capacity and capability through student-centered teaching methodologies. Teaching culture in military institutions, therefore, is not a matter of imparting a certain body of knowledge by using a set of didactic tools. It means, first, understanding and conveying how cultural competence is relevant to military practice. Second, developing cultural competence means engaging with assumptions about what it means to know, and, finally, it means realizing how teaching and training is affected by the broader individual, organization, and national contexts. The fundamental questions about the nature of culture and cultural competence from Part I are thus continued and linked to the practical questions of culture and cultural competence as an element in professional military education in Part II. Professional military education is the intended and conscious development and

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shaping of capabilities and habits. However, military culture, or the social field, in Bourdieu’s vocabulary, of the military, is shaped through a “long, slow process of autonomization” (Bourdieu 1990, p. 67), that is to say through complex processes mostly beyond conscious control. A key question when it comes to culture and cultural competence in the military is, therefore, how it is received, adopted, and incorporated in the military organization. That is what we address in Part III. Holmes-Eber presents a study of how the Marine Corps responded to the cultural initiative launched by Gen. Mattis in 2005. While her empirically rich ethnographic fieldwork gives a fascinating insight into the US Marine Corps and how it responds to demands for change, her chapter is also more generally an acute analysis of the mechanisms of organizational change, particularly as they relate to questions of identity. She shows how training at the Parris Island Recruit Depot manages to incorporate “two seemingly incompatible identities – fearless warrior and culturally savvy peacekeeper.” The external policy for change is “transformed into something that looks, smells and tastes Marine.” Organizational change in the Marine Corps entails adapting new policies to fit in the organization’s cultural narratives, and one of the central narratives of the Marine Corps is one on the unchanging nature of the Marines. Organizational change thereby becomes a paradoxical phenomenon. Whereas Holmes-Eber provides a view of military organization from within, McFate starts with a birds-eye-view of the larger cycles of ebbing and flowing interest in anthropology in the US military. Interest, she argues, follows predictable cycles that correspond to the periods when the military engages in land war against adversaries from a different culture. She then investigates the role military educational institutions play in keeping the interest alive, and what it takes for these institutions to fulfill that role in ways that are relevant to the military. The central question, as far as culture in military operations is concerned, is, she argues, “what happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force?” Thus, the broader vicissitudes of history, policy, and politics and the specific organizational culture are brought to bear on the question that runs through the whole volume, namely how cultural competence can inform military practice. In the chapter “Intercultural competencies in the Bundeswehr” one officer relates how he was confounded by the realization that his Afghan counterpart did not in the least fit his expectations: he spoke better English than he did, wore a nice Western-­ style suit, and knew more about Germany than the German officer knew about Afghanistan. We have surely all been guilty of forming stereotypical images of people from other cultures and had painfully to admit it. The immediate lesson from this story, of course, is that to assume that one has learnt about culture, and subsequently assume, perhaps, that others have not, is simply another form of cultural stereotyping. There is, however, a much more profound lesson to be learnt from this story, one that also plays into the biggest strength of this anthology, namely that there is no neutral vantage point whence culture can be described, framed, and understood.

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Any discussion of culture is inevitably shaped by the culture in which this discussion is situated. Thus, while the chapters in this book all start from a common ­interest in understanding the role of culture in militaries, in military education and training, and in military operations, the concerns and specific questions raised in the various contributions are also partly shaped by the historical, social, institutional, political  – in short, cultural  – circumstances where the questions are articulated. Alienation between a military and the civilian population as a starting-point for measuring the effect of teaching on the responses to ethical cases, for example, is only relevant in a historical setting where civil-military relations are fraught with tension, as is the case in Argentina (see the chapter by Masson and Moelker). Similarly, “historical guilt” as a factor that shapes officer behavior in international operations is unimaginable in a country like Norway, but may be tangible in Germany (see the chapter by Tomforde). Less obvious, but no less curious, is the contrast between the adaptation of a culture policy in the US Marine Corps (see the chapter by Holmes-Eber) and the analyses of military culture in neighboring Canada (see the chapter by Okros and Brown). The former investigates how new policies are adopted while preserving notions of an unchanging Marine Corps identity, an identity as “the elite fighting force in the world.” The latter presents a principled discussion of how diversity can contribute to unlearning ideas of “stranger danger” through heutagogy, and how the Canadian Armed Forces can thereby become more culturally competent. In the former a stable identity and cultural continuity is imperative. In the latter the question concerns adaptation to new social and political realities and how the military thereby can become different. While this somewhat simplistic comparison is problematic on many levels, it is tempting suggest that difference between the US Marine Corps’ adoption of culture policies as ideas that have always been part of their Marine Corps identity, and the investigations of the conditions for change in the Canadian Armed Forces, is a cultural difference that tells us something about the two different organizations and by implication, perhaps about the two different countries. For warriors and peacekeepers and for those who educate them, the realization that there is no neutral vantage point to view culture from, is an essential one, and this book with its range of contributions from different countries brings that fact into relief. In Gadamer’s hermeneutics (2004) understanding always starts from a specific vantage point, one’s horizon in Gadamer’s vocabulary. However, Gadamer emphasizes that understanding also presupposes an openness to other horizons, that is to the horizon of others. This book exemplifies such openness in two ways: first, as it addresses the question of how theoretical perspectives on culture can become relevant to officers and soldiers and how the contributors in various ways have adapted to the horizons of military professionals, and second, as the concerns of different militaries are juxtaposed and thereby enrich the discourse on culture in and for the military in interesting ways. For the reader, we believe this book represents an excellent opportunity for new understanding.

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References Autesserre, S. (2019). The crisis of peacekeeping: Why the UN can’t end wars. Foreign Affairs, 98(1), 101–116. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and method (Trans: Marshall, D., & Weinsheimer, J.). London: Continuum International Publishing. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic Books. Petraeus, D. H. (2006). Learning counterinsurgency: Observations from soldiering in Iraq. Military Review, 86(1), 2–12. von Clausewitz, C. (1993). On war. London: Everyman’s Library. Kjetil Enstad After graduating from the University of Oslo in 1998, Kjetil Enstad worked as a journalist and editor until he received a Ph.D. scholarship at the University of Oslo in 2005. He finished his Ph.D. on the novels of South-African author J.M. Coetzee in 2008. Since then he has been associate professor at the Norwegian Military Academy, which merged with the Norwegian Defence University College (NDUC) in 2018. From 2010–2012 he was head of department in the Department for Military Theory, International Relations and Communication, and in Spring 2018 he was briefly assistant dean at the NDUC. His research interests lie in theoretical and philosophical foundations for the professions and the role of language and culture as determining factors for professional practices.  

Paula Holmes-Eber holds a PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University. She is the author of five books and numerous scholarly publications on culture and conflict. Her previous books include: Culture in Conflict: Irregular Warfare, Culture Policy and the Marine Corps and Operational Culture for the Warfighter. For almost a decade, Dr. Holmes-Eber taught thousands of senior level military and government officials on the cultural aspects of conflict as Professor of Operational Culture at Marine Corps University. At the same time, she assisted the U.S. Marine Corps and US government in developing its culture policy, training and programs as Senior Social Scientist at the Center for Advanced Operational Culture (CAOCL). She is currently Affiliate Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.  

Part I

The Value of Developing Cultural Competence in Military Leaders

Cultural Intelligence as Part of an Officer’s Virtue Danic Parenteau

Abstract  This paper discusses the role and the place of cultural intelligence in the initial intellectual training of young officers in military academies. Its aim is not to argue in favor of the importance of cultural intelligence for officers, as this has already been well established. It rather deals with the question of how to cultivate cultural intelligence in young officers during the initial stage of their training at military academies. It defends the thesis that cultural intelligence refers to a particular type of virtue that officers must develop as professionals in the management of violence: a firm and constant intellectual and practical disposition that guides one’s behavior in any complex situation marked by cultural diversity. Keywords  Cultural intelligence · Cultural awareness · Cross-cultural competence · Military education · Officers · Military academy

This paper discusses the role and the place of cultural intelligence in the initial intellectual training of young officers in military academies. The notion of “cultural intelligence” could be broadly defined as the “capability of an individual to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity” (Earley and Ang 2003). It refers to “a person’s capability for successful adaptation to new cultural settings, that is, for unfamiliar settings attributable to cultural context” (Earley et al. 2006). The concept of cultural intelligence is a broad one that encompasses many aspects related to how a person interacts across cultures: cultural awareness (the ability to see cultural differences, even those that are more subtle and discrete), cultural understanding (the capacity to make appropriate sense of certain cultural practices that are foreign to one’s own culture), and intercultural communication (the ability to communicate effectively across cultures), among others. As an overall concept, cultural intelligence encompasses all of these dimensions.

D. Parenteau (*) Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean (CMR Saint-Jean), Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_2

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The need for cultural intelligence for officers has been thoroughly researched and there is no need to discuss it further, as it is well understood (Abbe and Halpin 2010). Cultural intelligence is “an important force multiplier for military operating in the contemporary operating environment” (Spencer 2009),” as it is not “merely a tool to be utilized, but rather a fundamental, critical enabler to success in the contemporary operational environment” (ibid.). Most Western militaries are now trying to integrate cultural intelligence training or the different notions associated with it in their doctrines or training models for officers (Gates 2012; Ng et al. 2005). The United States Army recently produced a guide entitled Cross-Cultural Competence: Introduction and Overview of Key Concepts (Rodmann 2015) to prepare “soldiers and leaders to be comfortable and effective working in a variety of cultural contexts.” In 2012, the German Bundeswehr set up a Central Coordination Office for Intercultural Competence (Zentrale Koordinierungsstelle Interkulturelle Kompetenz) that can issue policies and offer training to the German military. The Canadian Defense Academy, an institution that oversees the Canadian military academies, published in 2009 a major study, Cultural intelligence and leadership: an introduction for Canadian Forces leaders (Davis 2009), which serves as a “key resource for the professional development of all military leaders as well as a valuable tool for generating dialogue and further development of multicultural and ‘whole government’ capacity across the Canadian Armed Forces.” Other armed forces have also put in place similar initiatives. In the current operating environment marked by asymmetrical operations, low-­ intensity conflicts, counter-insurgency, multinational operations, or operations driven by a “whole-of-government” approach, cultural intelligence for officers is crucial. Officers must develop the capacity to understand effectively the different cultures of coalition forces, international and local partners, as well as local populations with whom they operate on the ground in order to achieve mission objectives. Moreover, in our societies increasingly marked by cultural diversity, this need is also very real for domestic operations, where intercultural communication is essential. Predicting how domestic or international theaters of operation will look like in the near future is near impossible. Nonetheless, we can assume that the actual cultural diversity of the environment in which our military organizations now operate and the complexity which results from it, will not disappear in the near future. Thus, if cultural intelligence is critical to mission readiness in today’s operating environment, we can be sure that it will remain as such in the years to come. The aim of this paper is not to argue in favor of the importance of cultural intelligence for officers. It rather deals with how to approach cultural intelligence to cultivate it in young officers during the initial stage of their training at military academies. I would like to defend the thesis that cultural intelligence refers to a special type of virtue that young ladies and gentlemen must develop as professionals in the management of violence, i.e. a firm and constant intellectual and practical disposition that guides one’s behavior in complex situations marked by cultural diversity. I wish to elaborate here, in the form of an essay, some lines of thought on the subject, rather than a practical guide to how to implement such a program. This paper should be of interest to anyone involved in the intellectual training of young officers or for anyone involved in curriculum development in military academies.

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 ultural Intelligence: A Concept That Attracts C Much Attention Cultural intelligence is a concept that has attracted much attention in recent years in the fields of business and commerce, as well as in higher education and research, leading to a growing body of studies since the early 2000s (Ott and Michailnova 2018; MacNab 2012; Maddy and Cappellen 2008). The ability to conduct negotiations or simply to do business in a culturally diverse environment is essential for many entrepreneurs in the age of globalization. Similarly, the capacity for researchers and professors to interact with people of different origins is essential in the academic world in which scientific production now must pass through transnational networks of researchers and institutions. The profit-oriented, competitive and market-­shaped environment in which business people evolve is quite different from the profession of arms and the field of management of violence. In the same way, the field of scholarly research is organized around requirements and practices which are often disconnected from those who govern the tasks and responsibilities of an officer. Still, I am convinced that the ability to maneuver in a culturally diverse environment and to interact across cultures is as essential today for an officer in a theater of operations as it is for an entrepreneur doing business abroad or for a scholar engaged in research. In the introduction to this paper, the notion of cultural intelligence was broadly defined as the “capability of an individual to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity” (Earley and Ang 2003). This definition needs to be clarified before we can further discuss how military academies can better train officer-­cadets to develop cultural intelligence. As previously mentioned, cultural intelligence encompasses many aspects related to how a person interacts across cultures: cultural awareness, cultural understanding, intercultural communication, etc. Developing awareness of cultural diversity is certainly the first step towards the development of a true cross-cultural competence. Cultural intelligence education comprises different stages and aspects that cannot be ignored. That said, for the purpose of this discussion, we will use the term “cultural intelligence” broadly to cover the different types of behaviors which may be related to this complex intellectual competence. Cultural intelligence refers to a type of intellectual aptitude or sensibility towards cultural diversity at large, and towards the cultural or social practices and customs of particular environments. If you have any travel experience abroad, especially in far places, you know that being immersed in a culture and a social environment which is different from the one you are familiar with – the culture in which you have been immersed for many years – is destabilizing. You lose your landmarks, your bearings. You are thus less capable of grasping the meaning of certain signs (non-­ verbal signs, visual expressions, gestures, etc.) of the people around you, whose meaning refers to cultural codes and customs that precisely escape your knowledge. In some cultures, the same behavior, gesture or expression could mean something different. In other cases, a gesture, specific to a culture, could have no significant meaning for you, as words and gestures always derive their meaning from a given

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cultural or social context. Meaning is always situated in specific sociocultural practices. Cultural intelligence refers to that overall capacity to understand complex cultural practices and to adapt to new cultural environments. Cultural intelligence could be understood as a specific type of intelligence. The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (Sternberg and Kaufman 2012) sets it as a kind of intelligence beside emotional intelligence, practical intelligence, social intelligence and mating intelligence. Cultural intelligence entails the capacity to interact correctly with other people, thus mobilizing a certain level of social and emotional intelligence. But inasmuch as it requires the ability to decipher cultural codes in a foreign context, it also mobilizes intellectual abilities. Cultural intelligence does not simply refer to the capacity for an individual to interact with people across cultures, but also the ability to operate and work within institutions or organizations shaped by cultural practices and customs which are unfamiliar to the individual. To account for this complexity, researchers Christopher Earley and Soon Ang have developed a concept of cultural intelligence as “a four-dimensional structure with metacognitive, cognitive, motivational and behavioral components within the culturally diverse environment” (Earley and Ang 2003). The complexity of cultural intelligence is not derived solely from its interaction with the different types of intelligence, nor from the complexity of the environment in which it is called to be mobilized. More fundamentally, it results from the fact that like any form of intelligence, it is always conditioned by culture. Culture is not only the object to which this type of intelligence must apply, it is also what shapes this intellectual ability. Cultures are complex systems of reference, multidimensional and evolving. Any type of intelligence is always culturally conditioned and cultural intelligence is no exception.

Cultural Intelligence and Leadership Several studies have demonstrated the importance of cultural intelligence in exercising leadership in different cultural contexts (Caliguri and Tarique 2012; Alon and Higgins 2005; Brannen 2016). To lead and exercise command across cultures certainly requires a great deal of intellectual skills forged in an understanding of cultural diversity. It further requires combining these intellectual abilities with some practical provisions. Let me here raise one issue dealing with cultural intelligence and leadership, namely, that of the exercise of leadership through speech – a subject of key importance for any officer. Leadership is an art based on a specific and meaningful relationship between a leader and his or her subordinates. This relationship involves a certain level of confidence, trust, and respect. It is based on a sense of duty, consent, and of respect for authority, but also a sense of responsibility on the part of the leader towards his or her subordinates. But this relationship is one that passes first and foremost by effective communication through speech. Indeed, writing is not the preferred mode of expression of leadership. The exercise of leadership always requires a certain mastery

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of public speaking, through which a leader communicates directly with his or her subordinates. Even for leaders who hold senior positions in large organizations in which there is less direct contact with subordinates and where communication goes more often through writing (in the form of guidelines, instructions or directives, etc.), speech continues to occupy a central place. Great speakers do not necessarily make great leaders, but a good leader needs to master public speech. For a speech to be powerful, it needs to make effective use of cultural codes, and it must draw upon sound knowledge of its cultural environment. Effective speakers know how to adapt their voice, tonality, and body language, thus making good use of rhetorical rules and principles. But effective speakers must also make proper use of specific cultural codes and references so as to bring their audience to believe in a single goal. The force of an effective speech never depends solely upon the intrinsic qualities of its text, its eloquence or its literary qualities, but always, first and foremost, upon a familiarity with the social or cultural environment towards which it is directed. Effective speakers know how to use cultural codes to convey their message better. Thus, for any leader who works in a culturally diverse environment, such as officers in the current operating environment, the development of cultural intelligence is essential to the exercise of effective speech.

Cultural Intelligence as a Type of “Virtue” From there, I would like to defend the idea that cultural intelligence indicates a type of virtue young ladies and gentleman must develop as professionals in the management of violence. Virtue can be defined as a firm and constant intellectual and practical disposition, nurtured by values, that guides the behavior of someone in any complex situation. Thus, cultural intelligence can neither be reduced to a technical competence, nor to a type of knowledge. It involves a practical dimension, that of being able to interact across cultures and, in the case of an officer, to be able to exercise effective leadership in non-homogenous cultural environments. Even if it goes beyond the simple rational knowledge acquired through formal education, in the present discussion virtue does not have any spiritual meaning, as understood for example in the Christian tradition. There is no religious or spiritual dimension attached to it, although one’s virtue might be compatible with some religious or spiritual practices. In the same way, it does not carry any moral connotation, even if one could argue that being open to cultural diversity is a good attitude to develop in our time. I conceive of this notion in the way the Greek philosopher Aristotle defined it, in particular in his writings on ethics (in his Nicomachean Ethics, for example). A virtuous person, according to Aristotle, is one who lives according to high standards and intellectual or practical norms. Virtue is attached to a strong set of values. It refers to a certain type of excellence in character, as it defines a way of being, thinking, and behaving. The Greek philosopher identifies two types of virtues: intellectual virtues and moral virtues. The type of virtue that denotes cultural intelligence is

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of the second type. However, Aristotle’s idea of ​​morality must not be understood here, as it is today in the Western world, through the influence of Christian thinking. The Ancient Greeks had a much more encompassing understanding of the notion of Good, unlike the more restrictive connotation this concept has nowadays in the Western world. For the Greeks, morality comprises domains that we do not anymore associate with morality, such as esthetics, politics, spirituality, wisdom, culture, etc. For Aristotle, living according to the Good required conformity to a set of high values that goes beyond what we have in mind today when we talk about doing Good. It serves to describe a type of character or a disposition of mind that strives for excellence in everything that defines humanity. The Aristotelian conception of virtue comes with a vision of how to acquire or develop it. For the founder of the Lyceum, virtue designates a type of hexis (ἕξις), that is to say, a habitual state which consists both of an acquired disposition and a certain inclination. Virtue can only be acquired through character education, a long process based both upon formal and practical education, embedded and nurtured in specific values. These values ​​can be acquired only through repeated behaviors or habitus, which refers to an ingrained habit or disposition, relatively permanent and stable, which becomes a kind of second nature for a person. One does not simply train or teach someone to become virtuous, as virtue is something that impregnates the mind. Becoming virtuous is not only a matter of education or instruction: it requires the acquisition of values that profoundly affect the way in which individuals perceive and project themselves. Cultural intelligence is not a skill that someone acquires once and for all, the way one learns to ride a bike or to ice skate. It is more of a disposition of mind, nurtured by curiosity and practice. To show cultural intelligence is to demonstrate a constant and renewed ability to seek and understand cultures by interacting with people of different origins. Cultural intelligence can thus only be acquired through a long and comprehensive educational process or a well-rounded education, i.e. through character education. It takes time to elevate an individual to become a virtuous person. This raises the question of the education of virtue in officer-cadets at military academies, in particular the question of the duration of programs in these institutions. In recent years, some countries have been tempted to shorten programs at military academies for operational needs, but also, inescapably, for budgetary constraints. Training an officer requires time, because virtue can only be acquired through a long and well-­ rounded education. It takes even more years for a newly commissioned officer to gain the experience inherent to this position through the exercise of real command. Military academies do not just train young women and men to the requirements of the profession of arms, they bring them to acquire a set of values that transform them and lead them to become officers. The training offered at military academies has traditionally been guided by a series of values, most often carried by a motto, such as the one of the Canadian Military Colleges, “Truth, Duty, Valour,” that of West Point, “Duty, Honor, Country,” and that of Saint-Cyr, “Ils s’instruisent pour vaincre” (“They are learning to overcome”). These values clearly go well beyond the simple academic training offered at a civilian university. This training is based, for a good part, upon the academic requirements of the university, with programs

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that are rigorous and intellectually demanding, the acquisition of technical skills related to the profession of arms, but also the development of a healthy lifestyle, through a high standard of physical fitness, in addition to the adherence to a code of honor and discipline and the nurturing of values. Cultural intelligence must inform these values and ​​ must be part of the officer model which directs the training at military academies. On a side note, I am aware that this notion of virtue goes against the Zeitgeist of our Western liberal democratic society. By definition, being virtuous inevitably implies a certain distinctiveness, or even a connotation of “superiority.” Indeed, virtue has always been associated with moral superiority. Being virtuous implies a certain status; virtuous men and women sit “above” the average individual. But officers must assume this status, not to claim privileges or to denigrate other professions, but as a reflection of the values ​​that they strive for and embody as professionals in the management of violence. This distinctiveness serves a purpose in any military institution, as a consolidation of one’s position over his or her subordinates and as a call for a high standard of values. Indeed, for cultural intelligence to develop itself as a virtue, it must be anchored in a broad general culture, and it must mobilize critical thinking. Cultural intelligence is not simply about being open-minded and embracing different cultural practices, although showing cultural intelligence requires this quality. It involves the ability to decipher cultural practices in concrete environments. It mobilizes complex analytical skills that can only be nurtured if anchored in a solid core of general culture. General culture refers to the type of knowledge related to the great tradition of humanistic thought, which essentially seeks a better understanding of human affairs in general. It provides the tools to deal properly with new or unknown cultural practices and to make sense of them. It enables comparisons between elements taken from a vast core of knowledge incorporating different disciplines which might be effective to decode unfamiliar cultural practices. If this type of knowledge is generalist and more focused upon areas traditionally related to the disciplines of the humanities or social sciences (sociology, political science, history, anthropology, geography, etc.) and literature (literature, communication, rhetoric, philosophy, etc.), it also gives an important place to the basic knowledge of the natural sciences in general (physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc.). General culture is not the lack of specialization in knowledge; one develops a general culture neither simply by refusing specialization, nor by gathering an inordinate quantity of knowledge in the most diverse fields. General culture is based on a global vision aimed at a coherent and significant meta-arrangement of knowledge coming from several domains. It comes with the ability to contextualize knowledge, relative to historical, political, ­sociological factors, etc. It seeks to establish links with other bodies of knowledge and to discern the main principles or dynamics at work behind different phenomena and to detect these same principles or dynamics in other cultural contexts. However, cultural intelligence in turn requires a certain level of reflexive thinking. Critical thinking refers to a special type of intellectual ability in which autonomous subjects apply a broad variety of intellectual tools in order to judge properly. To interact effectively across cultures sometimes requires going beyond one’s own

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biases, in order to appreciate the other outside of the light of one’s own categories of thought, as it presents itself in reality. Cultural intelligence refers to the ability to break with the prejudices that prevent us from correctly grasping a situation – even if not all prejudices are intrinsically bad. Critical thinking thus implies a certain level of autonomy, the ability to think for yourself, to mobilize different intellectual tools, to think clearly and to reflect upon your own reasoning process, including the lenses through which you see the world.

The Education of Cultural Intelligence How do we get young officers to develop their cultural intelligence, understood as a type of virtue? Let us admit that cultural intelligence cannot be acquired as a mere competence, in the manner of those which every young officer must master in his or her initial training at military academies: writing skills, management skills, physical skills, tactical skills, etc. That said, the development of cultural intelligence cannot be simply reduced to a type of knowledge which can be acquired through formal education, as cultural intelligence “is much more than simple knowledge of another culture” (Davis and Wright 2009). Cultural intelligence certainly feeds on complex knowledge, in particular on cultural codes or practices specific to a given social milieu. It mobilizes knowledge of the different fields of social sciences that builds upon general culture. However, it refers to something more encompassing. Intellectual tools, such as those developed by sociology, anthropology, political science, religious studies, or cultural studies, are very helpful to understand cultures and cultural dynamics, including those that take place in societies different from the one with which we are most familiar. However, these tools are certainly not sufficient for a practitioner of leadership in culturally diverse environments; they are not sufficient to operate effectively across cultures. For example, the different typologies of social phenomena developed by sociology are useful to make sense of different societies. We can think of Ferdinand Tönnies’ typology of social groupings between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society) as powerful notions. We can see for example that most African societies resemble more Gemeinschaften and that contemporary Western societies mostly relate to Gesellschaften. But these intellectual tools, alone, are of limited use when the time comes to lead military operations in the Malian Sahel desert, to conduct humanitarian missions in urban areas in South America, or to negotiate a truce between rival factions in a country on the verge of civil war. Thus, we can certainly agree that formal education  – ­lectures given in the classroom – is not sufficient for our young officers to cultivate cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence does not simply define one’s capacity to understand social realities and to describe them with theoretical tools, as it goes beyond that. Pointing towards a type of virtue, cultural intelligence can only be acquired through a comprehensive character-based education. Attached to a type of virtue, cultural intelligence thus refers to a type of behavior. It unfolds in the form of a certain practice, i.e. the ability to maneuver across

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cultures, the effective use of leadership, and the achievement of one’s objectives through the mobilization of cultural codes well-adapted to the situation. It indicates a way of being and acting in a cultural environment marked by diversity, through the mobilization of theoretical and practical resources. It is through cultural intelligence that an officer manages to exercise his or her command and can communicate effectively in a cultural milieu that is marked by cultural diversity. The most suitable type of education for acquiring cultural intelligence should inevitably include region-specific training, such as those offered to all military personnel before an overseas deployment. Getting to know the region in which you are to be operating, especially if this training addresses the issue of culture or cultural practices specific to this region, is an essential requirement. But this training is certainly insufficient if it is decontextualized, i.e. if this knowledge does not fit into a broader global and historical perspective. In the same way, this training must rely upon intellectual skills and a certain level of general culture, the type of knowledge that alone allows the contextualization of a culture and thus the appreciation of the each culture’s singular character, at the same time as their belonging to universal dynamics. For this type of knowledge to find real meaning and to be fully effective, it must be anchored to intellectual dispositions that make up cultural intelligence and which go beyond simply getting to know a specific region. It must nurture the development of a type of curiosity, a real openness to cultural diversity, and certain values attached to the idea of ​​cultures. Another key element in the development of cultural intelligence is the importance of learning foreign languages (Earley and Ang 2003; Boylan and Huntley 2003; Nugent and Catalano 2015). If we consider a language as more than a simple means of communication, but as a complex system of codes of signified and signifiers, we can see the importance of language skills in the development of cultural intelligence. Learning a foreign language gives the individual access to tools to decipher cultural codes that would otherwise be inaccessible or meaningless to one who has not mastered the subtleties of this language. In all truth, one cannot fully understand a culture, without some degree of language proficiency. Many cultural codes which are central to a society’s dynamics cannot simply be “translated” into another language, as they are precisely what overall provides meaning. Language supplies the basis for cultural understanding, cross-cultural communication, and possible immersion in a foreign culture. Understanding a different culture does not only help the learning of a foreign language, it also contributes to cultural awareness, and, ultimately, cultural intelligence. Foreign language learning should occupy a significant place in any officer’s initial training. Furthermore, if this language training is coupled with foreign trips or internships abroad, this can better contribute to the development of cultural intelligence. Being in direct and sustained contact with people of different origins in their own cultural environment is an effective way to bring an individual to develop the skills needed to interact across cultures (Holmes-Eber et al. 2016). Semester-long internships for officer cadets in foreign military academies, which provide for an immersion into a culture for an extended period, are essential in the training of cultural intelligence. The acquisition of cultural intelligence is done through the development of certain

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habits, which, in return, requires time. But in order to make the most of such opportunities, foreign language training and internships abroad must be preceded by appropriate training and rigorous preparation, as well as a clear understanding of what truly comprises cultural intelligence.

Conclusion If the military academies of today want to continue their educational mission and prepare young officers for the demands that await them in the future operational context, they cannot do so without working to develop cultural intelligence. I do not mean by this to call for an in-depth reform of the curriculum offered at military academies, but rather to better integrate this requirement in the training program. Anchored in a set of values, articulated around concrete initiatives, such as the development of international internship programs, reinforced with foreign language training, and supported ​​by rich and rigorous programs in the tradition of the humanities and social sciences, cultural intelligence will be able to flourish as a true virtue for the young men and women trained at military academies.

References Abee, A., & Halpin, S. M. (2010). The cultural imperative for professional military education and leader development. Parameters, 39(4), 20–31. Alon, I., & Higgins, J. M. (2005). Global leadership success through emotional and cultural intelligences. Business Horizons, 48(6), 501–512. Boylan, G., & Huntley, S. (2003). Foreign language learning and cultural awareness. El Guiniguida, 12, 37–44. Brannen, J.  C. (2016). The relationship between cultural intelligence and transformational leadership: A study of people leaders. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of the Rockies, Denver Caliguri, P., & Tarique, I. (2012). Dynamic cross-cultural competencies and global leadership effectiveness. Journal of World Business, 47(4), 612–622. Davis, K. (Ed.). (2009). Cultural intelligence and leadership: An introduction for Canadian forces leaders. Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press. Davis, K., & Wright, J. C. (2009). Chapter 2: Culture and cultural intelligence. In K. Davis (Ed.), Cultural intelligence and leadership: An introduction for Canadian forces leaders. Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press. Earley, P.  C., & Ang, S. (2003). Cultural intelligence: Individual interactions across cultures. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Earley, P. C., Ang, S., & Tan, J.-S. (2006). CQ. Developing cultural intelligence at work. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gates, K. (2012). Applying culture to military operations: A review of foreign militaries (Master of Military Studies Research Paper). https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a601127.pdf. Accessed 20 Dec 2018.

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Holmes-Eber, P., Tarzi, E., & Maki, B. (2016). U.S. Marines’ attitudes regarding cross-cultural capabilities in military operations: A research note. Armed Forces & Society, 42(4), 741–751. MacNab, B.  R. (2012). An experiential approach to cultural intelligence education. Journal of Management Education, 36(1), 66–94. Maddy, J., & Cappellen, T. (2008). Contextualizing cultural intelligence: The case of global managers. In S. Ang & L. Van Dyne (Eds.), Handbook of cultural intelligence: Theory, measurement, and applications (pp. 356–371). New York: Sharpe. Ng, K. Y., Ramaya, R., Teo, T. M. S., & Wong, S. K. (2005). Cultural intelligence: Its potential for military leadership development. Paper presented at the 47th International Military Testing Association, Singapore. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3157/1a51a22b31b3c4801ee26a96 6e95084e8686.pdf?_ga=2.36850464.1829832042.1545267985-744716462.1545267985. Accessed 5 Jan 2019. Nugent, K., & Catalano, T. (2015). Critical cultural awareness in the foreign language classroom. The NECTFL Review, 75, 15–30. Ott, D., & Michailova, S. (2018). Cultural intelligence: a review and new research avenues. International journal of management reviews, 20, 99–119. Rodman, J. (2015). Cross-cultural competence. Introduction and overview of key concepts, mission command – Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate (CDID)). https://www. hsdl.org/?view&did=800779. Accessed 20 Dec 2018. Spencer, E. (2009). It’s all about the people: cultural intelligence (CQ) as a force multiplier in the contemporary operating environment. Journal of Conflict Studies, [S.l.], April, 1715–5673 Sternberg, R.  J., & Kaufman, S.  B. (Eds.). (2012). The Cambridge handbook of intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Danic Parenteau  holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Paris I (PanthéonSorbonne). He is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC of Canada). His research focuses on political philosophy, Quebec politics, and the intellectual training of officers. His publications include Les ideologies politiques. Le clivage gauche-droite (« Political Ideologies on the Political Spectrum »; with I. Parenteau, 2017), Les 50 discours qui ont marqué le Québec (« The 50 Speeches in Quebec »; with C.-P. Courtois, 2010) and Précis Republican à l’usage des Québécois (« Republicain Précis for use by Quebeckers » 2014).

Civilians Under Attack: Diverging Threat Perspectives Sine Vorland Holen

Abstract  The military has become one of many actors operating in conflict settings where the objective is to protect civilians. This has spurred a debate on how military means can be utilized more successfully to combat violence against populations. A key part of this debate concerns threat analysis, since in order to protect civilians, one needs to know whom to protect and what to protect them from. The ‘threat’ concept is used repetitively in conversations concerning conflict resolution. Yet, professions and disciplines understand threats in different ways, indicative of the numerous perspectives that exist on how to manage conflict. This chapter explores two different understandings of threats to civilians: a context-oriented threat as understood by the peace and security field and an actor-oriented threat as understood in military operations. The chapter discusses what the conceptual understandings can learn from each other and what cultural competencies are needed to further strengthen the threat perspectives to improve civilian protection in practice. Keywords  Threats · Protection of civilians · Military operations · Peace and security · Contextual awareness · Cultural competency

Civilians are commonly targets of violence in armed conflict. This violence is described as one of the most striking characteristic of armed conflict in the current millennium (Peter 2019; Slim 2007; United Nations 2018, pp. 23, 24). This feature is compounded by crises occurring amongst the population and in densely populated areas (Smith 2006). The effects contemporary conflicts have on people has led to a shift in the security discourse, from an emphasis on state and territorial security to a larger focus on human security (Paris 2001; UNDP 1994; Vietti and Scribner 2013). More specifically, UN Security Council mandates are verbalizing this expansion through including the protection of civilians as part of the operational objectives. This means, in effect, that security forces have become one of the key S. V. Holen (*) Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_3

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protection actors operating alongside civilian organizations with a common goal of saving lives and alleviating suffering. In order to protect civilians from physical violence you need to know who to protect from whom. Here it is common to talk about threats. A threat is someone or something perceived as posing some sort of danger that can cause bodily injury or harm. However, sectors, professions and disciplines understand threats in multiple ways. This chapter investigates two different understandings of threats to civilians in conflict: the threat as understood in military operations and the threat as understood by the international community on peace and security. Are these perspectives opposing ways of perceiving threats, or can they be seen as complementary? In what ways can the perspectives draw learning from each other? Finally, what do these different perspectives tell us about the cultural competencies needed in order to enhance the protection of civilians in operations? First, the chapter analyzes how threats are described within the peace and security field, with the help of three United Nations (UN) evaluations on the status of peace and security: the HIPPO review on UN peace operations, the review on the UN Peace-building Architecture and the review on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Second, the chapter analyzes how threats are described and understood in military operational planning, more specifically, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) key operational planning document, the Allied Command Comprehensive Operational Planning Directive (COPD). Two different understandings emerge from these documents: the context-oriented threat and the actor-oriented threat. The chapter proceeds with a discussion on what the two threat approaches can learn from one another, and how the threat perspectives could be strengthened through incorporating cultural competency. To help frame this discussion, the chapter draws on a growing body of research on ways to prevent violence as well as sociocultural theory. When engaging in a discourse on conceptual orientations amongst professions that are highly operational in nature, it is an unfortunate necessity to accentuate one-­ sided points of views and cultivate individual phenomena or ‘ideal types’, often used in social science and research. Reality on the ground will always be more nuanced than written papers are able to present. This chapter is no exception. Throughout the chapter, I refer to ‘the military’, which undermines the different military traditions and national educational systems. Similarly, I refer to the ‘peace and security field’, another oversimplification. The field of peace and security started out as a study of the history of the UN Charter: the collective security agreement outlining comprehensive prescriptions on conflict resolution (Higgins 1995). Over time, the field has evolved from a focus on the UN to a more general discourse on patterns of global conflicts and how these can be mitigated through a spectrum of measures. This broad field combines security studies with peace activism. A variety of civilian actors belongs to the field, ranging from academic scholars to operational practitioners. Within the ‘operational’ side of the field, one finds groups labelled humanitarians, human rights activists, development workers, experts on conflict prevention and peacebuilding and many more. Nonetheless, drawing out

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distinctive features and generalizations enables comparison between the different fields and a cross-disciplinary discourse on the topic. Before looking more closely at the threat perspectives, I will outline some of the key parameters of contemporary conflicts and operational conduct to situate the different threat conversations.

Characteristics of Contemporary Operational Environments1 The UN Secretary General has declared the state of civilian protection as ‘bleak’ (United Nations 2015b, 2018, p. 2). This protection concern refers to a couple of characteristics emphasized as key features of contemporary conflicts. One of these characteristics is the deliberate targeting of unarmed populations (Peter 2019; UN Women 2015; United Nations 2018). At the same time, many battles occur in urban areas (Evans 2016; Sampaio 2016; Smith 2006; UNHCR 2018). As more than 50% of the world’s population live in cities, and with the numbers and size of megacities increasing, international operations are predominantly taking place in population-­ heavy areas (Norheim-Martinsen 2015). Non-state actors is yet another aspect of contemporary conflict. ‘Non-state actors’ is an umbrella-term for a myriad of violent constellations including irregular groups, violent extremists, networks, proxies and corporations, and are often depicted as being transnational (Cordesman 2017; NATO 2016b; Peter 2019). The transnational reference refers both to the violent activities taking place in territories spanning across national borders, as well as conflict being fueled by cross-border flows of people, money, goods, ideas, news and material (Norheim-Martinsen 2015; Peter 2019; United Nations 2015a, 2018). The transnational aspect of conflicts is also a reference to the record-high numbers of refugees. 70.8 million people are forcibly displaced, including refugees and internally displaced persons, many having fled their homes due to persecution, armed conflict, or general violence (UNHCR 2019). Humanitarian agencies, set to relieve civilian suffering, are often finding it difficult to access those in need as many reside in hard-to-reach or besieged areas controlled by warring parties (UNHCR 2018). Overall, these characteristics of modern conflict have increased the pressure on the international community to rethink approaches to security, including how to protect civilians from physical harm (Peter 2019). Protecting civilians is no longer limited to civil response measures. Today, UN mandates allow and expect to use military force to protect populations from physical violence (United Nations 2017). In effect, this has driven the armed forces into active duties to protect civilians (Berdal and Ucko 2015). Armed forces currently deploying to UN peace operations mostly operate under specific Protection of Civilians (POC) mandates. Even NATO, the world’s largest military alliance, has

1  The term ‘operations’ is frequently used by NATO, while the UN would normally refer to ‘missions’. The chapter uses operations, implying both.

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carried out operations where the main objective was to protect civilians: Operation Allied Force initiated in 1999 to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Albanians by Serbian forces, and Operation Unified Protector, launched in 2011 to stop the Gaddafi regime’s violent acts on its own population in Libya (Keenan and Beadle 2015). Furthermore, with the adoption of the Policy for the Protection of Civilians in 2016 (NATO 2016b), alongside the revised doctrine on the Conduct of Operations in 2019, NATO has committed military means to ‘protect civilians from conflict-­ related physical violence or threats of physical violence by other actors’ (NATO 2019, pp. 1–15). This implies it is a command responsibility to consider civilian security in an operational environment, beyond a traditional collateral damage thinking. As the military has become one of the many actors working to protect civilians, it has prompted a discussion on how to use military means more effectively to combat violence against civilians (Smith 2006). Part of this re-examination deals with the threat analysis.

Insecure Environments: The Threat as Context The UN published three global evaluations on the status of peace and security in 2015: (1) the review of the High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (also known as the HIPPO report), (2) the review of the UN Peace Building Architecture and (3) the review of the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (also known as the WPS report) (Stamnes and Osland 2016). The UN Secretary General commissioned the studies, and all three were led by high-level advisory groups. The experts’ task was to assess the observed gap between the objectives of UN peace operations and the limitations in responding to the conflicts (Stamnes and Osland 2016). The reviews present a set of recommendations, based on a vast amount of material concerned with peace and security, as well as extensive consultations with various stakeholders (Stamnes and Osland 2016). The reviews are part of shaping contemporary perceptions of operations as well as approaches to peace and security (Peter 2019). Although the reviews initially intended to strengthen the UN’s approach to sustaining peace (Peter 2019), their findings should not only be understood as limited to the UN machinery and UN peace operations. The analysis of conflict and how to resolve them have relevance to entities outside of the UN family operating in conflict settings, including NATO. So, how do the reviews explain and conceptualize threats to civilians in armed conflicts? The HIPPO report starts by stressing that ‘The United Nations must rise to the challenge of protecting civilians in the face of imminent threat’ (United Nations 2015b, p. ix). This is a recurring pattern in the three evaluations: the threat term is frequently used and widely defined as a general expression to encourage a response to the needs of the people - women, men and children – whose lives have been affected by armed conflict (United Nations 2015b, p. xiv). As such, the reviews

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focus on threats from the perspective of the civilians, and in many cases from the vantage point of the security of women and girls (UN Women 2015, p. 21). The threats to civilians, and in fact to the wider ‘international peace and security’ are depicted as environments that may shatter previous peace advances or become causal factors for future conflict. Examples of such situations are changes in local resources, the spread of pandemic diseases, or climate change. Even urban settings are highlighted as potential threats, as these areas, where the majority of people fleeing conflict currently reside, often have similar levels of insecurity to those areas from which they originally fled (UN Women 2015, p. 69). As insecure environments continue to deteriorate, they become breeding grounds for behaviors that challenge stable societies, such as sexual and gender-based violence, child marriage, or attacks on women not conforming to dominant stereotypes of appropriate female behavior (UN Women 2015, pp. 168, 173, 177). Insecure environments thus become threat multipliers, aggravating existing fragile situations and contributing to social upheaval. Such environments are considered threats because they create an atmosphere that normalizes violence (UN Women 2015, p. 209). In addition to describing the conditions that provide nourishment for violence to grow, the evaluations also portray ignorance as a threat. This ignorance, which is described as riddling operational conduct, is a lack of contextual awareness (UN Women 2015, pp.  15–17; United Nations 2015a, p.  23, b, p.  15). All three reviews criticize current conflict engagement strategies for primarily having dealt with the symptoms of conflict, and not the root causes. For this reason, a core aspect in all evaluations is that deep and relevant information about the social fabric of a society is crucial for any operational success. Consequently, threats are largely understood as the totality of circumstances that disrupt the safety and stability of peoples’ lives. Threat is related to the interconnected patterns of societal rule, often caused by bad governance, or as described in the HIPPO report ‘When peaceful protests and efforts at conflict prevention fail to bring about compromise, violence often ensues and, in its path, the reopening of historic wounds, the hardening of religious or ethnic competitive identities, regional entanglements and, at times, the accentuation of international rivalries’ (United Nations 2015b, p. 2). Threat assessments should therefore be centered on contextual awareness, and operational planning should tailor its protection efforts to the context.

Violence as a Social Problem One body of research that accentuates the context-oriented perspective is the prevention of violent extremism. Violent extremism is described as a rapidly growing threat to peace and security, largely because of networks such as ISIL and Boko Haram (Karlsrud 2017, p. 1217). The UN reviews also emphasize violent extremism as a significant threat, and uses it as a term to describe much of the violence

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committed by non-state actors in today’s conflicts. Communities within peace and security who study the prevention of violent extremism reflect on tools and means to respond to this growing threat. A recurring warning is against the tendency to oversimplify the dynamics at play in the realm of such violence. Men, women, youth and children engage with violent extremism in complex and multiple ways. They join the networks through a range of interconnected factors, taking on roles spanning from operational and support functions to mere domestic association (Anderlini 2016; UNDP and ICAN 2019). Violent extremism is often described as a social problem, indicating it is a symptom of other interconnected challenges. Furthermore, social problems cannot ‘be fixed’ through tackling one factor in isolation from the rest of the environment. Because the associations with violent networks are in most instances nuanced and complex, clustering groups of people together in dichotomies becomes a somewhat futile exercise (Anderlini 2016; Cordesman 2017; UNDP and ICAN 2019; Williams 2016). Studies on preventing violent extremism obscure the classification of people into traditional categories and warn against a perennial fascination with an enemy. Portraying those involved as either perpetrator or victim of violence can be a sketchy exercise as it may present an oversimplified and skewed picture of reality (Mahmoud 2019; UNDP and ICAN 2019). There is a conceptual difference between e.g. saying someone is a terrorist and saying someone has carried out terrorist actions, as the first implies a ‘once a terrorist, always a terrorist’ perspective. Instead, people should be seen as agents of positive change (Williams 2016). Determining the reasons for anti-social behavior therefore focuses on the processual aspects leading up to the violence, aspects that can fuel an insecure environment or an inclusive environment. This is a distinctly different orientation than merely focusing on a violent incident where physical harm occurs. Another risk associated with categorizing people as victims or perpetrators is that labelling people as a violent offender can in fact fuel the social manifestation of that identity, inadvertently pushing a person into becoming a violent offender (UNDP and ICAN 2019; Williams 2016). Individuals who see themselves as stigmatized as potential extremists, may instead of rejecting the label, embrace it in defiance so that the label itself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (Cherney 2016). Seeing a threat as embodied in an identifiable party may thus exacerbate and amplify the problem that one wants to prevent in the first place. And so interventions that are meant to counter violence, may in fact affirm the social transformation of someone becoming a violent aggressor, and hence be a factor in itself keeping the cycles of violence in motion (UNDP and ICAN 2019). To conclude, the context-oriented threat perspective encourages a dynamic and processual view of conflicts. The threat is understood as the sum of many factors in an environment, in which the grounds for peaceful conduct are laid down, or one that shapes the conditions for violent behavior.

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‘ Appreciation of Adversaries, Friends and Neutrals’: The Threat as an Identifiable Actor A vast body of doctrines, directives and guidelines inform the conduct of military operations. Still, if the desire is to understand military rationale during operational conduct, looking into the operational planning process is a good place to start. The purpose of operational planning is to design, conduct and sustain military operations in order to achieve a strategic objective (NATO 2013a, pp. 1–13). This objective is a translation of the political statement into a more compressed statement of intent developed at the highest-ranking military command level. The commander at operational level starts developing a plan outlining the actions required in order to get to the intended state (Andersen 2016, pp. 45, 46). To aid the commander through this process, his or her staff rely heavily on the Allied Command Operations Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive (hereinafter referred to as COPD or the planning directive). The COPD articulates the NATO operations planning process, describing a step-­ by-­step procedure and a systematic movement through phases (NATO 2013b, p. i). This detailed procedure is, in essence, a structured decision-making process, which is followed by NATO’s two permanent operational command structures at Joint Force Command Brunssum and Joint Force Command Naples, as well as being heavily used across the military community (NATO 2013b). As an instrumental tool for operational planning, the COPD strongly influences on how military personnel view, discuss and ultimately act in an operational environment. Furthermore, despite being a planning document, the COPD is not only process oriented but also portrays conceptual understandings of conflict. Therefore, the terms and perceptions applied in COPD matter and will influence how military officers conceptualize the conflict in which they plan to engage.

Reds, Blues and Greens The key starting point for the commander to make an effective decision on a course of action is by conducting an analysis of the operational environment. This analysis begins in the first planning phase and is from thereon a continuous and ongoing process that will guide the subsequent steps. COPD refers to this analysis as the situational awareness of the crisis (NATO 2013b, pp. 2–6), which is defined as ‘the human perception of all available elements of information in relation to a specific situation that allows for a more holistic and informed interpretation of reality’ (NATO 2013b, pp. 2–5). This narrative of events should thus answer main questions relating to who, what, where, when, why and how (NATO 2013b, pp.  2–1).

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Information requested to answer these questions covers a spectrum of domains, including political, military, economic, social infrastructure and information (NATO 2013b, pp. 4–10). Understanding potential threats is an essential part of gaining situational awareness. However, the planning directive does not clearly define ‘threat’. Instead, the directive encourages the identification of actors in the area of operation (NATO 2013b, pp. 2–6, 4–19). The actors are described as being a variety of state and non-­ state entities, including potential adversaries, partners and others, whose actions have contributed to the crisis and who may continue to influence future developments (NATO 2013b, pp.  4–19). Although the planning directive encourages the military officer to see the actors as systems ‘comprised of different elements that interact in accordance with their attributes with other systems to influence their behavior in pursuit of their interests’, it also encourages the classification of these actors into groupings of adversary, friendly and neutral (NATO 2013b, pp.  2–6). Another way of coding these key groups of people is through the colors red (the adversaries), blue (partners of the Alliance or friendly forces) and green (neutrals or others not categorized as red or blue, e.g. the civilian population) (NATO 2013b, pp. 3–24). The red, or adversary, is ‘a party acknowledged as potentially hostile to a friendly party and against which the use of force may be envisaged’ (NATO 2013b, pp. L-1). The level of an identified threat is measured through looking at the adversary’s intentions and their capabilities. This includes describing the adversary’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as estimations of what effect their actions might have (NATO 2016a). Clarifying the adversary’s intention and capability is performed in order to influence their course of action (NATO 2016a, pp. 3–7). The aim of such an assessment is to minimize, neutralize and/or defeat the threat (NATO 2016a, pp. A-3). In other words: Threat = Actor’s Intent x Capabilities.

Violence as the Embodied (State) Enemy An implied assumption emerges from the text: that a clear identifiable ‘adversary’ already exists. Furthermore, the threat is seen as embodied in a ‘party’, indicating the threat as a physical being. The planning directive thus encourages the search for a distinct enemy (Smith 2006, p.  300). Moreover, an important aim of building knowledge of the actors is to acquire the ability to project possible outcomes of potential actions (NATO 2013b, pp. 2–5). Identifying the threats in the area of operations by distinct actors thus becomes an instrumental feature for planning an operation, and a prerequisite in order to proceed with the next steps in the planning process. A brief reminder of the military’s role and function is here in order. Traditionally, threats were not understood to be towards civilians but towards one’s own forces. It is partly for this reason, that when military officers talk of ‘protection’, they are most often referring to Force Protection, i.e. protecting their own forces from

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external forces. The armed forces are a part of the state and are meant to protect the state: the main function of the military is thus to secure itself and its own state from enemy forces belonging to other states. Put differently, the military’s conceptual development of a threat is founded on the threat being an enemy of the state (Thomstad 2016). Presumably, it is this historical view of an enemy as a structured and unified form that has led to military planning naturally placing the ‘parties’ in conflict into binary oppositions, such as adversary-friendly, us-them, combatant-­ civilian etc. Such a diametric presentation of the world is part of traditional military thinking (Christensen et al. 2014). Indeed, it is only in recent military history that the definition of threats have been expanded to include acts of violence from actors who deliberately target civilians as part of their strategy, and where the failure to protect civilians can undermine and threaten operational objectives, often with strategic implications. The military’s adoption of a binary and actor-oriented focus in operational planning does not mean that the military is detached from contextual awareness. Although the primary ‘enemy’ to the military has been, and still is, another state with large and conventional firepower, fighting in so-called small wars settings operated by non-state actors is also a familiar focus (Kaplan 2013). Counterinsurgency (COIN) emerged as a discipline in the 1950s, while having its roots further back in colonial history. The term was first introduced in official US army doctrine, drafted by General David Petraeus with the Iraq invasion in mind (Kaplan 2013). As with the debate on violent extremism, the basic assumption is that insurgency is a social problem. However, while the ‘peace practitioners’ explore the problems in society that may encourage individuals to step onto the violent stage, COIN operations sees the social problem as the enemy’s ability to feed off and manipulate genuine popular grievances in society (Kaplan 2013, p. x; Kilcullen 2009). COIN, as a military approach, sees it as instrumental to address the social imperatives of a society in order to compete for influence and control (Huntington 2000; Kilcullen 2009, preface xv). In other words, one focuses on the society as the problem; the other focuses on the actor as the problem. These experiences have been critically reflected on by military officers such as General Rupert Smith and David Galula, the latter having stated that ‘war is not a chess game, but a vast social phenomenon with an infinitely greater and ever-expanding number of variables, some of which elude analysis’ (Galula, as cited in Kilcullen 2009, prologue). Acquiring knowledge on the social terrain has also been reinforced after the experiences from the invasions and following operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (Christensen et al. 2014; Jager 2007; Kipp et al. 2006). Nevertheless, mapping threat-actors (the red) in the operational area from the perspective of the local population (the green) is not mainstreamed in military planning. Even in COIN operations, which emphasizes the social environment, knowledge on the society and culture is collected in order to target a potential enemy. To conclude, the threat as understood in military operations can be seen as an identifiable actor, often referred to as an ‘adversary’, whose level of danger can be quantifiably assessed through multiplying intent with capabilities.

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Opposing or Complementary Perspectives? The actor-oriented approach, classifying people into ‘adversaries’, ‘neutrals’, and ‘friends’ in military planning, is supported by terms used in the Law of Armed Conflict, also known as International Humanitarian Law. This legal framework, ‘serving the protection of man in armed conflict’ (Greenwood 2008, p. 1), distinguishes between those parts of a population who take part in armed fighting to those who do not. The ‘combatant’ is a person who takes direct part of the hostilities and who is assessed to have an affiliation with an armed force (Ipsen 2008, p. 81). On the other side of the spectrum one finds those referred to as non-combatants, unarmed populations, occupied inhabitants, locals, and civilians (Ipsen 2008). A civilian is here defined negatively, as in what they are not: a civilian is not an armed combatant, and not a soldier. These legal provisions are important for conducting military operations as they describe who is a threat and when military forces can legally eliminate them, or put more bluntly, take someone’s life. The principle of distinction prevents parties from directly targeting civilians. Therefore, the structuring of the civilian and the adversary as binary opposites becomes a useful comparison, as being able to separate the two from one another is a matter of necessity. Also from a protection perspective, being able to distinguish a civilian from a perpetrator is a precondition in order to offer protection. It is impossible to safeguard people without forming an opinion about who needs protection and who poses a danger. Nevertheless, this duality presents an obvious challenge: the implied assumption being that a noticeable difference exists between the civilian and the adversary. As discussed within the context-oriented perspective, separating people at risk of violence from specific threats is difficult. Many of today’s conflicts are concentrated in urban areas with many actors that are in continual transformation. Fixed categories of ‘adversary’ and ‘neutral’ do not easily apply within such environments. Seeing the threat as an identifiable actor presumes a certain stability in people, where their behavior is somewhat coherent. This is a presumption that can lead to oversimplifications of social life (Rubinstein 2005). Sociology and anthropology provide insights to this ‘social life’, or cultural competence, seeing the human and the environment as inseparable and interdependent parts of a dynamic whole (Geertz 1973, p. 5; Wollants 2012, p. 2). In attempting to understand human behavior, we have to look at the symbolic meaning attributed to the action. And these ‘webs of meaning’, are to be found in the interaction between humans (Geertz 1973). Therefore, dividing the actors into separate and silo categories, without noticing the overlap and contact between them, removes the meaning. Such strict separations simply do not exist in the real world. However, approaching operational planning from this perspective is easier said than done. Applying sociocultural theory does make it difficult to pin down the nature of the threat and to classify ‘the threat’ from ‘the threatened’. A middle ground between an over-emphasis on the red enemy, and a theoretical framework that is difficult to apply on the battlefield, is to draw attention to a cluster of actors that military operations have downplayed: the greens (neutrals, or others, such as

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the local population). The UN evaluations stress that it is the local population who are the most important factor in conflict analysis, as it is the ability to reflect the concerns, culture and dynamics of the conflict area, that will determine the effectiveness of the efforts (UN Women 2015, p. 25). The context-oriented approach has an advantage in being culturally sensitive, as it tries to analyze the context from the viewpoint of the people, the civilians themselves. How do they perceive the threat? Moreover, the context-orientation blurs the lines between the ‘civilian’ and the ‘adversary’, seeing the ‘local population’ as representing a social complexity where actors can be friendly, hostile or both, depending on the situation. As such, the perspective already promulgates the interrelation between different parties. When protecting civilians is one of the operational objectives, it is a prerequisite that the conflict dynamics are better understood, including the relational aspects between the people in the operational environment. In the cases where a civilian and an adversary look alike and potentially even play both roles, forming an in-depth appreciation of what is stirring amongst the population in an area of operation is necessary. If acts of violence are best understood as social processes rather than as stereotypical behavior for a group of people, then it should follow that in order to plan adequate response measures, social configurations that are at play between the threat and the threatened must be better understood (Christensen et  al. 2014). In other words, understanding the relations between the actors, and how they adapt to each other and the wider environment, is what provides the threat analysis with substantial value.

Being Part of the Conflict Culture Understanding the relations between the actors also involves assessing our own role in conflict. All actors present in a crisis setting - military and non-military - have an impact on people’s safety. When civilians are caught up in violence, the armed forces risk becoming part of the problem if there is little awareness of how one’s own actions effect the wider terrain in which one operates. The principle of primum non nocere, meaning ‘above all, do no harm’, is originally ethical guidance for the medical profession. Humanitarian assistance, development work and peacebuilding have taken on this principle, documenting past mistakes where well-intended interventions had negative impact on the conflict (see e.g. Anderson 1999; Barber and Bowie 2008; Harrell-Bond 1986). These lessons learnt have since been applied, sometimes under the term ‘conflict sensitivity’ (Conflict Sensitivity 2015). Conflict sensitivity assessments include a systematic analysis of how different interventions might lead to positive and negative consequence for the wider conflict environment, and, conversely, the impact of the conflict environment on these interventions (Conflict Sensitivity 2015). As such, conflict sensitivity involves tuning into the local culture and how the conflict reinforces or changes the culture. It involves an adequate understanding of the local conceptions of the conflict, the means needed to resolve it, and how intervening forces fits within these.

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The military are sometimes criticized for ‘not seeing the forest for the trees’, suggesting that they have failed to make an accurate analysis of local realities (Mahmoud 2019). An example of this, mentioned in the WPS report, is when drones mistakenly target civilians. Often those mistakenly targeted are stigmatized within their community based on the assumption that these individuals and their families are affiliated with militant activity (UN Women 2015, p. 136). Another example is inadvertently empowering warring parties by choosing to give them a seat at the negotiating table, without realizing that violence is often applied as a means to be seen as a legitimate actor and thereby gain political influence. Military institutions do consider second and third order effects. However, the lessons learned from the context-orientated actors and their documented first-hand experience can stimulate and broaden this consideration. Assessing unintended consequences that may cause more harm than good are essential considerations, especially in operations where the utility of military force is expected to protect civilians against identified violent aggressors. Conflict sensitivity teaches us how we become part of a conflict’s social environment the moment we step into the operational ‘theatre’. It helps to assess how each action, or even one’s mere presence, might influence, intentionally or unintentionally, those driving the conflict. Furthermore, as conflict often creates a space to challenge cultural values and procedures, this sensitivity becomes even more relevant. Without sufficient awareness, operational actors may become involved in social changes without even realizing it. Many nations, for example, are involved with Security Force Assistance in Northern Iraq. Joining the Armed Forces in these regions has traditionally been a purely male profession. However, after ISIL’s devastating attack on the local populations in these regions, women began to take up arms in order to fight back and to rescue their ‘sisters’ still held captive by ISIL. Over a relatively short period of time, this led to the establishment of female units that have become integrated parts of the Peshmerga. Conflict sensitivity goes far beyond the military principle of proportionality, where the level of anticipated military advantage of an intervention is weighted against the level of incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian property, also known in military terms as ‘collateral damage’ (ICRC 2013; NDUC 2013). Having looked at some of the learning drawn from the context-orientated threat perspective, what are advantages with the actor-oriented positioning?

The Interpretation of Violent Cultures The best way to avoid or (re)lapse into armed conflict is to prevent those at risk of anti-social behavior from entering violent networks. Prevention work is key in peace efforts and usually carried out by civilian actors with a long-term focus. Nonetheless, within existing violent networks there will be a core group of people who see themselves as leaders and masterminds, recruiting those at risk and encouraging violence. And when the task is to minimize the danger that such people pose,

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the military’s actor-oriented approach has an advantage. A foundational principle in warfare is to ‘know your enemy’ (Sun Tzu, as cited in Muckian 2006, p. 1). Knowing your enemy implies knowing your opponent’s organizational structure and methods. A threat actor who systematically organizes violence requires a certain level of command and control, as well as certain capabilities to attack civilians, such as advanced planning in time and space. As a means to strengthen command and control, armed groups sometimes encourage and reward the performance of violence, thereby growing a culture of violence (Eriksen 2001, p. 60). Command structures also develop rationales for maintaining the organization of the violence. In the early 1990s war in Bosnia and Herzegovina for example, Serbian soldiers raped Muslim women as a tactic of war (Sharlach 2000). This violence had a structural component to it, as the intent of the mass rapes were not merely to drive away the enemy population, but to repeatedly violate non-Serb women to ensure they became pregnant. This, because it was believed that ethnicity was determined through the father (Sharlach 2000). For those who already commit, command and condone violence, it is the actor-­ oriented threat approach, which studies the interests of violent parties and assesses how these interests can be met and countered, that gives the military an upper hand in dealing with violent offenders. As part of the operational planning design, military officers systematically profile the perpetrators of violence, including their intent and capabilities. The military share a common warrior culture with armed groups. This gives the military a unique vantage point in decoding the symbolic meaning ingrained in violent action. In the cases of structural civilian violence, the bodily harm is an expression of a larger social meaning (Eriksen 2001, p. 172). The shared system of symbols, which makes up military culture, provides the military with an insider-perspective that can enhance the intelligible, or thick description of a violent situation (Geertz 1973, p. 15). In addition to thoroughly analyzing the perpetrator’s motives and abilities, the actor-oriented perspective brings with it a valuable potential of stopping violence through military-to-military engagement. When it is civilians who are under attack, and not the Armed Forces themselves, the Armed Forces can function as a vital third party, using both lethal and non-lethal force in order to influence the violent behavior of an armed party. A successful engagement with armed groups requires a certain credibility among those involved in the dialogue. The military, who have the ability and resources to protect themselves, have an obvious advantage in establishing contact with armed groups. Equally important is the fact that a shared military culture provides the legitimacy needed to even enter a conversation with the threat actors in the first place. This legitimacy is a prerequisite in order to have a meaningful discussion about the costs and consequences of a continuation of violent behavior. The military can also be an important third-party negotiator between warring parties, for example mediating ceasefires that ‘freeze’ the fighting between factions (Brickhill 2018). Ending conflict involves a shift in the power balance, which armed groups are well aware of. For many armed groups, this means entering a largely unknown and disempowering future. Successfully engaging with such armed

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groups is therefore instrumental, which will include an understanding of why they engaged in fighting in the first place (Brickhill 2018, p. 10). The potential positive outcomes of using strategically a shared culture as part of military-to-military engagements are many, especially when aiming at stopping violence directed at civilians.

Two Sides of the Same Coin Understanding threats as identifiable actors can appear a stark contrast to the context-­oriented perspective. Having looked at the two conceptual understandings of threats, it is tempting to conclude that context-orientation is better for understanding the social dynamics at play in conflicts; while the actor-orientation, which critics say involves a piecemeal approach to understanding conflicts, tends to neglect cultural considerations. However, is it necessarily that simple? By returning to the UN’s evaluations, expressing concern over the lack of contextual awareness and failure to understand the root causes of conflict, then the same critique can be applied to all protection actors involved within conflict mitigation, not just the military. Every profession and every sector, whether working on political level or tactical level, struggle with seeing the big picture of an ongoing conflict and incorporating adequate cultural awareness into the planning and execution of various conflict-­ resolution measures. Comprehensive efforts, where all protection-force actors fully appreciate how their role and function fit into the bigger picture to win the peace, is still a rarity. If the need is to increase contextual awareness, then an obvious way forward is to enhance cultural competency amongst the protection actors. Yet, cultural competency is not one unified, defined body of knowledge that can be taught and applied in the same way across professions. Even defining ‘culture’ itself is problematic with its plethora of definitions (Eriksen 2001, p. 3). Cultural competency is knowledge that needs to be tailored to the conceptual frameworks already existing within professions. Therefore, in order to build cultural skillsets, one way is to demonstrate what the particular protection actor’s competence is, and then expand and elaborate on this. By revisiting the two conceptual understandings of the threat, it should be possible to evaluate what elements of cultural competency are missing and then built on these to help fill the contextual awareness gap identified in the global evaluations. For example, one way of strengthening actor-oriented threat assessments is to expand on the sociocultural interpretation of the violent behavior when observing the intent of the threat actor. Seeing violence in sociocultural terms provides an understanding of why some people have committed themselves to violent action (Eriksen 2001, p. 173). Understanding better the social meaning of violence being committed should therefore strengthen counter measures, making them more relevant and appropriate. As such, integrating cultural competency into threat analysis

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presents a significant potential for strengthening planning when the protection of civilians is an objective. The many different conceptual lenses describing the threat illustrates the need to tailor the building of cultural competencies. The various threat orientations explain some aspects of the threat but not others. The elements of the two perspectives discussed in this chapter offer different, even complementary, insight into various threats. What differs is the purpose of the threat assessments. For the armed forces, it is natural to orient assessments around actors: as the unique function of the military (and the police) is the legitimate use of force. This approach differentiates them from all other actors working towards conflict resolution.

Conclusion The use of civil and military interventions to resolve complex conflicts requires multi-dimensional approaches, as there is not one level or one element that on its own can address all aspects. If protecting civilians from physical violence is the objective, as it is for those actors involved in conflict management, a coordinated and combined effort is essential. Such efforts must be based on in-depth considerations for the situations at hand, including a thorough threat analysis. There are many ways of monitoring threats in conflict situations, as seen through the actor-­ oriented and context-oriented threat perspectives. Both the actor-oriented and the context-oriented approach give partial explanations of conflict and violent performances. From the context-oriented perspective, a threat assessment involves qualitatively understanding the social environment in order to develop long-term comprehensive solutions. Yet it may not be able to provide immediate responses to occurring violence. The military’s actor-oriented focus on the other hand may not result in action that solves the larger issues at hand, but they do have the ability to halt ongoing violence. Furthermore, this is often a precondition for the civilian actors to start tackling the wider political and social issues underlying a conflict. For military officers, the mental transition of protecting the individual, in addition to protecting the state, is still new. Considering the characteristics of contemporary conflicts, and the expectation to ensure the protection of civilians, future military threat assessments might be expected to focus on human security as much as state security. This development dictates a re-orientation when viewing the operational environment. This does not mean that military operational planning should stop applying an actor-oriented approach. Quite the contrary, the actor-orientation can be strengthened and expanded on. Current operational planning still puts most of its emphasis on the enemy-actor. The contextual orientation can here enhance the appreciation of the other actors besides the ‘reds’. Looking more closely at the green actors and seeing them as instrumental as the red actors when planning appropriate courses of action, makes the conflict analysis and operational planning more confusing and certainly more complex. However, it also makes the analysis and the planning more accurate and robust.

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Exploring the different horizons of the threat provides interesting insight into the type of cultural competencies that today’s operations need. For the military ­commander, cultural competency can be of support when grappling with the complex threats that today’s conflicts present. In many operations, he or she will be held responsible for the active protection of civilians, while at the same time being expected to assess the risk that military action may have on encouraging or discouraging violent behavior. Taking a balanced view on how action can either stop violence or fuel it is extraordinarily complex, and requires careful consideration. Cultural competency provides backing to this balancing act and thereby strengthens the threat perspectives.

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Stamnes, E., & Osland KM (2016) Synthesis report: reviewing UN peace operations, the UN peacebuilding architecture and the implementation of UNSCR 1325. Retrieved from https:// www.un.org/pga/70/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/01/NUPI_Report_2_16_Stamnes_ Osland.pdf Thomstad, A.  B. (2016). Terrorangrepet i Oslo-Forsvarets håndhevelsesbistand og samarbeid med Oslo-politiet etter 22. juli. Oslo Files on Defence and Security, nr. 1/2016, Institutt for Forsvarsstudier UN Women. (2015). Preventing conflict transforming justice, securing the peace: A global study on the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolution 1325. New Work: United Nations. UNDP. (1994). Human development report: new dimensions of human security. New York: United Nations. UNDP, & ICAN. (2019). Invisible women: gendered dimensions of return. In Rehabilitation and reintegration from violent extremism. New York: United Nations Development Programme & International Civil Society Action Network. UNHCR. (2018). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2017. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/5b27be547.pdf UNHCR. (2019). Figures at a glance. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-aglance.html United Nations. (2015a). The challenge of sustaining peace: Report of the advisory group of experts for the 2015 review of the United Nations peacebuilding architecture. New  York: United Nations. United Nations. (2015b). Uniting our strengths for peace  – Politics, partnership, and people: Report of the high-level independent panel on peace operations, June 16. New York: United Nations. United Nations. (2017). Use of force by military components in United Nations peacekeeping operations. New York: United Nations. United Nations. (2018). Report of the secretary general on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. New York: United Nations Security Council. Vietti, F., & Scribner, T. (2013). Human insecurity: Understanding international migration from a human security perspective. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 1(1), 17–31. Williams, M. (2016). Youth, peace, and security: A new agenda for the Middle East and North Africa. Journal of International Affairs, 69(2), 103–114. Wollants, G. (2012). Gestalt therapy: Therapy of the situation. London: Sage. Sine Vorland Holen  is a Senior Advisor and Ph.D. student at the Norwegian Defence University College, where she manages the portfolio of human security in international UN and NATO operations. Holen is currently leading a research project where she investigates the military’s role in stopping violence committed by armed groups against civilians. Holen’s previous work has centred on humanitarian assistance, protection of civilians, security policy, human rights and forced migration, through employments with UNHCR, the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Kosovo, government institutions and NGOs. She holds a MA in Sociology, a Graduate Diploma in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies, and is a trained Gestalt therapist.

The Errors Clausewitz Made About Culture in War (and How a Clausewitzian Approach Can Solve Them) Youri Cormier

Abstract  Arguments aimed at undermining Clausewitz’s theories as too “state-­ centric” have carried the false idea that he excluded war’s cultural aspects from his analysis. In reality, Clausewitz wrote many thoughts on how different peoples fight, as well as the societal factors that affect morale among the troops and the population. This paper argues that Clausewitz did not understate the role of culture at all, but actually overstated it, falling at times outright into stereotyping. Luckily, despite these faults in his writings, he nonetheless bequeathed a rational tool to frame our notion of culture’s role in war in his famed “Wondrous Trinity.” Improving our overall grasp of Clausewitz through the lens of dialectical reasoning facilitates the task of extracting a cultural theory of war from his magnus opus that can be useful especially in fighting insurgencies whose claims to power are built on cultural re-­ appropriation and anti-colonialism. Keywords  War theory · Insurgency · Cultural intelligence · Military strategy

Cultural awareness and sensitivity are crucial to any military action on a foreign front. While reasons for this abound, two are particularly determinant for success. First, if either an intervention’s design or narrative is conceptualized without cultural intelligence, an attempt to wipe out small radical group may be understood by belligerents on either side as a wider war against a community, an ethnicity, a religion, or a nationality. If this problem lies at the intervention’s design, then the application of force will be illegitimate; yet, even if only the narrative is failing, the effect is nearly identical, because the application of force will be perceived widely as illegitimate. The effect is perceptually equal. Second, there is the problem of achieving an end state. A vital challenge in any asymmetrical conflict is to win the hearts

Y. Cormier (*) Conference of Defence Associations Institute, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_4

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and minds, but this is unachievable without at least basic knowledge of what these hearts and minds desire, beyond what is universal, such as security, dignity, and the requirements of life. Given this, no attempt to develop military doctrines and missions should forgo the cultural dimension at the design and implementation stages. In fact, any analytical tools used to determine strategy that cannot be synchronized within a culturally sensitive framework should be stricken from our design processes, since failing on this front could lead to counter-productive actions that reinforce the enemy’s arguments and recruitment. The argument that war’s cultural element undermines Clausewitz’s main conclusions has been made by various scholars, most notably by John Keegan and Mary Kaldor. If the works of Clausewitz are indeed irreconcilable with a cultural theory of war, then in keeping with my above caveat, I would quickly join this bandwagon and file away my many copies of On War into the section of my library where I keep dated, but quaint texts like those of Puységur or Joly de Maizeroy. Luckily, this can wait. Not only was culture on Clausewitz’s mind, he at times overreached with his analysis of culture and its implications to the point of falling right into the trap of generalizing and stereotyping traits, regarding the French, the Poles, “semi-­ barbarous” Tartars, and in opposition to these, his own Prussian culture. And yet, it is not enough to highlight these demonstrations of Clausewitz’s insistence on culture, especially since no strategist in their right mind nowadays would wish to elevate stereotypes and generalizations as a basis upon which to edify a cultural approach to warfare. In order to extract something useful from Clausewitz on the subject of culture, we must do better than he did, but we can nonetheless refer to his work for guidance. In this chapter, I turn my attention to a useful device Clausewitz uses, which is to separate the notion of culture from the notion of national morale. This distinction allows us to determine what feature in a community’s expression of self-awareness are more deeply set and more permanent in their disposition, and which are transient and more externally influenceable. I will also turn to Clausewitz’s famed description of war as a “wondrous trinity” to show how this device can be used to frame rational responses to wars that are difficult to “win” because they are justified on cultural re-appropriation, and consequently, where the presence of multilateral or foreign forces becomes an argument in favor of reaffirming the need for independence and cultural affirmation, which feeds the insurgency claim to legitimacy.

Clausewitz on Culture Culture is a difficult concept to define because it is a subjective term that can hardly be measured and is usually equated to a blanket statement regarding populations that does not account for the many individuals and sub-groups who make up its mosaic. As Edward Said retorted to Samuel Huntington, civilizations and identities are not “shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents

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and countercurrents that animate human history” (Said 2001). In this text, I will try to break away from this higher concept of culture and focus on some of its substrata which are far more useful and precise, such as language, sociological patterns in tactics, war’s relation to religion, and war’s relation to the organizational culture of the fighting force. This is distinct from the vaguer use of the term by Clausewitz and some of his recent detractors, who use of a broader concept of culture constructed through opposition rather than assessing the thing itself. Keegan’s suggestion that war is the continuation of culture by other means (Keegan 1993, p. 57–60) falls into the larger theme of bashing Clausewitz as being too state-centric. The extent to which certain authors revisit Clausewitz in this way is at times frustrating. Kaldor for instance claims that Clausewitz “insisted” that war is a “rational instrument for the pursuit of state interest” (Kaldor 2001, p.  19), though Clausewitz, far from insisting upon this, never actually wrote it. Meanwhile, Rapoport takes this one step further and actually rewrites Clausewitz’s “war is an instrument of policy” as “war is an instrument of national policy” (Rapoport 1968, 50–52), and then takes a strong position against this modified version of the statement. When Clausewitz is read with such an insistence on its relationship to state wars, it becomes possible to make grand arguments à la Keegan in which the proof that Clausewitz’s “continuation of policy” is wrong, is that war predates the existence of states. What this argument fails to perceive, however, is that policy or politics (depending on how we are translating Clausewitz’s word “Politik”) also predate the state considerably. The state is merely a modern apparatus for generating and implementing the political and the legal, not its birthplace. Any structured group of humans has the potential to generate “Politik”, be it the clergy declaring holy wars, hunter-gatherers electing to move east instead of west in the face of scarce resources, or a jihadist cell planning and carrying out a terrorist attack. It is merely the sum of words, decisions, and orders that generate coordinated human activity. Arguing that Clausewitz’s theories are exclusive to interstate conflicts and premised in a displaced trust in “pure reason” of state action, Keegan returns to pre-­ state eras to seek out cultural elements of war in his attempted refutation of Clausewitz, whereas Kaldor homes in on present-day intrastate wars and prospects for future wars in an attempt to do the same. In either case, their reading of Clausewitz appears very shallow and focused for the most part on a single chapter, Book I, Chap. I of On War, and a pocketful of word choices that are extracted from it, devoid of the argumentative context that generates them. Ultimately, though, the best demonstration of Clausewitz’s continued utility in the context of asymmetrical wars, culturally defined wars, and those against non-state actors, is that a copy of On War was found in an Al Qaeda safe-house (Strachan and Herberg-Rothe 2007, p. 1). If the central belligerent in these so-called “new” wars are busying themselves reading up on “old” wars, maybe there’s much more continuity to them than some believe. Clausewitz is much subtler than how he is presented by those citing merely his “continuation of policy” formula. In fact, he also wrote, “the aim of policy is to unify and reconcile all aspects of internal administration as well as of spiritual

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values and whatever else the moral philosopher may care to add. Policy, of course is nothing in itself; it is simply the trustee for all these interests against the outside world” (Clausewitz, in Herberg-Rothe 2011, p. 20). Whether these interests exist within a state or without a state makes no difference to their reality. For example, if war is fought towards religious objectives, it is no less policy on the grounds that those giving the orders are priests, rabbis, or imams. It simply means that this particular policy is codified within a different social organization. Meanwhile, in theocratic societies, these parallel institutions cause no problem at all, since they are merged into one, whether we are thinking of the Papal States of old, or today’s Iran, or the so-called Islamic State. In a similar line of argumentation, Keegan suggested that, “Primitive peoples accorded a high degree of ceremony and ritual to combat, the spur to and ends of which bore scant relation to the causes and results which modern man perceives in the wars he fights.” From this, he concludes that primitive warfare had no political ends, only cultural ones (Keegan 1993). This also coincides with Mary Kaldor’s inclinations, when she makes the argument that Clausewitz’s relevance is lost because classical interstate war (the old) have been replaced in the context of the state’s relative decline, the rise of privatized violence, the growing roles of warlords and mercenaries, as well as a resurgence of irrational violence (Kaldor 1999). While it is not stated as such, the very tribalism that Keegan brings up is also at the heart of fighting as it breaks out between warlords or gangsters: intrastate wars that bring out the primitive in man, who fight not only other primitively guided factions within the state, but also the state itself for being the universal, in its attempt to civilize and rationalize human interaction through the codification of law and its monopolization of violence. In the case of Kaldor, there is a shallow sense of history to the argument, which goes back just a few decades to identify the Cold War and the two World Wars as the “old” model. This forgets the important place of culture, religion, criminal activity, factions, non-state actors, and guerrilla tactics actually played in the intrastate wars that raged from one corner of the world to another, most notably in Latin America. Her history does not go back far enough either to consider the extent to which the Cold War itself was the outcome of nineteenth century revolutionary doctrines built on popular uprisings and non-state action against the state. In the case of the anarchists, their values, asceticism, and fighting doctrines had surprisingly powerful Christian cultural undertones and legitimation (Cormier 2016, p. 280–281). These much older wars had practically all the markings of “New Wars,” which suggests they were either well ahead of their time, or that the categorization itself is fundamentally flawed. The question perhaps lies a bit deeper: why were the masses revolting in the first place, and what was their system of justification? Clausewitz was convinced, as was his mentor Scharnhorst, that the moral factors of war are central. He argued for example that the events of the French Revolution had “shown what an enormous factor the heart and sentiments of a Nation may be in the product of its political and military strength” (Clausewitz 2004, p.  182).

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Furthermore, he regularly described the cultural features that defined politics and warfare among peoples, the French, first and foremost, but also the Spanish, the Vendean, the Russians, the Polish, as well as the Tartars. Once we have read his, at times, pertinent analyses of culture, and at other times unjustified rants, we can begin to see in Clausewitz a writer who had culture on his mind, whereby occasionally, his otherwise rationalist approach would suddenly be taken over by emotions and prejudices. So, the problem was not that Clausewitz failed to recognize the role of culture in war; the true problem was that it warped his judgement, and he jumped from analyzing how culture influenced war and politics to actually making broader, less thought out assumptions on the defining characteristics of peoples. A product of his time, Clausewitz was extremely nationalistic and romantic like many of the “learned officers” that he befriended throughout his life (Paret 2014). If negative stereotypes abound in his analysis of other nations, he generally spoke highly of his own. The most brutal words he kept for his descriptions of the Tartars, whose hordes and fighting style were so completely different from European standards that Clausewitz showed a particular hatred and disdain towards them, in what he perceived as barbarity, brutality, and cowardice. Describing their fighting style as “unnecessarily barbarous,” in that it was aimed at hurting the enemy’s subjects rather than their government (Clausewitz 2004, p. 591), he also noted that Tartars could be “easily scattered with a few rounds of artillery” (Clausewitz 2004, p. 170). He also made sweeping statements about their personal character: “It was a trait of the Tartar character to consider as a traitor an officer […] without one reasonable ground, merely on account of his name” (Clausewitz 1843). Because of these ideas on the subject of Tartars, it is no surprise that he had few kind words for the Poles either, since he regarded Poland as a “Tartar state”. He argued in favor of its partition on the grounds that “their chaotic public and their boundless irresponsibility went hand in hand, and thus they were swallowed up by the abyss” (Clausewitz 2004, p. 375). The cultural differences between the Germans and the French was slightly more problematic to him, because it was mixed in with a deep anger and resentment, coupled with a curious admiration. He considered the Germans to be more thoughtful and reserved than the French, but admired the spirit of the French nation: It is absurd to rank the German nation behind the French in terms of true intelligence. (…) and to put it bluntly, it is nothing less than the language and idle talk of the French which has given rise to such a rash judgement. If it is generally disagreeable to rank a whole nation in terms of intelligence ahead of another, it is childish to be misled by mere talk and esprit. Is the talkative man, the wordy, the rattler, yes even the eloquent, always a man of reason? Isn’t the latter here, at least in most cases, more introverted and silent? Shouldn’t this give us ground for thought? (Clausewitz 2015, p. 206)

To be fair, though, Clausewitz continues this section by considering the cultural difference between peasants and city dwellers, suggesting that when the two meet, the city-dweller appears “infinitely superior,” because of “the wealth of expressions he has acquired.” This, he explains, equally applies to the difference between the

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French and the Germans, and that while he does not assume the superiority of the Germans, he cannot concede the opposing argument (Clausewitz 2015, p. 206). If the concluding remarks allow him to soften his point of view, the passage nonetheless shows him to be very concerned with cultural differences and perhaps even frustrated by how these can be perceived. He also shows a willingness to entertain the possibility that cultural differences and national differences are far more profound than language alone and perhaps also pervade into the questions of sophistication and collective intelligence. He admired the French for their national spirit and the vigor with which they mobilized their forces and their ideology. And although he thought highly of Prussian culture generally, he was appalled by the extent to which national pride had been crushed and the morale of the nation stifled after the “catastrophe” at Jena-­ Auerstedt, which subjugated Prussia to the French empire. In a letter to his fiancé, Marie, he raged about his compatriots: With whips I would stir the lazy animal and teach it to burst the chains with which out of cowardice and fear it permitted itself to be bound. I would spread an attitude throughout Germany, which like an antidote would eliminate with destructive force the plague that is threatening to decay the spirit of the nation. (Paret 1985, p. 129)

What we perceive here is that Clausewitz generally made an important distinction between culture and morale. If culture was the underlying unity that defined the nation and its characteristics on a larger scale – in both time and space – the morale that he uncovers inspiring the French and demoralizing the Prussians was not fixed in time. It was malleable and could be instrumentalized towards military and political ends. That being said, he recognized certain limits to this: No matter how courageous, a people may be, how belligerent its culture, how great its hatred for the enemy, how favorable its terrain: it is undeniable that people’s war cannot sustain itself in an atmosphere that is too dense with danger. (Clausewitz 2015, p. 225)

It is interesting that Clausewitz should focus on the question of culture when he speaks of the Tartar hordes and of “people’s wars,” because we would naturally expect that in such wars – where no organizational culture has coordinated the violence into a system – the base cultural elements would come to the fore in a much greater way. In that sense, the freer the cultural aspects of war are allowed to infuse the battlefield, the less effective the forces. Even in warfighting cultures like those of the Tartars, where the whole of the semi-nomadic population marched, women and children following closely behind the advancing armies of men, as mentioned above, they could easily be dispersed with a few rounds of artillery. Their war culture did not translate into greater courage in the face of technology. This suggests that while culture may impact warfare, the impact is limited in its range and relatively weak in its actual effect: if the cultural bravery of a warrior nation can be offset by organizational and technological sophistication, then it suggests that while culture can guide war in the limited sense of declaring and setting its objectives, culture plays only a modest and perhaps negligible role on the pitch of battle.

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Peoples’ War and the “Trinity” Clausewitz’s interest in peoples’ war contributed to one of the most difficult decisions he ever took. Despite his great efforts to coax his superior officers, and by extension the King, to arm the population of Prussia to ward off Napoleon’s hold on the country, these efforts failed. And so, in 1812, Clausewitz committed an act that he felt was necessary and justified given the circumstances, writing in his Confessions that he was troubled by the decision and yet convinced of its necessity (Clausewitz 2015, p. 195). He left the Prussian army along with similarly-minded officers to join the Russians in their fight against Napoleon. His argument was based on the fact that the Spanish had demonstrated that the people in arms could help ward off an invader and fight for their king and country. In the introduction of his Confessions, meant to justify this departure, he explained that he hoped the text would “ignite a flame in the hearts and minds of [the Prussians], who at some point might prove to be the government’s salvation” (Clausewitz 2015, p. 170). Clausewitz was indeed a visionary for having brought to the fore the importance of peoples’ hearts and minds in the outcomes of war, as opposed to his contemporaries who were still lost in popular pseudo-scientific theories of war, some claiming to predict victory based on the angles of engagement (Jomini 1841), others describing the gravitational pull of armies (Bülow 1799), and others pursuing victory merely by meticulous maneuver (Guibert 1805) – a dream from the previous two centuries of war theorizing, which the Revolutionary Wars had forever shattered. The role of a peoples’ war in Clausewitz’s work is central. He taught lectures on the subject at the Kriegsakademie (War College) in Berlin early in his academic career and it formed the building blocks of many observations that show up later in his mature writings (Scheipers 2018). Heuser also notes that given his keen interest in peoples’ war (or small war), Clausewitz would have been the first to recognize that it is not merely states with well-segregated governments, armed forces, and general populations which engage in war (Heuser 2002). In fact, Clausewitz understood small war as having a developmental effect on citizens. As Scheipers has noted, “the foundation of his argument [was] that small war (…) could produce a new kind of soldier and, ultimately, a new kind of political individual” (Scheipers 2018, p. 45). Most importantly, though, Clausewitz understood the relationship between mobilizing the people and the connection to national mood. The revolutionary fervor in France had stoked the hearts of the masses. Nationalism and collective defense was at the core of the Spanish uprising against Napoleon. While Clausewitz perceived culture as something that contributes to strategies, tactics, and even why nations fight, it is never presented to the reader as something comparable in effect to the mood of a nation, which leads to an immediate kind of resilience or resignation – like the victorious French or the demoralized Prussians after Jena-Auerstedt. Unlike culture, which is less malleable, morale can quickly transform a risk-averse society into a risk-taking one; it determines if the citizens will be engaged or apathetic, peaceful or forceful, brave or cowardly. The effects of morale are even more

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dramatic and immediate on the battlefield. Even if culture can play a role in shaping why nations go to war and how they justify their actions, morale plays a greater role in when, where, and against whom they choose to do so. Consequently, morale also plays a stronger role in determining outcomes: victory and defeat. This adds itself as another reason to be wary of the clash-of-civilizations worldview. While culture can influence how and why wars are carried out and may contribute to a legitimation narrative based on cultural reaffirmation, it should not be understood as a factor that is more significant than the morale or mood of a nation. This more transient aspect of society is what actually empowers groups such as Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, or ISIL, which instrumentalize poverty, political oppression, and legitimate grievances in the population, packaged into a narrative that merely ties in culture rather than being actually or necessarily derived from culture. Thinking in terms of “cultural clash” leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy where conflict is rendered unavoidable and permanent in scope, whereas understanding wars in relation to morale relativizes the problem, thereby opening avenues for “fixing” legitimate grievances and developing strategies that are not meant to alter culture or challenge culture, but build off it in redefining the “mood” of a nation. Despite his own shortcomings in the treatment of culture, Clausewitz’s methodology can provide the necessary grounding upon which we might avoid making the same stereotyping mistakes he made. Beyond the important implications of distinguishing between morale and culture we find in Clausewitz’s concept of war as a “wondrous trinity”, yet another way to turn our understanding of culture into an asset in designing operations and prevailing. Applying the “wondrous trinity” frame to the question can be useful, but only insofar as we understand it within its dialectical origins, as a process of contradictions which subsume one another as the non-­ rational starting point is rationalized and instrumentalized, an approach in Clausewitz that is quasi-identical to Hegel’s theorizing on teleology a few years prior. In both cases, the authors proceed from the latent and natural violence in humans, which must be structured organizationally into a fighting force capable of managing and undertaking risks, from which it is possible to instrumentalize towards rational or teleological use – as a tool for the achievement of ends (Cormier 2016, p. 203–228). Bassford categorizes the three parts of Clausewitz’s trinity particularly well referring to them as “irrationality /non-rationality/rationality” (Bassford 2007). The original text consists of a triad of syllogisms that relates three conceptual poles together: (1) man’s latent “primordial violence”, (2) the free play of “chance and probability” within which the creative spirit can operate, and (3) “pure reason” that attempts to give direction to the other two. These he explained “mainly” concern the people, the army, and the government respectively, but he strongly added that attempting to fix an “arbitrary” relationship between the three would make the theory completely useless (Clausewitz 2004, p. 89). When applied to culture, the trinity offers a holistic perspective on how culture defines war, because the distinct parts of the trinity can nonetheless integrate within them a single overarching culture that impacts on how the parts interact. However, culture is not limited to a single overarching concept – there are many subcultures at play, and these take form individually at each level of the trinity and in their

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i­ nterplay. We can identify such sub-cultures as the organization culture in the armed forces, political culture in the elite, and the cultural mosaics that make up the population. All three are further broken down into more hawkish and more pacifist segments. The interaction among these many sub-cultures will affect the shape and direction of warfare. Consequently, the greater our cultural intelligence, the greater our power to design effective strategies meant to disrupt the reinforcing interrelations while enhancing contradicting interrelations. Transitioning from latent violence into active violence requires that the fires be stoked. And if leaders are ever to succeed in igniting them, then understanding the underlying culture is necessary to enable them to identify the levers at their disposal to achieve animosity and hatred on a large scale. And yet, even the most universal and arguably “non-cultural” call to violence, the “call to freedom” is ultimately driven by culture as well. It will be fundamentally different depending on where, when, and how it originates, which has much to do with the religious and societal values within the population, because it is at the heart of the ethical system that defines right and wrong, and by extension how violence is justified in achieving ends. Even though the ideological underpinnings of a revolt generate a framework for the objectives – i.e. achieving decolonization, the destruction of the state, or the construction of a state, the underlying logic of any “call to freedom”  – as these underpinnings merge with local ethical and religious factors, they become invested with a distinct interpretation of what freedom means and where the fight for it must start and end. Gandhi’s movement in India was a key precursor to independence because it favored pacifism and a decolonization of the mind – make your own salt, make your own linens, because breaking the cycle of dependency on Great Britain required an individual commitment to decolonization in order to achieve independence collectively. Constitutively, this insistence on individualism did not conflict with the creation of a liberal nation built on the British parliamentary model spearheaded by Nehru. Contrary to this, theocratic projects are built on collectivism and must break with liberalism and individualism. Their fulfilment cannot be the product of peaceful or deliberated constitution, but require by definition a more violent upheaval in order to “take” the space and monopolize violence to constitute the clergy as the state. They cannot appeal to pacifism in order for their traditional laws and scripture to become manifest in the world and their power cannot be derived from consent, but is usurped by clerical authorities citing scripture rather than consent and public deliberation to develop policy. For the nineteenth and twentieth century anarchists, their development of “propaganda of the deed” as a strategic approach meant that targeted violence should be used to gain legitimacy in the population and embolden supporters towards revolt. Here, the violence was generally limited to political assassinations and targeted terrorism, with the legitimacy built upon a thoroughly Christian tradition of “just war” aimed at targeting the “guilty” and sparing the “innocent”  – especially since the innocent were precisely those the movement was aiming to recruit. Their attacks on the merchants and the wealthy, most notably the Wall Street bombing on 1920, and

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their insistence on economic equality were no different from previous Christian movements including for example the Dulcinians during the Middle Ages, who also preached asceticism and self-sacrifice, as part of their otherwise violent, economically motivated revolt. What these three examples show us is that while religious wars are inherently religious, non-religious wars, and even those that are construed in economic, humanistic, and even atheistic language, like the anti-bourgeois movements, can nonetheless carry with them religiously determined notions of right and wrong. In all three cases, the path to peace depends on the prospects for compromises and how grievances can be corrected. In the case of India, this proved to be the simplest because national aspirations under a liberal-minded model was a manageable way forward. Anarchism (by definition…) failed to institutionalize and manifest itself beyond random acts of violence and so lost its appeal over time, but was also most likely defeated by the rising standards of living throughout the twentieth century, which appeased public anger at inequality. While the theocrats are more difficult to undermine because their propaganda can be abstract and immaterial rather than tangible, they nonetheless gain ascendency when their state-building projects are attached to a fight against economic and political inequality and colonialism. As such, while it is possible to counter argue clerics on scripture, it can be very feasible to beat them on tangible deliverables. Peru stands out as one of the places where this lesson was best turned into policy in its long and bloody war against the insurgent groups Tupak Amaru and the Sendero Luminoso. Based in the mountainous regions, funded by traditional coca farming, and supported by a marginalized and poor indigenous community, these groups provided a compelling worldview with a Marxist egalitarianism, anti-­racism, and anti-colonialism to a population that felt continually oppressed by the government. The strategy to end the violence was a broad initiative to re-legitimize the government in the eyes of the population. Promising measurable results to the population, the government pegged its success to yearly improvements on the UN’s Human Development Index. As such, they focused their attention on health, literacy, cultural reaffirmation, and economic development in the Andes (Government of Peru 2005). Meanwhile, the security objectives shifted towards capturing, trying, and imprisoning high-level insurgents such as President Gonzalo of the Sendero Luminoso as opposed to making martyrs of them, while pardoning and granting amnesty to lower ranking fighters in exchange for disarmament (Taylor 2006, p. 169). Soon thereafter, the country’s first indigenous president, Alejandro Toledo, was elected, and while the plight of the indigenous people is far from over, the path forward shines far brighter than it did during the fighting. Analysis of the latent violence in the population, coupled with a cultural understanding is precisely what allowed Peru to reconstruct itself in a way to defeat the insurgency. They successfully undermined the breeding conditions of this violence. The questions we should ask ourselves when facing an insurgency are therefore: how is the insurgent’s violence perceived by the population? Is it perceived as legitimate? Has the population suffered so much from violence and inflicted its own, so that it has normalized force as a condition to achieve better outcomes? Are gender

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roles, concepts of bravery, self-identification, and other cultural factors accentuating or deflating the fighting instinct? Knowing this about the base is necessary if we hope to establish a wedge between it and those who seek to instrumentalize the latent forces that reside within it towards redressing legitimate grievances using illegitimate means such as usurping local governance by force and perhaps tacit consent but not by actual consent and open deliberation. We move now to the second side of the trinity or how generals and armies engage in a free activity of the soul to make the most of chances and opportunities. In this case, our knowledge of culture should continue to include what came above, because each soldier and each general is before anything else, part of the population, infused with its culture, religion, ethics, and is by no means distinct or outside this base. What transitioning to the second side of the equation actually means, is that we must add a new layer of cultural analysis, mainly, organizational culture, which impacts fighting doctrines as well as how fighters coalesce and maneuver. For this example to come alive, it is useful to return to the anarchists and compare them to their communist counterparts in the fight against capitalism. The two groups operated on a distinct concept of time. Communists had a sequential notion of how the revolution needed to occur, whereby the political revolution need to occur first in order to materialize the cultural and economic aspects of revolution using the potent infrastructure of statehood (Préposiet 2002). Anarchists, Bakunin in particular, feared that such a linear process would come to a halt at tyranny, because it meant falling back into the trap of hierarchy and patriarchy (Bakunin 1953). For Anarchists, the revolution had to come simultaneously, which meant, as we saw above, acts of violence intended to inspire the economic, political, and cultural revolution in no particular order. To achieve their ends, the communists needed more traditional systems of power and usurp the state to gain its capacity to command armies, rule the land, and fulfill the revolution along a linear path. The anarchists could function as decentralized and autonomous cells. The organizational culture of both movements was so incompatible that both sides regularly failed to cooperate and on occasion, this tension led to fighting one another, instead of their common enemy (Avrich 1968). The most important features to grasp about the organizational culture is its effects on recruitment practices, fighting doctrines, and the choices of targets, since knowing these three is necessary to align an effective response and counter-force meant to undermine recruitment, predict actions, and secure likely targets. Groups that fight in the anarchist tradition, with decentralized operatives using the propaganda of the deed, must be countered using strategies that breach their communications and impede their actions in real time precisely because this communicates and demonstrates their ineffectiveness – it is the anti-propaganda-of-the-deed. Meanwhile, the use of courts as a means to reaffirm the moral superiority of the rule of law against those who would usurp such powers, is essential to counter their moral argument. The only way to break the cycle that engenders recruitment is to counter it with a contrary propaganda that redefines progress, bravery, the legitimacy of targets, etc., from a perspective that speaks to both the population base and the lower rank and file of the movement and reaffirms the legitimacy of the rule of law.

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If the organizational culture of the resistance is built on a more centralized, cohesive, and hierarchical model, mimicking the communist revolutions, they must be countered quite differently using methods that disrupt their chain of command, intercept their power on the battlefield, and fight them in a more traditional way, with boots on the ground, to reduce its access to territory, population, and resources. The goal is to break its linear advance with an equally linear counter-position. Knowledge of the organizational culture and the overarching culture of the population is necessary in order to synthesize a probable model for the culture of the upper brass of any fighting organization. If we attempt to isolate our understanding of the top tier of a fighting organization without considering it within the two other sides of the trinity, we get an incomplete picture. For example, while statements and speeches may provide hints about the grand strategy of a group, we cannot depend merely on such external communications, since these are tailored for specific audiences and may reveal much less than we need to know and might in fact be set up to deceive us. Similarly, when we take the fight to the upper echelons of an organization, we wind up with a hit-and-miss approach. While decapitating organizations is beneficial because it forces continual renewal of the chain of command and tends to bring forward less competent and more radical leaders who are more likely to isolate themselves from their base, this method is far from being danger-free, and may lead to a severe escalation of violence in the short term, at a particularly high cost to the very innocents we are trying to protect. The solution is again to apply the trinity in its fluid form and understand that the movement upwards of its mechanism is achieved as a process of negation and supersession. The second “moment” of the trinity should be understood as a counter-­ position to the latent and irrational violence in society: it takes what is latent and makes it manifest, it orders what is irrational into a rational tool than can be “used.” This demands discipline, indoctrination, and a reinvention of the latent concept of self-preservation among individuals into a collective concept of self-sacrifice for the greater good. It clashes with the general culture. Even universal mores like “not killing,” which are so deeply integrated into legal and religious ethics that they often show up in foundational documents that define peoples, must be overcome in the formation of a fighting force armed with the instruments to kill. The last stage of the trinity therefore must be understood as the synthetic outcome to the contradictions of the former two. The legitimation process and its rationality is precisely what allows the above cultural contradictions to coexist. Otherwise, there would be a breakdown between the two, since irrational violence is by definition unjustified, but the reverse is also true, unjustified violence is inherently irrational. Hence, the third side of the trinity animates or gives life to the concept of war because it not only generates the objectives of war and gives the strategic outline for reaching them, but most importantly, it sets the rationale and legitimation which holds the other sides together. Since it is expected that bureaucrats, politicians, theocrats, and any other decision-­making caste in society will have its own internal culture, then once again, it becomes strategically significant to discover and analyze it in order to generate counterposes that delegitimize their claim of having a the higher moral ground or

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any inherent right to proclaim their political universality, since they are, in fact, unless constituted and consented to, a mere particular group of society vying for the usurpation of the political sphere.

Consequence for Theory Ultimately, to generate a sustainable peace rather than a mere truce, it is necessary that the rationale behind the violence be understood. This at times can be a daunting task because how we reason can often be biased and influenced by culture. Defeating the argument that sustains violence depends on offering a rational refutation and alternative rationale for peace that is more convincing than the case of our opponents, but it must be sincere, followed up by trust-building, and its promises delivered in a timely fashion, as was done in Peru, with metrics that could be tallied over time. Again, however, unless the alternative rationale is constructed in a way that deals with legitimate grievances, and is tailored to its audience and effectively broadcast to the audience, even a plan that sounds rational to our ears may result in more resistance if it is not deemed to address rationally the grievances as expressed by the receiving end. While not all aspirations of fighters are rational, often their grievances are, which allows the counter-insurgent forces to define workable solutions when it sets firm limits on what can be offered and what is not up for negotiation in a way that is upfront and timely (Pape 2003). Consider, for example, the tendency of liberal powers to perceive their modern constitutions as universally applicable. Concepts like democracy and the separation of powers have proven themselves as highly effective forms of government, but their track record alone is not enough to sell “liberalism” as a lump. Their acceptance may require instead an incremental path to achievement, since constitutions that are not held high in the governance culture of a nation are quickly undermined through corruption, political elites, and even the population, whose fears in the aftermath of turmoil may lead them to vote for a “strong man” who will quickly usurp the separated powers and make them converge again. The expansion of liberalism cannot by definition be “delivered” – since it is premised on the principle of self-determination, but it should nonetheless be “protected.” Its protections are luckily already integrated into its very own institutions, insofar as independent courts, elected representatives, and the rule of law are preserved. Liberalism offers its own propaganda of the deed in each of its everyday actions. This above all can serve the important purpose of undermining the rationalization and justification of any insurgency’s “brain,” because they always have one thing in common: their claim to represent the grievances of the population is their legitimation for the usurpation of political power. While liberalism and self-­ determination offer a direct olive branch to the population that is by definition universal and adaptable, it is empty unless the grievances that are generating the mood of the nation are being addressed, while simultaneously, a clear, linear outline for a better future is offered.

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While some would toss Clausewitz out on account of his supposedly “state-­ centric” model not fitting well enough with the current rise in asymmetric war and non-state actors in political violence, in reality, his “wondrous trinity” offers a useful tool for framing the cultural and subcultural aspects of war at distinct levels of society. This in turn, can help guide the design of appropriate and effective military, diplomatic, and humanitarian actions and counter-actions to diffuse enmity, counter organized violence with force, and to divert or detach the policy makers of these groups from their base in the population and their fighting force, i.e. undermine their ability to instrumentalize violence towards their ends. Clausewitz’s trinity represents three points of view into a single society rather than three distinct parts of society each to be viewed separately. This is important when we are trying to develop a culturally sensitive doctrine because it forces us to think more holistically about the mission, which in turn sets the bases of peacebuilding as opposed to prolonged peacekeeping and foreign tutelage. And yet, as we explore a Clausewitzian approach to war and culture, it is important not to fall into the very same trap of stereotyping that Clausewitz fell into. Despite having bequeathed the building blocks of a theory that is pertinent to developing a culturally sensitive doctrine, Clausewitz failed to make use of it, because he was a product of his time. He held strong, nationalistic values, and had a very limited knowledge of non-Prussians, with much of that being gained by encountering them on the battlefield, which is without a doubt the very least effective way to get to know one another. Global interdependence makes it impossible for us not to know anything about our rivals, but it also leads to much greater amalgams between what we think is culture and what is actually national mood. It may be possible – hard to prove, but possible – that a culture or subculture is more belligerent than another, but it can never be as potent a factor as the context or the conditions that give rise to grievances that excite the latent violence any group can possess. Even though a cultural theory of war inspired by Clausewitz will not help us understand or identify cultures better, it can help us focus in on the strategic and tactical implications of culture by appropriately framing them within a larger concept of “morale” which distinguishes culture from the mood of a nation.

References Avrich, P. (1968). Russian Anarchists and the Civil War. Russian Review, 27(3), 296–306. Bakunin, M. (1953). Stateless socialism: Anarchism. In G. P. Maximoff (Ed.), The political philosophy of Bakunin. New  York: The Free Press. Retrieved on May 18, 2016, https://www. marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/soc-anar.htm. Bassford, C. (2007). The primacy of policy and the ‘trinity’ in Clausewitz’s mature thought. In H. Strachan & A. Herberg-Rothe (Eds.), Clausewitz and the twenty-first century (pp. 74–90). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clausewitz, C. (1843). The campaign of 1812 (Ellesmere, Trans.). London: John Murray Publishers, 1843. Retrieved on May 17, 2019, https://www.clausewitz.com/readings/1812/ Clausewitz-CampaignOf1812inRussia-EllesmereTranslation.pdf

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Clausewitz, C. (2004). On war. New York: Barnes & Noble. Clausewitz, C. (2015). Clausewitz on small war (C.  Daase, & J.  Davis, Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cormier, Y. (2016). War as paradox: Clausewitz and Hegel on fighting doctrines and ethics. Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Government of Peru, Ministry of Defense. (2005). Libro blanco de la defensa nacional. Retrieved on December 15, 2018, https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/157095/Peru%202005_spanish.pdf Guibert, J. A. H. d. (1805). Essai géneral de tactique. Paris: Magimel. Herberg-Rothe, A. (2011). Clausewitz’s concept of the state. In A. Herberg-Rothe, J. W. Honig, & D. Moran (Eds.), Clausewitz, the state and war (pp. 17–28). Stuttgart/New York: Franz Steiner. Heuser, B. (2002). Reading Clausewitz. London: Pimlico. Jomini, A.-H. (1841). Précis de l’art de la guerre. Bruxelles: Librairie Militaire de JB PetiT. Kaldor, M. (2001). New and old wars: Organized violence in a global era. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Keegan, J. (1993). A history of warfare. New York: Random House. Pape, R. (2003). The strategic logic of suicide terrorism. American Political Science Review, 97(3), 57–60. Paret, P. (1985). Clausewitz and the state. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Paret, P. (2014). Clausewitz in his time: Essays in the cultural and intellectual history of thinking about war. New York: Berghahn Books. Rapoport, A. (1968). Introduction to On War, translated by J.J. Graham. Baltimore: Penguin Books. Préposiet, J. (2002). Histoire de l’anarchisme. Paris: Tallandier. Said, Edward. (2001, October 4). The clash of ignorance. The Nation. Scheipers, S. (2018). On small war: Carl von Clausewitz and people’s war. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strachan, H., & Herberg-Rothe, A. (Eds.). (2007). Clausewitz and the twenty-first century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, L. (2006). Shining path: Guerrilla war in Peru’s northern highlands, 1980–1997. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. von Bülow, A. H. D. (1799). Geist des neuern Kriegssystems hergeleitet aus dem Grundsatze einer Basis der Operationen auch für Laien in der Kriegskunst faßlich vorgetragen von einem ehemaligen preußischen Offizier. Benjamin Gottlieb Hofmann: Hamburg. Youri Cormier  holds a doctorate in War Studies from King’s College London. He is an Adjunct Professor with the Royal Military College of Canada and the Executive Director of the Conference of Defence Associations, a leading Canadian defence & security think tank founded in 1932. He has served in research, teaching, and speechwriting capacities with Johns Hopkins University, King’s College London, NATO, and the Canadian Department of National Defensce. His acclaimed book War as Paradox: Clausewitz and Hegel on Fighting Doctrines and Ethics (McGill Queen’s University Press, 2016) traces the philosophical origins and current-day implications of dialectical war theory and received an award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Part II

Lessons Learned in Teaching Cultural Skills in Military Contexts

Understanding Cultural Differences: The Limitations of ASCOPE/PMESII Kjetil Enstad

Abstract  The NATO and the Norwegian military decision-making processes use the ASCOPE/PMESII framework for analyzing and understanding civilian factors in an area of operation. While the framework may be useful to area specialists in intelligence work, this article questions the assumption that the ASCOPE/PMESII is a useful tool for building cultural competence in officer training. Drawing on anthropological, sociological and hermeneutic theory, I argue that thinking of cultural differences in terms of established categories distorts our understanding and prevents officers from appreciating that cultural differences are different in unpredictable ways. Rather than employing rigid frameworks for understanding, officer training should: first, operationalize relevant anthropological, sociological or other theory for military operations; second, employ a Socratic approach to exploring other culture; and third, expose the future officers to cultural expressions such as film, music, and poetry. Keywords  Officer training · ASCOPE · PMESII · Military operations · Civilian factors

K. Enstad (*) The Military Academy, Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_5

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The Norwegian Armed Forces and The Norwegian Military Academy Norwegian population 5.3 million Norwegian active-duty military service members Army: 8323, Navy: 3428, Air Force: 3331, Home Guard: 640, Conscripts: 7346, Total: approx. 22,900, or 0.4% of the total population (The Norwegian Armed Forces 2019). The Norwegian Army The Army, the biggest branch in terms of number of personnel, consists of one brigade with three maneuver battalions and various support battalions. Norway has universal conscription for men and women (since 2015). However, only approx. 10% of each cohort serve the mandatory military service, of whom 25% were women in 2015. Location and nature of recent operations The 2001–2014 engagement in Afghanistan was the biggest operation in recent years, and it shaped and affected the Army considerably. Today only smaller units, regular army units and/or special forces units, are deployed abroad. In the current political climate, emphasis is put on domestic territorial defense and small, strategic deployments under UN mandate. The Military Academy, founded in 1750, is the oldest institution for higher education in Norway. The sense of history and tradition is strong at the Academy, and two of the three Norwegian monarchs since Norwegian independence from Sweden in 1905 have trained there. The Academy primarily trains junior officers for the Army. Graduates from the operative program, around 60 every year, get a BA degree and the military rank of lieutenant. Courses are intersubjective, and military and civilian instructors contribute in all courses. In 2018, the Military Academy merged with the Navy, Air Force and Cyber Defense academies, the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and the Command and Staff College to form the new Norwegian Defense University College. Instructors The Military Academy has approx. 65 instructors, of whom two thirds are military and one third civilian. The military instructors have operative experience and/or academic training in leadership, military studies, political science or other disciplines relevant to military operations and organizations. Civilian instructors have an MA or a Ph.D. in disciplines relevant to the military. “The worlds in which cultures unfold not only contain different events, they also contain them in different ways” (Feyerabend 1987, p. 105).

This article is borne from a culture clash between a tactics instructor and myself at the Norwegian Military Academy. Pressed for time in his own classes, the tactics instructor asked me whether I could “teach the cadets ASCOPE/PMESII” since I was

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Table 1  The ASCOPE/PMESII framework with the keywords for each category

A Areas

S Structures

C

P

M

E

S

I

I

Political

Military

Economic

Socio-cultural

Infrastructure

Information

Distinct/provincial Coalition or boundaries, shadow security government forces bases, historic ambushes, IED sites, insurgent bases

Market places, farming, livestock, dealers, auto repair, smuggling

District or provincial center, councils areas/halls, polling sites, court houses, mobile courts

District or provincial police headquarters

Dispute resolution by local leadership

Political parties, insurgent groups, courts systems

Irrigation network, water tables, areas with medical services

Radio, television, newspapers, graffiti, posters, word -of-mouth

Market places, food Place of worship, wedding halls, stores, industrial restaurants, coffee capabilities houses

Roads, bridges, electrical lines, walls, dams, sluice gates

Mobile telephones/radio/television towers, print shops

Security force coverage 24/7. Reaction forces available. Insurgent activity

Access to banks, drought resilience, black market influence

Strength of tribal and village tradition, structures, religious advisors, strength of traditional justice

Ability to build and Literacy rates, availability of maintain roads, walls, electronic media, phone checkpoints, irrigation services and sewage

Coalition and security force presence, insurgent groups presence, linkages and networks

Banks, large -scale land ownership, economic non-governmental organizations, major illicit industries

Tribes, clans, families, councils meetings, youth councils meetings, women’s representation

Government construction

Governors, councils, Coalition, security council members, force insurgent parliamentarians, leadership judges, prosecutors

Bankers, landowners, merchants, lender, illegal facilitators

Religious advisors, elders, council members, influential families

Media owners, informal Builders, road leaders contractors, local development councils, unemployed groups

Elections, councils, judges, provincial council meetings

Drought, harvest, business openings, loss of business

Religious services, weddings deaths, funerals, births

Road and bridge construction, well digging, school construction

Capabilities

O Organizations

P People

E Events

Traditional picnic areas, councils, meeting areas

Lethal events, deaths, injuries, loss of leadership

News organizations, influential places of worship and culture, media activitie s

Religious services, publishing dates, info operation campaigns, activities and propaganda, projec t openings

Source: Stabshåndbok for Hæren (Hærens våpenskole 2015, p. 132), the Norwegian handbook for operational planning

“responsible for culture.” After a short exchange, I got the impression that he wanted me to go through the different categories with the cadets, so that they were familiar enough with them to be able to use them to cover civilian matters in planning exercises. ASCOPE/PMESII lays out a matrix of nouns (ASCOPE – Areas, Structures, Capabilities, Organizations, People, Events) in one dimension, and adjectives and nouns to create compound nouns in the other (PMESII – Political, Military, Economic, Socio-cultural, Infrastructure, Information). The matrix thus has 36 categories, for example Political Areas, Socio-cultural Events, and Information Structures (see Table 1). It is the framework used for analysis of civilian factors in military operations. My colleague, the tactics instructor, had used the Norwegian version of the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP)1 as an integral part of his work throughout his career, and the acronyms and mnemonics associated with it were second nature to him. Assessing a situation meant considering things such as weather, light and terrain and deducing the appropriate conclusions for his mission. It meant  The Norwegian equivalent, «Plan- og beslutningsprosessen», is derived primarily from the American MDMP. 1

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assessing such questions as: which inclines are too steep to traverse; what are the appropriate firing sectors for my unit; what capacities do I have; and what does the enemy have? My colleague could take a quick look at a map and immediately see tactical challenges and opportunities. His experience with ASCOPE/PMESII, on the other hand, was limited, but his notion of what working with this framework would mean, suggested that the human terrain could be assessed in much the same way as the physical terrain or the weather conditions: first consider the factors detailed in the framework, and the logical consequences for the mission can then be inferred. This notion of how one can understand a foreign culture seemed very strange to me as someone whose training has been primarily in the humanities. My ideas of what understanding something means are shaped by Gadamer’s notion of a horizon of understanding, Foucault’s archeology and notion of the episteme and different concepts of discourse and narrative. I have, on my part, never had to solve a military tactical problem nor have I had to make split-second decisions with life-and-death ramifications. My instinctive response to my colleague’s request was to think that, as far as understanding a foreign culture is concerned, there are profound problems associated with the ASCOPE/PMESII framework, and thus taking the same approach to cultural-awareness training as to tactics training is completely misguided. This chapter is my attempt at spelling out why this might be so and at proposing an alternative approach. I will develop the argument in three stages. First, I will show how the idea of a framework for understanding, viz. ASCOPE/PMESII, is at odds with fundamental notions of culture in sociology and anthropology. Second, I will challenge what I will call the realist assumptions of tactical thinking and discuss which competencies from the analysis and understanding of a tactical problem are transferable to the understanding of the human terrain. Last, I will link the critique of ASCOPE/PMESII and the discussion of understanding in tactics and in the analysis of the human terrain to a model of stages in the maturity of concepts of knowledge from pedagogy, and thus move towards an answer to the real problem my colleague in tactics presented me with: how do you enable officers to understand the human terrain?

The Limits of ASCOPE/PMESII In its detailing of what “operational art” entails, NATO’s counterinsurgency doctrine, AJP-3.4.4., states that in COIN “a deep understanding of the operational environment is fundamental, especially the population and the insurgency” (NATO 2011, p. 0434). There is little doubt that in planning processes in NATO, at least, the ASCOPE/ PMESII framework is the solution to the question of how to understand and take proper heed of civilian factors in military operations. The analyses will be carried out by specialists and usually highly qualified people in higher staffs - typically, at brigade or division level. The products (that is to say the analyses with accompanying map overlays and other relevant material) will then be distributed down the organization. At the battalion, company or platoon levels, what is required is the ability to under-

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stand what the analyses mean and draw the appropriate conclusions from them in operational planning. Thus, an important question is whether knowing about the ASCOPE/PMESII framework and whether analyses developed from that framework will enable the low-level officer to develop sufficient cultural competence? First, however, we must consider ASCOPE/PMESII as a starting point for analyzing civilian factors. The ASCOPE/PMESII framework establishes a set of 36 categories (see Table 1 above). These categories are mnemonics for brainstorming relevant aspects of civilian factors that affect the operation (Hærens våpenskole 2015, p. 132). For example, in an area with several rival groups vying for political power where groups are divided by ethnicity, such categories as “political organizations” and “socio-cultural people” will be important. The analyses will then lay out in as brief terms as possible (ibid.) such cultural aspects as: the names/types of groups; where they live and operate; their political power (historical and current); key people in the groups etc. The analyses will be communicated to unit commanders in the form of military briefs. The aim at all levels is to identify aspects that affect the operation (ibid.). The inevitable assumption inherent in the ASCOPE/PMESII framework is that in an area of operation (AO, a well-established abbreviation in military parlance and planning), there will be such a thing as for example “political organizations.” On the face of it, that is a fair assumption. However, this assumption needs to be investigated in two ways. First, how does a concept or a category function as an analytic term when applied to a different culture, and, second, what happens when an officer deduces corollaries for the tactical level from analyses based on such concepts and categories? The first question, about the analytical utility of such concepts, requires a brief sketch of some important stages in the history of anthropology. When Claude Lévi-­ Strauss realized that marriage rules in certain groups in South America, Asia and Australia resembled each other, despite being too distant for cultural dissemination to have caused it, he proposed a typology for marriages in these isolated societies. Marriage rules in “elementary social systems” fit into a limited set of types, according to Lévi-Strauss. His The Elementary Structures of Kinship ([1949] 1969) is, among other things, an overview and analysis of the kinds of marriage rules that existed in these simple societies. Marriage rules maintained alliances and knit a society together. The rules were observed, according to Lévi-Strauss, more or less consciously; the structures were embedded in the social organization like the grammar of their language. As a native speaker, one does not have to be able to explain the grammar of one’s mother tongue to be able to speak it. Thus, in order to understand how any society works, one would have to look for the underlying structures. After Lévi-Strauss, a lot of anthropological work to understand societies consisted of trying to uncover ‘grammars’ of the kind that Lévi-Strauss articulated for marriage rules. The assumption implicit in much early twentieth century anthropological work was that the method had been determined, and the analysis it afforded would ensure understanding of the underlying structures of societies around the world. This approach to the analysis of societies is called structuralism. Lévi-Strauss’ approach to the analysis of marriage rules in “elementary social systems” was inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics. Saussure was a Swiss linguist who gave a series of lectures on the nature of language at the

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University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911. His Cours de linguistique général, or Course in General Linguistics in English, was compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from notes from these lectures, and it has had an enormous impact in fields far beyond linguistics, for example sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Saussure argued that language functions as a system of contrasting structures, and that the structures only exist through their difference from other structures. The sentences “The cat is dead” and “The bat is dead” only produce different meanings because of the contrast between the phonemes /k/ in “cat” and /b/ in “bat”, and the different meanings can only exist within this structure of differences (Saussure et al. 2011). The scientist can survey these structures and find the signifying differences, and as different languages only represent different structures based on systems of differences, different social systems, in Lévi-Strauss’ analyses, have identifiable structures, too. Structuralism dominated the social sciences in the early twentieth century. In her early career, Mary Douglas2, one of the most preeminent anthropologists of the twentieth century, did extensive fieldwork among the Lele people of the Congo, the result of which was her The Lele of the Kasai (1963), a detailed account of Lele society, its organization, customs, beliefs and religious and social practices. Her approach was to uncover the grammar of Lele society, viz. to find the signifying differences which create meaning to the Lele. Thus, the chapter on the different roles people have in the village, the primary social unit of the Lele, describes for instance how being age-mates, i.e. boys born within a few weeks of each other, differs from being brothers: “The bond between age-mates was contrasted with that between brothers, in a way that sharpened and emphasized each other” (Douglas 1963, p. 73). What it means to be an age-mate in Lele society, depends on how that role differs from other roles. Thus, structuralism, at least superficially, resembles the ASCOPE/PMESII matrix. The framework establishes categories that make sense only through their difference from other categories. Thus, the category of “Area/Political”, the first category of the framework, makes sense only by virtue of its being different from other areas, such as “Area/Military”. It falls far short of the methodological approach of anthropologists such as Lévi-Strauss or Mary Douglas, however. The ASCOPE/ PMESII matrix may seem to offer a universal grammar or a generic map of societies, which, once superimposed on a foreign society, would serve as a reference to understanding its essential machinations. However, even the most superficial investigation of such a conception of ethnographic analysis would reveal its shortcomings. Age-mates in Lele society, for example, would fit in the “People”/“Social” category. Understanding the significance of age-mates, however, requires the painstaking analysis that Douglas conducted and the familiarity with the concept she

2  Mary Douglas was critical of Lévi-Strauss and many aspects of his structuralism, but her own work has clear structuralist elements. Her best-known work Purity and Danger (1966), for instance, traces the meaning of words and symbols in different settings and thus identifying signifying differences.

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developed through years of fieldwork. Furthermore, conveying this understanding to others poses profound challenges of its own. Ethnography, says Clifford James in the influential anthology Writing Culture, “is always caught up in the invention, not the representation, of cultures” (James and Marcus 1986, p. 2). And he continues, “[M]etaphor, figuration, narrative […] affect the ways cultural phenomena are registered, from the first jotted “observations”, to the completed book, to the ways these configurations “make sense” in determined acts of reading” (James and Marcus 1986, p.  4). Such translation is obvious in the use of nicknames for members of the Taliban, for example. Among British troops a Taliban is often called a Terry, and among American troops, a T-Man. This renaming, which in many ways is analogous to renaming a hill in terrain analysis, serves to recast the identity of a person within very specific frames and reducing people to a few characteristics. The meaning associated with a Taliban or a T-Man in Western societies, viz. “terrorist, Muslim fundamentalist”, is quite far from the meaning the word has in Persian, from which it is taken: “students”. This shift in meaning is quite evident. The distortion of cultural difference is far less visible to us when we identify someone in Kabul as a “banker”. The epistemological challenges facing anthropologists, which follow from the philosophical discussions of the implications of Saussure’s studies in linguistics, lies in the “uncertainty about the adequate means of describing social reality” (Marcus and Fischer 1986, p. 8). While ethnographers will be aware that their own cultural lenses will create distortions, the ASCOPE/PMESII framework seems quite unabashedly to ignore what has been a central topic for methodological discussions in sociology and anthropology for decades. The matrix it creates forces a set of cultural phenomena of any size or shape into neatly organized squares. Area experts will be aware of that, but the framework itself will shape the analyses as well as the reading of the analyses done within it. The matrix has separate categories for “political people” and “socio-­ cultural people”. The former category may include “Governors, councils, council members, parliamentarians, judges, prosecutors”, whereas the latter category is for “religious advisors, elders, council members, influential families”. However, in many cultures around the world, the distinction between a sphere of politics and a sphere of religion is problematic. Thus, using ASCOPE/PMESII as a pedagogical tool is deeply problematic. What officers need to experience is Foucault’s revelation on reading the Argentinian author Borge’s account of a “Chinese encyclopedia”, in which animals are categorized in the following manner: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies. (Foucault 2012, p. xvi)

Borge’s book, says Foucault, “shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought – our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography – breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things” (ibid.). The differ-

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ences between cultures challenge our capacity of understanding in profound ways, since they cannot be captured in the categories in which we are used to thinking. The ASCOPE/PMESII framework and the terms in it will “invent”, in Geertz’ term, the culture it seeks to map. While analysts will know the fundamental methodological problems of cultural analysis, training the officers who will be on the receiving end of the analyses to think that the analyses have been made within such a rigid framework, is to invite significant distortions. Any conclusions drawn from the analyses are at risk of being dangerously flawed unless the readers are aware that the reading is culturally conditioned. Thus, the critical competence does not lie in the ability to remember and employ a fixed set of analytical terms, but in knowing how one’s reading of a culture is culturally conditioned. Let me note at this point that there is a certain luxury inherent to the discussions of the nature of representation, a luxury in which military planners cannot indulge. Anthropologists can discuss the subtleties of their methodology. Officers cannot, since, as Clausewitz argued, military operations are an extension of politics. They are conducted to establish a certain order on the world through physical force. Military planners, for instance in COIN operations, cannot afford to discuss whether insurgents should rather be referred to as “freedom fighters” than as “insurgents”. Anthropologists can discuss the ethics of inventing a certain representation or of establishing cultural contrasts and cultural hierarchies through the act of identification. In postcolonial theory, for instance, one speaks of the violence inherent in constituting identities through naming. Edward Saïd is perhaps the most obvious reference for such an argument (Saïd 2003), and he would probably have things to say about “T-man” or “Terry”. A military campaign, however, is in the most literal sense a violent appropriation of something. It involves insisting with all means necessary, for instance, that “this is the Falklands islands, not the Malvinas”. How we are to conceive of the political dimension of military operations and its implications for the appropriate precision in analysis of the human terrain is an interesting question, but beyond the scope of this chapter. For a plan to develop, all ambiguities over the true nature of a certain phenomenon (e.g. a riot, a piece of intelligence, a religious movement) must be resolved in a decision. Thus, the officer can neither afford to indulge in speculations about the essential otherness of a foreign culture, nor base his or her assessments on static conceptions of culture or notions that have been too distorted through translation. My question above about how a concept, which seems natural and has a clear sense in one culture, is applicable as an analytic term in a different culture, has, admittedly, a certain rhetorical quality. However, the need for efficiency, quick decisions, and clear orders requires us to respond in qualified terms to it. Officer training cannot weaken the officer’s ability to make decisions, yet it must enable him or her to recognize where his or her categories are inoperative.

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Realist Assumptions in Tactics We now turn to the realist assumption underlying my tactics instructor’s question, viz. the assumption that knowing a concept means knowing the world, and how this assumption informs the notions of how the “human terrain” can be approached. My colleague did not make the connection between analysis of the physical and the human terrain. The Counterinsurgent’s guidebook published by the U.S.  Army Counterinsurgency Training Center – Afghanistan puts it like this: Obstacles, avenues of approach, key terrain, observation and fields of fire, and cover and concealment (OAKOC) are aspects of physical “terrain” within the mission variables (METT-TC) in military operations. While still considered in COIN operations, the “human terrain” —and the tools we use to understand it (ASCOPE3xD and ASCOPE/PMESII-PT)— plays a larger part in understanding the operating environment. (U.S. Army 2011, p. 7)

Quite explicitly, the ASCOPE/PMESII-PT framework is juxtaposed with procedures for tactical analysis of the physical terrain. NATO as well as many NATO-country domestic doctrines emphasize understanding as the prerequisite for timely and sound decisions in operations. The NATO Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive (COPD) says the following about understanding: Within a military context, understanding is the perception and interpretation of a particular situation in order to provide the context, insight and foresight required for effective decision-­making. (NATO 2013, p. 2–1)

Furthermore, COPD states that “understanding flows from developing a detailed perspective of an actor, group, environment or situation” (NATO 2013, p. 2–2). US doctrines, unsurprisingly, have similar notions of understanding, for example in Field Manual 5–0 (FM 5–0): “understanding is knowledge that has been synthesized and had judgment applied to it in a specific situation to comprehend the ­situation’s inner relationships” (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command 2010, p. 1–4). The FM 5–0 bases its concept of understanding on a “cognitive hierarchy” going from “data”, which is turned into “information” through “processing”, which in turn gives “knowledge” through “analysis”, which, finally, leads to “understanding” through “judgement” (p. 1–4). These doctrinal emphases on understanding concern the operational level and thus involve all aspects and factors relevant to an operation and not just the physical or the human terrain. However, understanding is required of all factors (see e.g. U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command 2010, 1–19). The FM 5–0 does not specify the nature of the different stages in this hierarchy, nor does the COPD spell out what is meant by “the perception and interpretation of a particular situation” in terms that would satisfy an academic. However, applied to the analysis of the physi-

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cal terrain at the tactical level, the FM 5–0 hierarchy might suggest, for example, that expected temperatures and levels of precipitation and other elements from the weather forecast might constitute data. The form in which the precipitation will come (drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, hail) and what it will do to ground conditions, rivers and riverbeds might constitute information. What that implies for mobility, visibility etc. might constitute knowledge, whereas the tactical or strategic exploitation of this knowledge to solve the mission, might constitute understanding. Although doctrines never spell out their epistemological commitments, there are clear realist assumptions inherent in the FM 5–0 cognitive hierarchy and the ways in which the COPD speak of perception and interpretation. Realist epistemologies, in simple terms, argue that reality is knowable in itself, and thus that our concepts, if correct, mirror the objective reality. To a tactician the nature of mud is encapsulated in his or her concept of “mud”. The muddiness of mud is knowable through the concept. From such realist assumptions the question of how one should analyze the physical terrain can be answered with reference to acronyms. To understand the physical terrain, one will have to consider OAKOC (Observation and fields of fire, Avenues of approach, Key and decisive terrain, Obstacles, Cover and concealment). Each step of the analysis will have its concepts that create an image of the physical reality of the area of operation (AO). The percentage of incline and the vegetation of a slope (“data”) will translate to accessibility (“information”) and possible avenues of approach (“knowledge”). In other words, the data on shrub density in an area corresponds to the shrub reality of the physical terrain, and the tactician’s assumptions deduced from such data reflect the realities of the AO.3 However, proper assessment of possible avenues of approach, for instance, relies not so much on knowing that “avenues of approach” is something one must consider, but on the tactician’s understanding of the nature of the terrain in the operational area. A tactician completely unfamiliar with snowy conditions would be relatively at a loss when it comes to determining viable avenues of approach in winter in northern Norway. He or she must know the capabilities of a snowcat or the limitations of an armored personnel carrier in the snow before he or she can assess that particular factor. Similarly, a bush may provide concealment, but does not provide cover. It is a banal point, but it goes to illustrate that understanding a tactical situation requires far more than knowledge of which factors affect the situation. One must understand what the terrain, the weather, light conditions, enemy capabilities etc. mean. Thus, knowing the acronym and what it stands for is not sufficient to ensure sound judgement. The tactician must be familiar with the nature of the elements that are relevant to each factor. To really understand which slopes a tank can scale, it is not enough to read the data sheet provided by the tank manufacturer. He or she must already understand the capabilities of the tank and its behavior in various kinds of terrain and how the interplay of incline and ground conditions affect 3  Realists commonly have correspondence theories of truth, which is what I sketch as the underlying assumptions of tactical analysis of the physical terrain here. In epistemology the picture is a lot more complex, and so a proper analysis of the epistemological assumptions of military doctrines would require a separate study.

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maneuverability. One does not really understand the tactical capabilities of a tank or a snowcat unless one has, so to speak, lived with it. Familiarity with the environment is an attribute of the tactician. It is the backdrop for the assessment. The cognitive hierarchy in FM 5–0 does not show that aspect of understanding. Data is always seen from a specific position. Data that suggest “muddy conditions” can never be neutrally appraised. A tactician will always necessarily understand “mud” against his or her repertoire of known kinds of mud. The porridge-like mud of marshland Norway is very different from the claylike mud of rainy-season Ethiopia, to mention two kinds of mud which happen to be part of my own repertoire. Thus, the soundness of data processing into information, knowledge and understanding depends on the tactician’s prior familiarity with the specific conditions that characterize the OA. Understanding is contingent on the situation and the perspective on the data. Therefore, starting from the realization that, as far as tactical judgement is concerned, there is no such thing as objective assessment of data, even at the level of specific scientific measurements, we can begin to address the question of what understanding in fact entails, and thus find some new common ground for the appraisal of the physical as well as the human terrain. The Official Norwegian Report (NOU) after the Norwegian engagement in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 identifies lack of cultural understanding as one of the main reasons why the mission did not achieve its objectives (NOU 2016:8 2016, p.  57). Others have made similar diagnoses. Anthropologist Fredrik Barth, for instance, who has spent years researching Pashtu societies, attributed the failure of the state-building project in Afghanistan to a fundamentally misguided idea of what a state is and can be in Afghanistan (2008). A lot has been said about successes and failures in Afghanistan. This is not a place to revisit that discussion. A recurrent problem seems to be, however, that the facts about the situation which determine the outcome of a mission, only come into view in retrospect. In Iraq, too, the American forces realized only long after victory was declared, that the real challenges had not been resolved (Holmes-Eber 2014, p. 109). That has been a problem of warfare at least since King Croesus of Lydia consulted the Delphic oracle and was told that if he went to war against the Persians, a great kingdom would fall. He realized too late that it was his kingdom, and not Persia. The accurate analyses are only done after the realities of the situation have become familiar. Thus, just as proper conclusions about the physical terrain relies on the tactician’s familiarity with it and with the capacities at his or her disposal, so understanding of culture depends on the concepts and prejudices the tactician brings to the data. It is possible for a Norwegian officer to acquire intimate knowledge of the physical terrain in Norway. The insurmountable challenge to the general education of officers is that it is impossible to develop the intimate knowledge of every potential cultural environment in which the officer will find himself at some point in his career. So how does one develop the capacity for understanding?

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The Question of Teaching Cultural Competence Perhaps one of the greatest the problems with the ASCOPE/PMESII framework, however is that is fails to deal with what Gadamer calls the horizon of understanding, to which I shall return shortly, or what Clifford James calls the invention of culture (James and Marcus 1986, p. 2). Geertz makes a related point when he defines culture as “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (Geertz 1973, p. 89). Knowledge itself is culturally situated. Saïd, for instance, shows in Orientalism (2003) that the image of the Orient in the West, is a Western construction perpetuated in Western culture, popular as well as academic. Spivak argues in her short, but much-quoted article “Can the subaltern speak?” (1988) that Western discourse does not allow the voice of the subaltern, viz. the former colonial subject, to be heard, and Bhabha (2004) argues that “what comes to be textualized as the truth of the native culture is a part that becomes ambivalently incorporated in the archives of colonial knowledge” (p. 138). Saïd, Spivak and Bhabha have a lot more to say, of course, but for my present purposes it is enough to include in my discussion their central tenet that making sense of another culture involves an act of translation where the unfamiliar – customs, artefacts, beliefs and other elements of a foreign culture – is framed and given sense within the semiotic system of one’s own culture. The Muslim celebration of Eid is almost like Christmas, their crescent is like our cross, or from the other perspective, Jesus, like Mohammed, is a prophet. This does not simply apply to religious practices, of course, but concerns to some extent every act of making sense of something, be it of the wave of a hand, the cut of a dress, the color of the skin, and every phrase uttered. A general cultural competence must therefore, at the very least, include awareness of culture’s role in shaping one’s vision of the world and the inevitable translation involved in making sense of cultural difference. Thus, to appreciate that the “worlds in which cultures unfold not only contains different events, they also contain them in different ways”, as Feyerabend observes in the epigraph at the beginning of this chapter (1987, p. 105), we must develop an officer’s ability to question the culturally rooted conditions for his own ­understanding. The argument I shall put forward in this final part, is that in order to develop this ability, we must tailor our pedagogy. The philosophy of understanding is hermeneutics. The most significant contribution to hermeneutics in Western culture is arguably Gadamer’s Truth and Method ([1960] 2004). Gadamer claims that To acquire an awareness of a situation is, however, always a task of peculiar difficulty. The very idea of a situation means that we are not standing outside it and hence are unable to have any objective knowledge of it. We always find ourselves within a situation, and throwing light on it is a task that is never entirely finished. This is also true of the hermeneutic situation – i.e., the situation in which we find ourselves with regard to the tradition that we are trying to understand. The illumination of this situation – reflection on effective history – can never be completely achieved; yet the fact that it cannot be completed is due not a deficiency in reflection but to the essence of the historical being that we are. (Gadamer 2004, p. 301)

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To bring this claim back to the tactician’s appraisal of muddy conditions: what determines the understanding of mud to the tactician is his unique history of having seen different kinds of muddy conditions. Every tactician is a historical being in the sense that Gadamer here describes. Understanding cannot be dissociated from the situation in which understanding occurs, nor from the history of the one who understands. Gadamer continues as follows: We define the concept of “situation” by saying that it represents a standpoint that limits the possibility of vision. Hence essential to the concept of situation is the concept of “horizon”. The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. […] A person who has no horizon does not see far enough and hence over-­ values what is nearest to him. On the other hand, “to have a horizon” means not being limited to what is nearby but being able to see beyond it. A person who has a horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, whether it is near or far, great or small. Similarly, working out the hermeneutical situation means acquiring the right horizon of inquiry for the questions evoked by the encounter with tradition. (Gadamer 2004, pp. 301–302)

It is hard work to acquire the appropriate horizon for understanding the situation in Afghanistan. The issue is further complicated by the fact that military professionals often have a penchant for quick and easy solutions (Holmes-Eber 2014, p.  119). What is more, the belief in “quick, all-or-none learning appears to affect the degree to which students integrate knowledge” (Schommer 1990, s. 503). While that may not be a problem for much terrain assessment, it certainly is in culturally complex situations: “When one encounters content material that is tentative, strong beliefs in the certainty of knowledge leads to the distortion of information in order to be consistent with this belief” (ibid.). Thus, a crucial competence is what the Norwegian Committee on Knowledge and Education4 (“Dannelsesutvalget”) calls “the ability to contextualize facts and assess information in constructive ways” and “the ability to connect and integrate different frameworks for understanding and thereby produce knowledge or perceptions which would not be available through only one theoretical lens” (Bolstad and Dannelsesutvalget 2009, p. 9) (my translation). As Schommer points out in the quote above, there is a psychological dimension to the conditions for understanding complex issues. In pedagogy, that has long been appreciated, and notions of developmental stages in education have been linked to the development of competent practitioners within the professions. Harald Grimen, for instance, an influential academic in the study of the professions in Norway, draws on Habermas’ distinction between empirical-analytic, practical and emancipatory knowledge-constitutive interests (2008, pp.  75–76). The first interest concerns prediction and control and is linked to the natural sciences and the parts of the social sciences, which try to explain the world in terms of generalities. The second interest concerns the cultural-hermeneutic sciences. This practical interest concerns

4  The Committee was established by two universities (Oslo and Bergen) and one university college (Bodø) to investigate among other things how critical reflection, understanding of scientific thinking and related issues are and should be developed in academic education after such reforms as the Bologna process in higher education.

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the possibility of interpersonal understanding. Most theoretical perspectives from anthropology and sociology as they apply to the analysis of the cultural factor or aid in intercultural interaction fall within this knowledge-constitutive interest. The final interest, the emancipatory interest, seeks to overcome “dogmatism, compulsion and domination” (Bohman and Rehg 2014). This final interest is Habermas’ attempt to sketch a form of critical competence that can “free science from its positivist illusions” (ibid.). This category in Habermas has been criticized, but it may point towards a critical competence in officers: the ability to question one’s assumptions about the world. To develop the ability in officers to understand cultural differences that challenge our conceptual repertoire is thus a question of epistemological development. There exist different models on the cognitive development students go through in higher education. Baxter Magola distinguishes between four stages in cognitive development, or “models of epistemological reflection” as she calls them. The first is “absolute knowing”, the second “transitional knowing”, the third “independent knowing”, and the final “contextual knowing” (Baxter Magolda 1992). The first stage is characterized by the student’s expectations of clear distinctions between truth and falsity that knowledge exists in absolute form. The assumption is that there is a set of facts in and about the world, and learning involves acquiring these facts. The final two stages are where the student is able to entertain a number of alternative and even competing perspectives without committing to a single one. At these stages the contextual implications for our conceptual frameworks can be considered, and, thus, reaching such a stage of cognitive maturity seems to be a precondition for cultural understanding. To address the implications for pedagogy, I will take inspiration from Gadamer. Discussing the nature of a true question, he says “[t]he significance of questioning consists in revealing the questionability of what is questioned” (2004, p. 357). A real question arises from the realization that one does not know, a point taken from Plato and the Socratic method. A real question, therefore, starts from the assumption that there is something new to be known. The common classroom question, where the teacher typically attempts to prompt students to state what the teacher already knows, is different. Gadamer says of the pedagogical question that it has the ­“paradoxical difficulty” of being a “question without a questioner” (2004, p. 357), viz. a question where the one who asks already has the answer. Is it possible to do it differently in the classroom? It is, I think, and it involves three-steps. First, I believe that one can become attuned to the shortcomings of one’s assumptions, that is, know that one does not know, through theory. “Theory” quite often has a bad reputation in the professions, and the military profession is no exception. Presented with discussions about the semiology of gestures—e.g. how a wave is not necessarily a wave—officers will generally and quite impatiently dismiss the theoretical concepts and demand to know what is the meaning of a hand gesture. However, examples can bring out a point, but to move beyond the example and understand it properly, one needs to understand it theoretically. As McFate argues in her chapter in this anthology, the “Anthropology 101” approach to teaching culture in officer training tends to fail. Thus, emphasis cannot be on knowing about theory

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and theoretical discussions in the field, but on how theory can aid in the analysis of the human terrain. Fundamentally, theory is a simplification of the world, and the assumption that a political organization or a religious leader is recognizably similar everywhere, is, even if flawed, also theoretical. As an exhaustive inventory of facts on cultural differences is unachievable, theoretical understanding is the best one can hope for. Thus, one must build awareness of how meaning is generated in language and of the role of culture in shaping one’s outlook on the world. Some sociological, anthropological, linguistic and/or philosophical theory is therefore essential in officer training to build cultural awareness. Second, the teaching method should be Socratic, viz. questions should be proper questions as Gadamer argues. In military academies, teachers will be culturally quite like their cadets. Thus, orienting one’s efforts towards frameworks for understanding, such as the categories in the ASCOPE/PMESII framework, only serves to reify one’s own cultural horizon and distort cultural differences. Functional cultural awareness can only begin to be formed when one questions such frameworks. The key questions in teaching culture, therefore, can never be “what are the proper categories for these events, people and structures in the foreign culture.” The question must rather be: how else can we conceive of these events, people and structures? How are they different from our concepts and, more importantly – going back to Feyerabend – in what different ways are they different? The examples of cultural difference should be explored, not based on the teacher’s preconceived ideas of what would constitute a proper interpretation, but from the assumption that there is something new to be learnt for everyone. Third, and this is perhaps a rather controversial point, and one that should be worked out in a lot more detail, the object which is questioned, the examples in the classroom, should include works of art. As host of the BBC program QI, British-­ Danish TV personality Sandi Toksvig observed in a discussion of space travel, that she wished that they would put a poet up there so that we could get a better sense of what it is like to be in space. Astronauts are generally hard put to be more eloquent about it than saying “it’s really nice”. She has a point. The value of art in education has long been recognized in the liberal arts programs at American elite universities, and it is, I believe, worth considering in officer training. Gadamer was very much aware of art’s capacity for developing understanding. Could it be that officers can learn more about Iraqi life and culture and to see the limitations of the ASCOPE/ PMESII framework through for instance Iraqi music, painting and poetry?

References Army, U. S. (2011). A counterinsurgent’s guidebook: The application of COIN doctrine and theory. Kabul: U.S. Army. Barth, F. (2008). Afghanistan og Taliban. Oslo: Pax. Baxter Magolda, M. (1992). Knowing and reasoning in college: Gender-related patterns in students’ intellectual development. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass. Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture. London: Routledge.

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Bohman, J., & Rehg, W. (2014, September 21). Jürgen Habermas. Retrieved from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/habermas/ Bolstad, I., & Dannelsesutvalget. (2009). Kunnskap og dannelse foran et nytt århundre. Oslo: Dannelsesutvalget, Universitete i Oslo. Douglas, M. (1963). The Lele of the Kasai. London: Routledge. Feyerabend, P. (1987). Farewell to reason. London: Verso. Foucault, M. (2012). The order of things (2nd ed.). Hoboken: Taylor & Francis. Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and method. (D.  Marshall & J.  Weinsheimer, Trans.). London: Continuum International Publishing. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Grimen, H. (2008). Profesjon og kunnskap. In A. Milander & L. Terum (Eds.), Profesjonsstudier (pp. 71–86). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Holmes-Eber, P. (2014). Culture in conflict: Irregular warfare, culture policy, and the Marine Corps. Stanford: Stanford University Press. James, C., & Marcus, G. E. (Eds.). (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969). The elementary structures of kinship (No. 340). Boston: Beacon Press. Marcus, G. E., & Fischer, M. M. (1986). A crisis in representation in the human sciences. In G. E. Marcus, & M. M. FIscher, Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences (pp. 7–16). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. NATO. (2011). Allied joint doctring for counterinsurgency (COIN) – AJP-3.4.4. NATO. NATO. (2013). Allied command operations comprehensive operations planning directive, COPD interim V2.0. Mons: Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. NOU 2016:8. (2016). En god alliert - Norge i Afghanistan 2001–2014. Oslo: Utenriksdepartementet. Saïd, E. (2003). Orientalism. London: Penguin Books. Saussure, F., Baskin, W., Meisel, P., & Saussy, H. (2011). Course in general linguistics. New York: Columbia University Press. Schommer, M. (1990). Effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 498–504. Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). Basingstoke: Macmillan Education. The Norwegian Armed Forces. (2019, October 14). Statistikk. Retrieved from Forsvaret: https:// forsvaret.no/fakta/tall-og-statistikk U.S. Army training and doctrine command. (2010). Field manual 5-0. Washington: Headquarters Department of the Army. våpenskole, H. (2015). Stabshåndbok for hæren: Plan- og bestlutningsprosessen. Rena: Hærens våpenskole. Kjetil Enstad After graduating from the University of Oslo in 1998, Kjetil Enstad worked as a journalist and editor until he received a Ph.D. scholarship at the University of Oslo in 2005. He finished his Ph.D. on the novels of South-African author J.M. Coetzee in 2008. Since then he has been associate professor at the Norwegian Military Academy, which merged with the Norwegian Defence University College (NDUC) in 2018. From 2010–2012 he was head of department in the Department for Military Theory, International Relations and Communication, and in Spring 2018 he was briefly assistant dean at the NDUC. His research interests lie in theoretical and philosophical foundations for the professions and the role of language and culture as determining factors for professional practices.  

Unlearning “Stranger Danger”: Developing Cultural Competence in Canadian Military Professionals Through Collective Learning and Self-Reflection Vanessa Brown and Alan Okros

Abstract  The Canadian Armed Forces has signaled an important shift in how the institution seeks to address diversity within, which has resulted in amendments to professional military education curricula with increased emphasis on developing cultural competencies. Building towards a heutagogic approach, this chapter is presented in three sections. Section “Cultural and institutional barriers to cultural competence: The Canadian case” presents the premise that military professionals can develop cultural competence by critically reflecting upon their own institutional and Canadian cultures. Section “Learning diversity in the classroom: a prerequisite for cultural competence” provides examples of academic work which articulates why the eroding of “us/them” binaries helps people to understand each other better. The final section presents the teaching philosophies and methods needed for this type of skill development. We draw on a teaching philosophy which highlights that educators and learners possess positionality and posit that educators and learners can collectively make visible, and confront, tacit biases, stereotypes, and narrow adversarial worldviews. Applications of this philosophy helps to lay the foundation for heutagogy, a teaching method focused on collaboration, critical self-reflection, and student-driven learning: components which we esteem as beneficial to the development of cultural competence in military members. Keywords  Culture · Professional military education · Pedagogy · Heutagogy · Cultural competence

V. Brown (*) Dallaire Centre of Excellence for Peace and Security, Toronto, Canada e-mail: [email protected] A. Okros Canadian Forces College, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_6

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Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian Forces College Canada population 37.6 million Canadian active-duty military service members Regular force: 71,500 (approx. 0.2% of the population); reserve force: 30,000 (Government of Canada 2017). The Canadian Armed Forces Since 1968, the Canadian Armed Forces has been a single, unified armed forces under the Chief of Defence Staff which is organized to include the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Location and nature of recent operations The CAF conducts routine and specific operations within Canada and internationally including under multi-national NATO missions, the bi-national Canada-US North American Air Defence (NORAD) structure and UN-mandated missions. The CAF contributions in Afghanistan from 2001 until 2014 represented the largest and most sustained operations in recent years with more recent missions including NATO contributions in eastern Europe and capacity building missions in several other countries. Canadian Forces College Created as the Royal Canadian Air Force War Staff College in 1943, the Canadian Forces College (CFC) is the only center for Professional Military Education for CAF Regular Force or Reserve Officers from the ranks of Major/Lieutenant Commander through Colonel/Captain (Naval). The two primary programs offered are the 10-month residential National Security Programme (NSP) for 36 CAF and International O5 Officers and civilian equivalents from across Federal Government Departments and the Joint Command and Staff Programme (JCSP) for CAF and International O3 Officers as either 10-month residential (135 students) or two-year distance learning (200 students) versions. Instructors The NSP and JCSP programs are taught at the graduate level drawing on 13 civilian and 25 military faculty as well as 9 retired General/Flag Officers or retired Ambassadors. The military faculty have operational expertise with many as post-Command Lieutenant Colonel/Commanders. The civilian faculty hold PhDs in disciplines related to the CFC curricula including in political science, history, war studies, sociology and psychology.

As is the case in other nations, there are a number of social, legal, and instrumental rationales for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to attend to changes in broader societal demographics particularly regarding policies and practices related to aspects of diversity. Professionally, the military doctrine on the profession of arms

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articulates the social imperatives of ensuring both that the military’s demographics reflect the population it serves to protect and that the values in practice are broadly endorsed by society at large (Chief of Defence Staff 2009). Legally, the CAF, along with the rest of the Federal Government, is required to comply with relevant legislation including the 1996 Employment Equity Act (EE) requirements for appropriate proportions throughout its organization of members of four designated groups: specifically, women, Indigenous/Aboriginal Peoples, visible minorities, and persons with disabilities. Practically, however, the CAF has struggled to fill its ranks with suitable numbers of any type of enrollees, let alone achieve objectives to increase the representation of EE designated group members (Office of the Auditor General 2016). Against these imperatives, with the 2016 publication of the Canadian Armed Forces Diversity Strategy (Chief of Defence Staff 2016), the CAF has signaled an important shift in how the institution seeks to address diversity within. The critical change articulated in this Strategy is to move from a focus on recruiting (attracting representatives from a broader cross-section of the Canadian population) to a focus on incorporating a range of cultural perspectives in how the military operates. The strategy states “maximizing the potential of a diverse workforce is not only a social imperative, but is also an operational advantage which was reinforced by our recent overseas experiences where diversity made significant contributions to CAF operations” (Chief of Defence Staff 2016, p 1). This objective is to be achieved through four areas of focus: understanding diversity culture, inculcating a culture of diversity, modernizing related policies, and generating a CAF that reflects Canada’s diversity. The implementation of CAF diversity policies has resulted in amendments to professional military education (PME) objectives and curricula with increased emphasis on developing cultural competencies. These PME changes have, in turn, resulted in course members providing a range of responses to the theories, concepts, and perspectives exposed during learning activities. This chapter is based on the broader literatures on cultural competence and informed by the authors’ experiences in seeking to facilitate related learning amongst mid- and senior-level military officers.1 Developing cultural competence in military personnel can be challenging as it requires military members to unlearn implicit understandings and biases about ­others outside of their own culture. We address this challenge by facilitating examination of those who are often constructed in the Canadian military and society as “strange” or “dangerous”, drawing from the colloquialism “stranger danger” as illustration. The expression “stranger danger” emerged in public safety advertisements of 1950s American television (Wax 2016). Since noted as a gendered and racialized idea, the concept was developed as a way to warn children as well as 1  Portions of this chapter draw on both academic research conducted as part of a doctoral programme and professional research conducted as instructors at Canadian Forces College. Canadian Forces College is a Professional Military Education institute of the Canadian Armed Forces. The College educates mid to senior level military professionals in its Joint Command and Staff Programme, as well as senior military and civilian professionals in its National Security Programme. Some of the conclusions we draw and evidence we present come from our work with and study of members from the former programme.

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women about the perils of interacting with unknown, or different others (Ginneken 2013). The “stranger danger” trope has since permeated Canadian social mores and serves as one of many examples of popular cultural constructions which implicitly promote gendered and xenophobic ways of thinking about others (Mitra et al. 2014). Today the “stranger danger” stereotype is most often used tongue and cheek in Canadian public forums. Typically employed in memes and gifs that warn women and children to beware of the malfeasance of those unknown, “stranger danger” is a popular construct used in the contexts of online dating, social media, and other digital forums where interacting with diverse people is common (Cali et al. 2013; Nolan et al. 2011). “Stranger danger” is a useful concept in that it reminds people to beware of the malintents of some people. There are, however, problems that arise with such a sweeping concept. The tendency to construct strangers as universally dangerous tends artificially to assume dubious and fixed gendered, racialized, and nationalistic differences among people. The enactment of “stranger danger”, then, more often engages people in the process of building barriers rather than removing them. Instead of understanding and communicating with a range of world views and ways of doing things, conceptions like “stranger danger” involves the development of seemingly impermeable distinctions in the category of “us” (normal, reasonable, typical Canadians) and “them” (strange, dangerous, different, others). In this way, the “stranger danger” concept is one that facilitates the construction of a conceptual dualism, one which separates the “known” and “good” Canadian from an often adversarial “foreign” and “nefarious” enemy. It is this dualism between the “good” and “known” Canadian and the “strange” “enemy” “other” that is often taken for granted in the learning, discourse, and practices of Canadian military members. Suppositions of an us/them duality can also create constraints in thinking about the positive, good, and utility of diversity; or, what can be learned from strangers. For these reasons, this chapter addresses the constraints of dualistic thinking for the achievement of cultural competence and proposes a shift in us/them paradigms by introducing military professionals to heutagogic learning. We propose that an engagement in heutagogy—a critical adult learning method—can help to erode artificial barriers to cultural competence imposed by the tendency to see the world according to us and them. Building towards a heutagogic approach to cultural competence, this chapter is presented in three sections. Section “Cultural and institutional barriers to cultural competence: The canadian case” adopts the premise that military professionals can develop cultural competence by critically reflecting upon their own institutional and Canadian cultures. We propose that critical analyses of Canadian culture and the military’s institutional culture, as well as military members’ individual socialization, assumptions, and biases, enable them to negotiate the social obstacles which often impede precision in learning about others. We draw specifically on the Canadian military institution and Canadian culture to present and illustrate key ideas about the development of culturally competent military professionals, but we suggest that these skills can be applied and replicated elsewhere. Providing a brief overview of Canadian Armed Forces’ culture and forms of institutional bias, we make the case that members of the Canadian military are often conditioned to view those outside the military as “adversaries”, “outsiders”, or “others”, and that these views have a deleterious effect on their development of cultural competence.

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Section “Learning diversity in the classroom: a prerequisite for cultural competence” provides examples of academic work which articulate why eroding us/them binaries helps people to better understand each other. Drawing from scholarly literature with focus on overcoming us/them dualities (Bauman 1991; Vasta 2010), a theoretical standard is advanced which tasks military members with critical self-­ reflection, contestation of latent biases, and an erosion of adversarial outlooks by actively working to broaden understandings of a collective and hypothetical “we” (Dean 1995). Such a framework establishes a foundation for conceptual openness to unfamiliar peoples and cultures, and an earnest desire to avoid viewing diverse peoples and cultures through preconceived stereotypes and biases. In our assessment, endeavoring to overcome adversarial thinking through collective engagement and critical self-reflection develops prerequisite cognitive skills which enable military professionals to develop empathy and achieve cultural competence. In the final sections, we present the teaching philosophies and methods needed for this type of skill development. First, we draw on a teaching philosophy which highlights that educators and learners possess positionality. By speaking to positionality in the learning processes of instructors and military members, we posit that educators and learners can collectively make visible and confront tacit biases, stereotypes, and narrow adversarial worldviews. Applications of this philosophy helps to lay the foundation for heutagogy; a teaching method focused on collaboration, critical self-reflection and student driven learning: components which we esteem as beneficial to the development of cultural competence in military members.

 ultural and Institutional Barriers to Cultural Competence: C The Canadian Case Military professionals need not go far to begin developing skills that lay the framework for cultural competence. To get a sense of a range of perspectives and influences from a variety of cultures, military professionals need only explore their own backyard. Indeed, Canada is a country wealthy in cultural diversity. Yet, scholarship on the dimensions of diversity in Canada demonstrates that the valuation of different perspectives and views is not equal in dominant spheres of influence within Canadian society, and in both positive and negative ways, certain cultural values are lauded, while others are pushed to the margins of tolerance (Guo and Wong 2015; Reitz 2009; Thomson and Jones 2016). Institutionally, the Canadian military draws from Canadian society to produce its pool of professionals. Intuitively, one may suppose that the make up of Canadian military personnel naturally reflects the rich diversity of Canadian society. However, research has demonstrated that armed forces tend to attract members who are politically conservative and skeptical about change (Huntington 1957), and, as is the case in Canada, have historically appealed to members from particular segments of soci-

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ety, who, for a variety of gendered and cultural reasons, are more likely to view the military as an “employer of choice” (Government of Canada 2018; Leuprecht 2011). More traditional understandings of diversity in Canada are commonly conceived through legal models and prescriptions and often concentrate on the “grounds for discrimination” contained within the Canadian Human Rights Act. For example, many refer to diversity in relation to the prevention of exclusionary practices such as refusal of employment (sec. 7) or the denial of goods, service, faculty, or accommodation (sec. 5) on the basis of categories such as sex, gender, age, religion, marital status, and disability. Some may even reference the most recent amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act in 2016 (Bill C-16) in which gender expression and identity were added as protected rights to the person under law (sec. 3 (1)). Most common to discussions of diversity in the Canadian Armed Forces are the legal precepts of the Canadian Employment Equity Act. This act requires employers to improve opportunities for four designated groups; women, Aboriginal Peoples, members of visible minorities, and persons with disabilities. Though, due to special exemptions related to Universality of Service in the National Defence Act, the Canadian Armed Forces are not legally obliged to employ persons with disabilities (Canadian Armed Forces 2002; Irwin 2002). When thinking about diversity in relation to legal frameworks and obligations, most refer to the requirement to integrate and protect members of marginalized groups. Often, dialogue is focused on the recruitment and assimilation of underprivileged demographic groups to a dominant receiving population, where differences are often managed overtime through practices of socialization. Perhaps as a consequence, representation of diverse professionals in the Canadian military has historically been reliant on regulative influences (Madsen 2000) and its Forces nevertheless err on the side of homogeneity in terms of sex and racial constitution. The Canadian military has historically been male dominated (Davis 2007; Lane 2017; Pierson 1983). Males, who constitute a majority of members, are most often English speaking, White (Caucasian, of typically British or European ancestry), and heterosexual (Razack 2004). While the numbers of female members have improved overtime,2 the Canadian Armed Forces have historically struggled to meet what some posit is already a low threshold (Whitworth 2004).3 The population of Indigenous peoples

 As of January 2018, women represented 15.3% of the total strength of the Canadian Armed Forces, of which 14.9% are employed in the Regular Force, while 16.3% are members of the Primary Reserve. Representation of women in the Combat Arms has been slow to increase since women were permitted to join, growing from less than 1% in 1989–1990 to 4.3% as of February 2018. National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, 2018, Women in the Canadian Armed Forces, Backgrounder. Retrieved from http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/news/article.page?doc=womenin-the-canadian-armed-forces/izkjqzeu 3  The current goal is 25% of the total Force by 2020. House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Response to Recommendations 1–8 of Report 5, Canadian Armed Forces Recruitment and Retention, of the Fall 2016 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada, 30 April 2018, p. 17, 3. The idea of the low threshold is referenced from Whitworth (2004). 2

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and visible minorities have not fared much better overtime.4 As a result of systemic social problems (Winslow and Dunn 2002) such as the sociocultural marginalization of diverse gender and cultural populations, harassment, sexual misconduct, and assault (Deschamps 2015), the Department of National Defence is attempting to begin once more, carte blanche, to put together an effective diversity strategy.5 Many scholars have pointed to the deep social and cultural roots of such systemic problems in the Canadian Armed Forces. Culturally, the Canadian military has produced and maintained the dominance of a specific demographic with similar intersecting identities as standard (Razack 2004; Whitworth 2005). Yet, it is not merely identity politics which dominate military culture in Canada. Indeed, while White English-speaking males comprise the lion’s share of membership, there are other important intersectional factors at play (Crenshaw 1991). As military anthropologist Anne Irwin suggests, there are a multiplicity of diversity factors often overlooked that are of great significance in understanding culture and power within the Canadian military (Irwin 2002). Whilst dominant stereotypes and biases in Canadian society have been produced and reproduced over time, new knowledge or ways of understanding have also emerged in the discourse of sub-­ cultures. In the Canadian military context, stereotypes and biases are produced in sub-groups such as divisions and units. These biases, or established ways of doing things, are often presented as facts, or “the way things are”, but are social fictions created and maintained overtime and in relation to the power and privileges developed and held among and between people in the group.6 As such, despite limited variety in traditional diversity categorizations, the study of “more relevant categories” that relate to factors such as gender, age, geographic origin, education, marital status, rural or urban upbringing, military or non-military familial history, experience or familiarity with different cultures may also be useful (Irwin 2011). In Irwin’s research, the categorization of “others” or “outsiders” in the Canadian military had more to do with belonging or membership to specific sets, or layers, of the aforementioned intersecting categories in addition to traditional diversity factors such as sex and ethnicity. Irwin demonstrates that within her sub-set of study participants, of mostly White English-speaking males in an infantry mechanized company group, idealizations of intersecting value positions more likely contributed to  The Department of National Defence has committed to achieving 3.5% representation of Indigenous Peoples and 11.8% visible minorities by 2020. House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Response to Recommendations 1–8 of Report 5, Canadian Armed Forces Recruitment and Retention, of the Fall 2016 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada, 30 April 2018, p. 17. 5  For current debates about the creation of a new diversity strategy for the Canadian Armed Forces and the impetus to create professional military education curricula on diversity, see Parliament of Canada, House of Commons, “Diversity within the Canadian Armed Forces,” Standing Committee on National Defence, 18 October 2018–11 April 2019. 6  While power and the distribution of wealth and privilege transcends institutions and borders, for the purposes of developing cultural competence in Canadian military members, we are interested in looking at the social organization of people within the Canadian military and the territory of Canada, noting that the people who live and move through the Canadian state are not all citizens, and do not all share the same, nor equal, rights, advantages, and privileges. 4

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the creation of a specific social order and hierarchy of “insiders” and “outsiders” (Irwin 2011, p 155–156). Providing a brief overview of Canadian Armed Forces’ culture and forms of institutional bias, we make the case that members of the Canadian military are often conditioned to view those outside the military as “adversaries,” “outsiders,” or “others,” and that these views have a deleterious effect on their development of cultural competence. Most notably, military members can be “assigned to categories based on observed personal qualities” (Irwin 2011, p. 161). Thus, while the work of sociologists and feminists have shown a normalized specific ideal type of member through the process of military socialization (Whitworth 2004), creating racialized “others” (George 2018; Razack 2004) and gendered “enemies within” (Kovitz 2000), anthropological, masculinities, and intersectional scholarship further reveal that social hierarchies manifest within seemingly homogeneous groups based on categorizations of observed personal values, worldviews, and habits. In this way, we suggest that the development of cultural competence can be fostered when military members are able to take a deeper look inward, with the added benefit of discovering and unlearning their own institutionally derived biases about ideal members and “strange/dangerous” others. Currently, very little exploration of Canadian military culture and institutional social privilege takes place within the PME institutes. While much academic scholarship has investigated militaries as sociological and anthropological sites of importance, the military has demonstrated limited engagement with these academic contributions (Brown 2017; Brown 2018). Drawing from the interdisciplinary studies of Canadian scholarship, we have learned that through military socialization members learn to conform to a culturally specific construction of the prototype soldier, sailor, and aviator. But, the non-critical nature of military learning, in which emphasis is placed on obedience and conformity, often avoids deeper discussion about power and privilege in military culture. In this way, political scientist Samuel Huntington’s notion that the military is authorized to be a society apart (Huntington 1957) has allowed the Canadian military ostensibly to develop an insular and unique culture. To create for itself a social order which is enabled to reproduce without much critical reflection and often to the detriment to those for whom it is more difficult to conform to, to fit in with, and to render a sense of belonging and esteem within, the constraints of military social practice and ideology. Moreover, sociologist Morris Janowitz has demonstrated that the military aspires to produce its own professional model, wherein professions are expected to have higher standards than the broader society (Harries-Jenkins 1990; Janowitz 1960). As the scholarship referenced here shows, in practice, these higher standards can often slip imperceptibly into becoming different standards. Considering the broad spectrum of cultural diversity, social challenges, and cultural issues faced within the Canadian Armed Forces, it is crucial for both educators and military members to think critically about themselves and their place within the institution. For educators, this self-reflection helps to challenge power inequities that may develop in the classroom. For military members, self-reflection allows them to consider where and how they are situated within the military in relation to

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social power, privilege, disparity, and equality. By examining their own institutional and Canadian cultures, we propose that military members begin the intellectual groundwork required for developing cultural competence beyond their institutional and territorial borders. In exploring the ways in which individuals experience socialization to the military, as well as through the examination of culturally specific assumptions and biases about people within the military’s culture and sub-cultures, military members can start to frame how they think and what they think about unfamiliar people with a range of cultural backgrounds, worldviews, norms, and perspectives. Ultimately, we propose that military members should engage in the discovery and challenge of taken-for-granted assumptions through self-reflection and collaboration in PME, as doing so will enable military members to recognize and negotiate possible constraints and learned social obstacles that impede precision in learning about others.

 earning Diversity in the Classroom: A Prerequisite L for Cultural Competence Providing examples in the first section of this chapter, we explored the ways in which thinking about diversity has often tended to be narrow in scope. In most cases, when thinking about diversity, implicitly scholars and practitioners engage in thought about equality, some consider equity, while others begin to work towards social transformation and redistribution of power and resources. In doing the latter, academic scholarship has emerged which investigates the root causes of social inequity and has worked to explain the manifestation of social power and privilege in societies. Some examples of this academic research center on the development of binary categories and the construction of us/them thinking. This research underscores the reasons why eroding us/them binaries helps people to better understand each other (Dean 1995; Mohanty 2003; Touraine 1998). Drawing from diversity, solidarity, and inclusion literature with focus on overcoming us/them dualities (Ahmed 2007; Bauman 2003; Dean 1995; Touraine 1998), we advance a theoretical approach to learning which tasks military members with critical self-reflection, contestation of latent biases, and an erosion of militarily socialized adversarial outlooks by actively working to broaden understandings of a collective and hypothetical “we” (Dean 1995). Our approach intends to establish a foundation for military members’ development of conceptual openness to unfamiliar peoples and cultures, and an earnest desire to avoid viewing diverse peoples and cultures through preconceived stereotypes and biases. In our assessment, endeavoring to overcome adversarial thinking through collective engagement and critical self-reflection develops the prerequisite cognitive skills which enable military professionals to develop reflexive habits, empathy, and ultimately enables them to achieve the skills required for cultural competence (Davis and Wright 2009).

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A critical analysis of military ethos and social cohesion delineated in Canadian Armed Forces’ policy and doctrine, and a reflection on the practices of military socialization reveal that a cultural “fear of difference” may exist within the military. In 2000, Chris Madsen’s work revealed that the CAF had historically demonstrated institutional closure to heterogeneity in their desired constitution of soldiers, sailors, and aviators. He notes that external pressure from evolving Canadian legal and social frameworks ultimately led to policy changes aimed to protect Francophone members, women, visible and sexual minorities from discriminatory employment practices (Madsen 2000). In 2002, Winslow and Dunn examined the integration of female members within the CAF.  Winslow and Dunn’s research showed that the CAF’s reliance on regulative means for integration, such as the application of labor and human rights laws, did not challenge the deeply social and cultural roots of the problem. Their work illuminated that despite policy changes to integrate females, cultural reproductions of male dominance in service cultures and continued internal social closure to females employed in non-traditional roles continued to pose barriers to inclusion (Winslow and Dunn 2002). Similarly, studies of the cultural circumstances surrounding the Somalia Affair (Razack 2004), as well as insights into masculinist preferences for leadership behaviors in the CAF (Febbraro 2007), also indicate that the Canadian military continued culturally to reproduce ideals about the soldier, or ideal member, in ways that were exclusionary to minority groups. More recent examinations of CAF culture demonstrate similar patterns. For example, the External review into sexual misconduct and sexual harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces reported the presence of a culture of hostility, specifically towards female and LGBT members (Deschamps 2015). Increasingly, Canadians are exposed to demonstrations of the CAF’s cultural closure to minority groups via headlines about the institution’s systemic problems with sexual misconduct, racism, and ethnocentrism (Pinkerton 2019).7 The media portrayal of the CAF in view of these issues may contribute to the image that the CAF has significant social problems which act as barriers for their membership to reflect the demographics, values, and perspectives of the larger Canadian society. Indeed, from the outside, membership within the CAF may seem an unattractive prospect for women, visible minorities, and Indigenous peoples. In this way, the Canadian military’s diversity and inclusion troubles may be compounded by the image the institution projects to the Canadian populace. As illustration, Kathleen MacLaurin, former policy analyst for the Canadian Department of National Defence, states that “Aboriginal people may be deterred from enlisting in the military for fear that the objectives” of the military “would assimilate and extinguish their own particular value orientations or give rise to value stances that are in direct opposition to their own” (MacLaurin 2006, p. 166). In considering the importance of the image it projects to the Canadian public, the military may benefit from a more critical look at its culture and the internal social relations that may pose obstacles to cultural 7  As a recent example, see “Ex-member says military sexual harassment complaints process needs overhaul” by Charlie Pinkerton, iPolitics, 2 May 2019, accessible at: https://ipolitics.ca/2019/05/09/ ex-member-says-military-sexual-harassment-complaints-process-needs-overhaul/

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inclusion if one of its central objectives is to reflect better the composition and values of Canadian society (Government of Canada 2017). Aside from a requirement to analyze military ethos critically and update military policy and doctrine such as Duty with Honour (Chief of Defence Staff 2009), the Canadian military might benefit by engaging in the development of social conditions through which a sense of belonging among people with diverse worldviews, values, and backgrounds is possible. In this way, in addition to putting in place policy that recognizes the benefits of cultural diversity and inclusion (Chief of Defence Staff 2016), it is imperative that military members learn the critical thinking skills necessary to create an inclusive social environment, to develop adequate institutional structures, and to learn to engage in the cultural practices under which inclusion and the professional advancement of diverse groups is achievable. The most crucial point is to facilitate requisite thinking that erodes binaries in the military that establish categories of us and them. In so doing, the CAF might offer opportunities in PME for professionals to seek out and reject the policies, principles, and practices which contribute to masculinist, colonizing, heteronormative, and racially essentialist social relations. From superficial vantagepoints, policy and procedure may appear neutral and equal, but as the research attended to in this chapter suggests (Guo and Wong 2015; Lane 2017; Reitz 2009; Thomson and Jones 2016), it is in the application of policy to social practices that inequities and discrimination often emerge. In order to avoid essentialist and adversarial paradigms, military members must learn to seek out differences (in perspectives, in privileges, and in abilities) and work to build these into the foundations of military work rather than attempting to manage difference through assimilative processes. In this way, members can develop reflective habits which promote tendencies towards the recognition of diversity and in which an inclination to explore what is positive, or the useful, in the unfamiliarity of each military member. This practice requires military members to learn the ways in which to construct a new conception of “we” in which a collectivity of different “I’s” constitute the “us” of the military (Dean 1995, p.126). For the purpose of developing cultural competence in military members, however, the category of “us” should be a hypothetical one that is not limited to the military sphere, the national realm or the boundaries of the State (Dean 1995, p.130). The hypothetical “we” is the recognition of the communicative efforts, values and perspectives of both existing and potential members of the CAF. Rather than describing narrow and specific values and norms belonging to the “us” of the military, the “we” of the CAF remains indeterminate, changing, inclusive, and therefore less prone to exclusionary thinking (Dean 1995). To forward cultural competence, the consideration of a hypothetical “we” in PME may set the cognitive conditions in which diverse and unfamiliar peoples are positioned as potential partners in military members’ work to create and maintain peace and equity. The expectation of a broader “we,” then, develops a paradigm shift away from often limiting adversarial us/them constructs which currently dominate PME classrooms. In addition to the development of a hypothetical notion of “we,” in order to be truly attentive to their goals of diversity and inclusion, the CAF may also need to

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consider the ways in which the military establishes social power. We pose that it is worthwhile, then, to engage students in reflection about how power is distributed within the military, to have them investigate what social and structural mechanisms are in place to enable such power to reproduce institutionally, and to have them explore who ultimately benefits from these social and structural practices. Doing so immerses students in critical thinking about power and its distribution between military leaders and personnel. While examining existing power arrangements in the CAF may seem antithetical to the military’s rank structure and Chain of Command, doing so may have great benefit to the development of cultural competence. Such examinations could enable military learners to think critically about the practices and ideals required in military work, allow them to determine those that may not be required, and discover those which may facilitate social exclusion and misunderstandings about diverse populations. Moreover, doing so could engage students with the prospect of horizontal and innovative force structures to deal with increasingly complex security challenges of diverse cultures in the twenty-first Century. Lastly, examining power in the military could aid greatly in the scoping and execution of the military’s goals to diversify and support its workforce (Government of Canada 2017). In thinking about inclusion, anti-colonial and feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty cautions practitioners to be wary of visions of diversity that are inattentive to inequitable power distributions, and those which “falsely universalize” the desires, expectations, and needs of all people according to “masculinist assumptions” about the world in which we live (Mohanty 2003). Drawing on masculinities and feminist scholarship that study power, gender, and culture specific to the CAF, we propose that the military continues to operate under an “essentially masculinist framework” (Reiffenstein 2007). Through policy and practices which are supposedly universal and gender-neutral, a masculinist framework nevertheless establishes very narrow values, roles and behavioral expectations that tend to exclude greater diversity in ideas and limit members’ practices to tidy boxes of acceptable action and inaction. Many anthropological and sociological studies of the Canadian military have shown the ways in which military behavior is constrained within hegemonic, or socially esteemed, military masculinities (Okros and Scott 2015; Razack 2004; Taber 2009; Whitworth 2004). Such studies point to a deeply gendered and masculinist culture in armed forces writ large (Ashe 2012; Carreiras 2006; Eichler 2012; Higate 2007; Parpart and Partridge 2014), and also within the CAF that places immense pressure on members to conform to specific masculinist ways of thinking and being soldiers (Razack 2004; Taber 2015; Whitworth 2004). We do not intend to argue that masculine ways of thinking and being military members are d­ etrimental to diversity and inclusion. However, we do want to highlight how masculinist ways of defining the profession of arms, as well as masculinist practices and identities sometimes tied to the ideal “soldier,” “sailor,” and “aviator” are exclusionary. We also emphasize that militaries, and in particular the CAF, are institutions undergoing tremendous change and transformation, that, in essence, the Canadian military is an entity which has just begun to turn its attention to “feminist political goals of gender equality, peace, and justice” (Duncanson and Woodward 2016, p. 3; Government of Canada 2017).

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 owards a Heutagogic Approach to Learning Cultural T Competence In order to develop the appropriate conditions for a heutagogic approach to learning, educators must also engage in self-recognition. To do this, educators must come to understand their own positionality—the layers of identity and social categorization that organize them and others in different positions of power within society over time (Brown et al. 2000). Guided by this premise, we propose that the unique societal positions occupied by learners and educators influence their visions of the world and impressions of those who live in it. By speaking to their own positionality in the learning process, educators and learners can collectively confront bias, stereotypes, and narrow adversarial worldviews. A continued application of this philosophy helps to create the appropriate conditions for heutagogy, which, as we will develop, is a teaching method focused on collaboration, critical self-reflection, and student-driven learning. These are components which we esteem as beneficial to the development of cultural competence in military members. Thus, in compliment to the philosophy of positionality, we forward the heutagogic approach to learning (Canning 2010; Hase and Kenyon 2001). Heutagogy has been lauded as an important learner-centric and inquiry-driven adult education methodology which centers on the development of competencies (Blaschke 2012). First advanced by Stewart Hase, a professor and doctor of psychology, and Chris Kenyon, a Royal Australian Air Force Wing Commander, heutagogy is about the practice of developing critical thinking skills in professionally experienced learners through communication with others, self-insight, and self-growth (Canning 2010; Hase and Kenyon 2001). The heutagogic learning approach is argued to cultivate critical thinking capabilities by enabling learners to determine for themselves how and what they learn in relation to twenty-first century problems, technologies, communication, complex communities, and cultures of people (Hase and Kenyon 2001). The idea put forward is that learners can better confront latent biases about others by engaging in critical self-reflection. Further, it is our view that through collective communication and mutual authority over their learning, professional military members cultivate desire toward empathy and inclusivity, seeking “ultimately to influence a shift in thinking within [themselves] and those that they work with” (Canning 2010, p. 59). This approach can be considered as at the highest of five successive levels of learning. These levels, with associated differences in the types of learning in military PME, are behaviorist, cognitive, constructivist, experiential, and social-­ constructivist (Leonard 2002). First, the behaviorist level sets the conditions for the learner to absorb information through repetition and memorization of specific facts and solutions, otherwise known as rote learning. For this type of learning, students are conditioned to learn the right response for a particular situation. Such an approach to learning underpins the traditional military model of technical training, where students are given a set of conditions and are expected to solve problems in the right way to the approved standard. The consequence of this framework is that

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it often leads students to assume that there is a perfect or right solution to all problems – and their task is to find it. The cognitive level of learning is where the learner takes on memory and recall of more varied information akin to a computer. The cognitive style equates to passive learning, where students acquire, store, and recall required knowledge to be able to use it when needed. Standardized military planning procedures and the use of checklists tend to fit this approach. The key implicit learning message from this approach is that there are multiple solutions to a problem – it is up to the student to pick the best. The third level of learning is the constructivist level. This approach situates the learner as a sense maker. This level is the first to condition students for active learning. In a constructivist approach, the instructor helps the learner put what the instructor is teaching in the context of the learner’s experience and environment. In PME, the teaching of leadership theories generally fits this approach. For example, this framework enables students to assess what institutional leadership doctrine means for them. The underlying lesson from the constructivist approach is the recognition that different people will select different solutions for a problem – and it is up to the student to be accepting of alternatives. The experiential level is the fourth on the scale of levels of learning. The experiential model facilitates the learner as an explorer of knowledge. Constituting the next stage of active learning, this level assumes self-initiated development where the learner (not instructor) directs and connects their own learning based on their experiences, insights, and questions. This approach recognizes that learners are not “empty vessels” and that their learning does not occur in a vacuum. For PME, the implication is that senior officers will assess/judge new concepts in the context of their own experiences and worldviews. This is illustrated when senior officers grapple with the concepts of wicked problems or design analyses as these challenge their assumptions of linearity, simplicity, and fact-based decision-making. The implicit message from this approach is that different people will understand problems in different ways, hence they will select different solutions – in this way, students learn that they must live with the confusion of multiple and changing perspectives. The highest level of learning on this scale is the social-constructivist approach. In this framework, the learner is understood as a social agent capable of interactive learning. Through the social constructivist approach the learner is enabled to develop their own understanding of “knowledge” through interactions with others with the recognition that there are no universal “truths” or “facts” – rather students are subject to learning environments that set the conditions for them to understand that all knowledge is socially constructed. This is the level of learning required for independent moral reasoning in ambiguous or dynamic contexts. The key learning implication of this approach is that learning to think critically is not about defining either the problem or finding the “right” solutions, rather, it is about understanding your own views, biases, and assumptions in relation to others. Learning about gender and diversity requires an approach which allows military members to think critically about themselves in relation to one another and those outside of the military. This practice is what we call reflexive learning, or, learning

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intended to be critical of preconceived and taken-for-granted assumptions and biases about people (Bourdieu 1990; Bourdieu and Nice 2004; Kenway and McLeod 2004). We propose that military members can better understand unfamiliar people by first coming to understand potential limitations in the way they think, the possible constraints to thinking lent by their socialization within the military, and their biases. As such, we propose that professional military learners would be best positioned through the social constructivist level of learning to develop the reflexive skills requisite to cultural competence. To confront the limitations brought on through learners’ own socialization, stereotypes, and latent biases about people, military members require a learning environment, effectively facilitated by instructors, where they feel free to challenge critically their worldviews together with their peers. Developing critical reflection about gender, diversity, and inclusion, for example, necessarily requires space within which military members can comfortably co-construct and collectively determine meaning. In other words, reflexive learning does not occur easily in isolation or under the influence of power and authority. Rather, developing shared and more fluid understandings about the diversity of people, cultures, and values as well as the positionality of one’s self in relation to others, necessitates an environment where debate and difference in opinion are accepted and encouraged. Learning in this way, and in this environment, exemplifies the necessary conditions for developing postmodern thinking skills; skills that allow learners to seek out and understand multiple perspectives of the “truth” to obtain a more accurate sense of the diversity of ideas within cultures. To facilitate this more nuanced definition of cultural competence, military members are also in need of a great deal of autonomy and agency in the learning process. This means that educators require an approach that is: focused on students’ learning goals and desires, supportive of students’ engagement with each other, and facilitative of an environment that is open to students’ critical self-reflection. This conception of teaching constitutes a student-centered approach to learning. Student-centered methods to teaching carefully shift the role of the teacher from a disseminator of knowledge to a conduit through which students determine their own learning. For the purpose of learning cultural competence, we propose a conscious effort to move away from teaching styles which focus on students’ engagement with ­specific content. Instead, we believe a student-centered framework which embeds the educator within students’ collaborative efforts to generate new knowledge is a better approach. In collaboration with their instructors, military members can determine for themselves the purposes of their learning about diverse peoples and perspectives. In adult and professional education, such a configuration of learning, and the turn of roles in which teachers and learners play, is at the core of the practice of heutagogy. Thus, heutagogy is an appropriate learner-centric, inquiry-driven approach enabling students to develop the kind of self-determined thinking about gender, diversity, and inclusion which is predicated on communication with others, self-insight and self-growth. A heutagogic framework can also serve to illuminate gender and cultural inequities among members of the military. Heutagogy’s emphasis on collaboration, for

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example, provides an approach which draws on the experiences of learners. To illustrate, males and females may have different experiences within the military, particularly in relation to their experience of the military as a male dominated institution. Moreover, males and females may have differing perspectives about power and privilege. This range of perspectives may influence how unfamiliar people are viewed through gendered lenses and gendered constructions of strangers, adversaries, us and them. There are diverse methods through which a heutagogic approach to learning can be facilitated. Some of these methods include: the co-construction of learner contracts (where the learner and instructor construct a study plan); flexible curriculum (where the learner is responsible for sourcing learning materials, case studies, peer-­ reviewed and primary research); learner-directed research questions (where the learner sets a path for inquiry with guidance from the instructor), and negotiated assessment strategies (where the learner and instructor negotiate how capacities and capabilities achieved through learning are measured and evaluated) (Blaschke 2012). In addition, a collaborative learning design is necessary for heutagogic learning. Constructing communities of practice through team-based learning is advanced as a common strategy—of which developing co-constructed projects or research groups among students with similar research interests are practical examples (Hase 2009). Similarly, knowledge sharing through the open dissemination of resources and ideas among learners has also been assessed as setting conditions for collaboration within a heutagogic learning environment (Ashton and Newman 2006). While heutagogy is a relatively new approach to teaching adult learners with professional experience, studies have emerged that show in what contexts and under what conditions the approach has been embraced or resisted (Blaschke 2012; Samaroo 2012). Some analyses have revealed that decisions to implement and practice heutagogy have been determined through gendered norms, values, and ideologies (Samaroo 2012). As heutagogic learning involves shifting the authority over learning from the instructor to the learner, this approach is also inherently about reconceptualizing the distribution of power in the classroom. In this way, facilitating military members’ use of collaboration, self-insight, and self-determined critical thought may be difficult for educators who are comfortable in greater positions of power over students, educators who desire to structure students’ learning to areas of their specific expertise, and educators who prefer to employ directed rather than participatory forms of delivering knowledge. In reference to preceding ideas in this chapter, these preferences may also be value-laden and specific to the positionality of the educator. Education scholar Selwyn Samaroo traced the practice of heutagogy at a southern university in the US in order to examine how gender norms and values within different academic disciplines effect faculty responses to this learning approach. This research indicated that in various culturally specific contexts across the university, gender bias against a heutagogic approach was evident. Samaroo’s work illuminates that teaching styles associated with heutagogy had been resisted in traditionally male-dominated and masculinized disciplines such as business, while they had been more readily embraced in traditionally feminized disciplines such as

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education and health (Samaroo 2012). As an extension, quantitative analyses of the same academic institution showed that female faculty, faculty with training in teaching, and faculty teaching graduate courses had more favorable attitudes and assessments of heutagogic approaches (Samaroo 2012). This research shows that the acceptance of heutagogy had a gendered flavor which depended on the specific cultural context of this southern American university. As such, studies such as this one illuminate the importance of considering how approaches to teaching emerge in relation to gender, different foci of learning, and existing power dynamics between teachers and students. Moreover, it is useful to note how the unique culture of the educational institution may maintain and (re)produce gendered evaluations and norms of learners, educators, and institutional leadership through teaching practices, philosophies, and methods. In this way, it is essential for military members and educators to view the learning environment as already situated within a unique and very gendered military culture. Several authors have each contributed significant work which illuminates the privileging of specifically Anglo, white, aggressive and “warrior” forms of masculinity by members of the Canadian military (Davis 2007; Razack 2004; Whitworth 2004). And, as defence scientist Angela Febbraro’s work with women leaders in the Combat Arms has shown, these masculine idealizations have impacted on approaches to leadership. Febbraro’s study indicates that more iterative, communicative, and facilitative styles of leadership had been esteemed within the Canadian Armed Forces as “feminine” and undesirable, while autocratic approaches to leadership had been idealized as “masculine” and often constructed as more “effective” (Febbraro 2007). In this way, while female leaders had similar leadership styles to men, stereotypes that “women are not suited for leadership positions” and gendered ideals about leadership as directive rather than collaborative persisted in the Combat Arms (Febbraro 2007, p 93). Febbraro posited that in the Canadian military context “‘effective leader’ remain[ed] masculine in content.” Therefore, as the learning of cultural competence by military members is informed by the larger military institution, teaching practices which are lauded as more masculine may be tacitly preferred within its male-dominated culture. For example, student-centered learning has the potential to be perceived negatively in PME precisely because it forwards teaching qualities that are less transactional, less directive, and less authoritative (read as less masculine), and more supportive, facilitative, and collaborative (read as more feminine) in relation to the military’s existing gendered culture, gendered norms, and gendered values. Consequently, it is important to recognize the extent to which gendered assessments of learner-centric approaches are situated within larger frameworks of professionalism, institutional closure, and institutional culture. In this way, military members’ learning of cultural competence can be deeply influenced by the cultural norms, values, and traditions of the military. As such, it operates within, and (re)produces, knowledge, practices, and norms that are in constant negotiation across the military. Thus, it is important to recognize how institutional constructions of knowledge, ways of doing things and values can be gendered, and therefore, might create cultural constraints or barriers to cultural competence.

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Conclusion This chapter builds from two initial premises regarding developing cultural competence in military personnel: first, that this requires them to unlearn implicit understandings and biases about others outside of their own culture, and second, that they can best do so by critically reflecting upon their own institutional and national cultures. We have argued that critical analyses of our own cultures as well as individual socialization, assumptions, and biases will enable military members to negotiate the social obstacles which often impede precision in learning about others. Drawing on scholars’ evaluations of the nature of military culture and the production and reproduction of military identity, we identified that a key requirement is to overcome the us/them dualities that many develop. The central contribution offered in the context of PME is for a shift from standard expert-based approaches to military learning to adopting the learner-centric methodologies and underlying pedagogy of heutagogy. This requires more than selecting different content or new types of learning activities but necessarily involves reframing of the concepts of “teacher” and “student” and assumptions regarding who “owns” or controls the learning process or intended learning outcomes. Key to doing so is to enable military members to engage in critical self-reflection, contestation of latent biases, and an erosion of adversarial outlooks by actively working to broaden understandings of a collective and hypothetical “we”. When conducted in an appropriately facilitated, collaborative learning environment, the combination of collective engagement and critical self-reflection can develop the prerequisite cognitive skills which enable military professionals to develop empathy and achieve cultural competence. The key paradoxical conclusion offered is that the best way to prepare military members for the challenges, ambiguities, and dynamics of navigating in the culturally complex environments of international deployments is to study ones’ own culture, context, and perspectives. While occasionally appearing to be monolithic to outside observers, the military is rife with nuanced differences within. Critical examinations can be conducted of the identities, values, expectations, and assumptions that all in uniform may share while concurrently differing from each other: what are the differences versus similarities of Officers versus Non-Commissioned/ Enlisted Members, men versus women, Army from Navy from Air Force, those in combat roles versus support versus specialist? The real insights, and first stages of learning, will come when individuals realize that conducting an examination of men versus women and then doing so for Army versus Air Force does not allow them to understand women in the Army as compared to women in the Air Force. The recognition of the multiple dimensions of culture and the intersectionalities which make each an individual, can facilitate the deeper understandings of cultural nuances across differing groups and contexts as well as helping to mitigate the enthusiasm of those who assume to be able to venture abroad armed with a great two-hour presentation of the “local culture”. Ultimately, the objective of this chapter and of PME in general is to develop the capacity of military members to ask the right questions

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when encountering the unfamiliar rather than assuming to have all the answers already. Developing cultural competence in military professionals—in the face of adversarial conceptions of “strangers”—is an ongoing challenge. However, military members’ active engagement in bias erosion and empathy construction addresses the challenge of competency head on (Blaschke 2012). By intentionally moving away from adversarial us/them thinking, we have provided a theoretical, philosophical, and methodological framework that lays the groundwork for military personnel to develop cultural competence. It is our view that when professional military learners engage in critical self-reflection and collectively determine their learning path, they are poised to challenge personal, institutional, and Canadian cultural biases which have often rendered diverse peoples and cultures as “dangerous” and “strange.”

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Kovitz, M. (2000). The enemy within: Female soldiers in the Canadian forces. Canadian Woman Studies, 19(4), 36–41. Lane, A. (2017). Special men: The gendered militarization of the Canadian Armed Forces. International Journal, 72(4), 463–483. Leonard, D. C. (2002). Learning theories, A to Z. Westport: Greenwood. Leuprecht, C. (Ed.). (2011). Defending democracy and securing diversity. Abingdon: Routledge. MacLaurin, K. (2006). Organizational values and cultural diversity in the Canadian forces: The case of Aboriginal peoples. In F. Pinch, A. MacIntyre, P. Browne, & A. Okros (Eds.), Challenge and change in the military: Gender and diversity issues (pp. 146–170). Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press. Madsen, C. (2000). Another kind of justice: Canadian military law from confederation to Somalia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Mitra, R., Faulkner, G.  E., Buliung, R.  N., & Stone, M.  R. (2014). Do parental perceptions of the neighbourhood environment influence children's independent mobility? Evidence from Toronto, Canada. Urban Studies, 51(16), 3401–3419. Mohanty, C. (2003). Feminism without borders-decolonizing theory: Practicing solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press. Nolan, J., Rayes-Goldie, K., & McBride, M. (2011). The stranger danger: Exploring surveillance, autonomy, and privacy in children’s use of social media. Canadian Children, 36(2), 24–31. Office of the Auditor General. (2016). Canadian Armed Forces recruitment and retention— National Defence (report five). Ottawa, ON: Office of the Auditor General for Canada. Okros, A., & Scott, D. (2015). Gender identity in the Canadian forces: A review of possible impacts on operational effectiveness. Armed Forces and Society, 41(2), 243–256. Parpart, J., & Partridge, K. (2014). Soldiering on: Pushing militarized masculinities into new territories. In M. Evans, C. Hemmings, M. Henry, H. Johnstone, S. Madhok, A. Plomien, & S.  Wearing (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of feminist theory (pp.  550–565). Thousand Oaks/ London: SAGE. Pierson, R. R. (1983). Canadian women and the Second World War. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association. Pinkerton, C. (2019, May 9). Ex-member says military sexual harassment complaints process needs overhaul. Retrieved October 23, 2019, from IPolitics website: https://ipolitics.ca/2019/05/09/ ex-member-says-military-sexual-harassment-complaints-process-needs-overhaul/ Razack, R. (2004). Dark threats and white knights: The Somalia affair, peacekeeping, and the new imperialism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Reiffenstein, A. (2007). Gender integration as asymmetric environment. In K.  D. Davis (Ed.), Women and leadership in the Canadian forces: Perspectives and experience. Kingston: Canadian Defence Academy Press. Reitz, J. G. (2009). Multiculturalism and social cohesion: Potentials and challenges of diversity. Dordrecht: Springer. Samaroo, S. (2012). An investigation into the practicality and applicability of the pedandragogic framework: A case study of faculty attitude toward a learner-centered model of teaching and learning at a university in the southern United States. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. Taber, N. (2009). The profession of arms: Ideological codes and dominant narratives of gender in the Canadian military. Atlantis, 34(1), 27–36. Taber, N. (2015). Gendered militarism in Canada: Learning conformity and resistance. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press. Thomson, K., & Jones, J. (2016). Colonials in camouflage: Metonymy, mimicry and the reproduction of the colonial order in the age of diversity. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 35, 58–75. Touraine, A. (1998). Can we live together, equal and different? European Journal of Social Theory, 1(2), 165–178. Vasta, E. (2010). The controllability of difference: Social cohesion and the new politics of solidarity. Ethnicities, 10(4), 503–521.

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Wax, N. (2016). Parenting styles-the concept of ‘stranger danger’ and instilling child safety skills (Order no. 10112469). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Whitworth, S. (2004). Men, militarism and UN peacekeeping. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Whitworth, S. (2005). Militarized masculinities and the politics of peacekeeping: The Canadian case. In K. Booth (Ed.), Critical security studies in world politics (pp. 89–106). Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Winslow, D., & Dunn, J. (2002). Women in the Canadian forces: Between legal and social integration. Current Sociology, 50(5), 641–667. Vanessa Brown  is a sessional instructor at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto. She facilitates graduate level learning in the areas of leadership, gender, cultural perspectives, and military institutional policy. Her research and written work focus on gender, intersectionality and (in)security through the domain of professional military education and the institutional social dynamics of the Canadian Armed Forces. Alan Okros  is a professor in the Department of Defence Studies at the Canadian Forces College with responsibilities for teaching staff and war college graduate-­level courses in leadership, command, and personnel topics. He has authored journal articles and book chapters examining military policies related to integrating or accommodating individuals based upon Aboriginal identity, sexual orientation, and gendered identity.

Culture as Operational Enabler: Training Danish Officers to Understand the Interaction Between Cultural Dynamics and Military Operations Rikke Haugegaard

Abstract  In this chapter, I argue that teaching culture through the perspective of operational experiences creates very substantial benefits. Utilizing military officers’ capacity to reflect on past operational experiences is crucial to improving their understanding of cultural complexity in a conflict zone. In Denmark, the Master in Military Studies program offers an elective module titled “Culture as Operational Enabler”. By inviting the hardship and challenges of war into the classroom as case examples during the module, the instructors create a learning environment where officers’ personal experiences are empirical data for further reflection and analysis. The practice-oriented approach to education is relevant in order to ensure the connection between academic cultural theory and military operational reality. Concepts from anthropology and educational psychology supported the planning of the research-based culture education, but the officers’ suggestions also shaped the changes of the educational methods and learning activities. Culture education can benefit from diversity in learning activities such as writing exercises, games, and exercises outside the classroom. Building on these Danish experiences, the chapter closes by exploring best practices for teaching culture theory in relation to the professional practice of military officers. Keywords  Military education · Officer training · Operational culture · Cultural awareness · Culture theory

R. Haugegaard (*) Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_7

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The Danish Defence and The Royal Danish Defence College Danish population 5.8 million Danish active-duty military service members Army: 6288, Navy: 2372, Air Force: 2750, other units approx. 8.500. Total: approx. 20,100 (of which 16.1% are women) or 0.3% of the total population (Forsvaret 2019). Location and nature of recent operations As of 2019, Danish armed forces conduct operations with training and capacity building of local security forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and East Africa. In addition, Danish Armed Forces conduct peace military engagement operations in the Baltic states and Poland. Danish Armed Forces conduct stability operations in Kosovo and peacekeeping operations in Mali. In addition, Danish Armed Forces participate in peace-support operations in South Sudan and coalition support in the Middle East. In addition, the Danish air force supports the French counter-terrorism ‘Operation Barkane’ in Sahel. The Royal Danish Defence College The Royal Danish Defence College was founded on 3 May 1830. In the beginning, officers from the army and the navy were admitted to the college. From 1951, officers from the air force were admitted to the higher education programs for officers. The Royal Danish Defence College has 735 students, and it has the educational responsibility for both branch-specific basic officer’s training programs and the continuing professional education of officers. This promotes coherence in the overall training and education of officers from ‘lieutenant to general’. Academic programs include the Diploma in Military Studies (the basic officers’ training program), the Master in Military Studies (joint services), the military linguists’ program, and several management and specialization courses. Instructors The Royal Danish Defence College has approx. 104 instructors, of whom 73 are military and 31 are civilian. In addition, the College has 38 researchers and Ph.D. students. The military instructors have operative experience and/or academic training in leadership, military studies, political science or other disciplines relevant to military operations and organizations. Civilian instructors have an MA or a Ph.D. in disciplines relevant to the military, such as history, political science, anthropology etc.

In 2013, the Royal Danish Defence College began offering a new elective on culture for its military officers, the Operational Culture module. Over the years, the module has shifted and developed as instructors learned from students’ feedback and as the operational tasks and role of the Danish military changed. In this chapter, I describe

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the development of the module and the pedagogical lessons learned in developing and teaching culture at the Danish Defence College. I argue that teaching culture through the perspective of operational experiences creates very substantial benefits. Utilizing officers’ capacity to reflect on past operational experiences is crucial to improving their understanding of the cultural dynamics in a conflict zone. In addition, the motivation of students is stronger when the culture module includes cases from the operational realities they encountered. Therefore, this chapter will address the relationship between the operational environment and culture education through the following three questions: A. How did concepts from educational psychology and anthropology support the development of the elective culture module as a practice-oriented education? A section is devoted to a brief overview of relevant theoretical concepts from educational psychology. These concepts help to explain how reflection functions as an individual endeavor. In addition, the section discusses how cultural perceptions develop, and how officers’ professional experiences from deployments abroad are linked to theoretical concepts from anthropology. B. How did the officers’ operational experience influence the development of the module? I present some background information about the Danish operational culture module. The chapter then proceeds by arguing for a close link to operational reality when planning and teaching culture education. Several examples highlight how officers influenced the design of the module through their comments and suggestions in on-line evaluations. This section also argues for incorporating real-time conflicts into the classroom discussions in order to increase coherence between academic concepts and operational reality. C. How did the officers respond to the concepts and research taught by military anthropologists? What methods and learning activities provided us with the richest link between operational experiences and academic theory? The final sections of the chapter focus on discussing why culture education should be research-based education. I outline the ways our research group involved students in a research project, thereby generating better research products. I explore how culture education can benefit from diversity in learning activities such as writing exercises, games, and exercises outside the classroom. Building on these Danish experiences, the chapter closes by exploring best practices for teaching culture theory in relation to the professional practice of military officers.

 heoretical Perspectives: Developing a Practice-Oriented T Approach to Culture In this section, I will discuss some of the concepts from educational psychology and anthropology that have been useful in the development of the Danish elective culture module as a practice-oriented module. “Transformative learning” (cf. Illeris 2013)

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and “episodic memory” (Hattie and Yates 2014, p. 157) are concepts from educational psychology which will be applied to the argument below. These concepts can inform the discussion about what happens in the minds of the officers when we teach culture in the classroom. Designing a practice-oriented learning environment is important for several reasons. Firstly, “our experiences are the basis for how we perceive the world around us and thus for what we think, say and do” (Grønlund and Sjøstedt 2016, p. 15). Officers perform their roles in war-torn societies by acting, negotiating, and learning in conflict areas. They are practitioners of warfare and diplomacy. When the objective is for officers to learn and apply concepts from the field of “culture”, the academic learning process is enhanced if the point of departure is their own experiences – their deployments abroad. Secondly, the ability to reflect critically on cultural dynamics and cultural dilemmas is essential to improving cultural understanding of “the other” (the local military partner, the local population, the partners in coalition warfare). Reflection is qualified thinking. When we reflect we do not only register what is happening – we also consider why and how it happens. We consider how it fits with what we knew before and its significance to us now or in the future (ibid., p. 21).

Reflection is also to “consider why something was successful and how we can use that success in future experimentation” (ibid.). Reflection connects our experiences with future possible experiences, and therefore, the ability to reflect critically upon past operational experiences is very important to improve the understanding of cultural dynamics in war-torn societies. Reflection “is the essential bridge between experience and learning” (Reed in Johnson-Freese 2013, p. 22). When officers are able to see cultural dilemmas from their deployments through a new conceptual framework, they have gone through a process of “transformative learning” (cf. Illeris 2013). The process takes place when students exceed their mental habits and frames of reference (cf. Grønlund and Sjøstedt 2016, p.  17). However, we are not always successful in bringing about transformative learning. To some of the Danish officers in the elective culture module, the cultural perspectives we taught in the classroom were too complex and too ambiguous for them to deal with. The instructors sought to open the students’ minds toward more complexity and a deeper cultural context and ambiguity instead of simple answers and clear orders about how to interact with ‘the other’. However, occasionally, the learning process became too overwhelming for some officers, and they decided to leave the course. Thirdly, from childhood, people develop memory systems in their brains connected to language, which enable them to recall specific experiences from a context in the past. “This type of memory is called episodic memory, since it is tied to actual events that took place within your experience, often in connection with specific people, places, or times” (Hattie and Yates 2014, p. 157). A military deployment is often a very intense experience, consisting of a range of events that are later recalled by officers through their episodic memory. However, often the officers only remember pieces of events. Therefore, there are some limits to the relevance of educational

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psychology concepts in culture education. The more time passes, the more blurred our memory becomes. When officers are able to activate their episodic memory through classroom discussion and group sessions, and remember cultural dilemmas during deployments, they can have an intense learning experience. If the concepts from anthropology can help to frame and contextualize episodes from their deployment, then the level of cultural understanding increases. Our culture module places a deliberate emphasis on activating memories of the officers’ past deployment experiences. Episodes from deployments are discussed through critical reflection in the classroom and in written assignments. The process of writing supports critical reflection, and we have – based on students’ and instructors’ evaluations – increased the amount of writing exercises in the culture module. “Reflective writing strengthens your critical reflection skills more so than when you merely express yourself verbally, because expressing yourself in writing calls for more precision and is irrevocable” (Illeris (2013) in Grønlund and Sjøstedt 2016, p. 21). Reflection is enhanced through writing because writing sharpens our qualified thinking. Writing about culture and its relevance for military operations is a way to process past experiences. Writing is also a creative learning experience, where students can reflect about perceptions about partners and dilemmas in military missions. Cultural perceptions often hamper international military efforts if the perceptions are linked to cultural stereotypes about military partners, partners in coalition warfare, and local actors. During our course module, officers discuss coalition partners’ capabilities and daily challenges in multinational working environments. Often, frustration about differences in working styles is part of their experiences from military deployments. Therefore, an important theme in the culture module is a discussion of how cultural perceptions develop. Cultural perceptions develop as sensitive themes in an international coalition (Albrecht et al. 2017). Daily small conflicts, misunderstandings and rumors can create tension in a military alliance where different interests are brought into play. In addition, international military missions are ‘ad-hoc’ communities, consisting of soldiers from different countries, and thereby a distinctly diverse organization (cf. Elron et al. 2003). From previous research conducted in military organizations such as the US Marine Corps and the Danish Defence (see Christensen et al. 2014), we learned that military planning processes often circle around conceptual constructs like “us”/“them”, “war”/“peace” and “enemy”/“friend”. When deploying to a conflict area, it is obvious for military officers to focus their attention on their military ­opponents. However, the construction of “the enemy” often leads to a misrepresented image of the conflict because the challenge is to understand the local environment, actors and population, who are part of the scene where a military operation takes place (cf. Flynn cited in Christensen et al. 2014, p. 15). Bhabha (2004) is a pertinent selection for the module’s theoretical reading, since he debates the creation of cultural stereotypes. Colonial discourse in the form of stereotyping is “that ‘otherness’ which is at once an object of desire and derision”

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(cf. ibid., p. 96). Stereotyping “the other” becomes “a complex, ambivalent, contradictory mode of representation” (ibid., p. 100). Cultural stereotypes are dichotomies in colonial discourse about the “preliterate vs. literate, traditional vs. modern, peasant vs. industrial” (Fabian 1983, p.  23). The module “Culture as Operational Enabler” at the Danish Defence College has continually sought to debate and deconstruct cultural stereotypes, in order for the military officers to learn about cultural complexity in their regions of deployment. In other words, military officers are encouraged to understand cultural “depth” (Albro and Ivey 2014, p.  11). Reflections on cultural perceptions and stereotypes are relevant for the officers, equipping them to meet local military partners in an open and equal dialogue.

Operational Culture and the Danish Defence College In recent years, Danish military forces have been involved in military capacity building, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2013, Danish forces have contributed to the UN mission MINUSMA in Mali. The Danish contribution in Afghanistan has undergone an important transition: moving from an initial focus on combat operations and supporting civil authorities in the Helmand province to a current focus on training and mentoring at the Afghan National Army Officer Academy (ANAOA) in Kabul. “Capacity building of host nation militaries is a central component of current multinational military operations, which is likely to become increasingly vital to future military interventions in conflict settings” (Christensen 2015, p. 1). Today, Danish officers and mentors are deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine conducting training of local security forces in co-operation with NATO partners. Smaller teams of instructors have contributed to capacity building and training in African countries. The volume of these international tasks grew between 2016 and 2018 (Danish Defence 2018), and it is most likely that a major part of future military engagements will be conducted in the classrooms and exercise areas of military bases, not on the battlefield. One of the upcoming challenges will be to integrate local perspectives, values, and visions in the design and implementation of training programs (cf. Donais 2008) for military capacity building. Hence, education in cultural dynamics is vital for any officers who propose to implement future military capacity building worldwide. The increase in training and mentoring as core tasks for military officers calls for a better understanding of how to build relationships with military partners. Building sound and respectful partnerships with military partners is a process in which an understanding of cultural dynamics is a key to success. In Denmark, the institution that supports culture education is the Royal Danish Defence College. Danish Defence’s designated cultural experts are the military linguists/cultural advisers trained at the Royal Danish Defence Language Academy. Apart from such specialists, the more general course taught for Danish Defence personnel is an elective module on culture. The module is part of the Master in

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Military Studies program. Instructors are involved in both courses, but this chapter will discuss the elective culture module at Master’s level. In 2013, the Royal Danish Defence College started a new course for officers: Master in Military Studies. The idea was to create a part-time study program where officers could attend their daily job and study simultaneously. The Master in Military Studies is a 3-year research-based higher education program primarily aimed at military personnel. The program prepares officers and future commanders for high-­ grade joint and single service appointments, both nationally and abroad. The Master’s program focuses on refining command and decision-making abilities and analytical skills. In addition, the program provides a learning environment for broad understanding and knowledge of joint/combined operations, strategic issues and management challenges. Officers from all parts of the services can apply for admission to the Master in Military Studies. At the Royal Danish Defence College, civilian researchers and military analysts with subject matter expertise on strategy, leadership, and military operations teach the Master’s program. Military history and culture are cross-disciplinary subjects, covered in a short mandatory introduction module for all students, and later as elective modules chosen by the officers as part of their individual specialization. The Master’s program is designed as blended learning modules, with seminars (mandatory presence) and on-line collaborative learning modules between the seminars. The Master in Military Studies equates to 60 ECTS credits, and the elective module on culture represents 5 ECTS credits. European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) credits are a standard means for comparing the volume of learning based on the defined learning outcomes and their associated workload for higher education across the European Union and other collaborating European countries (European Union 2019).

The Operational Culture Module The culture module is a five-month course. Occasionally, elective modules are conducted in English and thereby open to international students. The elective module is entitled “Culture as Operational Enabler” – a title that refers to the importance of applying cultural analyses to military planning in order to create operational effects. The instructors are civilian researchers with academic backgrounds in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and history. Guest lecturers are invited from external organizations such as the University of Copenhagen and other Scandinavian ­universities. In the first years, from 2013–2016, military officers contributed to the design and planning of the module. In addition, military officers lectured on military planning and analysis of military actors and capabilities. The discussions in the classrooms became interesting when military officers and academic personnel had different views on military planning and the role of culture in military operations. In the group of instructors, I was “the anthropologist” or “the academic”, but I also had operational experience from deployments in Afghanistan and Mali. My

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operational deployments with Danish CIMIC (Civil-military co-operation) officers in Afghanistan and UN staff officers in Mali helped me to understand the officers’ profession and their experiences from the field. Based on my operational experiences, I selected academic texts and concepts that are of direct relevance to the officers’ understanding of cultural dilemmas. In addition, my legitimacy as instructor was easily established, because I had deployed to conflict areas and worked together with CIMIC officers, military analysts and staff officers. I was not only an academic teacher with university education. I was a cultural adviser with operational experience. I know the hardship of working in a conflict zone with suicide bombers, daily threats, and other challenges. A criterion for admission to our elective culture module is experience from at least one military deployment. In this manner, we hope that students admitted to the module are able to discuss academic concepts in relation to the cultural dilemmas they faced during deployments. The students are employees in the Danish Armed Forces and hold a rank of captain or above. The admission requirements for officers/ students are: (a) operational experience from a deployment in a conflict area, and (b) working experience from the Danish Defence or another military institution, or (c) working experience from a humanitarian or development organization. Civilians can apply for admission if they hold a Bachelor’s degree from a European University and have working experience from abroad, preferably with humanitarian and/or development assistance. During the first five years, we have had a few civilians attending the course. Operational experience is an admission criterion because the intention is to create a practice-oriented course where officers reflect on their operational experience in order to acquire new knowledge about culture theory and its relevance for future military operations. Most officers admitted to the course in the period from 2013 to 2018 had served one or two deployments in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Mali. Some had worked as military observers in the Middle East or in Africa. The average number of students attending the module is 20–28 students for each module.

The Evolution of the Module Culture theory is a new field to most Danish officers. They might have operational experience with cultural factors, but they are not familiar with theoretical concepts from the academic disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history. Therefore, from the beginning of the first Master’s program module called “Culture as Operational Enabler”, the focus has been to create a learning environment where military officers can reflect about their operational experiences abroad. The practice-­ oriented approach to education is relevant in order to ensure the connection between academic cultural theory and military operational reality. In this manner, the module is based on the professional practice of the officers – in our case, their past operational experiences and their future experiences in international military deployments.

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Connecting experiences from deployments in missions such as Afghanistan, Iraq, or Mali and critical reflection about these experiences is a dynamic link we try to establish in the culture module. To be able to reflect critically on past operational experiences – and understand the cultural dynamics involved – enables officers to become ‘culturally clever’. The module’s learning plan from 2016 specifies the following learning objectives: The aim of the course is to provide you with insights into those aspects of culture relevant to operations, including cultural theory and analytical methodology. You will learn how to apply these analytical tools to military thinking and planning of military operations. The student will develop his/her academic skills in the field of cultural analysis. Understanding how cultural dynamics influence military operations is the key theme throughout the course. The course will focus on local actors and ‘coalition culture’ – on how internal cultural friction and coalition cohesion influences military deployments.

Finally, the learning plan states a range of end goals for knowledge, skills, and abilities. A very important ability learned in this course is the ability to identify and “reflect on concrete matters of cultural relevance within the mission area”. When planning the first module back in 2013, we had a learning plan written as a draft version. As the Master program matured, we revised the learning plan based on the first years of experiences from planning and executing the culture module. On-line evaluations were an integrated part of the module in which we asked for students’ comments and suggestions regarding the module. The on-line evaluation was conducted after completing the module. In addition, students were asked to provide a mid-term evaluation during the module. After each module’s conclusion, the instructors analyzed the answers from the students. The instructors then discussed the results with staff from the Dean’s Office at the Royal Danish Defence College. Decisions from the evaluation meetings are filed as instructor guidelines for the next module.

The First Module: 2013 The first version of the culture module (spring 2013) used an exam format where officers wrote an individual assignment on a theme selected from the curriculum. In the evaluations of the module, the officers commented to the team of instructors that an individual exam form did not really reflect the way they work in operations. They preferred an exam that simulated the staff work they conduct during deployments. Therefore, some students proposed a group assignment whereby future students could work in teams of four or five officers and write the assignment together. Their argument was: “In the military organization, it is very seldom that you conduct an analysis by yourself, as an individual” (comment from internal evaluation, 2013). After some thought, the instructors decided to change the exam format to reflect the suggestions made by the officers. In subsequent modules, the exam was a group exam with oral defense of a written group project assignment. The disadvantage of

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the group examination was that some students felt they were working harder and taking initiative, whereas other group members were limiting their study efforts to a minimum. The advantage of a group project examination was the high level of peer-to-peer debate, reflection, and learning. In 2013, the module presented different case scenarios (Syria, Iraq, and Mali) to the students. The students suggested that they would prefer to work with only one scenario during the module, enabling them to conduct in-depth analysis of cultural dynamics in the region in question. The officers had faced hard situations during deployments, where they learned that knowledge about culture was limited. Therefore, we understood the need to facilitate thorough discussions and analyses of cultural dynamics.

 he Second Module from 2014–2015: Using Research-Based T Culture Education Based on our students’ suggestion, we decided to work with a single scenario to facilitate deeper analyses and discussions in the classroom. From spring 2014, the culture module’s case scenario was the region of Sahel in West Africa, with a focus on the role of the UN mission MINUSMA  (United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission) in Mali. The advantage was that our department was conducting research on Mali/MINUSMA and the Danish military contribution to MINUSMA was a focus for the national media. By choosing Mali as our case scenario, the students could follow the developments in the country closely, discuss the Danish military contribution to the mission, and learn more about the cultural dynamics in the Sahel region and in the UN mission – all in the same course module. Military units sent their staff to the culture module as preparation before deployment to Mali/MINUSMA.  Instructors were tasked with designing tailor-made briefings to staff from the Danish Army and the Danish Air Force. In addition, we used the officers who returned from deployment to Mali as resources for the course. Some officers signed up for the culture module after deployment in order to improve their knowledge about cultural dynamics in the Sahel region. In this manner, the culture module gained legitimacy in a wide range of units in the Danish Defence, as well as among participating officers from the United Kingdom and Finland. The initial suggestion from the officers to focus on a selected case scenario for the module triggered a development, which resulted in a very close link between the classroom and the ongoing military operations in Sahel. From this experience, we learned that the link between the classroom ­discussions and the ongoing operations increased the motivation of the students as well as the instructors. Culture analysis became highly relevant because officers involved in the Mali mission could implement cultural perspectives from the course directly. They subsequently used the cultural perspectives in their jobs as military analysts or staff officers in MINUSMA.

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Since 2014, the students attending the module have participated in our department’s ongoing research. We have presented our findings from the research project on culture in military planning. Researchers from Danish and international universities have presented their research from the fields of anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, and conflict studies. Given the focus on Mali, more literature on cultural dynamics in African countries became part of the curriculum (e.g. Utas 2012). As an academic lecturer and researcher working at the Royal Danish Defence College, my main research priorities have always changed according to the shifting conflict scenarios that Danish officers are deployed to. When the situation in Mali developed in 2012, I was tasked to gather academic literature on Mali and write some handbooks for Danish military officers and analysts working in the MINUSMA mission. In the period from 2014 to 2017, I conducted three field studies in Mali. This ongoing research was presented to the students in the module. Previously, the officers who applied for the first culture modules in 2013 and 2014 were eager to learn about cultural dynamics, especially in relation to the counter-­insurgency setting they experienced in Afghanistan. At the time, the curriculum for the culture module focused on introducing the students to anthropology. General themes included explorations of how anthropology can support military operations, and the role of culture in counter-insurgency. Later, when the module shifted to the case scenario of Mali and cultural dynamics in the Sahel region, the culture curriculum was changed in order to include a focus on peacekeeping. The general introduction to anthropology as an enabler for military operations is still a major theme in the module. Other themes are cultural interoperability (cf. Rubinstein 2014) and discussions on militant networks and their relation to crime. The concept of ‘interoperability’ became relevant because my research in MINUSMA in Mali revealed that friction among coalition partners in the UN mission were a serious issue for many analysts and staff officers in the mission. This research finding from Mali echoed similar experiences brought forward by the students when we discussed the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The concept of interoperability will be discussed in a later section of this chapter. The students participated in our research project by testing the analytical questions in draft versions of the “Connecting Culture Handbook” (Christensen and Haugegaard 2017). The officers in the elective modules held in 2015 and 2016 provided valuable contributions to the final product. The Connecting Culture Handbook introduces a generic tool that facilitates and enables the use of culture as part of the military operational planning processes. In order to test the validity of the handbook, the students worked in groups with the application of a PMESII (Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, Information) analysis (NATO 2013) to the conflict in Mali. For instance, the handbook asks the students to consider social factors by asking: –– Which fundamental social causes of the conflict can be identified? –– What characterises family structures, gender relations and intergenerational relationships in the mission area, and how do these characteristics impact on the organisation and mobilisation of militant groups?

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–– How does the presence of military forces influence family structures, gender relations and intergenerational relationships in the mission area? –– Which population groups in neighbouring countries have interests in the mission area, and to what extent is there a migration of population groups across the borders? –– How are family, intergenerational and gender conflicts resolved in the mission area? Which social mechanisms and entities drive the conflict resolution processes? (Christensen and Haugegaard 2017, p. 15) Working with questions in each PMESII domain enabled the students to think about the complexity of the operational environment. Question three  – with its request to consider how the presence of military forces influences local social dynamics  – was especially difficult for the officers to answer. After the initial PMESII analysis, the handbook continues with suggestions for analysis of three main themes: (a) Organization and mobilization (b) Motivations and interests (c) Perceptions and intentions The students commented that this part of the module was interesting because they learned new ways to apply cultural analysis to military planning cycles: –– “I learned how cultural analysis can enhance the operative analysis” –– “The most important thing in the module was a deeper understanding of how anthropology can contribute to military operations” –– “I learned new models and theories I can apply to military planning processes” –– “I gained knowledge of culture theories and a different view on the root causes of conflict” –– “Understanding much better the complexity of factors behind the conflicts, we as Danish officers are engaged in” (comments from internal evaluations of the culture module, 2014 and 2015). Based on these evaluation comments, it seems that we were successful in establishing a practice-oriented learning environment. Officers learned analytical approaches useful in their day jobs. In this manner, we included the officers as participants in our research projects, and the officers welcomed our effort. The class agreed to provide feedback on initial research findings and analyses. As researchers, we found it very motivating to be able to discuss our research on culture in military planning with the officers who will be using our research products in the future. However, there were also some critical voices in the evaluations, asking the group of instructors to focus even more on operational needs.

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The Third and Current Module: 2016 Today, most Danish officers perform Military Assistance (capacity building, mentoring, training) during their deployments. Therefore, the role of culture in counter-­ insurgency is not forgotten (because Danish officers train the Afghan and Iraqi officers who perform counter-insurgency), but the culture curriculum has shifted towards a broader focus on cultural complexity and capacity building. In 2016, our research team (Dr. Maya Mynster Christensen, Commander Poul Martin Linnet, and the author) started thinking about ways to refine our education in culture for military operations. This focus came after lengthy discussions about military planning and cultural dynamics in a three-year research project we conducted at the Royal Danish Defence College. We were seeking to expand the concept of culture from ‘local’ culture to include a focus on the cultural dynamics within the coalition’s own military forces. We wanted to point to the role of coalition forces and their interaction with the armed forces of partner nations when conducting multinational operations (cf. Christensen and Haugegaard 2017). Given that Danish contributions to current NATO and UN operations are mostly about training and capacity building of local/regional partner forces, our research finds the concept interoperability (Rubinstein 2014) highly relevant. Building on NATO’s definition of interoperability as technical aspects of co-­ operation (NATO 2006), we thought that cultural interoperability can refer to “the will, ability and potential of the various actors in the area of operations to work together to achieve a common goal” (Christensen and Haugegaard 2017, p.  7). Thus, cultural interoperability focuses on understanding “the motivations, interests, perceptions and intentions that can have a positive as well as a negative impact on mission accomplishment” (ibid.). We incorporated the focus on “cultural interoperability” in the Connecting Culture Handbook and in the learning plan. However, we are still researching how to give this theme more focus in the elective culture module. In the PMESII analysis on Mali (discussed above) we asked the students how the presence of international military forces influence social structures in the mission area. We asked this question to prompt officers to reflect on how their own actions and planning can influence local dynamics. In the past, culture was often considered a sum of empirical facts. Henceforth, we want to focus our students’ attention on a more dynamic view of culture in military operations. Our research has led us to a useful definition on operational culture: “Those aspects of culture that influence the outcome of a military operation; conversely, the military actions that influence the culture of an area of operations” (Salmoni and Holmes-Eber 2011, p. 15). The officers must understand that they are part of the solution in the area of operations, but they are also part of the problem. For instance, regional and local militant networks are influenced by the presence of military forces – the militant networks navigate according to pressure (or lack of pressure) from international military forces (cf. Haugegaard 2017). At present, the incorporation of cultural interoperability is rather new in the module. Further development of exercises and curriculum will take place during the next few years.

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In the following sections, I will discuss the methods, analytical questions, and learning activities that were successful in linking operational experiences to academic theory.

Written Assignments, Games, and the Outdoor Classroom This section will highlight some of the educational tools, which have enabled successful learning situations. In developing the culture module, a source of inspiration was my study time at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. Back then, I learned a lot through writing assignments. In addition, my field study experiences outside the university classroom were intense hours, weeks and months. My first fieldwork exercise was a one-week exercise spent with a group of students at the Danish Police Academy. Our task was to study police officer identity. We followed the lectures, the physical training, and we had informal interviews with police cadets and their teachers during the breaks. I can still remember all our new insights, discussions, and mistakes during that particular week. Later, I have tried to transfer these learning experiences into the design of the culture module at the Defence College. In the following, I will show how culture education can benefit from written assignments, games and fieldwork exercises in the outdoor classroom. In student evaluations of the culture module from 2014 and 2015, we asked our students to mention a learning situation they benefitted from – a great learning experience. More than 25% of the students mentioned the written assignments. The students’ evaluations thereby support our theoretical view – noted earlier – that critical reflection about culture dynamics is enhanced through writing. Therefore, based on the Danish experience, I recommend that writing exercises should be part of any culture module. The written assignments in our module were rather short and given to the students as individual homework. The short individual assignments were used to prepare the students for their group project, where they were tasked to write a larger project together. The goal was to make a learning activity where the officers reflected on a theoretical concept and discussed the relevance for their own operational experiences. Table 1 provides an example of such an assignment. We used these written assignments to establish a firm link between theoretical concepts from sociology/anthropology and the officers’ operational experience. The officers commented about the assignments in the internal evaluation sheet: “The questions in the individual assignments made me think a lot about my operational experience,” “I learned a lot from writing the individual assignment,” “the home assignments forced me to understand the theoretical concepts in depth” (comments from internal evaluation, 2015). It seems that the connection between theory and operational practice was established through the reflections in the written assignments. The writing process supported critical reflection about past operational experience and made the officers able to connect military operations to academic concepts like exchange, cultural memory or ethnicity. Through their professional

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Table 1  Written online learning module assignment: Exchange Title Background

Exchange as a social phenomenon This assignment is a continuation of our discussions about cultural analysis in course week 1. The work of the French sociologist Marcel Mauss has inspired the whole discipline of anthropologists to conduct studies on exchange as a social phenomenon. In Mauss’ text ‘the gift’, you can read his perspectives on exchange, generated from extensive data collection during field studies in many places in the world. Learning target The learning target of the assignment is:  To understand Mauss’ theoretical perspective on exchange as a social relation  To apply and discuss this theoretical perspective in connection with your own operational experiences. After completing the assignment, you have increased your level of understanding of cultural analysis. In addition, you have analyzed how Mauss’ perspectives on exchange can support knowledge development in military operations. Questions to be 1. Explain the concept ‘reciprocity’ in exchange situations. Please use quotes answered in your from the text by Mauss when you write the answer. assignment 2. Use an example of an exchange situation you have been part of during an international deployment. In what way is Mauss’ perspective on exchange relevant for this situation? Format The assignment must be in a format of minimum 650 words and maximum of 900 words. Curriculum for Marcel Mauss: (2002/1990, original 1924): ‘The Gift. The form and reason the assignment for exchange in archaic societies’. Foreword by Mary Douglas. Routledge Classics 2002. Read: Pages 1–18 and 50–59.

work in war-torn societies, officers often see conflicts were the use of cultural memory is a way to mobilize fighters. Also, ethnicity can be closely linked to political conflicts and escalation of war. The officers have the real-life examples at hand, but it is only when they choose to become students of culture, that they learn about cultural memory and ethnicity. In the development of the elective culture module, we thought about how to make the learning process more interesting for the students. Teaching theoretical concepts can sometimes be difficult, especially in a classroom with officers with diverse educational backgrounds. As an experiment, we invented a game: “Rolling the theory dice”. The rules of game are rather simple: (a) All students stand in a circle – a student starts the game by rolling the dice. (b) The numbers from one to six (on the dice) refer to six different academic scholars. (c) Your dice shows, for instance, the number four, which is Pierre Bourdieu.

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(d) Think of a question you can ask your fellow student about Bourdieu’s work (Bourdieu 1990) – you should be able to answer the question yourself. (e) Your fellow student has got 2  min to think of an answer  – if he/she cannot answer, he/she is out of the game. (f) A student who left the game can re-enter the game, if he/she can has an answer to a question that nobody else can answer. (g) In the end, two students are left to compete for first place in the game – the winner is the student who was able to answer all questions. (h) In case there is disagreement over an answer, the teacher is the referee. We invented this game as a learning experiment. In the student evaluations, many students commented that the “theory dice” was one of the best learning activities in the module. So, why did the officers welcome this learning activity? First, it was a game. When games or quizzes are part of the module, we noticed that military officers enjoy it because of the competitive aspect – they simply like to battle! Second, in this game they developed their own questions. The officers ran the activity and as teachers, we were facilitators of the game. Third, the peer-to-peer learning aspect was clear: the officers reflected on theoretical concepts in various ways, triggered by the questions asked by fellow students. Everybody listened to all answers. In this manner, the game activated the social dimension of learning through others. It was a competition – characterized by a lot of laughs and jokes – but it was also fun. During the “theory dice” game, we witnessed a high level of concentration in the classroom – almost equivalent to the intensity of a performance characterized by flow, concentration, and presence (Schechner and Appel 1997, p.  4). This is the wonderful effect of a game. The officers fought each other (with the theoretical concepts) as if they were at war. However, some students commented after playing the game, that it was “too spontaneous, I was not well prepared” (comment in classroom lecture, autumn 2016). Such a game is demanding, and you cannot play the game in front of your computer where you have stored all knowledge in systematic notes. In the game, you have to remember the theories and apply them correctly. This was a difficult task for some students. The course location and the surrounding facilities are vital to positive learning experiences. We have often used “walk-and-talk” sessions during the module, where students talk about a guest lecture or other presentations. They walk in groups of 2–3 people, and the results are two-fold: the students experience a different type of dialogue when they are outside the classroom. Also, they get fresh air and new inspiration. “Physical activity increases our ability to concentrate and to think and remember” (Grønlund and Sjøstedt 2016, p. 19). In the first seminar of the module, we send the students out on a field study exercise. They conduct a small field study in the nearby city. Through this exercise, they get an initial sense of applying the method of participant observation and informal interviewing (DeWalt and DeWalt 2011). The officers’ forums for study are the local shopping centers, train stations, the library, the harbor, churches, sports clubs, and the university. Most officers consider these exercises outside the classroom a

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Table 2  Field exercise in Roskilde, Denmark Aim of exercise: To meet the population of Roskilde and try the method of ‘participant observation’ with a focus on ‘informal interviewing’. Try to get as much information possible about: *Social interaction in the location *Perceptions: how people see their daily life *Dress code, hair style, body posture *Sounds, smells, terrain Please bring back an artefact from the location.

nice challenge. However, some find it very uncomfortable to conduct a field study that involves talking to people with the aim of doing research. Before the exercise, texts on participant observation and informal interviewing (ibid.) are discussed in the classroom. Table 2 provides an example of the guidelines for a field exercise (class instruction, module lecture, 2016). The officers work in pairs. The field study lasts 4 h at the selected location, and the exercise is conducted in civilian clothes. By practicing informal interviewing, the officers quickly learn what type of questions they should use in order to start conversations with rich details. The students, who had previously worked with local populations during their deployment, use their dialogue skills to perform well in the field exercise. All students have found this exercise helpful in learning about anthropological methods. Later the same day, the officers present their findings in the classroom. We discuss how only 4 h of detailed observation and informal interviewing on the locations provided us with many interesting field data. Cultural dynamics are complex and full of surprises. Even when studying a very small location in your own country, cultural complexity unfolds. This is an exercise well suited to dismantling cultural stereotypes. In addition, the field exercise illustrates that the study of cultural practices demands lengthy periods spent in the field. This raises the important question of the extent to which soldiers can apply the method when they visit locations in their areas of operation. Can soldiers patrolling the streets of Kabul provide the same type of information? Is participant observation a tool for military operations? Does it support analysis of local actors and military partners? These were questions for discussions afterwards. In general, the students said that the fieldwork exercise increased their motivation for the subject, and they understood the methods better after testing the qualitative methods in the local setting. The learning objective of the elective culture module is to provide the participants with insights into those aspects of culture relevant to operations, including cultural theory and analytical methodology. The officers learn how to apply these analytical tools to military thinking and planning of military operations. This learning objective focuses on reflection on how to apply concepts from anthropology to military thinking. When a learning objective is to prepare an officer to ‘be able to act in a responsible, independent, flexible and situation-dependent manner under various conditions, then the need for reflection and testing as part of the learning ­activity

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is greater than when the learning objective is consistency and simultaneity in familiar situations’ (Grønlund and Sjøstedt 2016, p. 25). The elective module is designed to stimulate reflection about culture through the different learning activities discussed above. The aim is to support the officers in conducting flexible and situationdependent decision-making, especially during deployments to regions with different, complex cultural dynamics influenced by war.

 essons Learned from the ‘Culture as Operational Enabler’ L Module After 5 years of experiences with teaching the culture module at the Royal Danish Defence College, the first lesson learned is that research-based education is the foundation of teaching cultural dynamics. Research conducted by anthropologists, sociologists, and related disciplines can provide new perspectives. For our course participants, these analytical perspectives constitute a different view on the root causes of conflict. Through reflection and testing of research products, we invite the students to become involved in our research because the officers in the classroom are the target audience for our research products. In addition, the officers can contribute to our research with their operational experiences. Ongoing research in conflict areas (conducted by anthropologists working at universities or in Danish Defence) is necessary in order to bring operational dilemmas, themes, and challenges back into the classroom for further reflection and constructive criticism. The second lesson learned is to teach culture through writing. Our experience from the elective culture module shows that qualified thinking about culture starts when officers begin to write. As argued earlier in this chapter, writing is essential for reflection on culture. Courses in academic writing can support high-level education in culture analysis. Writing sessions and small written assignments support all levels of education. The connection between theory and operational practice is established through reflection in the process of writing. Writing workshops (1–2 h) – or written assignments – support critical reflection about past operational experience. If academic concepts are relevant for the officers’ operational experiences, the connection between academic theory and military experience is clear. Written assignments are suitable in blended learning modules where on-line learning periods between seminars give the student time to reflect and write individually or in groups. The third lesson arising from our work concerns the role of games. Games and quizzes on culture are appropriate learning tools in a military setting. Officers enjoy a battle, and competition enhances motivation and concentration in the classroom. Games with a focus on peer-to-peer learning, or groups competing against each other, can facilitate and activate the social dimension of learning. The fourth lesson from our coursework is that a practice-oriented approach to education stimulates the officers’ motivation to study cultural dynamics. When learning activities activate their episodic memory (Hattie and Yates 2014, p. 157) – through discussions, exercises or in written assignments  – learning takes place

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through reflection referring to past operational experiences. Field study exercises in the “home” culture are about learning to apply anthropological field methods in a familiar setting. Field study exercises show the students the strengths of anthropology as a social science studying people through their lived experiences. By testing the anthropological methods in practice, the officers learn more about qualitative research methods and cultural complexity. This chapter has discussed Danish professional experiences with developing a culture module for the Master in Military Studies program at the Royal Danish Defence College. Adjustments in the curriculum and the learning activities are influenced by the instructors’ choice of concepts and literature, the officers’ suggestions, changes in operational conditions, and evaluations of learning activities. Today, Danish Defence officers can select the Culture as Operational Enabler module as a specialization. In future, to ensure the optimal effect, such modules should be mandatory learning for officers. Military organizations should include cultural factors in the core curriculum of officers’ education. Future military missions will focus increasingly on capacity building, training, and mentoring, and such efforts demand an increased emphasis on how to create trust, legitimacy, and a culturally sensitive dialogue with local partners in war-torn conflict areas.

References Albrecht, P., Cold-Ravnkilde, S., & Haugegaard, R. (2017). African peacekeepers in Mali (DIIS Report 2017:02). Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies. Albro, R., & Ivey, B. (Eds.). (2014). Cultural awareness in the military: Developments and implications for future humanitarian cooperation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture. New York: Routledge Classics. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Oxford: Polity Press. Christensen, M. M. (2015). Mentoring the Afghan army at the officer academy in Kabul: Findings and recommendations. Danish Defence: Policy brief. Christensen, M. M., & Haugegaard, R. (2017). Connecting culture. A handbook on cultural analysis in military planning. Royal Danish Defence College/Danish Defence. Christensen, M.  M., Haugegaard, R., & Linnet, P.  M. (2014). War amongst the people and the absent enemy: Towards a cultural paradigm shift? Royal Danish Defence College Publishing House. http://www.fak.dk/publikationer/Documents/War-amongst-the-people.pdf. Accessed 22 May 2019. Danish Defence. (2018) Interactive map of deployment of Danish forces in current operations (2018). https://www2.forsvaret.dk/viden-om/opgaver/kort/Pages/kort-over-opgaver.aspx. Accessed 22 May 2019. DeWalt, K.  M., & DeWalt, B.  R. (2011). Participant observation: A guide for fieldworkers. Lanham: Altamira Press. Donais, T. (Ed.). (2008). Local ownership and security sector reform. Zürich/Berlin: Geneva centre for the democratic control of armed forces. LIT. Elron, E., Halevy, N., Ari, E. B., & Shamir, B. (2003). Cooperation and coordination across cultures in the peacekeeping forces: Individual and organizational integrating mechanisms. In T. V. Britt & A. B. Adler (Eds.), The psychology of the peacekeeper (pp. 261–282). Westport: Praeger. European Union. (2019). ECTS. http://ec.europa.eu/education. Accessed 17 Mar 2019.

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Fabian, J. (1983). Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object. New York: Columbia University Press. Forsvaret. (2019). Retrieved October 15, 2019, from https://www2.forsvaret.dk/Pages/forside.aspx Grønlund, T., & Sjøstedt, P. (2016). The military instructor’s handbook (2nd ed.). Copenhagen: Royal Danish Defence College. Hattie, J., & Yates, G. C. R. (2014). Visible learning and the science of how we learn. London: Routledge. Haugegaard, R. (2017). Sharia as ‘desert business’: understanding the links between criminal networks and jihadism in northern Mali. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 6(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.494. Accessed 16 Sept 2019. Illeris, K. (2013). Transformativ læring og identitet. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. Interactive map of deployment of Danish forces in current operations. (2018). www.forsvaret.dk. Accessed 22 May 2019. Johnson-Freese, J. (2013). Educating America’s military. London: Routledge. Mauss, M. (2002/1990). The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. London: Routledge Classics. NATO. (2006). Interoperability for joint operations. Bruxelles: NATO. NATO. (2013). Comprehensive operations planning directive. Mons: Supreme Headquarters Allied Power Europe. Rubinstein, R.  A. (2014). Humanitarian-military collaboration: Social and cultural aspects of interoperability. In R.  Albro & B.  Ivey (Eds.), Cultural developments and implications for future humanitarian co-operation (pp. 57–72). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Salmoni, B., & Holmes-Eber, P. (2011). Operational culture for the warfighter: Principles and applications. Quantico: Marine Corps University Press. Schechner, R., & Appel, W. (1997). Introduction – By their performances shall ye know them. In R. Schechner & W. Appel (Eds.), By means of performance: Intercultural studies of theatre and ritual (pp. 1–7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Utas, M. (2012). Introduction. Bigmanity and network governance in African conflicts. In M. Utas (Ed.), African conflicts and informal power: Big men and networks (pp. 1–34). London: Zed Books. Rikke Haugegaard  is a researcher and lecturer at the Royal Danish Defence College. Her research interest is culture analysis for military operations, capacity building of African military partners, and information operations. She holds a Master’s Degree in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and a Postgraduate Certificate in Information Operations from the Defence College of Management and Technology, Cranfield University, United Kingdom. Currently, Rikke is a Ph.D. student at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Anthropology. Rikke has been conducting field studies in several locations, most recently in Mali.

Combining the Teaching of Intelligence, Arabic, and Culture at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School Stine Beate Dahle and Idun Myrflott Mostulien

Abstract  Today’s complex information landscape emphasizes the need for cross-­ disciplinary critical thinking in future intelligence personnel. The cultural expertise of intelligence personnel could and should provide vital situational awareness in military operations, but putting doctrinal understanding into action in a military environment still proves challenging. While the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School has a highly competent teaching staff, most have a background from either cultural and linguistic studies or from military intelligence, rarely from both. So how can educators that mainly know one of the professions, best cooperate to produce future professionals that embody both skill sets? What should be taught and how can teachers create a realistic context for the language and intelligence learners, simple enough to facilitate learning, yet complex enough not to cement cultural misconceptions and stereotypes? While there is a consensus that a combined cultural, language, and intelligence training is a forte, no similar consensus exists on how one should educate for this. We therefore hope that the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School’s approach to educating for transcultural competence in Arabic and intelligence studies can serve as a contribution to the discourse on comprehensive intelligence education. Keywords  Military intelligence · Language training · Intelligence analysis · Structured analytic techniques · Transcultural competence · Multidisciplinary analysis

S. B. Dahle Norwegian Defence Intelligence School, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] I. M. Mostulien (*) Norwegian Police Immigration Service, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_8

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The Norwegian Armed Forces and the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School Norwegian population 5.3 million Norwegian active-duty military service members In peacetime, the forces have approx. 23,000 soldiers, officers, civilian employees and conscripts. Total strength after mobilization is approx. 83,000 personnel (The Norwegian Armed Forces 2019). Location and nature of recent operations The deployment of intelligence personnel largely reflects the overall pattern of operations for the Norwegian Armed forces. Significant troop contributions, including intelligence personnel from tactical to strategic levels have recently been deployed to areas such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait. These personnel deploy as a part of their various Army, Navy or Airforce branches, or as a part of a national intelligence service detachment. Norwegian Defence Intelligence School The Norwegian Defence Intelligence School has been a language and intelligence educational institution since 1954. It received its accreditation as a university college in 2013, and at the time of writing offered a three-year, full-time bachelor program for the intelligence profession. This bachelor’s degree consists of a combination of language and area studies on one side, and intelligence subjects on the other. Traditionally, the school has offered training in languages such as Russian and Arabic. Upon graduation, the student becomes a sergeant in the Norwegian Army, more specifically in the Military Intelligence Battalion or other intelligence units within the armed forces. Instructors The Norwegian Defence Intelligence School has two departments that employ a combination of both military and civilian teachers and instructors. In general, the teachers responsible for language and culture studies are civilians with master’s degrees or PhD’s, who also have vast professional and practical experience from the cultural or geographic area of study. The military instructors responsible for intelligence courses usually have master’s degrees, several deployments in military operations and 5 years or more experience from tactical and strategic intelligence work. In addition, military officers are responsible for the students’ military training and their administrative matters. With the emphasis for military operations often shifted from military victory and territorial gains to reconstruction, nation-building and host-nation enabling, linguistic and cultural nuances become vital to a balanced threat perception and situational awareness. The good, culturally aware intelligence practitioner must be able to view the multitude of actors and their cultural beliefs comprehensively so that their potential both for hostility and cooperation is correctly assessed with the informa-

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tion available. The accurate assessment of actors and dynamic interactions in both strategic, operational and tactical environments could mean the difference between mission success, timely warning, or policy and intelligence failure. When encountering increasingly complex environments, this also means that the demands on the intelligence practitioner, and their professional education and training, is increased. So too, with the merging of the education between the two interlinked, but different professions of future linguist and intelligence officer. Transcultural competence, and more specifically connecting Arabic language and culture with intelligence theory and practice, could therefore be the result of a unique combination of education and training provided for the students at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School (NORDIS). In addition to adequate language skills, it is an undeniable advantage for intelligence personnel to have broad knowledge about historical, political and cultural factors, including military aspects, and established social values and norms. This increases the importance both of nuanced observation and study of cultural aspects, as well as the critical and methodical processing of this cultural information. It is here that NORDIS and other military institutions combining both intelligence and cultural education have a seemingly great possibility of conducting a comprehensive professional education—with in-house resources. However, this also emphasizes the potential challenges of fusing two disciplines and professions, that when combined, could complement each other, but could also end up competing for resources—and the favor of the students. The NORDIS students not only have to adapt to the increased focus of cultural and social factors in their intelligence environment, they also have to exploit the vast access to information with the ability of critical assessment. During their studies at NORDIS, the students are given the understanding that intelligence is essentially the reduction of both own and others’ ignorance, as well as decision support. However, today’s information technology creates new opportunities, but also generates so much information from various sources, that the risk of using false narratives and cultural assumptions as foundations for these vital decisions is ever increasing. This is both a problem for intelligence, but also the observers of culture. Even more so, if one is observing a culture that often sparks tension due to religious, ideological or political fault lines. Hopefully, the pedagogical approach to both the teaching of Arabic as a language, area study and intelligence training, can contribute to increased consciousness of own inherent conditioning to own cultural values and norms. After all, can one fully analyze another culture, often seemingly diametrically different, without a critical view of one’s own cultural legacy and conditioning? So, what are then the viable approaches to optimizing both the teaching of Arabic culture and language, while maintaining focus on the student as a future military intelligence professional? What should be taught and how can teachers create a realistic context for the language learners, in an environment that lack natural arenas for intercultural meetings and learning, while at the same time avoiding misconceptions, such as cultural bias and ethnocentrism? How should the past and current reality of the Arabic world and culture best be taught in order to create a comprehensive understanding for future intelligence assessments? The educators need to have a conscious approach to the provision of the comparative, cultural advantage

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becoming ever more important in complex military operations and intelligence work. This means a dialogue between professionals on how educational institutions could optimize the combination of contextual language and intelligence training. In the following, we give a brief theoretical background of the relationship between culture and language, and briefly describe the approach to cultural, linguistic, and intelligence training and practice at NORDIS. We also discuss the function and importance of cultural knowledge in intelligence and describe NORDIS’ teaching strategies for language education and critical thinking for intelligence processing. In addition, we will outline some of our main identified benefits and challenges of this approach, and make some suggestions for improved fusing of these disciplines that could satisfy the expectation of critical processing of cultural knowledge in the students and their future employers.

The Norwegian Defence Intelligence School While the school has existed as a language and intelligence educational institution since 1954, NORDIS only received its accreditation as a university college in 2013. At the main time of writing—late 2017—the school offered a three-year, full-time bachelor’s course for the intelligence profession. This bachelor’s degree consisted of a combination of language and area studies on one side, and intelligence subjects on the other. Traditionally, the school has offered training in languages such as Russian or Arabic. During their time at NORDIS, the students also received basic officer candidate training and became non-commissioned officers upon graduation. This military part of the course is not eligible for study credits and will not be discussed in this chapter. Of the three cultural, linguistic, and intelligence components, language and area studies dominate the curriculum quantitatively. As shown in Table 1, 80 study credits of the 180 in total are drawn from language and culture subjects. 30 credits come from area studies, and 65 credits from intelligence studies. The last five credits are an introductory course to the theory of science and scientific method at the beginning of the program. Even as the number and importance of key intelligence personnel respectively decreases and increases with the modern pattern of alliance operations, the graduates from NORDIS will often be critical components in staffs and headquarters, driving and supporting various types of operations within their first few years of service. This means that their contribution to the cultural situational awareness could have a potentially critical impact and even be viewed as an important contribution to ground perceptions of truth within strategic and tactical alliances. School graduates may even be placed in key positions such as interpreters to area commanders and cultural advisors, in essence directly facilitating decision-making and exercising influence through interactions such as key leader engagements. They may also be involved as intelligence analysts and area experts in the initial preparation of the operational environment prior to an operation.

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Table 1  Course of study, NORDIS full-time bachelor’s degree program

Bachelor of Arts in Intelligence Studies: Course of study (ECTS 180 credits) First and second semester Language studies

Area studies

Intelligence studies

Basic course Arabic

Modern history of

Basic intelligence course and

Middle East and Islam

Introduction to scientific theory and methodology

40 credits

20 credits

15 credits

Third and fourth semester Language studies

Area studies

Intelligence studies

Intermediate Arabic

Language and cultural

Structured analytic techniques,

expressions

Open sources intelligence, The intelligence professional

15 credits

5 credits

40 credits

Fifth and sixth semester Language studies

Area studies

Intelligence studies

Advanced Arabic

Language and cultural

Bachelor’s thesis

expressions 25 credits

5 credits

15 credits

While NORDIS has long trained and educated both intelligence personnel and linguists, the educational format discussed in this chapter is the one that most explicitly fused the two, by formalizing both the cultural and intelligence components as parts of an accredited curriculum.1 This, of course, marked one of the 1  For more information on the origins of other academic endeavours at NORDIS, please see Dylan et al.’s (2017) account, as well as Goodman and Omand’s (2009) account of the making of the intelligence study at King’s College, London.

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more substantial steps towards a recognized and standardized intelligence profession in Norway. Although a bachelor’s degree in linguistics, cultural or area studies is rather common in civilian, academic institutions, the degree rarely, if ever, provides direct career opportunities, on-the-job-training programs or exercises run by actors within the intelligence community. NORDIS therefore conducts a careful selection of students based on physical and mental abilities, academic prowess and overall suitability for a profession which is shrouded in secrecy and demands the highest national security clearance. The unique form of recruitment and testing thus also sets NORDIS significantly apart from the demands of a civilian university college. This, in addition to NORDIS’ close cooperation with the students’ future employers, means that the students are able to conduct a meaningful and realistic training within the actual intelligence community during their studies. NORDIS thus offers a unique opportunity to fuse cultural and linguistic understanding with the ability to examine cultural assumptions and context critically in close cooperation with intelligence decision- and policymakers. But in order for this kind of educational program to reach its full potential, the teaching staff from both the professions of linguist and intelligence practitioner must themselves maintain a critical view of their own perceptions of culture—be it the culture of a profession or area studies.

Teaching a Language—Learning a Culture The term culture in itself is rather intricate, considering that there is no general consensus on what culture actually is—and consequently there is no prevailing best practice when it comes to ways of teaching culture, not least in combination with language studies. Having said this, culture should neither be reduced to mere artifacts, practices, nor to lists of practical dos and don’ts. A definition that illustrates the complexity of the term is “the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors that can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion” (Nieto 2010, p. 136). This definition includes culture as both content and product, as well as the process of how it is created and transformed. In addition, it highlights the agents of culture, in other words who is responsible for creating and changing it (p. 136). When teaching culture, it is helpful to build on a more specific framework that “offers a means for describing culture in terms of what students need to do in order to learn it—their encounters with another way of life” (Moran 2001, p. 15). Based on the so-called “cultural knowings framework”, as portrayed by Patrick Moran, the cultural experience relevant for students consists of four interconnected learning interactions, namely knowing about, knowing how, knowing why and knowing oneself (p. 15). The knowing about includes “facts, data or knowledge about products, practices and perspectives of the culture” (p.  15). Learning such essential

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information is fundamental when getting to know a new culture. The knowing how interaction involves exploring relevant cultural practices, such as behaviors, actions and skills (p. 16). As Moran points out, “this calls for direct or simulated participation in the everyday life of the people of the target culture, according to their customs and traditions, using their tools or technology—and their language—to establish bona fide relationships with them” (p. 16). The knowing why interaction focuses on acquiring knowledge of essential cultural perspectives, in other words “the perceptions, beliefs, values and attitudes that underlie or permeate all aspects of the culture” (p. 16). This process includes observing and experiencing another culture, and students have to analyze and explain cultural perspectives, which “necessarily involves a comparison with their own culture and themselves” (p. 16). The final interaction, knowing oneself, deals with the learners themselves. When learning about a different culture, it is important not to forget to start with what you know best: yourself. Knowing oneself is thus an essential component when exploring a new culture, and this knowing focuses on the learners’ “values, opinions, feelings, questions, reactions and thoughts, and their own cultural values as a central part of the cultural experience” (p. 17). Together, these four knowings form a useful pedagogical framework for teaching culture. They are not taught or learned in isolation, as they are closely linked and interconnected. At the same time, each knowing presents specific learning goals and a pedagogical focus that are achieved by different learning activities. For example, the knowing about, involves activities that focus on gathering information resulting in cultural knowledge, while the knowing why deals with discovering explanations resulting in cultural understanding (p. 18). The notion that language teaching should deal with both language and culture is something that is agreed upon in most of the world, “though more in theory (statements of intent) than in practice” (Risager 2007, p. 5). Mastery of a language requires knowledge of the cultural rules for what it is appropriate to say, when, where, how, and to whom (Hogg and Vaughan 2005, p. 577). In other words, “acquisition of a second language is not so much a matter of acquiring basic classroom proficiency but rather the wholesale acquisition of a language imbedded in its cultural context” (p. 577). Furthermore, according to Meier (2003) students “need to attend to variables (e.g. age, status…gender and education) that are especially sensitive to different cultural interpretations, which in turn, may result in miscommunication even if the intended message obeys the rules of grammar” (as cited in Eldin 2015, p. 114). As a result, “great demands are made on the teacher to be a generalist who has an overview of the entire subject area, including language, literature, culture and society” (Risager 2007, p. 6). If the educators are successful in their teaching, students will become proficient language users with a considerable intercultural competence who are “able to mediate between various languages and various cultural contexts” (p. 10). In addition to the cultural differences, the particulars of the Arabic language in itself often pose a problem for the students. Direct translation of words from Arabic to Norwegian or English does not necessarily preserve meaning. It is argued that “seeking words or idioms to communicate meaning accurately across cultures, a language can pose larger problems when words, or word usage, are entwined with culturally specific concepts” (Hogg and

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Vaughan 2005, p.  635). For instance, the use of religious formulae in everyday Arabic such as ‘in shā’ allah—if Allah wills—or alḥamdu li-llah—praise be to Allah—might seem unnatural in English/Norwegian. The expression ‘in shā’ allah could be rephrased as “I hope”, which would be a much more idiomatic equivalent in English, although it clearly lacks the religious aspect seen in the original Arabic (Dickins et al. 2002, p. 35). Languages in general are filled with such culture-specific words, collocations, and fixed expressions, pointing to concepts which are not intuitive or easily accessible to the translator (Baker 1992, p. 60). Such nuances might not be interpreted appropriately by someone unfamiliar with both the language and the culture. The question is how to convey this knowledge of basic cultural principles to students in a pedagogical manner, without being too general or stereotypical, during the relatively short course of a bachelor’s degree. The linguist Samar Attar (1995) underlines the importance of avoiding generalizations and half-truths that are very much still a part of the prevailing portrayal of Arabs and somewhat immortalized by popular media (p. 192). For instance, instead of saying “the Arabs are”, she suggests the more contextualizing “the Arabs in…at the time of…under this circumstance… are…” to convey a more nuanced picture of reality (p. 192).

Critical Cultural Thinking as Intelligence Decision Support Cultural understanding, intercultural competence and language skills from areas of strategic interest are essential in modern military operations. The ability to detect and assess linguistic and cultural nuances is vital to a balanced threat perception, situational awareness, as well as strategies to achieve mission-critical objectives. Effectively, cultural understanding is the basis for describing the risks and opportunities of the operational environment (OE). In today’s technological environment, where unverified, competing narratives can spread with immense speed and proliferation, a critical evaluation and comprehensible contextualization of information through cultural insight and structured processes is perhaps more important than ever. NORDIS therefore tries to give its students a structured analytical framework for generation of hypotheses and assumptions based on their existing, and future cultural knowledge. We encourage them to test and refine their initial hypotheses, working from the principle that for every hypothesis refuted, others become more accurate. In essence, we are trying to get the students to prove their hypotheses on cultural understanding wrong in order to refine them, and at the same time improve their cultural expertise. Exactly how and why cultural and linguistic knowledge is crucial to developing intelligence hypotheses may vary somewhat with how one defines the concept of intelligence. The most interesting definitions in the context of this article focus on intelligence as a product for decision support, resulting from a continuous process within an intelligence organization or intelligence architecture, as found in Mark

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Lowenthal’s (2012) work: “Intelligence and the entire process by which it is identified, obtained and analyzed responds to the needs of policy makers” (p.  1). The emphasis on decision support to a policy maker is also found in David Omand’s (2010) definition: “The most basic purpose of intelligence is to improve the quality of decision-making by reducing ignorance” (p.  22). Meanwhile, NATO (2018) defines it in a more standardized, military way as a product “resulting from the directed collection and processing of information regarding the environment and the capabilities and intentions of actors” (p. 66). In all these definitions, one can trace the need for a structured approach to the intelligence process, and more specifically the sub-process that is perhaps most emphasized at NORDIS: processing as a way to generate contextualized intelligence from refined, evaluated information. NATO (2014) defines doctrinal processing as “the conversion of information into intelligence through collation, evaluation, analysis, integration and interpretation” (p.  4–1). In a different NATO doctrine (2016), it is further described as “a structured series of activities…Processing is iterative and may generate further requirements for collection before dissemination of the intelligence” (p. 3–10). In other words, the cultural knowledge and information needs to be assessed in a structured way before it becomes valuable decision support. In addition to NATO’s doctrines, David T. Moore’s (2007) view on critical thinking is also an important part of the analytical framework taught at NORDIS.  Moore suggests that “critical thinking is both a deliberative meta-­ cognitive (thinking about thinking) and cognitive (thinking) act whereby a person reflects on the quality of the reasoning process simultaneously while reasoning to a conclusion” (p. 8). As David Omand (2010) points out—the importance of the decisions to be made also increases the importance of critical thinking and evaluation when selecting information pieces, driving intelligence requirements and making predictive assessments: “The more important the decision, the more the analyst and decision-taker alike are liable to be influenced by subconscious desires” (p. 23). This means that the students must understand their own cognitive impact on the analytic process as well as that of their customers. In short, the analyst’s cultural understanding and interpretation could be a foundation for decisions made on life and death. This is particularly challenging when providing intelligence support to modern operations, where conventional control of physical territory is rarely the sole objective. The intricacies of limited military interventions in order to stabilize or enable thus naturally bring cultural awareness as a success factor to the fore. No longer just concerned with physical terrain, the operational environment also consists of human factors and actor interactions shaped by cultural practices. If the information processing is skewed due to the “subconscious desires” of the analyst, then the decision made on this basis could also prove flawed. NORDIS therefore teaches its students to generate several hypotheses for situational understanding, in order to widen both the possible outcome and the possible scope for action. In Spielmann’s (2018) words, “the comparison of hypotheses must be a central concern for intelligence analysts” (p. 8). In this way, one allows for the

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possibility that the analyst may initially have wrong cultural assumptions, while also allowing for a structured mapping of exactly how and why one is wrong. However, forming these hypotheses based on cultural and situational understanding also involves what Jervis (2006) calls making “causal claims” (p.  642) based on how one evaluates and understands the environment where “[t]hey are combining how they see the evidence and what their values and desires lead them to think should and must be true.…In parallel, we often have difficulty taking seriously beliefs with which we disagree” (p. 642–43). These causal claims, or assumptions, form the basis of our hypotheses used for understanding and explaining behavior of actors and development of situations, and subsequently for shaping decisions and operations. In other words, cultural expertise combined with analytic rigor and examination of assumptions could therefore be valuable decision support when deciding what strategy to pursue towards different actors. Only when this combination is working optimally can intelligence personnel start delivering their, in Omand’s words (2010), most important contribution to decision-making: the building and maintenance of situational awareness. This involves gaining, maintaining and predicting the vital developments and interactions between actors and driving forces within the environment, or what the US Joint Publication 2-01.3 (2014) refers to as a “holistic view” (p. xi). Perhaps paradoxically, one of the most important analytic skills is increasing the willingness of analysts to engage in counter-intuitive thinking, within the framework of doctrine and structured process. This is especially important since the situation in the OE continuously develops, which must be reflected in their hypotheses. The accurate interpretation of group interactions, beliefs and values could prove to be the best kind of force protection and enable a more efficient use of manpower and resources. These interpretations could also mean the difference between the local population’s hostility, support or indifference. The degree of cultural insight thus affects our ability to influence the various key actors in a meaningful way in order to achieve the military forces’—and ultimately the host-nation’s—objectives. As a physically powerful and often culturally foreign object in the OE, the military’s presence can quickly be perceived both as a threat and an instrument to many of the existing groups. Recognizing when one is perceived as one or the other, is vital to the freedom of movement and achievement of objectives in all aspects of a modern military operation. The ability to obtain relevant information by actively asking the right questions about how and where actors interact, both formally and informally, could then prove critical to several aspects of intelligence work. This could influence targeting, both soft and hard, key leader engagement, and the choice of intelligence discipline to be used for collection of information—be it human sources, open sources, or communications intercepts. Here the value of the intelligence will be directly determined by whether the intelligence personnel are able to decode the information in a ­culturally appropriate manner. Maximum exploitation of information thus requires a person who is deeply interested and willing not just to immerse oneself in the area’s culture and linguistics, but also to use structured intelligence techniques to answer intelligence problems.

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Teaching Arabic and Arabic Culture at NORDIS The NORDIS Arabic language program is inspired by a communicative approach to language learning, which emphasizes learning language by using it.2 The course titled “Cultural expressions from the Arab world” is taught in parallel with the language course, and deals with cultural expressions such as literature, music, and movies in the Arab world. The course aims to make the students familiarize themselves with and contextualize cultural expressions from the region, in other words knowing the about, how, why, and oneself. Throughout the course the students are exposed to a diversity of such expressions with the aim of developing the budding intelligence personnel’s ability to reflect and think scientifically about cultural issues while building a solid competence in diverse linguistic and cultural expressions and conventions. The students are exposed to authentic material over several months, and in combination with the language program, the course plays a central role in developing the students’ cultural competence. The course is designed to enable reflection and improve the ability to disseminate information concerning the area. In addition to courses in modern Middle East history and Islam, students watch an Arabic movie on a weekly basis, with subsequent discussion and reflection exercises either in Norwegian or Arabic. Furthermore, students read Arabic novels in Norwegian translation, and present and discuss them with guidance from the teachers. They are also given the opportunity to explore Arabic music and its various genres. In the final semester, they write an academic assignment with a topic of their own choice derived from Arabic cultural expressions. Earlier assignments have for example been a rhetorical analysis of the Syrian President Bashar Assad’s speech to his religious elite during Ramadan 2011, an analysis of Hamas’ web profile, as well as a textual analysis of popular cultural contemporary texts in Egypt. Towards the end of the course, the students should be able to reflect on both their own cultural standing and that of the Arab world. The language course is structured in modules arranged in themes, with different topics varying from family and daily life to politics and history, as shown in Table 2. No single textbook is used, as the educators carefully select material for each module, so that the NORDIS students can get a thorough and realistic understanding of Arabic language and culture in a relatively short amount of time. The modules aim to provide students with a basic introduction to Arabic language structure and grammar, and to give a foundation for further language learning. They provide an introduction to cultural, political, geographical and linguistic matters within the target language area based on authentic language material. The students will primarily get a good overview of Arabic phonology, morphology and syntax. It is essential that the students at this stage get a good understanding of the

2  For a more detailed outline on how Arabic is taught at NORDIS, see Dahle and Næss (2017) on teaching Arabic in Norway.

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Table 2  Beginners’ level modules in Arabic language taught at NORDIS

Modules at beginners’ level Daily life

Family, school, holidays

Geography

Arab countries and nationalities

Army

Military service, weapons

History

The Arab uprising, Middle East after WWI, UN and the Arab world

Culture and Society

Marriage traditions, customs and traditions in Arab world, Arabic literature

Religion

Call for prayers, surahs from the Quran, Islam and human rights, religion in the Middle East, political Islam

Arabic language of the Arab world, as well as basic knowledge of history, culture, geography, politics, and religion in the region. At the advanced level, the modules provide an even more thorough understanding based on a wide variety of sources, as exemplified in Table 3. The topics range from gender roles from an Arab perspective to political upheaval in Egypt. Each module ends in either a written assignment or a class presentation, in order to facilitate reflection and discussion. Written exercises are included throughout the course as pedagogical tasks to reinforce students’ reading and speaking capabilities. Providing as much reinforcement as possible for our language students is essential, particularly considering the physical location of the school. Teaching Arabic language and culture far away from its natural context is perhaps one of the most obvious challenges for the teachers. Intercultural meetings are very limited, if existing at all, and therefore much responsibility lies on the teaching staff to provide material from authentic sources and ensure that the students get as much cultural input as possible. This facilitation is essential, as neither language nor culture is acquired in isolation. It is up to the teaching staff to provide a context that is not naturally there, both linguistically and culturally, by carefully selecting ­teaching materials and strategies at all levels of the course. For instance, roleplays and interpreting scenarios as a model for language and culture learning, give learners an opportunity to interact in a more natural way. In order to combine the language and culture learning with intelligence training, teaching staff try to make even small tasks at beginners’ level relevant, for example

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Table 3  Module 6 at the advanced level in Arabic language taught at NORDIS

Module 6 at advanced level: Palestine Writing skills

Descriptions

Reading skills

Resistance poetry

Communicative

Listening

Cultural in-

skills

skills

sights

Prepare presentations

A selection of

An insight of

based on Arabic

documentaries

life in Palestine

sources to a Norwe-

about civilian

gian audience

life in Palestine

Writing letters

Novel excerpts:

Roleplay:

Movie:

I saw Ramallah

A conference called:

Paradise now

Men under the

“The future of Jeru-

sun

salem”

Poetry

by setting assignments that focus on translation and presenting material in an understandable manner for third parties. When appropriate, intelligence or military staff is involved, for example as a receiver of such material. Building transcultural competence and connecting Arabic language and culture in relevant and unbiased ways puts a significant demand on the educators, but perhaps even more so on the students, who—after they complete their relatively short course of study—will depend on this knowledge in their work as intelligence officers.

 rain as You Write: Putting Intelligence Theory into T Culturally Aware Practice For several decades the Norwegian armed forces have attempted to institutionalize critical thinking in its mandatory intelligence training, mainly through the NORDIS intelligence courses. In particular, critical thinking is taught and trained through the course on structured analytic techniques, as well as the advanced intelligence course on intelligence support to joint operations. The latter culminates in an exercise with over 200 participants from the Armed Forces Staff College and NORDIS. Here, the demands and requirements for intelligence work in operations will be made even more to scale and realistic through various staff functions demanding a wide range

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of intelligence support. Through these and several other subsequent courses, NORDIS course instructors work to merge analytic techniques rooted in principles of general critical thinking with intelligence-specific principles, process knowledge and best practices. Throughout their intelligence training, the students conduct several tabletop simulations where they play a part of a central headquarters’ intelligence staff. In addition, they also conduct actual training within real intelligence units and staffs. The intelligence courses on analytic techniques and intelligence support to joint operations are mainly conducted through a combination of classroom lectures, simulation exercises and small-group instruction. During the tabletop simulation exercises, instructors acting as intelligence customers will make demands for intelligence products. These demands are naturally tailored to ensure both a creative, yet structured group process, as well as development of individual analytic capabilities. The combination of approaches is employed in order to contextualize tasks and techniques, as well as spur cognitive development and reflection through thorough feedback. Through several iterations, it should be possible for the instructors to see whether the groups are able to put their feedback into practice, and improve their quality of analysis. The design of the scenarios and the feedback from instructors are perhaps the most important pillars of the students’ intelligence training. Clearly, their future ability to fill their intended function may vary with their educators’ ability to convey the utility of a nuanced and structured approach to both culture, linguistics and intelligence. In particular, this applies to the courses and exercises where the instructors are able to combine and demonstrate several of these nuances and approaches. Where we as educators demand analytic rigor from students, we ourselves must also be able to convey and demonstrate the necessity of this rigor through feedback and realistic scenarios. As Karl Spielmann (2018) explains: “Their ability to affect policy decisions, some with major life and death consequences, in fact makes analytic rigor a crucial requirement” (p. 5). Throughout the courses mentioned above, students are first taught basic analytic techniques, as well as how and why these techniques may prove useful in combating various biases, including cultural ones. We ask the students to explicitly formulate their current situational understanding of the OE as a standing hypothesis that will be the baseline for their future assessments. In order to maintain the predictive element of intelligence production, students must then create several hypotheses that all represent possible future outcomes of the area of study, be it a military operation or the political development of a country. Students are then asked to interpret and integrate ambiguous pieces of information and incorporate these to test their hypotheses on future outcomes. The contradictory information pieces could detail unexpected interactions between groups, whose ideologies and intentions could often be viewed in stereotypical ways. The students will therefore have to conduct a continuous assessment of the relevance of their hypotheses in order to identify when it is time to correct—or alternatively—refute them. This demands a certain level of openness from the analysts, and sometimes a willingness to entertain seemingly abstract options in order to stay strategically ahead. NORDIS chooses to define this

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iterative analytic process as the continuous evaluation of the impact of driving forces on the situation and actors. This is heavily inspired by Robert M.  Clark’s (2016) iterative model, in his classic target-centric approach to intelligence analysis. This approach is directly aimed at targeting some of the most common components involved in analytic, and overall intelligence failure, such as failure of the group or the individual to recognize qualitative change in driving forces or actors and merely using information to confirm a single hypothesis, rather than developing alternatives. The potential negative impact of systematic misjudgments of groups or practices in the OE should not be underestimated. The failure to explore possible future changes in driving forces and actor capabilities, as well as to question the validity of current assumptions has historically led to what the CIA (1983) has deemed “overly conservative single-outcome forecasting” (p.  4) and subsequent strategic miscalculation. If not actively mitigated through training, these mindsets and misjudgments could prove fatal for both a foreign military force, and the host-nation. While the students’ immediate output is hard to measure since most are lacking the operational experience to put the course material into context, general feedback from several student cohorts has been positive. While we can largely give them a normative framework, we also try to give them a practical set of thinking skills fitted for a world where intelligence products must be timely, while the information it is based on remains unpredictable and untimely. However, while we try to develop the students’ awareness as much as we can during their time at the school, a case could be made for the school’s educators to be more involved also after the students graduate—and especially before and after their deployment into various operational environments. While information packages before deployment into military operations often describe the various demographics and ethnicities in-country in general, detailed information on how these groups view each other, their cohesion and interaction are often lacking. Greater involvement particularly in redeployment debriefings could provide the school’s teachers with extremely valuable, updated knowledge of cultural codes and group interactions that could be disseminated to other students prior to deployment. This cultural knowledge is vital, since a host-nation to a foreign military force naturally must be allowed to participate constructively in the creation of its own future. The earlier this knowledge can be given to the students, the better.

 ultural Intelligence or Intelligence Culture? C Integrating the Two Disciplines Today’s information environment provides almost endless possibilities for access to information. However, this also makes the critical evaluation and processing of this available information extremely challenging, not only for intelligence and media professionals, but also for observers of culture. Good cultural awareness could and

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should be the foundation of good situational awareness, but reaching this level of common understanding across military and cultural expertise at times still proves challenging—even at an academic institution well versed in both disciplines. While the information sources and outlets have increased exponentially, the same cannot necessarily be said for the capability to challenge the various narratives presented in these outlets. The ability to evaluate and navigate an information landscape with a high degree of complexity and ambiguousness is paramount for future intelligence professionals, especially if the professional is expected predict how a nation or actor’s culture will influence their strategic behavior. In order to provide the best possible intelligence as decision support, the intelligence professional needs to maintain an increased awareness of her own possible conditioning to other’s cultural values and norms, and be able to challenge these beliefs. Without a doubt, this is a very challenging intellectual exercise. So how can educational institutions such as NORDIS best prepare their students for a professional life combining the critical observation and participation in both intelligence and cultural studies? While the relevance of cultural values and the social environment for operations has become more explicit over the past two decades, the gap between doctrine and practice is still tangible. Sadly, it is somewhat likely that the emphasis on culture is a consequence of several heavily military-based campaigns, where primarily Western military forces have been far superior in their physical capacities. Yet, these forces have still failed to achieve a lasting constructive effect. Currently, there seems to be a consensus that intelligence-driven military operations need cultural expertise, but exactly how one should educate for this and the extent to which we should merge the two, remains largely unsaid. As an institution with a long history of both linguistic and intelligence training and education, NORDIS has the unique possibility of providing a combined, professional intelligence education. Conversely, one could also say that an institution where these two disciplines have a long history of existing separately, also emphasizes the potential challenges of fusing the two. Ideally, they could complement each other, but they could also end up competing for resources. Both disciplines have long and proud separate traditions within the school, so how could one attempt to create one comprehensive professional identity, rather than maintaining two strong separate identities? While enhanced cultural understanding is valuable in itself, when found in intelligence, it will inevitably be used in order to achieve a desired end-state for a policymaker. Sometimes the end-state could even seem counterproductive to those living with and studying the culture or area in question. Students should therefore be made explicitly aware that there is a difference here between cultural education in civilian academic institutions and the one given in a military intelligence setting. By making clear the role of understanding culture in developing actionable intelligence for military operations, instructors could perhaps help the students better manage their expectations and improve their ability to fulfil their intelligence functions upon graduation. One of the main challenges students should be prepared for is the willingness, or lack thereof, to regard cultural studies as a value in itself, and not as something that

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only becomes valuable once it has merged with military might. If not wary of this, a worst-case scenario could be a form of “weaponization of culture” (Davis 2010, p.  8) that only favors cultural aspects seen to directly affect military or security domains. A lingering question could then be whether it is possible to avoid cultural knowledge and expertise being regarded as a weapon alongside conventional capacities, and whether educators themselves are aware enough of the implications of possessing specific cultural expertise in an intelligence environment. While standard military training often focuses on creating a rather homogenous group supporting smooth chains of command, the cultural training conducted by the language teachers is often more focused on open-mindedness and ways of perceiving different cultures. This is perhaps where intelligence, as a particular branch of the Armed Forces, could be at an advantage with its focus on critical thinking and active examination of own assumptions, even in military settings. But in order to reap the benefits of this advantage, the combination of disciplines during education must be carefully coordinated and be regarded as an explicit priority supported by all members of staff. This may require a better joint understanding of the intelligence function the students will eventually fill from all the in-house educators. While the students will spend most of their time studying language and cultural aspects, their future employer will often be an intelligence organization that requires an understanding of intelligence first, and cultural aspects and language second—sometimes with an institutionalized view of the latter as a means to an end. While NORDIS carefully selects students possessing the best possible abilities to succeed both within linguistics and intelligence, the population from which to choose their instructors is comparatively smaller. Thus, the students at NORDIS often end up with teachers who have deep expertise either in linguistics or intelligence, but very rarely both. This could mean that the school is trying to educate the students for a combined profession that nearly none of the educators themselves possess, leaving the students to develop their own knowledge from both directions without adequate available role models. Little formalized interaction between the teaching staffs could mean that the connections needed to integrate the two disciplines currently depends upon personal relations, either across the two staffs, or between students and staff. While the two teaching staffs at NORDIS are often distinctly different from each other, they are in some respects quite internally homogenous, particularly when it comes to the intelligence instructors. At the intelligence school, a clear majority are male, military officers who have largely been deployed to the same conflicts and have a standardized military and officer training. Many have served in the same intelligence units. Most have their master’s degrees, not necessarily from the same academic institutions, but often within security, war, or intelligence studies. Most have completed the same intelligence courses at the same institutions. Only a small number have a formalized language or area study, and these are often former students of the school’s own language courses prior to the school’s accreditation as a university college. Meanwhile, all the Arabic teachers have master’s degrees in Arabic, including Middle Eastern area studies, and generally diverse educational

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backgrounds. In addition, they have formalized pedagogical training, which potentially gives them a wider spectrum of teaching strategies compared to the military educators. The majority of language instructors have completed the basic intelligence course at NORDIS, but have no further formal intelligence training or experience. However, the Arabic teachers have spent several years studying and/or living abroad in countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Syria. One could only wish that the lack of formalized cooperation between language and intelligence staff was an issue mainly visible to the educators and hardly discernible to the students. After all, role conflicts are evident in many professions today, and maybe no worse in intelligence work than others. However, some comments from past and present students could unfortunately indicate that at least some see the issue of two different disciplines being merged into one as problematic. To some extent, this could perhaps originate from a diverging emphasis on professional ethics within the two disciplines. While the students have a course dedicated to intelligence ethics, there is no course directly addressing the challenges of possible diverging ethics in a combined profession. This could lead to the students being forced to choose which discipline they prefer, rather than enjoying the combined expertise of both cultural studies and intelligence. If so, increased institutional coherence, where the cooperation between the two professions is made more explicit, would potentially benefit both students and faculty. This integration should involve focusing on optimizing the combination of disciplines, rather than emphasizing the differences. The success of a coherent program could be hampered by the underdeveloped discourse on whether intelligence, and in particular analysis, should be regarded as a profession, or a tradecraft. In comparison, the profession of a linguist is rather more established. Furthermore, if increased coherence is not a recognized priority for the school’s owners or its principal customers, no real implementation will occur, as no actual resources will be diverted or re-allocated. For both the intelligence and the language educators, the semesters are fully packed, with little time to participate in or prepare extracurricular seminars or external courses that could create a mutual understanding of each other’s disciplines. A schism, whether perceived or real, between teaching staff as a result of diverging disciplines, is inherently ineffective. As the authors see it, one could proceed in two possible different directions to mitigate the problems of a divided professional identity, each representing different challenges. The first option would be to maintain a teaching staff that embodies both disciplines, but consists mainly of military personnel. If all teachers and instructors at the school belong to the same profession, it would probably be easier for the students to absorb and experience a professional unity. Unfortunately, one would likely be left to recruit teachers mainly among the school’s former students. Then again, this would likely narrow the cultural and linguistic curriculum and the general teaching strategies, leading to a more expressly military approach, as well as a possible tendency towards groupthink—the exact opposite of what one tries to achieve with critical thinking. Here it could be argued that one runs the risk of sacrificing comprehensive cultural understanding for a more unified professional identity.

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The second, and perhaps more viable option, would be to maintain a staff of both military and civilian educators, but make a joint professional identity a priority in order to formalize cooperation. This option means real priority must be given to increasing coherence in the program by freeing up time and resources. In the short term, that could mean a heavier workload on all staff, in order to increase the mutual understanding of each other’s disciplines. However, in the long term, it could mean increased efficiency and cooperation. This demands a certain willingness from the individual staff to identify constructively how the two disciplines could be combined. Until now, this has only been tested to a very limited extent, and mainly due to personal relationships between individual members of staff, rather than an institutional effort. This process would be greatly supported by a wider debate on professional ethics for intelligence personnel, as well as the use—and potential misuse—of cultural expertise in military operations. This would perhaps also demand a firmer and more explicit stance from intelligence organizations on whether intelligence should be viewed as a profession, rather than a tradecraft.

Conclusion The case of NORDIS provides a concrete example of the challenges and benefits of integrating culture and language skills in intelligence officers’ education. Our cultural and linguistic approach is intended to help intelligence students establish a baseline of cultural understanding. When combined with intelligence training, the students should be able to test and discover hypotheses on the specific relationships and dynamics between the particular actors and their communities. But if the combination of disciplines is viewed as competing, rather than complementary, it could result in the students feeling forced to choose between the two, rather than reaping the benefits of a unique combination. Both the school’s internal cooperation and its external relations are somewhat prone to shifting political priorities, but with every possibility of realizing more of its potential. As intelligence personnel, one has a duty to evaluate pieces of information critically and continuously assess one’s own assumptions in the pursuit of providing the best possible decision support. As instructors contributing to the education of future intelligence personnel, one has a duty to provide a framework for critical thinking and understanding of integrity and professional ethics. This means that when provided with the opportunity to combine both intelligence, cultural, and linguistic elements, it should also be a particular duty to continously seek the optimization of this combination of components. But the responsibility to uphold this duty cannot rest on individual teachers. The optimized combination could perhaps be achieved through a more explicit national ambition for the development of intelligence as a profession. Subsequently, this would have to entail allocation of resources in order to enable staff to actually educate for intelligence as a profession that embodies both linguistic and transcultural competency, as well as intelligence doctrine and critical thinking. Perhaps most

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importantly, this would also establish and combine the professional identities of both. While not perfect, it is important to make the NORDIS approach available for discussion and improvement by making it a part of the ongoing intelligence, and cultural disciplinary discourse. Hopefully, this paper could be a small contribution to building a body of knowledge and further a discourse around functional intelligence, cultural and language studies. In particular, the topic of intelligence studies conducted in military institutions has traditionally been shrouded in secrecy. It is the authors’ beliefs that only by making this kind of formalized cultural and intelligence training available to a wider audience, could the development of professional intelligence identity in Norway be improved.

References Attar, S. (1995). Learning from Gulliver: The teaching of «culture» in an advanced Arabic language course. In M. Al-Batal (Ed.), The teaching of Arabic as a foreign language. Issues & directions (pp. 185–222). Utah: American Association of Teachers of Arabic. Baker, M. (1992). In other words—A coursebook on translation. New York: Routledge. Central Intelligence Agency. (1983). Report on a study of intelligence judgments preceding significant historical failures: The hazards of single-outcome forecasting. Retrieved from https:// www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86B00269R001100100010-7.pdf Clark, R. M. (2016). Intelligence analysis. A target-centric approach (5th ed.). Washington, DC: QC Press. Dahle, S. B., & Næss, U. G. (2017). Teaching Arabic in Norway. In N. S. Eggen & R. Issa (Eds.), Philologists in the world. A festschrift in honour of Gunvor Mejdell (pp.  451–470). Oslo: Novus Press. Davis, R. (2010). Weapons of the strong. Culture as a weapon system. Middle East Report, 2010(255), 8–13. Dickins, J., Hervey, S., & Higgins, I. (2002). Thinking Arabic translation. A course in translation method: Arabic to English. London: Taylor & Francis Ltd. Dylan, H., Goodman, M.  S., Jackson, P., Jansen, P.  T., Maiolo, J., & Pedersen, T. (2017). The way of the Norse ravens: Merging profession and academe in Norwegian national intelligence higher education. Intelligence and National Security, 32(7), 944–960. Eldin, A. A. (2015). Teaching culture in the classroom to Arabic language students. International Education Studies, 8(32), 113–120. Goodman, M. S., & Omand, D. (2009, 7 January). Teaching intelligence analysts in the UK. What analysts need to understand: The King’s intelligence studies program. Retrieved from https:// www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/ vol-52-no-4/teaching-intelligence-analysts-in-the-uk.html Hogg, M., & Vaughan, G. (2005). Social psychology. Edinburgh: Pearson. Jervis, R. (2006). Understanding beliefs. Political Psychology, 27(5), 641–663. Joint Chiefs of Staff. (2014). Joint intelligence preparation of the operational environment (JP 2-01.3). Retrieved from https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp2-01-3.pdf Lowenthal, M. M. (2012). Intelligence. From secrets to policy (5th ed.). Los Angeles: CQ Press. Meier, A. J. (2003). Posting the banns: A marriage of pragmatics and culture in foreign and second language pedagogy and beyond. In G. A. Fernandez, F. A. Martinez, & J. U. Esther (Eds.), Pragmatic competence and foreign language teaching (pp. 185–210). Castello: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I.

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Moore, D. T. (2007). Critical thinking and intelligence analysis. Occasional paper number fourteen. Washington, DC: National Defense Intelligence College. Moran, P. M. (2001). Teaching culture: Perspectives in practice. Boston: Heinle. Nieto, S. (2010). Language, culture and teaching: Critical perspectives. London: Routledge. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (2014). NATO standard AJP-2 allied joint doctrine for intelligence, counterintelligence and security (Edition A version 1). Brussels: NATO Standardization Office. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (2016). NATO standard AJP-2.1. Allied joint doctrine for intelligence procedures (Edition B version 1, ratification draft). Brussels: NATO Standardization Office. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (2018). NATO glossary of terms and definitions (English and French) (AAP-06 edition 2018). Brussels: NATO Standardization Office. Omand, D. (2010). Securing the state. London: C. Hurst & Co. Risager, K. (2007). Language and culture pedagogy—From a national to a transnational paradigm. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Spielmann, K. (2018). The logic of intelligence analysis. Why hypothesis testing matters. Abingdon: Routledge. The Norwegian Armed Forces. (2019, October 14). Statistikk. Retrieved from Forsvaret: https:// forsvaret.no/fakta/tall-og-statistikk Stine Beate Dahle  is Assistant Professor of Arabic at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School, where she teaches Arabic language, including cultural and area studies. She has studied Arabic at the American University of Cairo and worked several years at the Norwegian Foreign Service in Egypt and Jordan. Ms. Dahle holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African studies from the University of Oslo, the topic of her master’s thesis being within the field of Arabic sociolinguistics and language attitudes. Idun M. Mostulien  is a senior advisor, intelligence methodology developer and intelligence manager with the Norwegian National Police Immigration Service. She has previously been a tactical single- and multi-discipline intelligence analyst with the Norwegian Armed Forces. She has deployed to Afghanistan twice. Ms. Mostulien was an intelligence course developer and instructor of structured analytic techniques at the Norwegian Defence Intelligence School between 2014 and 2018. She holds a BSc in Political Science, as well as an MA in security and intelligence studies from the University of Buckingham.

Intercultural Competencies in the Bundeswehr: Officer Training and Mission Realities Maren Tomforde

Abstract  Intercultural competencies (ICC) have been acknowledged as soft skills by the Bundeswehr (the German Armed Forces), since the beginning of the twenty-­ first century when service members encountered intercultural challenges in missions abroad. General cultural education as well as area-specific pre-deployment culture training was introduced to further intercultural competencies among officers and their subordinates. Using studies based on anthropological research, this paper highlights structural ICC challenges within the Bundeswehr, discusses epistemological challenges in the classroom at the German Command and Staff College and contrasts these insights with mission realities. Attitudes and ways of officers dealing with intercultural situations when on deployment are analyzed. Keywords  Bundeswehr · German military · Culture · Intercultural competencies · Afghanistan · Officer education · Military academy

M. Tomforde (*) German Command and Staff College, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_9

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Bundeswehr and Intercultural Competence Training German population 82.7 million German active-duty military service members Army: 62,308, Navy: 16,434, Air Force: 27,779, Ministry of Defense: 1126, Armed Forces Base: 27,634, Medical Corps: 20,000, Cyber and Information Space: 13,131, Other areas: 10,256. Total: 181,816 or .21% of the German population (Bundesministerium der Verteidigung n.d.). The Bundeswehr is an all-volunteer service composed of 52,989 regular officers and 120,319 temporary career officers and 8508 short term soldiers. 22,116 women serve in all areas of the German Armed Forces. Location and nature of recent operations The Bundeswehr is considered a ‘mission force’. The main missions at present (2019) are located in Afghanistan, Mali, and the Mediterranean Sea. German Armed Forces conduct operations from humanitarian aid to (robust) peacekeeping military training and partnerships. Intercultural Competence Training is not just a part of an academic degree. It is done through a three-level-approach as part of ‘pre-mission training for conflict prevention and transformation’ (German: Einsatzvorbereitende Ausbildung für Konfliktverhütung und Krisenbewältigung, EAKK): 1. during basic training, a few hours are dedicated to a general, basic understanding of intercultural competence. 2. during build-up training the focus is on intercultural competencies needed for mission assignments. 3. further training that is also called ‘country-specific training’, is conducted to raise awareness of cultural specificities in mission countries. In addition, to this three-level approach, a wide variety of intercultural courses are available at the two Bundeswehr universities in Hamburg and Munich, the Federal Academy of Defence Administration and Technology, the Centre for Operative Information, the Operations Command of the German Armed Forces, the Leadership Development and Civic Education Centre (ZINFü), and last but not least, the German Command and Staff College where (general) staff officers are trained. None of the above-mentioned institution is in the lead when it comes to intercultural competence training. A joint approach is followed. Instructors The Command and Staff College has approx. 180 instructors of whom three fourths are military and one fourth are civilian. The military instructors have academic training in fields such as political science, history, leadership or pedagogy as well as operative experience. Civilian instructors have an MA or a PhD in various disciplines relevant to the military.

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At the end of the Cold War, local cultures were largely conceptualized as a source of disorder and an impediment to sustainable nation building in failed states, whereas now they are largely seen as a powerful corrective to this failed-states rhetoric. On the one hand, “the local has turned into a potential savior for contemporary peacebuilding by providing legitimacy and access, and by lowering the costs of intervention” (Mac Ginty 2015, p. 841). On the other hand, a rather traditional and superficial view of cultural aspects continues to exist among most militaries and other international organizations (Paffenholz 2015; Rubinstein 2011; Kuehn 2010). Intercultural competencies (ICC) have been termed ‘key competencies’ by the Bundeswehr since the year 2000 when service members were faced with large cultural differences and intercultural challenges, especially during deployment to Afghanistan (see Bundesministerium der Verteidigung 2006, p. 81). Consequently, intercultural education and training for soldiers was introduced on several levels. General cultural education as well as area-specific pre-deployment cultural training was aimed at improving ICC among officers and their subordinates. This chapter examines and evaluates the Bundeswehr’s efforts to develop intercultural competence using in-depth anthropological research conducted by the author over the past decade. First, his chapter discusses ‘classroom’ challenges in intercultural training courses for officers at the German Command and Staff College. Secondly, I look at mission realities and examine how service members actually deal with intercultural situations during deployment. Two main and interrelated issues are investigated in the course of this article: First, although the need for intercultural competencies has been recognized by the Bundeswehr, structural and epistemological challenges in the classroom and during pre-deployment training impede the development of effective cultural education. Several initiatives have been launched to incorporate intercultural training and education on a number of levels. However, training is often too short, understaffed and underfinanced, and the students show resistance to the cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills necessary for intercultural competence. Second, I argue that mission experiences, such as those from Afghanistan, constitute an important impetus for change and for a structured intercultural ‘lessons-learned’ process. Responses by German soldiers to intercultural mission experiences show a continuum from assimilation into local cultures to total rejection of them as well as of intercultural awareness topics. This paper is structured as follows: First, I introduce the research methods and diverse data sets that form the basis of this chapter. Second, I provide general information on the Bundeswehr, its mission areas, and on the core philosophy Innere Führung (‘leadership from within’). This concept can be understood as the important Leitkultur (‘leadership culture’) of the Bundeswehr, which also consists of core principles applicable to intercultural contexts. Third, structural challenges in ICC education and training are discussed and shortcomings highlighted. Fourth, the chapter analyzes research data from ICC education and training at the Command and Staff College. Finally, these results are then juxtaposed with ICC experiences form German officers in Afghanistan.

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Methods and Data This chapter is based on a various specific data sets. First, the chapter draws on other people’s research on ICC and the Bundeswehr. Second, I present research I have conducted on the Bundeswehr both in the military classroom, and in the field with German soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. I have worked as a socio-cultural anthropologist for the German Armed Forces since 2003. In my first 4 years (2003–2007), I was employed at the Social Research Institute of the Bundeswehr and conducted qualitative research on and in Bundeswehr missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan. I received a 4-week long course in military training for civilians to participate in pre-deployment training and to research intercultural mission realities in uniform. Since 2007 I have been a senior lecturer in socio-cultural anthropology at the Command and Staff College (CSC) in Hamburg. At the CSC, I am in charge of the intercultural education, have to write ICC curricula and organize and teach ICC classes in the staff officer courses (ranks of students range from captain to lieutenant colonel), national and international general staff officer courses (captains to colonels), as well as in additional modules for officers (captains to two-star generals), police officers, and civilians. In addition, I teach courses on Bundeswehr culture and identity, military sociology and anthropological peace and conflict studies at the CSC as well as on ‘the local turn on peacekeeping’ at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg. These personal experiences form an important background for the following analyses which provide data from on my research with students at the CSC as well as from my interviews in the field. Findings on intercultural competence education at the CSC are based on ten focus-group interviews, 20 semi-structured interviews with officers participating in my intercultural courses, and on informal conversations and participant observation. The conversations and interviews were conducted between 2016 and 2019. For the discussion of ICC in Bundeswehr missions, I take my anthropological research in Afghanistan as an example and draw on 2 weeks of participant observation as well as on 30 in-depth interviews carried out in Kabul and Kunduz in 2004; on participant observation in three post-deployment courses (each 1 week long) for soldiers after the mission in Afghanistan; as well as 30 semi-structured interviews with officers returning from Afghanistan conducted in Germany at the CSC between 2010 and 2014 (see Tomforde 2017). All of my interview partners volunteered to participate in the interviews at times when they were off duty.1 In most cases, the interviews lasted for 2 h or more. It was not unusual for the interviewees to name further potential conversation partners. I was also directly contacted by soldiers who had heard of my research project and wished to be interviewed. My interviewees were mostly male officers between 30 and 50. Only a few female officers could be interviewed, as numbers of female officers at the CSC courses and in missions are still low (below 10%). Furthermore, 1  At this point I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the soldiers who have supported my research project and allowed me valuable insights into their experiences and thoughts.

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I did not talk to the 18–30-year-old enlisted soldiers and sergeants who mainly deployed to ISAF in Afghanistan. Instead, my study focuses on the military leaders. Officers with operational and intercultural experience who are in their thirties or forties today, are the ones who will have a major influence on the Bundeswehr and its system of orientation and cultural norms over the next years and decades. With this in mind, an analysis of this future elite will thus provide vital insights: The study of elites provides a useful focus for addressing a range of core anthropological and sociological concerns including language and power; leadership and authority; status and hierarchy; ideology and consciousness; social identities and boundary-maintenance; power relations, social structure and social change. (Shore 2002, p. 9)

The interviewees’ names have been anonymized and details about mission experiences, the time of the mission, and about the unit have been deliberately omitted. A research project in the context of the military deals with sometimes sensitive, often highly personal and intimate experiences. All interviewees in Afghanistan as well as at the CSC were guaranteed absolute anonymity prior to the beginning of the interviews. Therefore, any information about the soldiers which could be used by insiders to identify the interviewees, had to be omitted.

Context: Bundeswehr Missions and the Concept of the ‘Innere Führung’ Since the end of the Cold War, the Bundeswehr has changed dramatically. The focus of the armed forces has shifted away from mere territorial and alliance defense to deployment missions with alliance partners. Major structural and socio-cultural changes were instigated due to the integration of women in all areas of the armed forces in 2001, the suspension of compulsory military service in 2011, the transition to volunteer armed forces, cuts in defense spending and reduction of troops. 181,816 active soldiers serve in the Bundeswehr today and 3236 soldiers are currently deployed to missions abroad (Bundesministerium der Verteidigung 2019 (Table 1)). The socio-cultural composition of the Bundeswehr has changed as well over the past few decades. While in the 1960s, some 90% of all soldiers were Christian, today they account for only half the troops. It is estimated that around 3000 soldiers of the Muslim faith now serve in the German military, along with around 300 Jews. Due to the integration of women in all areas and the increasing diversity of people (including soldiers with an immigrant background) joining the Bundeswehr, the organization has become more diverse than ever before. Thus, ICC is not only needed during deployment or in multinational missions, but also in the day-to-day service inside and outside the barracks at home. From a German military perspective, intercultural competence requires an understanding of the core philosophy of the Bundeswehr: the Innere Führung, literally meaning ‘leadership from within’ or ‘inner guidance’. The goal of the Innere Führung is to reconcile the functional conditions of operational armed forces with

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Table 1  German contingents to international missions Mission Country Resolute Support Afghanistan KFOR Kosovo UNMISS South Sudan UNAMID Sudan UNIFIL Lebanon EUTM Mali Mali MINUSMA Mali Atalanta Horn of Africa Sea Guardian Mediterranean Sea Operation Sophia Mediterranean Sea Anti-IS Syria/Iraq Further (support) missions Mission STRATAIRMEDEVAC MINURSO

Personnel deployed 1.222 68 14 3 115 191 867 78 198 0 429

Women deployed 93 2 0 0 12 27 53 7 16 0 25

Country Deutschland West Sahara

Personnel 48 3

Reservists deployed 79 9 1 0 5 19 47 7 0 0 24

Source: Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (2019)

the liberal principles of a democratic constitutional state. Innere Führung has become a trademark of the Bundeswehr. Since its development in 1953, the concept has aimed at developing ethically motivated citizen-soldiers in the Bundeswehr and at incorporating democratic values of the German Constitution “into every German soldier’s daily judgment and action” (Lux 2009, p. 13). Innere Führung is therefore often referred to as a ‘moral compass’. The concept is connected to high moral standards and is dedicated to a so-called ‘inner order’. It is intended to further the cohesion of military forces while at the same time making the fulfilment of tasks and the adherence to the existing law code achievable (Lux 2009, p. 31). In terms of human dignity, the core philosophy of Innere Führung was devised in such a way that, even today, it forms an essential part of the intercultural competence of the German armed forces. Mutual tolerance and acceptance as well as respect for one another’s cultures are the basis for communication and a guarantee of success.

I ntercultural Competency Training and Education in the Bundeswehr: Structural Challenges Since 2004, the Bundeswehr has developed a three-level approach to promoting intercultural competencies as part of ‘pre-mission training for conflict prevention and transformation’ (German: ‘Einsatzvorbereitende Ausbildung für Konfliktverhütung und Krisenbewältigung’, EAKK). First, during basic training, a

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few hours are dedicated to a general, basic understanding of intercultural competence. Second, during pre-deployment training the focus is on intercultural competencies needed for mission assignments. Third, further training, called ‘country-specific training’, raises awareness for cultural specificities in mission countries. In addition to this three-level approach, a wide variety of courses are available at the two Bundeswehr universities in Hamburg and Munich, at the Federal Academy of Defense Administration and Technology, at the Center for Operative Information, at the Operations Command of the German Armed Forces, at the German Command and Staff College, and, last but not least, at the Leadership Development and Civic Education Center (German: ‘Zentrum Innere Führung, ZINFü’). In 2012 the so-called Central Coordination Office for Intercultural Competence (German: ‘Zentrale Koordinierungsstelle Interkulturelle Kompetenz, ZKIKK’) was founded at the ZINFü to coordinate and modulate all intercultural training courses within the Bundeswehr. Furthermore, the Coordination Office develops training tools and provides intercultural ‘train-the-trainer’ courses. Once a year a conference named ‘Coping with culture’ is organized in different locations across Germany and Europe to advance an intercultural network of all actors involved. Furthermore, intercultural mission advisors are trained at the Center for Operative Information in Mayen in order to assist German commanders during deployment. Advisors are required to support the commanders in communication and interaction with the local population. To do so, they need to identify and analyze local, ethnic, religious, political and other socio-cultural structures and try to build trust among local populations towards German forces. To sum up, the Bundeswehr has developed a multi-level training and education program to enhance intercultural competencies among subordinates and leaders as well as among trainers and advisors. A network of people working in the field of Intercultural Communication (ICC) provides training and education to the Bundeswehr stationed in Germany. During deployment, these intercultural advisors support commanders in the field. In short, a lot has been achieved over the past 15  years. However, major improvements can still be made in terms of providing (financial) resources for all of these endeavors to further support cultural training and education. For example, at the Central Coordination Office for Intercultural Competence, only a handful of people work on a full-time basis to accomplish the very challenging and time-consuming tasks described above. The head of the Coordination Office is always a lieutenant colonel, most likely with a degree in pedagogy and seldom an expert on ICC prior to this position as head of the Office. This holds also true for most of the three to four other staff members. Despite these shortcomings and a chronic funding and personnel shortage, the Office does its best to provide all information available on ICC in the Bundeswehr. In 2010, an external consulting firm developed a so-called ‘ICC training board’ for ICC training at military bases and schools for officers and non-commissioned officers. Yet, a standardized ICC curriculum for all Bundeswehr institutions that offer ICC education and training, is still missing. Instead, all actors involved write their own ICC curricula on the basis of the official regulatory description of Innere Führung. This Joint Service Regulation is the core document for all guidelines and

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programs dealing with leadership, education and training (as well as other topics) in the German Armed Forces (A 2600-1; formerly ZDv 10/1). The ten key areas of the regulation are: civic education, leadership, law and military discipline, compatibility of family and duty, information activities, training and the organization of military duty, pastoral care and the practice of religion, organization and personnel management, medical care, welfare and recreation (Bundesministerium der Verteidigung 2017). There are additional directives for specific areas under the broader ten key areas including a general directive on ICC. This directive gives definitions for concepts such as ‘culture’ and ‘intercultural competency’ and shows the Bundeswehr’s general approach to ICC, but it does not include more detailed, specific information on ICC education and training. Each Bundeswehr institution that engages in cultural education, must develop its own courses on the basis of this directive, which is itself based on the above-mentioned Joint Service Regulation Innere Führung. In addition to the lack of a coherent ICC curricula, the Bundeswehr also has a shortage of intercultural trainers. The Zentrum Innere Führung offers 1-week long ICC ‘train-the-trainer’ courses on a regular basis to increase the number of military personnel that can teach ICC courses during basic military and pre-deployment training. ICC (pre-deployment) training in the Bundeswehr is generally limited to a few hours and largely focuses on rather basic, sometimes essentialist understandings of culture and ICC as well as practical rules of conduct for the respective country and culture (e.g. ‘dos and don’ts’, pocket guides). As I have personally experienced, more often than not, intercultural education is scheduled late in the afternoon after practical military training when most people are too exhausted to focus on new topics. Yet a much deeper understanding of local cultures might be achieved, if for example, role players from the mission areas would be included in the training (Matoba and Küstner 2016). During deployment, intercultural mission advisors primarily assist the commanders. This means that subordinates have to cope with intercultural challenges without structured assistance from the organization. My interviews and participant observation in Afghanistan have highlighted that soldiers, instead, exchange and share their ICC lessons learned on an informal basis. If the soldiers need help, they ask local translators hoping that they can elucidate cultural misunderstandings. After deployment, valuable intercultural lessons learned in theatre by soldiers and civilians alike are not officially collected nor reviewed by the Bundeswehr for an integration into future intercultural training exercises as is the case in the international private sector. To further substantiate my arguments about structural and epistemological ICC challenges in the Bundeswehr, empirical data collected in the classroom at the Command and Staff College of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg as well as field interviews of soldiers in Afghanistan are discussed in the following sections of this chapter.

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 hallenges in the Classroom: ICC Education at the Command C and Staff College When asked at the beginning of any ICC seminar at the Command and Staff College, (general) staff officers generally report having received only a few hours (or a few days at the most) of intercultural competence training in their whole career so far. This also holds true for police and civilian attendees, if there are any in the course. In the Bundeswehr, intercultural competencies are so-called soft skills, which are only taught in addition to prioritized military skills if time allows and trained personnel are available. Most staff officers have already been deployed to peace and stability operations at least once. When working at the local level and with local populations, officers thus draw mainly on their personal experiences from intercultural contexts. As many of them claim themselves, they still lack a thorough understanding of what ‘culture’ really means. They thus sometimes feel overwhelmed by culturally complex settings in mission areas that need more knowledge than a pocket guide on dos and don’ts. Furthermore, for some military staff working in peacekeeping operations, knowledge about local structures, actors and cultures is not a priority when following the standardized procedures of EU, NATO or UN missions. Despite the insight that good relations with the local population are important and can indeed heighten the security of the military deployed, a thorough and genuine understanding of and interest in  local cultures is still not a focal point for most military in theatre (see also Rubinstein 2008; Hohe 2003). It is still a widespread belief that ‘local imponderabilia’ cannot be integrated into standardized mission procedures (see Odoi 2005, p. 14). Despite this fact, the relevance of intercultural competence training is generally understood and agreed upon at the Command and Staff College of the Bundeswehr. However, courses that deal with these soft skills are not automatically integrated by the military staff into the syllabus of the (general) staff officer education as automatically as week-long tactical and operational trainings are. Instead, since 2007, when I started to work for the CSC as an anthropologist, I have had to fight and argue for the continuation of a 4-day long core ICC course involving general staff officers from Germany, NATO and non-NATO states. This seminar is taught in parallel by ten lecturers, since 180 officer students have to be taught at once. The general aims and content of this module named ‘Intercultural Dialogue’ are jointly agreed upon, while each lecturer defines her or his own seminar structure on the basis of her or his academic background and expertise. Officers from up to 60 countries generally attend classes at the Command and Staff College throughout the year, thus providing an impressive intercultural potential which we could integrate into our seminars. However, each year I have to argue anew that we have to profit from this potential and that national as well as international general staff officers from non-NATO states should get the chance to start a profound, mediated intercultural dialogue with each other at least once during their

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1–2 year stay at our College. In the past, the ICC module mentioned above has generally been scheduled for the unfavorable week just before or after Christmas (when many soldiers are on home-leave) or has been shortened to a 2- or 3-day seminar making space for more important classes. Again, timing demonstrates priorities and underlines which training is of high relevance, or, as in this case, less important, for the military organization. Officers mostly fluctuate in ‘maneuvering’ between recognition or renunciation of culture topics: They know that intercultural competencies are important in times of operations abroad. At the same time, they mostly have difficulties opening up to socio-cultural topics. Intercultural competencies are a combination of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills which necessitate a certain mind-set. My numerous interviews and conversations with general staff officers at the Command and Staff College underline that soldiers generally have difficulties opening up to intercultural ways of thinking, acting and cooperating. Many have studied natural sciences or engineering and thus are used to what might be called exact, mathematical ­methods and laws in natural sciences. They are not too familiar with social scientific, relative approaches that have to be understood in a cognitive relativistic way. Military ways of thinking and planning follow clear structures and procedures and as such are more compatible with natural rather than with social scientific approaches.2 Due to these reservations, soldiers are more willing to choose a seminar that is called ‘Team and Conflict Management in Military Operations’ than a module with the title ‘Intercultural Competencies in Military Operations’ even if the content is the same. However, as my interviews have shown, officers with mission experience mostly display a greater openness to intercultural training, cultural approaches and relativism due to their numerous intercultural challenges and encounters while deployed. These lessons learned are informally and individually passed on to any soldier interested in that topic, mostly before another deployment. To sum up, when teaching ICC in the military, we face structural challenges in terms of the lack of an overall, coherent ICC curriculum, of sufficient qualified personnel and of favorable teaching time slots that underline the importance given to this topic by military leaders, in particular, and the organization in general. In addition, relativistic social scientific approaches do not seem to be compatible with the military’s structured and standardized ways of planning, thinking and operating, leading to epistemological challenges in providing classes that are relevant and accepted by the soldiers. Despite these limitations in (pre-deployment) ICC education and training, a as I discuss in the following section, German soldiers generally act in interculturally competent ways when in theatre. A continuum exists between soldiers more or less rejecting the ICC topic but still acting in somewhat intercultural ways and soldiers completely adapting to the intercultural situation, even incorporating behavioral patterns of the host society.

2  Similar experiences can be seen during police officer trainings (personal communication with Markus Feilke, Federal Police Academy, Lübeck, 21 May 2019).

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 hallenges in the Field: Mission Experiences C and Intercultural Challenges in Afghanistan The previous section discussed observations from teaching culture to general staff officers at the Command and Staff College, I now want to turn my focus to my research on intercultural mission experiences in north Afghanistan. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission started officially at the end of 2001 as a peace enforcement and stabilization operation under UN resolution 1386. The UN-mandated international force was to assist the newly established Afghan Transitional Authority to help create a secure environment in and around Kabul and support the reconstruction of Afghanistan. With the security situation worsening and attacks by enemy forces rising after 2005, ISAF’s engagement was successively expanded to a total of 13 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in the north, west and south, covering some three-quarters of Afghanistan’s territory. The PRT’s overall tasks were to improve security, extend the authority of the Afghan government, and facilitate reconstruction (Ali-Cina 2014; Naumann 2012). After deploying troops just to Kabul and its vicinity in 2001 and 2002, Germany started to deploy to the north of Afghanistan (Regional Command North) and to establish two Reconstruction Teams in Kunduz and Faizabad to provide security and help with the reconstruction of the country. At this time, most Taliban fighters had fled the region of Kunduz or had been imprisoned after combat, with the result that German armed forces first operated in a relatively calm environment in northern Afghanistan. During the early years of the German ISAF involvement in the Hindukush, service members and the German public alike viewed the mission as a mere peace intervention and supported it as such (Wagner and Biehl 2013). In cooperation with police forces as well as civilian GOs and NGOs, the Bundeswehr implemented, in the surroundings of Kabul as well as in the Kunduz region, smallto medium-scale reconstruction projects to ensure the local population’s support for the foreign armed forces and their tasks. As the security situation severely worsened after 2008, (including in the north of Afghanistan), German soldiers could no longer pursue their peace enforcement and stabilization efforts, but were more often than not the target of IED3 attacks and had to fight in combat. The ‘Good Friday fighting’ in Isa Khel south of Kunduz, which took place in April 2010 and left three Bundeswehr soldiers dead and eight wounded, marked a turning point and a caesura. For the first time since the end of World War II, German troops were actively involved in kinetic actions, had to kill on foreign ground and were being killed. According to international law, what these troops experienced was not war, but most German service members deployed to ISAF during the years 2008–2012 talked about war as the following account shows:

3  IED means Improvised Explosive Devices. This expression refers to booby traps which are relatively easy to build and not too expensive. Retreats of insurgents or anti-government forces are secured by such booby traps. With booby traps, it is also easy to force the enemy into an ambush.

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Last year, on September 5th, we were blown up by a suicide bomber. An Afghan car with a license plate from Cologne was approaching my convoy, and I remember our driver saying: ‘Hey, look, that guy is from Cologne.’ But the car didn’t stop – and all of a sudden fifty kilos of explosives detonated under our Dingo. We were blown from the street and rolled down the slope; I had burns on my hand, my face, my elbow, my leg and several stones had left injuries on the back of my head. My gunner had splinters in his face because the screen of the automatic weapon on board had imploded; my other comrades were injured, too. That’s the moment when you have to take a really deep breath and think: What have I learned back home? So we’ve got our comrades out of the vehicle, and as the platoon leader I took over the coordination of the local forces. I knew, we had two options: We could just sit down at the side of the road and cry or we could try to compensate the whole thing and to make a joke of it. I chose the second option, and that was the right thing to do. You make a few little jokes, maybe saying to one of your comrades: ‘Be careful, or you’ll set the grass on fire.’ (Sergeant Förster in Koelbl 2011: no page reference)

Since the German operation in Afghanistan had started as a ‘mere’ peace enforcement operation that slowly but surely turned into a robust mission with kinetic action, German service members successively started to question the meaning of ISAF. They did not only miss clear mission goals and an exit strategy (to name just a few criticisms), they also no longer understood the main reason for their deployment. This became apparent in conversations during the mission with ISAF soldiers in Kunduz as well as after the operation back home when service members participated in courses at the Command and Staff College. Due to their personal experiences4 in Afghanistan, soldiers started to question the effectiveness of an operation such as ISAF. In addition, they, especially officers, critically assess any peace intervention and the role of the military it plays in it as the two accounts below underscore: After Afghanistan, I am convinced that the role of the military in such missions should be a very restricted one. A quick move in and quick move out would be the best. What we did in Kunduz was distressing. No clear goals, always multiple tasks. One day we are peacekeepers, the next day fighters in combat. What sense does it make? What can we really achieve? In my opinion, it would have been best if we had saved all the money and instead had concentrated on rebuilding the Afghan economy. Instead, billions of dollars was spent on the military in a mission that left the country in chaos. (Interview with Major Z. at CSC, 25 August 2014) I do not believe in the liberal peace concept. I have a bad conscience when I think about us in Afghanistan. We act like neo-colonialists there. The Afghan population has very little say, others plan their future for them. I think everything we do in that country will have an effect that we did not intend because we simply do not understand this country and its many cultures. We never will. This means we cannot really achieve anything there but instead can cause much harm. (Interview with Lieutenant Colonel T. at CSC, 11 November 2014)

Of course, not all soldiers who have been deployed to Afghanistan are this critical about the ISAF operation, but many indeed are. In their critical assessment of the mission, they are acutely aware of the political situation and severe security and instability problems in this country nowadays. In interviews at the CSC with officers returning from Afghanistan, several even questioned Germany’s deployment of 4  About half of the troops have been deployed to Afghanistan at least two or three times (Seiffert 2012).

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troops to the Hindukush. They seriously asked themselves if they still wanted to serve in a military that is being sent by the German parliament into such questionable ‘peace’ operations (see also Kuehn 2010).5 One reason for the dissatisfaction with the ISAF mission among German service members can be seen in the many intercultural challenges (see also Langer 2012; Tomforde 2010). A majority of officers emphasized during interviews about their ISAF mission experiences that good relationships with local populations were vital to prevent troops running into dangerous situations, traps and kinetic attacks. Marianne Heiberg already wrote in 1990 “Stated in a nutshell: a relationship to local civilians built on communication and confidence is a necessary factor for success; a relationship characterized by mounting hostility, suspicion and lack of communication is a sufficient cause for failure” (p. 148). German soldiers are very well aware of the fact that every intercultural misunderstanding or individual misconduct can have an effect on the whole mission and endanger its goals and people. After the publication of German service members posing with (allegedly Russian) skulls they had found along the road in the south of Kabul in 2006, the German Ministry of Defense (MoD) became even more aware than before of the threat of potential misconduct of its troops in a culturally foreign environment. Consequently, ICC became part of pre-deployment training and the ‘Central Coordination Office for Intercultural Competence’ was founded at the ZINFü in Koblenz in 2008, as mentioned above. The MoD wanted to ensure that German soldiers in missions abroad displayed intercultural sensitivity, did not act as an occupying force and did not repeat incidents like the ‘skull scandal’ (see also Langer 2012). As the security situation severely worsened in 2008 in the north of Afghanistan, U.S. General Petraeus’ paradigm shift towards ‘winning hearts and minds’ and putting the Afghan population as the ‘center of gravity’ resulted in partnering projects with the Afghan Security Forces, who were now in the lead during operations (Coll 2009). Military leadership and politicians back home in Germany expected soldiers to have polyvalent qualities and to master this close cooperation with the Afghan National Army (Haltiner and Kümmel 2008, p. 48): They should be able to fight, to protect, to help, and, last but not least, to mediate (in an interculturally sensitive fashion). Naturally, some soldiers were better prepared to meet intercultural challenges when dealing closely with Afghan partners (and other stakeholders) than others. How challenging some non-military encounters in theater can be for military personnel, is exemplified in the following story by a major, who had been deployed to Kunduz in 2010: I was expected to meet a local warlord to discuss some security issues with him. I felt quite competent to meet such a local personality as I had participated in intercultural competency courses prior to deployment. Also, I had been in Afghanistan long enough to feel intimidated by such an encounter any longer. ‘A local warlord?’ I thought. Of course, I pictured 5  Michael A.  Messner (2019) from the Department of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of California has studied combat veterans of several wars who became lifelong advocates for peace due to their combat experiences.

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him wearing a beard and local traditional clothes, speaking broken English, if at all, and having little knowledge of our Western way of thinking and acting. I was quite surprised when a man entered the tent in an expensive-looking Western-style suit, speaking better English than I, and apparently having more knowledge of my culture than I did of his. I felt very insecure and began to sweat. Suddenly I heard a rocket exploding nearby, and my instant sentiment was relief: ‘Thank god, now I know again what to do. I know how to fight.’ Of course, nowadays I have to smile about this instant reaction. But then a rocket attack seemed ‘safer’ than meeting with a local warlord so different from how I imagined him. After all, we are no anthropologists but soldiers. (Interview with Major K. at the CSC, 4 May 2012)

This frank account by a German general staff officer underlines how demanding cooperation with local stakeholders can be in conflict areas. It is always difficult to judge, even when cooperating with Afghan partners, who is on which side in these heavily contested (political) situations that arise in many post-conflict societies struggling for peace, control, security and law. Who represents whom, and who speaks for which local group/community is equally challenging. In an ever-­ changing, unsafe, plural and dynamic local sphere, it is difficult to differentiate between friend and foe (Hughes et al. 2015, p. 821). After 2009 the Bundeswehr introduced the partnering concept into their PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) in Kunduz. German soldiers hence cooperated with comrades of the Afghan National Army in their endeavor to build a secure and stable environment for the local population. In doing so, they were confronted with a two-fold dilemma: First, they always had to deal with insider attacks by Afghan soldiers that could and did happen inside their camps. Despite this constant threat, they had to simultaneously cooperate with local soldiers as partners in the field (Bohnert 2014). Building mutual trust was a constant and challenging task given the insecure situation in theatre marked by combat and daily attacks on foreign troops and locals alike.6 Second, Bundeswehr soldiers had to display a high degree of intercultural competence trying to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the partnering armed forces and the local population. This worked quite well on the tactical and operational level as service members had developed enough skills to establish good and trusting relationships with the parts of society open to Western troops and Western ideas of nation-building. However, these efforts were partly counteracted by what was arguably an interculturally insensitive mission mandate, which did not take local structures, cultures, concept, needs, and ideas into account. Valuable cooperation by soldiers with members of the local population in Afghanistan was counteracted by national interests and standardized Western-centric concepts of governance pro-

6  Additionally, good cooperation with Afghan partners from the military or police was sometimes very difficult to maintain due to moral challenges. In some instances, German soldiers (as service members of other armed forces) were confronted with acts of violence of superiors towards their inferiors or with the so-called bacha bazi (literal meaning: boy play) ‘custom’. Young Afghan ‘chai boys’ wearing make-up, dancing and serving tea to police and military commanders obviously also had to have sexual relationships with these superiors putting Western soldiers in culturally and morally critical situations (Schut and van Baarle 2017).

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moted by the German government and allies. This fact, which hampers intercultural relations in mission areas, holds not only true in Afghanistan. Honest respect for and interest in the diversity of local cultures is mostly lacking in UN, NATO and EU mission concepts and mandates (see UN 2018). Instead, local cultures are conceptualized as “a hindrance to development and therefore something to be countered” (Mac Ginty 2015, p. 842). In other words, Bundeswehr soldiers in Afghanistan were expected to display intercultural sensitivity on the tactical-operational level in encounters with local stakeholders while working along a strategic-political mission mandate based on Western-centric ‘liberal peace’ notions. The manifold ways German service-members deal with this two-fold dilemma and other intercultural challenges in Afghanistan, is the subject of the analysis below.

The Continuum: From Rejection to Total Adaptation How service-members respond to intercultural challenges in the country of deployment can have many facets. Their reactions may range from extreme rejection and stereotyping of Afghan culture to extraordinary adaptation and renunciation of one’s own cultural identity and ways of life (see also Tomforde 2009). During multinational peace operations, Bundeswehr soldiers have often been successful in winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local population (Zürcher and Koehler 2007). Nevertheless, some of the soldiers deployed did not understand why they needed to display intercultural competencies at all and resented making advance concessions to the Afghan population. According to my interviews during deployment in Afghanistan as well as after the mission back home, the soldiers stated they were sacrificing their life, time and energy to a country characterized by war, corruption and ‘medieval traditions’. They did not understand why, in addition to the assistance they provided, they would also have to show cultural sensitivity when the opposite side tended to ignore their own values and culture. On the other hand, for some soldiers, intercultural competence means, as one interviewed officer underscored, “signaling to the counterpart that you respect him, even if this is not the case” (Interview with Major T. in Afghanistan, 3 May 2004). At the other end of the ‘intercultural continuum’ are soldiers of all ranks who try to integrate as well as possible into the new environment for the sake of their own safety. Some military personnel even undergo a process of adaptation: These men grow full beards and/or learn Pashtu or Dari as well as possible.7 They prefer spending time sitting in a hut or on the desert sand palavering with Afghan dignitaries to being at their desk in an air-conditioned HQ building in the camp. These soldiers 7  Language training is not part of the official pre-mission preparation in Germany. If soldiers want to learn the language spoken in theatre, they have to do so in their spare time. As the German parliament needs to vote for the prolongation of mission mandates on a yearly basis, long-term mission commitments that justify language training are not given – even if in the end a mission turns out to last more than a decade like the one in Afghanistan.

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adapt so well to the Afghan ways of life that more often than not, they initially find it difficult to return to ‘organized life’ at home in Germany and may even experience a ‘returnee’s culture shock’ (see also Gustavsen 2017). As my joint patrols with soldiers in Afghanistan (as well as in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo) have shown, Bundeswehr soldiers generally enjoy a relatively high esteem among the local population despite the wide range of positive and negative attitudes adopted towards intercultural competencies. This is due not only to intercultural pre-deployment training, which can still be optimized with regards to gaining insights into local cultures, but also due to at least three other significant factors. First, soldiers generally fear “doing something wrong in the field and, consequently, facing problems in Germany,” as a colonel underscored in an interview (Interview with Colonel T. in Afghanistan, 14 May 2004). Second, the burden of ‘historical guilt’, which still continues to shape the action of many soldiers abroad, contributes to making them want to appear not as an occupying force but as ‘helpers’ (Tomforde 2005, p. 580). Third, keeping up a good, helpful contact with the local population adds to socio-contextual meaning making in theatre despite the few goals achieved according to the mission mandate and the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan (see also Brinn and Auerbach 2015, p. 82).8 Together with ICC training, this combination of individual factors contributes to the culturally sensitive behavior of many soldiers (see also Tomforde 2010). To some extent, however, Bundeswehr soldiers display a ‘hypersensitivity vis-à-vis the unfamiliar’ that may also be detrimental to the development of good intercultural relations with local stakeholders. One of many examples of this is a place of worship in the former Bundeswehr Camp Feyzabad, which initially was not called a church but ‘House of Silence’. The Bundeswehr personnel in charge of naming the house worried that building a church in a predominantly Islamic environment might entail problems. However, officers soon realized that it is the very fact of not having a faith that meets with incomprehension among Muslims, not an openly declared belief in a different religion of the book. After many discussions among German military staff, the ‘House of Silence’ was re-named ‘church’ and was dedicated to the Patron-Saint Michael (conqueror of the devil and evil) (Boczek 2008, p. 18). Similar incidents of hypersensitivity happened around Christmas time when superiors prohibited the erection of a Christmas tree in the German section of Camp Warehouse in Kabul out of respect for local Muslim employees. During Ramadan, German officers partly asked their subordinates not to drink and eat in public, which turned into a problem when soldiers had to do physical work outside in the heat. These examples underline that the Bundeswehr and its deployed soldiers need intensive intercultural counselling as missions abroad raise many fundamental 8  The aspect of helping became very important during the Bundeswehr mission in Somalia in the mid-1990s. This first deployment of German soldiers outside Germany after 1945 was characterized by military mishaps and political failures. In order to still give the mission a meaning, Bundeswehr soldiers acted as development aid workers and helped to build streets, bridges and schools. The German population was quite happy to accept the role of ‘soldier diplomats’ in missions abroad.

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questions such as: How openly do I have to behave towards the unfamiliar? Do I really have to make an ‘advance move’ towards the Afghans and display intercultural competencies if I am permanently under fire and being cheated by the local residents? How can I get involved with the foreign culture, if I have taken the oath as a Bundeswehr soldier to ‘defend the law and the freedom of the German people’? What are we doing in such a culturally unfamiliar and complex country as Afghanistan, and what can we actually achieve there? Do we as Christians actually have a real chance to enter into a genuine dialogue with Muslims? These questions and many more were asked repeatedly by the interviewed soldiers. For Bundeswehr service members it is also problematic that they have to improve their intercultural competencies but are unable to apply them fully in the same way as members of international NGOs in close daily contact with the local population. On patrols through vast areas in the north of Afghanistan, they often do not have the opportunity nor the time to establish trusting relations. To some extent, establishing trust and confidence even proves to be difficult when it comes to the selection of Afghans employed in the camp as local-wage-rate employees or as linguists (see also Düe and Forster 2019). Naturally, the soldiers’ despair and demotivation is increased if (once more) a local worker has to be dismissed because things have been stolen from the camp, a booby trap has been detonated, or sensitive information has been smuggled out. It is hard for the Bundeswehr personnel to come to terms with the fact that they are exploited and deceived in such a way when many soldiers try to help locals in many diverse and unexpected ways.9 Soldiers want to make their contribution to stabilizing their country of deployment, which is obviously not appreciated by all local people. Their self-perception as stabilizers and peacebuilders who should be respected and supported by all involved, seems partly to collide with diverging perceptions of, at least part, of the Afghan population.

Conclusion Two main issues in developing ICC in the German military were identified at the beginning of this chapter. First, I discussed the question of whether or not the Bundeswehr has recognized a need for cultural awareness and responded with effective educational and training programs. Second, I argued that mission experiences in Afghanistan highlight that, despite structural and epistemological challenges in Bundeswehr ICC education and training, soldiers display relatively high levels of intercultural competence when in theater. ICC has been introduced at several levels throughout the German Armed Forces: at several training levels, as well as at the educational level at two Bundeswehr universities in Hamburg and Munich and the German Command and Staff College in 9  See, for instance, the association “Lachen helfen e.V.,” which emerged from a private initiative, by way of which German soldiers and policemen independently organize humanitarian aid for children in war and crisis zones (http://www.lachen-helfen.de)

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Hamburg. In addition, the ‘Central Coordination Office for Intercultural Competence’ at the Zentrum Innere Führung in Koblenz was founded to train trainers, develop training boards and promote an ICC network. The foundation of such a Coordination Office has been of utmost importance to further and modulate ICC training and advance coherent ICC curricula in the Bundeswehr. Due to serious financial and personnel constraints, however, the Coordination Office cannot fulfill its diverse tasks to a satisfying extent. At the political level of the Ministry of Defense, the importance of a coherent ICC concept should not only be recognized but should also be supported in the form of sufficient financial resources and job placements for qualified personnel. Furthermore, intercultural advisors should not only be responsible for commanders in theater, but additional advisors should be deployed to mission areas to assist troops on the ground. This would counteract the soldiers’ practices of asking local translators for cultural advice. Furthermore, the quality of ICC courses could partly be improved through better-qualified trainers and lecturers and foremost through the allocation of better and larger time slots for training and education. Despite an overall recognition of the importance of intercultural competencies, complex military skills needed in theater are prioritized over intercultural topics that are perceived as add-on, nice-to-have soft skills. Epistemological challenges also persist? in the classroom. Service members are generally more at ease with exact, natural scientific methods and thinking. Due to their military tasks that demand quick and structured responses in conflict scenarios, soldiers need straightforward and broad-spectrum problem-solving approaches. As my research has shown, at the Command and Staff College we can find different attitudes towards ICC among (general) staff officers: Some soldiers are very open to ICC topics. Some ask for quickly accessible rules of conduct in the form of dos and don’ts or even country pocket guides. Others completely reject the ICC topic as irrelevant or too ‘soft and mystic’ in contrast to tough military skills. This continuum between complete acceptance to rejection of ICC topics can also be found in theater as I illustrate in this chapter. Despite this continuum, German service members mostly act in culturally sensitive ways when deployed. In addition to ICC (pre-deployment) training, three factors ensure this: First, many soldiers (even the ones who are critical of ICC approaches) have realized that cultural misconduct can have serious overall consequences in mission areas and may result in personal, legal charges in Germany. The burden of a so-called German ‘historical guilt’ is a second motive for good levels of ICC among Bundeswehr soldiers who do not want to be perceived as an occupying but rather as a supporting force. Third, good and helping relations with the local population augment socio-contextual meaning making in theatre and counterbalance the lack of accomplishments in the overall mission. Research has demonstrated that German soldiers generally enjoy a good reputation among local populations due to their intercultural sensitivity. This sensitivity exists not only due to ICC education and training and the three factors mentioned above but, mostly and foremost, due to the Bundeswehr core philosophy of ‘Innere Führung’, into which every soldier is socialized at the beginning of as well as throughout her/his service.

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Tolerance and respect of the other are part of this concept, which also forms the basis for all ICC understanding and behavior in the German Armed Forces. Even if this concepts results, in the side effect of culturally sensitive behavior of soldiers, the Bundeswehr should continue to fight structural limitations, to improve ICC training and education, and, last but not least, to integrate intercultural lessons learned in theater into future curricula.

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Maren Tomforde  holds a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Hamburg. From 2003 to 2007, she worked at the Social Research Institute of the German Armed Forces (SOWI) carrying out anthropological research on German peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and in Afghanistan. Since March 2007, she is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social Anthropology at the Command and Staff College of the German Armed Forces in Hamburg. She also lectures at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg and is Honorary Associate at the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, where she has worked as a Visiting Scholar in 2015. Her main research interests are peace and conflict studies in anthropology, the anthropology of violence and war, culture theory, changing military cultures, migration and diaspora studies.

Teaching Gender, Teaching Culture: A Comparative Study of Gendered Dilemmas in Culturally Complex Situations Laura Masson and René Moelker

Abstract  This chapter compares two workshops that focus on training cultural competencies in a gendered context in culturally complex situations. The workshops used the same cases on gender and culture, but one course was given in the Netherlands and the other in Argentina. After running the workshops, the effect on cultural competencies was measured with FORCIT, a scale that measures, among other qualities, flexibility, openness, respect, curiosity, and trust. The results from the two countries are compared in order to determine the best practices for teaching gender and culture and to establish what contexts and situations impact cultural awareness and cultural competences. Culture training does indeed enhance awareness, but it does not automatically enhance competences or influence behavior. We find that awareness was enhanced in the Netherlands while students in Argentina developed both awareness and competences. In this chapter, we conclude with explanations and lessons learned. Keywords  Cultural competency training · Gender education · Military culture training · Netherlands military · Argentine military

L. Masson National University of San Martín, San Martín, Argentina National Defense University, Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] R. Moelker (*) Netherlands Defense Academy, Breda, The Netherlands © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_10

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The Netherlands and Netherlands Defense Academy NL population 17,380,597 NL Active Duty military service members Army 21,920; Navy and Marine Corps 10,580; Air Force 8105; Military Police 7349 Total (with reserves and civilians): 62,855. All Volunteer Force. 10% is female. The budget is 1,35% of GDP (Ministry of Defense 2019). Location and nature of recent operations The largest mission until 2019 regards Mali. Before that ISAF was the main mission area. The Navy engaged in piracy operations in Somalia. The Air Force was deployed to ISIL and before that participated in Libya. Netherlands Defense Academy Officers (army) training was established in 1828, whereas the Naval academy started in 1829, but there were forerunners such as artillery and engineers schools. The joint Netherlands Defense Academy (established in 2005) trains cadets and midshipmen for commissioned officers. Circa 100–120 cadets and midshipmen (all services) annually follow a 4-year training that is certified as bachelor. Circa 400 students annually follow a short 1 and a half years career course whilst already in possession of a civilian certificate at higher vocational training level. The first mentioned training is the more academic pathway, but that also comprises military training. Instructors The new recruits are trained by military instructors in the first half year. Then the recruits engage in the academic training that has 70% civilian lecturers who hold PhDs and work in a university-like structure (Faculty of Military Sciences). The remainder of the lecturing staff working at the faculty comprises of senior officers with academic credentials.

Argentina and Argentina’s National Defense University Argentinian population 44,494,502 Argentinian Active Duty military service members Army 49,000; Navy 19,000; Air Force 12,000. Total (without reserves and civilians): 80,000. All Volunteer Force. Percentage of women in the Army: 13.98%; percentage of women in Navy 27.81%; percentage of women in Air Force 26.34% (Ministry of Defence of Argentina 2019). (continued)

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Location and nature of recent operations The largest missions were the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), which has been ongoing since 1994, and the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) from 2004 to 2017. The Argentine Armed Forces are currently also participating in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic MINUSCA as members of the General Staff (since 2014), and since 2017  in the UN Verification Mission in Colombia (UNVMC). The National Defense University was created in 2014 and trains cadets at the Faculty of the Army, the Faculty of the Navy and the Faculty of the Air Force to become commissioned officers. They follow a 4-year training program that is certified as bachelor’s degree. Instructors The new recruits are trained by military instructors and civilian and military lecturers who work in a university-like structure.

If it is difficult to understand one’s own culture and the differences between groups in one’s own society, it is even more difficult for soldiers who are deployed in a foreign country. Yet, their success depends on interaction with people from different cultures. As Salmoni and Holmes-Eber (2011: 3) point out, understanding culture is important in irregular warfare because “no matter where operations are located on the spectrum of violence, they are about people. Hostile, neutral, or friendly, people are the center of gravity in what militaries do.” In the military context, gender differences especially play a fundamental role insomuch as they represent relationships that deeply permeate people’s identity and subjective interpretation of events as well as demonstrate power inequalities.1 Salmoni and Holmes-Eber suggest that culture and gender are important for the efficacy of military operations, information gathering, and goal attainment (Salmoni and Holmes-Eber 2011: 121). Equally important is teaching culture and gender both for domestic legitimacy of the military as well as for deployments abroad. Our aim in this chapter, is to compare culture and gender education in two countries where the Armed Forces are not fully integrated into their home society (for different reasons). To do this, we compare two workshops that focused on training cultural competencies in a gendered context in culturally complex situations. The workshops used the same cases on gender and culture. The course in the Netherlands was given mainly to young cadets whilst the course in Argentina contained a mix of experienced civilians and military students. The cases used are described later in this chapter. Teaching about culture and gender in the Netherlands and Argentina is important for more than just operational effectiveness. Given that the military in the Netherlands 1  The United Nations acknowledges the importance of gender. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) was the first to recognize the importance of gender mainstreaming and that armed conflict intensifies gender inequalities. Since then, seven resolutions have been adopted on women, peace, and security (1820, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106, 2122, 2242).

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is a peripheral institution on the margins of public life (Moelker et al. 2018) and that the Argentinean military has been essentially alienated because of its involvement in coups d’état and human rights violations (Badaró 2010, 2013; Frederic 2013), teaching cultural and gender awareness and skills to these militaries could help bridge the gap with their respective societies. Also, the United Nations requires this kind of competence, especially in regard to gender, to comply with the standards of International Humanitarian Law. In the case of Argentina, this is especially important since the teaching of human rights and women’s rights has been part of the “democratic control of the Armed Forces” along with their modernization and democratization (Diamint 2008; Masson 2010, 2015). This chapter is structured in four parts. First, we discuss the relevance of teaching culture and gender and we highlight similarities and differences between Argentina and the Netherlands, but more specifically we discuss why the Armed Forces in each country are alienated and marginal. We assume that teaching culture and gender can help bridge the gap with society. Second, in the theoretical section, we discuss cultural awareness and cultural competences, focusing on the dilemma that arises from cultural relativism. Following Bloom’s model (1956), we analytically distinguish three levels: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective, which are important for constructing different types of courses on gender and culture. In the third section, we describe the methodology used, explaining the cases used, the study’s design, and the evaluation system that measures both cultural awareness and cultural competences. Fourth, we analyze the data, focusing on two questions. The first question to be addressed relates to the efficacy of the workshop in acquiring a) cultural awareness and b) cultural competences. The second question comparatively explores the differences between the Netherlands and Argentina. In this endeavor, we try to determine the lessons learned regarding the praxis of teaching. After discussing the results of the analysis, the chapter ends with the conclusions.

The Interface Between Culture and Gender Culture and gender are connected. Gender is embedded and reproduced in relations structured by norms, values, power relationships, and societal context. Connell defines gender as: “the structure of social relations that centers on the reproductive arena, and the set of practices that bring reproductive distinctions between bodies into social processes” (Connell 2009: 11). Gender is about power relations. Scott (2010) in her critique of some of the early definitions of this notion draws attention to the lacking conceptualization of “social reality” in terms of gender. She suggests a definition based on an integral connection between two proposals: gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes and is a primary way of giving meaning to relationships of power. Gender relations, as primary forms of power relations, permeate all cultures, but are especially prominent in the military, a masculine and hierarchical institution.

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Military culture is based on gender divisions in terms of power and occupational structure as well as opportunity since it is an institution numerically dominated by males. Taking the culture and structure of the hegemonic definitions of the military combined with male ideology and hegemonic culture into consideration, the military has long been both a source of normative conceptions of gender and a space for the construction of male identity (Carreiras 2006). These characteristics substantially influence the exercise of leadership. Culture and gender structure and give meaning to human relations, but when we do not understand the code of culture and the particular code of gender relationships, these same structures lead to confusion and miscommunication. In an attempt to understand the behavior of others, we interpret the subjective meaning individuals attribute to their actions (Weber 1991: 7) and since we do (or do not) know what the others’ objectives are, we model the others’ motivations and behavior according to culturally constructed expectations. Often expected modeling takes the form of cultural and gender stereotypes, and these models are frequently skewed according to our own biased mode of thinking. Thus, cultural interactions can lead to irrational conclusions with unintended consequences. In regard to female combatants and participants in armed conflict, International Humanitarian Law establishes that protection and guarantees must be granted “to all persons without distinction.” When distinctions are made based on sex, they should be neither unfavorable nor adverse. The principle of the humane treatment of wounded, sick, shipwrecked, or imprisoned combatants when under the adversary’s power also applies to female combatants, and, in some cases, specific additional protection is granted to women. For example, the Third Geneva Convention requires women to be accommodated in dormitories separate from men and to have separate sanitary facilities. Harsher punishment or harsher treatment of female prisoners of war is also prohibited; it is common for female combatants to pay a price for challenging traditional gender stereotypes and be considered “abnormal” for killing others during the war. In a similar manner, men who refuse to adhere to the traditional role of “warrior” and do not want to fight may undergo a similar kind of treatment. Teaching culture and gender in the Armed Forces is not only related to the deployments of national armies in Peace Operations but is also linked to the relationship between the Armed Forces and society. Dandeker (2003) believes that the place of women in the military illustrates the fact that the military world continues to possess unique social and cultural characteristics that make it obviously with respect to the societies they serve or represent. In the case of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, the military is well integrated into its parent society. Following the typology introduced by Burk (2001), this idea of integration means that the American Armed Forces enjoy legitimacy and can claim sufficient recourses (money, personnel, material). For members of the Armed Forces in other countries, the situation is different. According to this typology, the Armed Forces of the Netherlands would be considered marginal to the parent society (Moelker et  al. 2018). Although the Armed Forces are seen as legitimate bearers of the monopoly on violence, this burden should not be too costly, and despite offering a competitive salary, few people are motivated to serve. Women are especially underrepresented in the Armed Forces and are not highly motivated to enlist. Moelker et al. (2018) conclude that the cul-

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ture should change to be less masculine and thus recruit more women, bridging the gap with society. In Argentina, the Armed Forces are also alienated from their parent society. Kruijt and Koonings (2002) stress that throughout the twentieth century, Latin American Armed Forces have rarely had to face external enemies in traditional wars. The battles of professional soldiers in Latin America have taken place almost exclusively in the terrain of “internal wars” or “asymmetric warfare” against adversaries, defined d by the armies themselves as “subversive”, as has been the case of guerrilla contingents or insurgent peasants. The authors call these Armed Forces “political armies”.2 In several South American countries, the Armed Forces have been led internally as a state within a state and have often been put to use against their own population. In Argentina, the violation of human rights and the forced disappearance of individuals during the last military dictatorship (1976–1983) have led to the loss of legitimacy of the Armed Forces in a large part of Argentinean society. For these historical reasons, the military is not trusted and its claim to resources is barely honored. Teaching gender and culture thus is also relevant in order to raise domestic legitimacy.

Cultural Competencies and the Review of a Previous Study Trying to improve cultural awareness is probably more fruitful than selecting members based on cultural intelligence (Ng and Earley 2006). The concept and the measurement of cultural intelligence is highly questionable. If cultural intelligence were a viable concept, people would not need cultural education, only good forms of evaluation would be necessary. For this reason, acquiring awareness seems more feasible. Training for cultural competence is only a small next step once cultural awareness is achieved (Bhagat and Prien 1996; McFarland 2005). McFarland pleads for “cultural literacy” which is essential to awareness but only a prelude to competency training. Cultural Competence Theory is based on seven cultural competences that can be worked on (Van der Zee and van Oudenhoven 2001). The seven competences are: Flexibility, Openness, Respect, Cultural Empathy, Emotional Stability, Social Initiative, and Trust. These competencies are useful in dealing with other cultures, but they are not linear. Too much of one of the competencies will be detrimental to interaction; this excess can be one’s pitfall. Too little of one of the competencies is likewise disadvantageous. It is about reaching a compromise (Ofman 2001). Let us take the example of trust: trust is positive, but too much carries the risk of naivety. In other words, trust is good, but one must also remain critical. However, when one is too critical, one often becomes suspicious and controlling. A compromise is sought in which one is trusting but not naive and critical but not suspicious or controlling. For each of the competencies it is possible to indicate how to achieve the golden mean between “too much” or “too little”.

2  According to the authors’ definition, “Political armies are military institutions that play an active and often decisive role in national politics, justifying this as a legitimate extension of their professional role.”

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In a previous study (Tweehuysen et al. 2016), we compared four training methods: classic lecture; live role-play (in this case, a Muslim actor who played the part of an indigenous local leader); use of computerized scripts, known as the “serious gaming approach”; and the combination of methods, i.e. the blended learning approach. The measurement was based on the aforementioned cultural competence theory using items that indicated the seven cultural competencies (Van der Zee and van Oudenhoven 2001). The results proved that the cultural competence, as measured in terms of the seven indices, were NOT enhanced, neither by lecture, nor by interactive live roleplaying, nor by use of the electronic application in the serious game approach, nor by the blended learning approach. However, all efforts (lecture, role-play, electronic application, and combination of methods) did further cultural awareness, increase awareness of ethical dilemmas in cultural contexts, and raise interest in questions about culture and gender in the student population as a whole. The method of teaching that proved most efficient and effective was the blended learning approach, and the best results were obtained by the combination of diverse training methods. This previous study also supported the idea that training in culture should be timely and coupled with a specific deployment. Generic training (lecture) should provide a general understanding and serve as a framework that can be elaborated in more specific tailor-made training modules that are only used when a unit prepares for mission. In tailor-made modules more specific cases can be discussed. The previous study concluded that the more contact the military makes with cultures that are not their own, the more the training should be modeled after Bloom’s (1956, 1965) didactic model that distinguishes between cognitive, psycho-motoric, and affective levels. A lecture could serve as an introduction and serious gaming as a supplement to practice psychomotor skills whereas the affective level should be addressed with blended learning which also includes role-play. When functionaries have to interact intensively with the indigenous population, they should undergo training at all the “Bloom”-levels. If contact frequency is low, only an introductory lecture is required. Of course, the results from this study served as input for the present study (Fig. 1) Intensity of contact with indigenous cultures Low Level of Learning

Cognitive

Psycho-

Medium

High

Classic Lecture

+ Virtual training

motoric Affective

+ Roleplay

Fig. 1 Bloom’s (1965) taxonomy and the intensity of contact with cultures not one’s own

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Method: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches The design of this study is based on statistics (using an evaluation survey) and on classroom observation. The design compares classroom situations in Argentina and the Netherlands. However, first, we must caution against generalization. Even the comparison itself is difficult because there is a significant difference between the samples. In this respect, the study is exploratory. Even though the total sample size of N = 100 suggests that comparisons can be made, the composition of the groups are different since the subsample for Argentina was 43 and for the Netherlands was 57 respondents. The classroom size was always a small group size of 15–20 students so as to encourage discussion and interaction between students and the instructor and among the students themselves. The sample in the Netherlands consisted mainly of young cadets with no operational experience. The Argentinean sample however consisted of a mix of experienced civilians and military students, older and wiser than the Dutch sample. Females were overrepresented in the Argentinean sample (29 females versus 14 males) while the composition in the Netherlands showed a reverse image (13 females versus 44 males). Although the lecturers presented both an introduction and the same case material, the lecturers themselves differed. The Argentinean lecturer was female whilst the Dutch was male, but both were civilians. Although both were experienced and dealt with the topics in roughly the same manner with the same feedback protocols, students respond differently to different teachers. Despite the differences between the groups the similarities go beyond age and cultural differences. Many qualitative findings are similar and comparable, and the measurements were also similar. The researchers were curious about how the groups would deal with the resistance against the topic of gender and culture, themes which tend to provoke opposition mainly due to the subjective moral dimension that also is connected to identity. The training prescribes ways of acting towards people and ways to improve one’s cultural competence. It is closely associated with moral and normative views on gender in one’s own society as well as in the recipient or host society. Nevertheless, cultural relativism (Schut and Moelker 2015) lurks around the corner because how people deal with gender relations in Afghanistan or in Colombia is different than “back home”. When in Rome, do as the Romans, but the “anything goes” mentality stretches ethics, law, and operational guidelines. The differences in the norms of other countries never provides a license for impunity. The cases used in Argentina and the Netherlands were the same and were selected from the deployments of both the Dutch and Argentinean Armed Forces.

The Afghan Case The Afghan case concerns the existence of Bacha Bazi, tea boys, or Dancing Boys in Afghanistan (Schut and Moelker 2015). In most cultures, pedophilia is taboo, so for members of the militaries of Argentina and the Netherlands, it is often unbearable

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to witness important locals like police chiefs or army commanders abusing a young boy. “Bacha Bazi” literally means “boy play”, and the term refers to young boys who dance for and provide sexual services to local strongmen and their guests. In this case, for example, a peacekeeper hears noises and discovers a boy crying. He (or she) strongly suspects that the chief of police has abused the boy. What should (s)he do? Should (s)he enter and intervene, but what happens next? Should the boy be send back to his parents? Should the authorities be informed? Should the collaboration between the police chief and the Western military be terminated? How can the chief of police be convinced that this abuse of power is unacceptable?

The Paraguayan Case In the Paraguyan case, Paraguay sends military specialists to supervise the peace agreement between the Colombian State and the FARC for the United Nations Observer Mission in Colombia. Shortly after the arrival of one of the mission’s members, a non-commissioned officer (NCO), married to a female NCO of the same force in Paraguay, gets in contact with a Colombian woman with whom he maintains a consensual relationship for much of the mission’s duration. During the mission, he lives in her home and spends time with her son and family. He promises her that he’ll leave his wife. He also promises that when the mission ends he’ll ask for dismissal and stay in Colombia. However, once the mission is over, he returns to Paraguay, breaking his promise to remain in Colombia. The Colombian woman files a complaint to the United Nations and to the Paraguayan Ministry of Defense. The arguments used against the Paraguayan NCO are deceit, lack of ethics, and improper behavior in regards to the values that should be assumed by a soldier deployed in a UN Mission. She also alleges that the affair has damaged her young son because of the affective ties developed during the relationship.

Feedback Protocols Both cases served an educational purpose and both cases were intended to promote discussion on gender and culture. The discussion was indeed lively in all classroom situations, but each case had a twist. Each had an ending that the participants could not always foresee or anticipate. This was so, not only because in cases like these not all the information is given, but also because the end of the story is purposely left open. This raises participants’ curiosity because they all want to know how the story ended in reality. This is the catch in this type of education. For the students, this is the reward they receive from the instructors and lecturers. The format of the discussion in the working groups is that of the ethical dilemma, and the first step is for students to detect the problem; the second step is to identify the stakeholders; the third step is to reflect upon and weigh alternative solutions; the fourth step is to

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investigate the legal implications; and the fifth and final step is to deliberate about whether their conscience can live with the chosen solution. Ethical discussion is the most important objective of this didactical form. Both cases are complex and blend critical cultural ethical dilemmas as gendered questions. The Bacha Bazi case is complex because, regardless of the solution chosen, the boy remains the victim. Homosexuality is illegal in Afghanistan, but since the boys are not yet adults, they are not considered to be engaging in homosexual acts. This argument does not legitimize child abuse, but there are also culturally inspired motives that point toward a certain gender regime. Relationships with females outside formal marriage are taboo, and the boys appear more attractive to warlords and officials than girls –according to the statesmen. One can force the chief of police to send the boy home, but as a result the boy is often beaten (or worse) by his parents, and the chief of police employs a new tea boy to render services. The best option is to report the incident to the authorities or gender officers so the magnitude of the problem may be known, charted, and taken into consideration for future policies. At present, there are no guidelines in the rules of engagement detailing how soldiers should respond, nor was it part of their mission-oriented training. Ethically it is tempting to put a halt to the abuse, but the higher political objective of the mission (collaboration) is hampered as a result. The deployment in Colombia highlights the dilemma of privacy versus work obligations. It is common opinion in modern liberal states that in one’s leisure time one is free to do as one pleases (even if this involves ethically dubious interactions), but no such luxury exists during a mission. Leisure time is also mission relevant. For example, the NCO leaked information to the local woman and he was punished for endangering the mission. Moreover, there are UN regulations about non-­ fraternization with recipient populations. The NCO broke those rules. Furthermore, there are ethical issues (broken promises, adultery) to consider. Also, leadership did not intervene; the commanding officer could have ordered the NCO to stay within army quarters. Last but not least, one must consider the potential damage to the peacekeepers’ image because the media would not hesitate to publish about the moral decay among foreign “interventionist” troops.

Measurements The effect of the workshops was measured by an evaluation form administered after the workshops with a cross-sectional design. The form was comprised of some basic biographical questions and typical evaluative items such as “The subject of gender in culturally complex situations and how to deal with it during deployments is: …” Participants were also asked about their preferred didactic method for the teaching of gender in culturally complex situations with the answer choices: “lecture”, “workshop”, “role play”, “computer aided scenarios”, or “blended learning

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approaches”. Beyond these “evaluation” type questions, we also asked about preferred coping style. We asked about the best way to solve complex gender problems in conflict situations. The possible answers included strictly following the rules, solving the situation according to one’s own cultural guidelines, acting according to local cultural customs and guidelines, or understanding the context of the situation and the feelings of those involved. One important question was modeled according to consequential ethics and problem-solving related to the violation of human rights: “The most important aspect in deciding whether or not to respect other cultural values linked to gender is to know whether suffering or harm to others occurred.” In order to know whether the workshops contributed to acquiring cultural competences we introduced the items “Flexibility”, “Curiosity”, “Respect”, “Empathy”, “Emotional stability”, “Trust”, and “Understanding gender issues and cultural values”. Finally, we utilized a scale for “Cultural Relativism”.

Results Observations in the Dutch Classroom The topic of “gender” in culturally complex situations was seen as useful and the workshop was considered to be a pleasant way of discussing the matter at hand. The group was young and inexperienced (most participants had entered the Military Academy right after high school); therefore, the cases proved challenging and somewhat confusing. Often, participants expressed that they wanted more information. However, a female major, who also participated, remarked that the situation of the Paraguayan NCO’s “dangerous liaisons” in Colombia was exactly the same as a situation that she experienced during deployment in former Yugoslavia. To ­experienced military members, the cases were realistic. In the Dutch sample, even though female participants were underrepresented, both males and females reacted similarly. Unexpectedly, no one was morally affronted by the Paraguayan case, but the general conclusion was that the adultery committed by the NCO was a private affair. They did recognize the moral dimension and did not agree with the NCO living off-­barracks with a local woman, but they did not think the military organization had something to say about it. When they learned of the UN’s non-fraternization rules, their opinion changed 180°. This change was apparently rule-based and not rooted in cultural understanding or an understanding of the effect gender can have during missions. The outspoken reaction of one of the male students to the Bacha Bazi case was remarkable. This participant wanted to put a decisive end to the abuse of the tea boys because –in his own words– it was totally against his own norms and values. He persisted despite acknowledging that intervening in the abuse could potentially hamper the mission’s objective at the political level. He comprehended the conflict between micro-ethics and the bigger picture.

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Observations from the Argentinean Classroom The composition of the Argentinean students was very heterogeneous. A major divide was related to the difference between civilians and military members. Five military males had already participated in peace missions. It was also a group that had attended gender classes for 5 months and had worked on different aspects of gender perspectives (political, socio-cultural, legal). However, while debating the cases, except for the military members who had previously participated in peace missions, the reactions were similar to those of the Dutch participants. The soldiers who had previously participated in peace missions responded according to the guidelines of the United Nations, and there was an interesting debate with younger soldiers and civilians who defended positions closer to their own moral values both in the Bacha Bazi and Colombian cases. In the case of Bacha Bazi, a military lawyer in her 30s said she would do her best to put an end to the abuse; otherwise, she would be unable to return home and look her children in the eye. In the Colombian case, she also emphasized a moral dimension since she considered that part of the responsibility lay with the Colombian woman for engaging in a relationship with a married man. Other students, for the most part, had difficulty proposing solutions in the case of Bacha Bazi, with the exception of military members with prior experience in peace missions. Regarding the Colombian case, there were disagreements among those who had experience in deployments in peace missions. Some agreed that the NCO’s attitude was a mistake and that he should be repatriated for having fraternized with the local population. Others were familiar with the regulations of the United Nations, though they considered that these rules were not always followed, and they deemed that the mistake of fraternization was not serious in this case. In other words, they knew the rules and put them into perspective according to their own cultural and gender values. Civilian men and women oscillated between the view that it was a matter of private life and that it was a form of “abuse”. It is abuse in the sense that the uniform and the status as a soldier belonging to a United Nations mission gave the NCO a position of power that he used for personal gain. Some also considered that it was not a private matter because the NCO was in Colombia to represent his country and not for personal reasons.

 valuative Questions: Teaching Gendered Dilemmas E in Culturally Complex Situations In general, participants consider that the subject of gender in culturally complex situations is important (Table 1). It is interesting that the Argentinean participants judge the subject to be more important than the Dutch. The differences between the

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Table 1  ‘The importance of gender during deployments is …’ By sex, by country. In percentages Sex Country Not important Slightly important Important Very important Total % Total N

Male NL 5 18 64 14 100 44

Arg 0 0 31 69 100 13

Tot 4 14 56 26 100 57∗

Female NL Arg

Tot

15 54 31 100 13

5 32 63 100 41∗

0 21 79 100 28

Total NL 4 18 61 18 100 57

Arg 0 0 24 76 100 41

Tot 2 10 46 42 100 98∗

∗ The grand total does not always sum up to 100 because of system missings or figures being rounded. The asterisk means that the probability for the chi square value is smaller than .05

Fig. 2  The importance of gender in cultural complex situations. By sex

countries are very significant. When only looking at the bilateral relation between this item and sex, sex is also significant. Figure 2 illustrates the difference. Both sexes, regardless of nationality, believe that the subject is important, but females more frequently consider it “very important”.

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Table 2  ‘Because of this training I better understand gender issues and cultural values.’ By sex, by country. In percentages Sex Country Disagree Important Agree Total % Total N ∗

Male NL 11 25 64 100 44

Arg 7 7 86 100 14

Tot 10 21 69 100 58∗

Female NL Arg 15 0 8 7 77 93 100 100 13 29

Tot 5 7 88 100 42∗

Total NL 12 21 67 100 57

Arg 2 7 91 100 43

Tot 8 15 77 100 100∗

The asterisk means that the probability for the chi square value is smaller than .05

However, the difference between males and females becomes smaller when maintaining nationality constant.3 In each country, males and females tend to sustain the same opinion. When we look closer at the Argentinean data, we find that the military participants consider gender to be more important in culturally complex situations than the civilians. It is possible that the more experienced participants, those who have been abroad on mission, are more convinced of the importance of gender and culture because they have been in similar situations or can more easily imagine being in similar situations. So, it is probable that though the countries are different, the difference in the degree of experience (as previously mentioned: the Dutch come straight from High School) is more significant. This thought is in line with the finding that 69% of people who are 26 years or older in this study think the subject of gender in culturally complex situations is very important. The relationship with age is highly significant. The majority of the participants in both countries agreed with the statement that they better understand gender issues and culture because of the training. In total, 67% of the Dutch agreed with the statement and 91% of the Argentineans. Females agreed with the statement more than men. Closely connected to the item above, the Argentineans had two more questions (not included on the Dutch evaluation), and the results are consistent with the results from Table 2. The Argentineans responded to the statement, “Since the course, my confidence in resolving specific cultural situations involving gender has increased.” 86% of all respondents agreed with this assertion. Females and males did not differ in opinion but the agreement was 100% among the civilians in the group whereas only 80% of military members agreed. Among both Argentinean civilians and military, 67% agreed regarding the following affirmation: “I believe that this training would not have helped me understand specific cultural situations that involved gender if I had not taken courses previously.” This suggests that the longer gender and cultural curriculum for the Argentinean students may also have influenced their more positive responses to the effect of the workshops. Prior to the workshop,

3  Indeed, in regression analysis “sex” is no longer significant because “nationality” explains the variation in the dependent variable.

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Table 3  ‘The best way to gain gender awareness in culture lessons can probably be achieved.’ In percentages

By a lecture By a workshop By role play By computer aided scenarios By a combination of the above educational tools Total % Total N ∗

Nationality NL 7 26 4 7 56 100 57

Arg 5 10 24 2 59 100 41

Tot 6 19 12 5 57 100 98∗

The asterisk means that the probability for the chi square value is smaller than .05

Argentine students had received gender classes from university professors, NGOs, lawyers and judges, and government agencies. They had a more solid conceptual background, practical tools and concrete examples of complex situations involving gender, which allowed them to better interpret the cases. In regard to the inquiry about the best possible educational format for teaching gender awareness, the results are straightforward. While there are significant differences in sex and nationality, these factors do not influence the main finding that the majority prefers a combination of educational tools. Close to 60% in both countries believe that several didactic approaches are needed in order to achieve the educational objective. The Argentineans prefer role-play whereas the Dutch would like a workshop. However, the best way to increase awareness is with a mix of educational tools (Table 3).

 trategies for Dealing with Gender in Culturally S Complex Situations Participants perceive two strategies that stand out in order to solve complex gender problems in conflict situations and these are “to apply the rules strictly” and “to try to understand the context of the situation and the feelings of those involved”. Female participants in Argentina preferred strict adherence to the rules (71% versus 50% of males) whereas the female Dutch participants were the most ardent advocates of trying to understand the context of the situation and the feelings of those involved (92% versus 58% of males) (Table 4). Again, experience might be an explanation for this difference. The Argentinean sample consisted of a mix of civilian and military participants, but all of them had more life experience. We mentioned that one of the more difficult things about culture is cultural relativism. In other words, if one observes a case of abuse related to gender issues, it is tempting to use the “culture argument” as an easy escape from moral and legal responsibility. For example, when it is culturally acceptable or a custom to have sex

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Table 4  ‘The best way to solve complex gender problems in conflict situations is to…’ By sex. In percentages Sex Apply the rules strictly Resolve the situation according to my cultural guidelines Resolve the situation according to the cultural patterns of the place Try to understand the context of the situation and the feelings of those involved Other Total % Total N

Male Female NL Arg Tot NL Arg Tot 7 50 18 0 71 49 2 0 2

Total NL Arg Tot 5 64 31 2 0 1

23

14

21

8

4

5

20

7

14

58

14

47

92

11

37

66

12

43

9 21 12 0 14 10 7 17 11 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 43 14 57∗ 13 28 41∗ 56 42 98∗

∗

The asterisk means that the probability for the chi square value is smaller than .05

Table 5  ‘When I am confronted with puzzling situations where gender is involved that are against my moral norms …’ By sex, by country. In percentages Sex Country I will not act, because it is their culture and they do it their way I will try to explain that there are other solutions for gender problems in cultural settings I will put an end to abuse and norm violating behavior Total % Total N

Male Female Total NL Arg Tot NL Arg Tot NL Arg Tot 17 21 18 0 21 15 13 21 17 49

50

49

92

57

68

59

55

57

34

29

33

8

21

17

28

24

26

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 41 14 55 13 28 41 54 42 96

with underage girls or boys, then the custom legitimizes the abuse, and soldiers from foreign countries might consider it better not to intervene. However, the dilemma remains. The abuse remains. The weakest party remains victimized. Sometimes intervention is beyond the mission’s objectives, but what can be done? Should one allow the abuse to continue? Soldiers are sometimes seriously troubled by these dilemmas and their conscience haunts them. Occasionally, this is a cause for moral injury. The numbers in Table 5 indicate that respondents were divided on this question. About one-fifth to one-third of the participants really desired to end the abuse and the norm-violating behavior. In discussions, they were very much aware that this might even be detrimental to the higher political objectives of a mission. Those who took this stance were often morally appalled by the cases under discussion. They were experiencing culture shock even within the safety of the classroom walls. The majority of participants opted for diplomatic action and to try

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to find alternatives, point to other solutions, or discuss ethics with the locals to ­contribute to awareness. Between one-tenth and one-fifth would not act because “it is their culture”. This type of cultural relativism is sometimes very close to false respect for culture, but the dilemma is that one does not always have the means to intervene and intervention is sometimes hard or even impossible.

Comparing Cultural Competencies Regarding cultural competencies (flexibility, curiosity, respect, empathy, stability, intervene and trust), two questions are relevant. The first is whether the workshops have improved these competencies and whether participants think that they have acquired more of the desired competencies. The second is whether there are differences in the groups under study. The first question is relevant because one needs to know whether the course is effective. The second question is relevant because courses like these need constant improvement. This appears to be an open door, but we have observed in ethics training during mission oriented training that training can sometimes have an adverse effect (Schut and Moelker 2015). For example, training for cultural awareness at the “wrong” time made people more suspicious and cynical toward indigenous populations and sometimes even strengthened stereotyping. Sometimes training affirms stereotypes because people are selective listeners and seek confirmation of what they had always suspected, in these situations a flawed impression is only strengthened. Flexibility is considered a cultural competence because people need to be able to adapt to changing situations or surprising environments. Many participants reported that they expect to act with more tolerance after the workshop (NL: 37% / ARG 67%). The Dutch reported less change (NL 61% versus ARG 28%) in tolerance. The self-reported impact of the workshop on the Argentinean participants thus is much larger (Table 6). In the original literature (Van der Zee and van Oudenhoven 2001), openness is discussed. Here we made this competence curiosity, which covers the intention even better. People can be culturally illiterate, but if they are curious, they are willing to start learning. The majority (over 50%) of the participants were very curious and were stimulated by the workshop to learn more about gender and culture. The Argentineans (88%) were even more curious than the Dutch (58%). When lecturing on gender and culture some of the “resistance” is vocalized the loudest. For an inexperienced professor, this can cause trouble, especially when one pays too much attention to the “protester”. When asking to what extent the workshop changed the competence of “respect”, we were also able to quantify the resistance. When the course is well managed, the percentage of people stating “I don’t have to change” is very low. Thus, hard core resistance is low. The percentages that reported no change in respect due to the workshop were respectively 64% and 37% for the Netherlands and Argentina. However, 23% and 51% noted (significantly) that “after the workshop, my respect for the other cultural values is higher.”

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Table 6  Cultural competences by sex. In percentages Cultural competences Flexibility

Curiosity

Respect

Empathy

Stability

Sex →

Male

Nationality → After the lecture/workshop I think I am less tolerant, less flexible in dealing with gendered cultural situations The lecture/workshop did not change my tolerance / flexibility After the lecture/workshop I think I will react with more tolerance I do not want to know more about cultural values and gender after this training. This was enough. The lecture/workshop did not change my curiosity I want to know more about culture and gender after this introduction in cultural value and gender Other cultural values are fine, just as long I am not affected and I don’t have to change The lecture/workshop did not change the respect I have for other cultural values After the workshop my respect for the other cultural values is higher After the workshop I like the way other cultures or other groups deal with gender less than I did before The workshop did not change my feelings toward the way gender is dealt with in other cultures After the lecture/workshop I am better able to see culture and gender through the eyes of the other cultures After the lecture/workshop I think I am less able to remain calm in complex gendered situations

NL Arg Tot NL Arg Tot NL Arg Tot 2 0 2 0 7 5 2 5 3

Female

Total

64

36

57

54

24

33

61

28

47

34

64

41

46

69

62

37

67

50∗

5

0

3

8

0

2

5

0

3

43

36

41

15

0

5

37

12

26

52

64

55

77

100 93∗ 58

88

71∗

12

0

9

15

17

17

13

12

12

67

57

65

54

28

36

64

37

53

21

43

26

31

55

48

23

51

35∗

11

14

12

8

28

21

11

23

16

55

21

47

38

17

24

51

19

37

34

64

41

54

55

55

39

58

47∗

7

7

7

0

7

5

5

7

6

(continued)

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Table 6 (continued) Cultural competences

Trust

Total % Total N

Sex →

Male

Nationality → The workshop did not change my ability to remain calm in complex gendered situations After the workshop I think I will in the future be more calm in complex gendered situations Through this workshop my trust in people with other cultural values has increased. … disagree Not disagree/not agree Agree

NL Arg Tot NL Arg Tot NL Arg Tot 52 43 50 62 38 45 54 40 48

Female

Total

41

50

43

38

55

50

40

53

46

21

14

19

23

24

24

21

21

21

51 28 100 44

50 36 100 14

51 30 100 58

54 23 100 13

45 31 100 29

48 29 100 42

52 27 100 56

47 33 100 44

49 29 100 100

∗ In some of the sub tables the N was a little bit lower because sometimes there were one or two system missings. For sake of overview and brevity we took the liberty of not reporting those missing. This explains why sometimes columns do not add up to 100. The asterisk means that the probability for the chi square value is smaller than .05

Regarding “empathy” we notice the same pattern as with the other cultural competencies described above with the difference that Dutch female participants now almost equaled (54% versus 55%) the Argentinean participants. This indicates that, after the workshop, Dutch and Argentinean females are better able to see culture and gender through the eyes of the other cultures. Dutch males, however, claimed that they did not change the way they felt about other cultures, whereas Argentinean males did. Emotional stability is an important cultural competence, because when experiencing culture shock, or while confronted with things one does not understand, one can easily panic and be unnerved. Of course, this would harm the mission. For this reason, it is important to remain calm and stable even when the situation appears to be unclear or incomprehensible. The findings from the evaluation of this competence show the least differences between the Dutch and the Argentineans. No significant differences were found. Moreover, a percentage between 40 and 55 reported that, after the workshop, “I think I will be more calm in culturally new situations where gender is at stake.” So, generally, many participants agreed that they gained emotional stability because of the workshop. Regarding “trust” there were no significant differences between nations or between the sexes. Twenty-one percent did not agree with the statement “Through this workshop my trust in people with other cultural values has increased,” 49% did not disagree or agree, and 29% did agree with the statement.

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Conclusion In this study, we compared the effect of workshops on culture and gender in military students from the Netherlands and Argentinean military and civilian students. We decided to compare these countries because, in both cases, the Armed Forces are peripheral or alienated from their parent societies. We consider that teaching culture and gender can somewhat help to change the image of the Armed Forces and close the civil-military gap. For all participants, the objective of enhancing cultural awareness was realized. For the Argentinean participants, we can cautiously conclude that cultural competences were acquired, while in contradistinction the students from the Netherlands did not acquire those. The data suggest that the best teaching practice is to use more than one didactic model. A lecture combined with role-play or with a workshop works better than using only one of these methods. In the comparative study, we found that only the Argentinean students realized the attitude level of educational objectives from Bloom’s typology. This was possible because the Argentinean participants had taken a 5-month course and attended weekly 4-hour long classes. The workshop was only one part of this course. In the Netherlands, the workshop was part of a course in Leadership and Ethics and while cognitive and psychomotor levels in the Bloom taxonomy were reached, affective effects were not. In order to reach the affective level (if that is the objective of the course), a workshop on gender and culture should thus be embedded in a specialist course devoted to gender and/or culture. In a dedicated course the subject matter is more coherent, the message is repeated in accordance with didactic purposes, leading to enduring effects at the affective level. Another finding from this study was that age and experience influence receptiveness to culture and gender training. The Argentinean students were older and more experienced and thus were able to better connect the cases with personal experiences. Interestingly, the older students are more inclined to “rule based ethics” whilst younger ones prefer “virtue ethics”. The former type of ethics is more prudent, whilst the latter is more individualistic. The former type of ethics implies that it is safer to stick to the rules, while the latter points the finger to individual deviations in moral standards. The risk with virtue ethics is that individual morality is blamed and that this kind of blaming the individual draws attention away from breaches in regulation. A healthy balance is required. To achieve changes in attitude, it would help to have a mixture of more mature and experienced participants with younger students, because the older ones can relate to personal experience and “teach” the younger ones about that. These findings agree with Holmes-Eber et al. (2016) who found that age and experience were significantly related to positive attitudes regarding culture and culture training. Whilst this study stresses the importance of culture and gender in training, the study also identifies flaws in curricula for acquiring cultural competences and attitude formation. Curricula that are adapted to this objective should be supported by monitor studies in order to improve the content of curricula piecemeal. Moreover,

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more studies in competences and attitude are necessary. The non-linear nature of cultural competences forms a challenge for future research. Better understanding this non-linear nature is where social science and pedagogy can advance. The cultural and historical context is also relevant, and we suggest the hypothesis that there are some similarities in the peripheral role of the armed forces that can and should be explored in the future. This refers, for example, to the gender policies of respective countries and/or differences in imagery regarding masculinity. This proposed research can help future teaching in culture and gender.

References Badaró, M. (2010). Militares o ciudadanos. La formación de los oficiales del Ejército Argentino. Prometeo: Buenos Aires. Badaró, M. (2013). Historias del Ejército argentino. 1990–2010: democracia, política y sociedad. Buenos Aires: Edhasa. Bhagat, R., & Prien, K. O. (1996). Cross-cultural training in organizational context. In D. Landis & R. S. Bhagat (Eds.), Handbook of intercultural training (2nd ed., pp. 216–230). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Bloom, T. M. E. (1965). Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman. Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. In The classification of educational goals. New York: David McKay Company. Burk, J. (2001). Theories of democratic civil-military relations. Armed Forces & Society, 29(1), 7–29. Carreiras, H. (2006). Gender and the Military. Women in the armed forces of western democracies. New York: Routledge. Connell, R. W. (2009). Gender: In world perspective. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Dandeker, C. (2003). Femmes combattantes: problèmes et perspectives de l’intégration des femmes dans l’armée britannique. Revue française Sociology, 44(4), 735–758. Diamint, R. (2008). La historia sin fin: el control civil de los militares en Argentina. Nueva Sociedad, 213(enero-febrero), 95–111. Frederic, S. (2013). Las trampas del pasado: las Fuerzas Armadas y su integración al Estado democrático en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Holmes-Eber, P., Tarzi, E., & Maki, B. (2016). U.S. marines’ attitudes regarding cross-cultural capabilities in military operations: A research note. Armed Forces & Society, 42(4), 741–751. Kruijt, D., & Koonings, K. (2002). Fuerzas Armadas y política en América Latina: perspectivas futuras. Iberoamericana II, 8, 7–22. Masson, L. (2010). La transformación del rol de las mujeres en las Fuerzas Armadas Argentinas: hacia la construcción de un espacio mixto. Security and Defense Studies Review. Interdisciplinary Journal of de Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 11(4), 43–56. Masson, L. (2015). Saberes académicos, experiencias y militancias. Buenas prácticas en políticas públicas con perspectiva de género. Equidad de Género y Defensa: una política en marcha, 9(marzo), 33–40. McFarland, M. (2005). Military cultural education. Military Review, 85(2), 62–69. Ministry of Defence of Argentina. (2019). Personal correspondence. Ministry of Defense. (2019). Het verhaal van Defensie. https://www.defensie.nl/overdefensie/ feiten-en-cijfers. Accessed 7 Oct 2019 Moelker, R., Op den Buijs, T., Van Doorn, E., & van den Langenberg, K. (2018). Vissen in een diepere vijver. Breda: NLDA.

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Ng, K., & Earley, P. C. (2006). Culture and intelligence: Old constructs, new frontiers. Group & Organization Management, 31(1), 4–19. Ofman, D. (2001). Core qualities: A gateway to human resources. Schiedam: Scriptum Management. Salmoni, B., & Holmes-Eber, P. (2011). Operational culture for the warfighter: Principles and applications (2nd ed.). Quantico: Marine Corps University Press. Schut, M., & Moelker, R. (2015). Respectful agents, between the Scylla and Charybdis of cultural and moral incapacity. Journal of Military Ethics, 14(3–4), 232–246. Scott, J. W. (2010). Gender: Still a useful category of analysis? Diogenes 225, 57, 7–14. Tweehuysen, J., Moelker, R., Bosse, T., Beek, P., van der Cuijten, E., & Roosendaal, L. (2016). Cultura Een onderzoek naar de effectiviteit van serious gaming bij de verwerving van cultural awareness en culturele competenties in onderwijssituaties. Breda: Netherlands Defense Academy. United Nations Security Council. (2000). Resolution 1325 S/RES/1325. New York: United Nations. Available from http://undocs.org/S/RES/1325(2000. Van der Zee, K., & van Oudenhoven, J.  P. (2001). The multicultural personality questionaire: Reliability and validity of self- and other ratings of multicultural effectiveness. Journal of Research in Personality, 35(3), 278–288. Weber, M. (1991). The nature of social action. In W.  G. Runciman (Ed.), Weber: Selections in translation (pp. 7–32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laura Masson  is a professor at the National University of San Martín and the National Defense University, Argentina, and a member of the Gender Policy Council of the Argentinean Ministry of Defense. She holds a Doctorate (2007) and Master’s degree (1999) in Social Anthropology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (FURJ), Brazil. She is the author of Politics in Female: Gender and power in the province of Buenos Aires (Ed. Antropofagia) and Feminists Everywhere: An ethnography of spaces and feminist narratives in Argentina (Prometeo). She was advisor to the Undersecretary for Education, Ministry of Defense, Argentina. René Moelker  is an associate professor of sociology at the Netherlands Defense Academy. He holds a Doctorate from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. His work in military sociology concentrates on the sociology of military families, military technology, military profession, the military sociology of Norbert Elias, military education, the conflict in Chechnya, and the media. His latest project focuses on veterans and veteran care. His latest (edited) book (with Andres and Rones) is titled Politics of Military Families (2019, Routledge).

Part III

Organizational Change: When Military Culture Meets Cultural Competence

Anthropology in the Bunker: Teaching Transcultural War at the US Naval War College Montgomery McFate

Abstract  The military’s interest in anthropology follows predictable cycles in the US: anthropology holds interest when the military must fight land wars against adversaries from a different culture. In off-cycles, anthropology reverts back to the special operations community and survives as an academic subject in the world of professional military education (PME). In the US, PME institutions exist as a kind of reservoir for the concept of culture and for the discipline of anthropology. PME institutions keep the concept of culture alive within the military domain by retaining a smattering of anthropology in their curriculum. Under these conditions, a professor teaching anthropology to military personnel must focus on anthropology’s professional relevance, offering insights that might be applied to operational problems. This chapter describes my haphazard journey in developing an anthropology course for senior military personnel. I describe some of epistemological benefits offered by an anthropological approach (e.g., ‘ground up’ perspective, de-naturalization of taken-for-granted cultural norms, and subjective thinking), and my discovery of the limitations of anthropology and military history for theorizing about transcultural war. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the central question that emerged from the course: What happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force? Keywords  Military · Anthropology · Transcultural war · Professional military education · US Navy

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the US Navy or the US Department of Defense. M. McFate (*) US Naval War College, Newport, RI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_11

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United States Navy and United States Naval War College U.S. population 327 million U.S. Active Duty military service members Army 470,500; Navy 333,000 Air Force 327,800; Marine Corps 186,100 Total (excluding Coast Guard): 1,317,600 or .4% of U.S. population (Defense Manpower Data Center 2019). U.S. Navy Founded in 1775, the U.S. Navy is the largest in the world. The Navy has 289 deployable combat vessels and approximately 3700 operational aircraft. The Navy’s vessels include aircraft carriers, amphibious warfare vessels, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, patrol boats, and littoral combat ships. The U.S. Navy is an all-volunteer service composed of 54,184 officers (16%) and 274,146 (84%) enlisted Sailors. Women may serve in all Military Occupational Specialties. Currently 19% (64,920) of US Navy personnel are female (ibid.). Location and nature of recent operations The US Navy has a global presence, and is deployed in the Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. With the capacity to project force worldwide, respond rapidly to regional crises and engage in peacetime missions, the US Navy frequently engages in both military and statecraft activities. US Naval War College was founded 1884 in Rhode Island, USA. The US Naval War College graduates about 600 in-residence students per year, and includes personnel from all the US military services, US government civilians, and international military students. Students are divided between the senior course (O-5 and above) and the junior course (O-3 and above), and those graduating the senior course earn a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies. The curriculum includes joint maritime operations, strategy and policy, and national security affairs. Students also take a variety of electives and ethics & leadership. Instructors The US Naval War College has a total of 330 faculty members, comprised of both active and retired military officers, governmental officials and civilians. In 2006, Major General Robert Scales referred to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as “the social scientists’ war.” Scales (2006) argued that “to win World War IV, the military must be culturally knowledgeable enough to thrive in an alien environment. Victory will be defined more in terms of capturing the psycho-­cultural rather than the geographical high ground.” During this brief moment during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, anthropology was viewed by many in the Pentagon as a ‘silver bullet’ for improving Coalition counterinsurgency efforts. The US Marine Corps Intelligence Activity was established at Quantico to provide sociocultural

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information to Marines. The US Army established the Human Terrain System which deployed mixed social scientist and military teams to every brigade, division and corps in theater to conduct research on the local communities. Even the Air Force (who arguably encounter few people at 30,000  feet) established a Culture and Language Center. With the drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, that moment has ended, and anthropology currently appears to have limited relevance to the US military. This chapter argues that the military’s interest in anthropology follows predictable cycles in the US: anthropology holds interest when the military must fight land wars against adversaries from a different culture. In off-cycles, anthropology reverts back to the special operations community and survives as an academic subject in the world of professional military education (PME). In the US, PME institutions exist as a kind of reservoir for the concept of culture and for the discipline of anthropology. PME institutions keep the concept of culture alive within the military domain by retaining a smattering of anthropology in their curriculum. Under these conditions, a professor teaching anthropology to military personnel must focus on anthropology’s professional relevance for military officers, offering some insights that might be applied to operational problems. This chapter describes my haphazard journey in developing an anthropology course for senior military personnel. I describe some of epistemological benefits offered by an anthropological approach (e.g., ‘ground up’ perspective, de-naturalization of taken-for-granted cultural norms, and subjective thinking), and my discovery of the limitations of anthropology and military history for theorizing about transcultural war. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the central question that eventually emerged from the course and some of its possible answers: What happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force?

An Irrelevant Discipline On what grounds might we conclude that anthropology is irrelevant to the US military? Evidence for this proposition can be found by looking at professional military education institutions, which provide master’s level education to the US military. Currently, there is one PhD anthropologist at the US Naval War College (out of a total of 330) (USNWC 2018); one anthropologist at Joint Special Operations University (out of a total of 203) (JSOU 2018); none at the US Army War College (out of a total of 190) (USAWC 2018); two at Naval Postgraduate School (out of a total of 666) (NPS 2018); one at National Defense University (out of a total of 300) (NDU 2019); none at the Air War College (out of a total of 90) (AWC 2019); one at the Marine Corps War College (out of a total of 23 total) (MCU 2019). Out of the total faculty members at all the advanced professional military education (PME) institutions in the US, only .33% are anthropologists. The vast majority of teaching faculty in US PME institutions (including the US Naval War College) are political scientists, followed by military historians.

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The question naturally arises: why are there so few anthropologists teaching in US PME institutions? One of the reasons is that anthropologists have little interest in teaching in a military institution because of perceived ethical conflicts. Moreover, the set curriculum (in which all classes offer the same basic readings and lectures) tends to discourage free-spirited faculty who prefer to design their own syllabus and teach according to their preferred methods. In the core curriculum, students take three blocks: ‘strategy & policy,’ which covers a different war every week; a block of ‘national security affairs,’ which covers how decisions are made in Washington DC; and a block of ‘joint maritime operations,’ which covers how the US Navy achieves its missions. There is not much flexibility to change the curriculum, which is designed by faculty committees and jealously guarded by senior faculty. At the US Naval War College, attempts to recruit and retain anthropologists on faculty has not been successful. When I asked a department chair what happened to a prior PhD anthropologist on faculty, I was told, “he didn’t adjust well and decided to leave for civilian academia.” While it may be understandable that anthropologists would not want to teach in a PME institution, it is somewhat harder to understand why no anthropologists are represented in the assigned reading across three departments at the US Naval War College. Further evidence for the current irrelevance of the disciple can be found in the official guidance of the US Department of Defense. Every few years, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issues the so-called Officer Professional Military Education Policy (OPMEP) guidance, which tells the various PME institutions what they are required to include in their curriculum. In 2009 – when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height – the OPMEP required that newly commissioned officers, for example, “know the operational definition of culture; describe the relevance of regional and cultural knowledge for operational planning; and explain the relationship and importance of knowing one’s own culture and another’s and the impacts on human interactions, behaviors, and mission accomplishment” (2009, p. E-B-2). The most recent OPMEP (2015) minimizes the comparative importance of culture and focuses more deeply on joint operating concepts and strategic leadership. At the operational level, anthropology is no longer being applied to military problems. Operational programs such as the US Army’s Human Terrain System (which employed anthropologists and other social scientists to conduct research in support of Coalition efforts) have been mothballed. Along with Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and Counterinsurgency Advise and Assist Teams (CAAT teams), HTS was seen by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a “Joint Stability Operations Capability” that had limited utility after the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in 2011 (McHugh 2013). Although Coalition forces remained in Afghanistan, the Obama administration’s strategy eschewed “nation building” and stabilization in favor of “disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan” (Obama 2010). After 2011, emphasis was placed on lethal

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operations against specific targets, particularly the use of drones, and provision of military training to Afghan forces. An understanding of the culture and society of Afghanistan became less relevant as US operations became more lethal.

Cycles of Disregard Anthropology may be currently irrelevant from the perspective of US PME institutions (and more broadly from the perspective of the US Department of Defense), but that has not always been the case. Historically, the US military’s (and more broadly, the US government’s) interest in anthropology tends to follow predictable cycles. During the “frontier period” of the United States, the Bureau of Ethnology was established in 1879 as a repository of materials related to Native Americans and US Army Major John Wesley Powell (1834–1902) became its first director. During the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), the US government established the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes in 1901 to study the culture and political organization of remote inhabitants in order to govern them more effectively (McFate 2018, p. 325). After the frontier closed and the Philippines became increasingly self-governing, anthropology fell into governmental disregard. The discipline, however, came to the attention of the US again in the early 1940s when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) took an interest in enemy morale, propaganda and the social structure of other societies. After a couple of decades of disinterest, the Vietnam War brought anthropology back to the attention of the US military. Anthropologists were called upon to explain the social organization of rural Vietnam, the Cao Dai religion, and the negative consequences of strategic bombing, among other topics (McFate 2018, p. 3). The US military forgot anthropology for about 30 years, but then when the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan proved difficult to manage the Pentagon again began to take an interest in the discipline. In November 2005, the Secretary of Defense issued Defense Department Directive 3000.05 Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations. Directive 3000.05 also directly established a requirement for socio-cultural knowledge, mandating that the Commanders of the Geographic Combatant Commands include information “on key ethnic, cultural, religious, tribal, economic and political relationships…” as a component of their intelligence campaign planning. Needless to say, this focus on social structure, culture and local politics represented an enormous shift for a military that had been focused squarely on fighting peer competitor enemies during the Cold War. From this brief history, one might conclude that the US military finds anthropology of interest when it must fight land wars against adversaries from a different culture, in close proximity to a civilian population (such as in counterinsurgency, stability operations and unconventional warfare) and where failure appears imminent.

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The US withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011 and is currently removing troops from Afghanistan as well. The current focus in the Department of Defense is “great power competition,” which is another way of saying peer competitor adversaries. According to the 2017 National Security Strategy: after being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned. China and Russia began to reassert their influence regionally and globally. Today, they are fielding military capabilities designed to deny America access in times of crisis and to contest our ability to operate freely in critical commercial zones during peacetime. In short, they are contesting our geopolitical advantages and trying to change the international order in their favor (White House 2017, p. 27).

The question occupying the minds of strategists in the Beltway is: what weapons, force structure and strategy is needed to fight these types of wars? The answer includes offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, ‘multi-domain operations,’ weapons of mass destruction, and so on (Judson 2018). Anthropology is not on the list. In off-cycles, anthropology reverts back to the special operations community, whose missions tend to take place by-with-and-through the civilian population. Around 2012 as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended and operational programs were mothballed, advocates inside the Pentagon began to articulate the emergent concept of the ‘human domain’ in order to provide a potential mechanism to institutionalize some of the hard-won lessons and hard-fought bureaucratic battles of waging counterinsurgency. An article by Frank Hoffman and Michael C.  Davies (2013) characterized the ‘human domain’ as a new domain of war, in addition to air, sea, space, land and cyber. Hoffman and Davies argue that it ought to be included “both conceptually and as a framework for investment” in the Quadrennial Defense Review and as a new concept in Joint Force 2020, to ensure that “historical, behavioral and social science research is recognized and resourced.” However, nobody could define what ‘human domain’ meant exactly. “What we’re working to avoid is getting trapped into a title,” said Colonel Robert Simpson of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). More essential is “to make sure that we get into our doctrine, into our thinking in terms of the joint force and policymakers, that the purpose of any military operation is to affect human behavior” (Freedberg 2012). The US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) picked up the ‘human domain’ concept and now has primary ownership. In 2015, General Joseph Votel signed Operating in the Human Domain on behalf of US Special Operations Command. The objective of the concept, according to SOCOM, is to produce forces who are skilled at “understanding the social, cultural, physical, informational, and psychological elements influencing actors in the operating environment and capable of shaping human decision-making and behavior to create desired effects” (USSOCOM 2015, p.  1). Understanding the people in the theater is critical because “military ­history and experience have repeatedly shown that unfamiliarity with the local culture and society can result in a failure to anticipate challenges and an inability to accomplish national objectives” (USSOCOM 2015, p. 7).

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Anthropology in the Bunker Anthropology lives on in SOCOM’s concept of the ‘human domain’ and also in a limited fashion in US PME institutions. Anthropology’s continued presence in US war colleges and staff colleges is critical for preserving lessons learned for operating with local communities during military operations. Although one hopes for peace, these lessons must be preserved in order to prepare the US military for the next conflict where this type of competence will be required. Since all the operational programs inside the US military have been mothballed, the DOD has lost much of the corporate knowledge amassed by these programs over a decade of war. The only remaining reservoir for this type of cultural knowledge is PME. A few anthropologists (like myself) transitioned from working in the ‘field’ to working in the ivory tower. For the past 8 years I have been a professor at the Naval War College, which educates military personnel and government civilians in strategy, policy, and history. My work no longer involves applied military anthropology in war zones, but rather conventional research and scholarship conducted at a desk. While I work in a research department that primarily produces strategic and operational research for the Navy, I also teach an elective once a year to the military and government civilian students enrolled at the Naval War College. (For more information regarding the Naval War College, please see the text box.) Anthropologists (like myself) who work in US military academies and war colleges keep the discipline alive in the military domain. Doing so successfully depends on how it is taught. The appropriate pedagogy for teaching anthropology depends first and foremost on the characteristics of the students to whom it is being taught. At the US Naval War College, the students range in rank from major through colonel and include all branches of the military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard). Federal agencies such as DIA, CIA, and the US Department of State are also represented, along with a smattering of international students. All of the students have deep professional experience (ranging from drug interdiction in South America, to infantry operations in Afghanistan, to diplomatic postings in Pakistan, to counterpiracy naval operations in South Africa). Most of the students have had multiple, back-to-back deployments with little opportunity to think and reflect on their personal and professional experiences. Most of the students come to the NWC with at least one advanced degree, which is often in engineering, business, or other fields pertinent to the military. They are generally accustomed to digesting large amounts of complex material. Their off-duty reading is mostly limited to professional publications, and often tends to be highly technical. Over the course of 8 years, I conducted a variety of pedagogical experiments on my students in order to determine how best to teach the anthropology of war. One year, I spent time discussing the Hobbes/Rousseau debate, which represents an on-­ going topic of interest for anthropologists who study war (Fry 2007; Keeley 1997; Le Blanc 2004). The core questions asked by anthropologists are: Is the nature of mankind violent strife or peaceful cooperation? Is violent conflict between human

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groups inevitable? My military students had no doubt that Rousseau was dead wrong: in their collective experience, human beings are naturally violent and life in most places is, in the words of Hobbes, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In another class, I focused on cultural materialism, a school of thought that assumes that most cultural practices can be explained by the material conditions in which people live, such as level of technology, demographic facts, and ecological systems (Harris 2001). My students scoffed at the idea that people go to war to obtain pigs to increase their protein consumption (Meggers 1971; Harris 1971; Gross 1975). In their view, even tribesmen in New Guinea were fundamentally Clausewitzian, and fought not for pigs but for politics. Another year, I assigned articles about the military written by anthropologists, with the hope that my students might better understand their own organizational culture. Unfortunately, I discovered that most anthropologists who write about the military have not been immersed deeply enough in the culture to understand it fully, or their biases prevent them from viewing the subject objectively. One assigned article argued that soldiers use the term “Indian Country”  – common during the frontier and also during the war in Iraq – because they feel historical, cultural, and national kinship with soldiers who similarly waged wars of pacification against unruly adversaries who could be subjugated with appropriate force. In both cases, whether battling Indians in the 19th century or Iraqis in the 21st century, the U.S. military discourse attempts to convey civilization’s battle against savagery… (Silliman 2008)

My students did not recognize themselves in the author’s characterization of them as “agents of colonization, imperialism, and the presumed highest orders of civilization,” and pointed out that this article tells the reader nothing about the worldview of soldiers, but a lot about the political biases of anthropologists. The problem with the anthropology of war is that anthropologists have an aversion to the study of war. Therefore “they ignore the bellicosely obvious for the peaceably arcane” (Keeley 1997, p. 20). Part of this aversion stems from the fact that most anthropologists come from bourgeois backgrounds and picked a profession involving leisurely scholarship. Part of the aversion concerns the politics of the discipline. As Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois have argued: violence is not a natural subject for anthropologists….The characteristic avoidance of violence by most twentieth-century anthropologists was based on a legitimate fear that study and analyses of indigenous forms of human cruelty and mass killing (which certainly exist) would only exacerbate Western stereotypes of primitivity, savagery, and barbarism that took modern anthropology more than half a century to dislodge. (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2003, p. 6)

In other words, anthropologists do not study war because it might make indigenous people look bad. So much for objective science. Another problem in the anthropology of war concerns levels of abstraction. Take, for example, Allen Feldman’s Formation of Violence, which is an ethnography based on fieldwork among Republican paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. The book concerns how British counterinsurgency practices and community resistance consistently transformed the bodies of paramilitaries into symbols and messages

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through political violence. While the book is remarkable for its scholarship, methodology and conceptualization of the war, unfortunately it is written at such a high level of discourse that most people cannot understand the prose. For example: “Privileged sites, nomothetic domains, or suprahistorical agents are to be interrogated for their fictive construction and not accepted as originary and therefore immune to contestation. The whole semiotic relation of legitimation to the concept of origination falls into question” (Feldman 1991, p. 4). Much as I admire Feldman’s work, I could not assign the book to my class for fear of outright rebellion at reading such dense prose. The final problem of the anthropology of war is that anthropologists have limited knowledge of war. This was not always the case: during WWII a substantial number of anthropologists served in uniform or otherwise contributed to the war effort. However, very few contemporary anthropologists have served in or worked with the military, which limits their ability to understand their subject. Anthropologist Hugh Turney-High, who served in the US Army during WWII as a military police officer, observed (1949) that: The persistence with which social scientists have confused war with the tools of war would be no less than astounding did not their writing reveal, for the most part, complete ignorance of the simpler aspects of military history and theory, and an almost stubborn unwillingness to conceptualize warfare as the great captains have conceptualized it – and still do. It would be very hard to find a noncommissioned officer in the professional armies of the second rate powers who has been as confused as most analysts of human society.

After a number of pedagogical failures, I concluded that the subject cannot be taught as Anthro 101 with readings from classic ethnographies. While this might be suitable for graduate students, military officers do not understand the immediate relevance of Magic and Witchcraft among the Azande to their professional lives. Anthropology cannot be taught as a field research skill since most military personnel have no inclination to master the research methodology, which is a skill they will never use. Anthropology cannot be taught as a bunch of competing theories (such as functionalism, structuralism, feminism, etc.) since this approach results in immediate boredom. The traditional approach to anthropology of war (that I experienced in graduate school) posits a variety of theories to explain the origin, extent and practice of human violence. The core question traditionally asked by anthropologists in this field has been: what is the influence of culture on warfare (and vice versa)? This sort of question works well for teaching undergraduates with limited experience in combat arms, or for conversing about arcane topics with other academic anthropologists. To teach the anthropology of war to professional military officers, however, I needed to approach the subject more pragmatically as anthropology for people whose job is war. In other words, I needed to identify the aspects of anthropology of war that would have professional relevance for military officers, and that could be applied to operational problems or that might illuminate strategic dilemmas. The central question that I believed the course need to address was: what happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force? In short, what are the dynamics between combatants in transcultural war?

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With this new approach to the anthropology of war in mind, I began to collect whatever material I could find on dynamics between combatants in transcultural war. As described below, the literature in both history and anthropology left much to be desired. But anthropology offers more than just a theory of culture and society; it also provides a unique world view. Thus, I thought of the subject matter of the course as two interrelated components: epistemology and content. After some reflection, I decided to design the course according to what would most benefit my military students according to 8  years of inductive observation. One of the most important aspects of anthropology as a discipline is its inherent epistemology, which develops from ethnographic fieldwork among a particular population. Living closely among people requires an anthropologist to participate in and observe their everyday practices, religious rituals, social relationships, and worldview. Accordingly, anthropologists learn to suspend their own cultural norms and values in favor of a relativistic view. Importing the epistemological approach of anthropology, my first new course objectives was to alter their perspective. Military personnel tend to be grounded in history and political science. From the perspective of international relations theory, the world is a system of states without which there would be nothing but anarchy. But anthropology takes a different view, looking at the world from the ground up rather than the top down. For example, on one hand Iraq can be viewed as a state within the international system, taking part in the normal activities of states: monitoring its international borders, forging alliances, participating in the global economy, providing for its own military defense, and so on. But Iraq can also be seen as a system of communities, ethnic groups, networks, organizations, tribes and so forth that exist within the state and sometimes in opposition to the state. Despite their deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan or both, most military officers in my class tended naively to view the governments of these countries as the most significant actor and had to shift their perspective to understand that local social systems were often more important in terms of executing US national security strategy on the ground or working with foreign governments and civil societies. My second new course objective was the de-naturalization of taken-for-granted norms. My military students are the product of an educational system designed to produce confident, technically competent, historically minded, linear thinkers. Following their undergraduate education at West Point or the US Naval Academy (or Reserve Officer Training Corps at a civilian college), most of these officers have advanced training for their military specialization (e.g., airborne school, submarine school, helicopter pilot school) plus command and staff college over the course of their 20 years of military service. While some of them may have watched the film Black Hawk Down for prior courses and discussed the challenges of urban ­operations and small arms tactics, none of them had previously been asked to consider the battle from the Somali point of view. While it disturbs the moral sensibility of a Western soldier, the use of child soldiers makes perfect sense if you are a Somali combatant fighting the UN invasion: they can move without attracting notice, they can conceal themselves easily, and they are brave in the face of danger. We often assume that our culture represents the ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ way to conduct war.

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Military students need to understand that our norms (such as protection of civilians, loyalty to country, adult soldiers, and so on) is not natural at all, but culturally constructed and totally arbitrary. A third and related objective was to increase the capacity for subjective thinking among my military students. Subjectivity – by which I mean seeing the world from another person’s perspective – is often a foreign skill to military students. As part of their academic training in political science and canonical Western history, they tend to perceive the world in the manner they have been taught: as a system of rational, goal-oriented, power-maximizing actors. When the behavior of states like North Korea does not make sense according to this model, they tend to dismiss the behavior as irrational or crazy. Very rarely have they been asked to flip the scenario around and imagine it from another point of view. My goal is encourage my military students to understand that North Koreans are not irrational or bellicose, rather most North Koreans are justifiably angry and terrified of the US because we bombed Pyongyang flat in 1950–53 and killed more than a million North Koreans (Cumings 2004). While the US military has mostly forgotten this history, these experiences continue to shape North Korean reactions. In terms of the content of the course (considered separately from the epistemology), I began by trying to understand the professional experiences of my military officer students. Most of them had multiple, back-to-back deployments conducting operations against adversaries who were culturally different from themselves. Because of the operational tempo, my students had little opportunity to think and reflect on their professional experiences in the field. When they arrived at the Naval War College they were required to read 600 pages a week on topics such as Thucydides, the Washington DC policy process, and joint maritime operations. In short, this curriculum provided some insight into wars fought long ago, how decisions were made inside the Beltway that resulted in boots on the ground, or how strategy should be crafted in their future careers. None of the material in the standard NWC curriculum provided a framework for understanding conflict between culturally different adversaries. The central question that I believed the course need to address was: what happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force? In short, what are the dynamics between combatants in transcultural war? Unfortunately, over 200  years of anthropological research provides no direct answer to that question. However, anthropological inquiry into the phenomena of ‘culture contact’ seemed at first glance like it might offer some insight into the psycho-social processes experienced by combatants in transcultural wars. As early as 1893, scholars of folklore theorized culture contact as a means of diffusion of various myths through different societies (Hartland 1893). In 1914, W.H.R. Rivers explored the psychological aspects of culture contact in the History of Melanesia Society, noting that circumstances of the contact of two cultures may give rise to features foreign to both cultures before contact. Rivers’ contribution in this domain is notable because he was interested not simply in the mechanical process of

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diffusion of technology or mythology, but the psychological aspects (and later developed the psychoanalytical approach to what we now commonly term PTSD) (Slobodin 1997). In the 1930s, anthropologists began to study how culture contact between the colonial powers and indigenous societies resulted in social change and cultural adaptation, defining acculturation as the process of cultural change resulting from contact between two autonomous and independent cultural groups (Herskovits 1938; Redfield et al. 1936). Culture contact was hypothesized to be the first stage of acculturation. Anthropologists noted that this two-way process was not necessarily egalitarian, and often involved some element of domination or coercion (Teske and Nelson 1974; Dohrenwend and Smith 1962; Devereux and Loeb 1943). (The most extreme variety of coercive acculturation is ‘culture conquest,’ such as the Spanish conquest of the New World, in which a government of one cultural group “has some degree of military and political control over the recipient people, and… this control is utilized to bring about planned changes in the way of life of this group” (Foster 1960, p.  11)). Much of anthropological literature during the colonial period had practical utility, and focused on appropriate governmental policy to reduce or limit conflict during periods of contact (Wagner 1936; Mair 1934). In the 1940s and 50s, anthropologists became interested in post-war reconstruction and ‘military government’ as a form of culture contact. These studies tend to fall into three main categories: policy recommendations for treatment of defeated nations (Wagner 1936; Mair 1934), criticism of US policy during occupation (Embree 1946), and analysis of unintended cultural and political consequences of military government (Useem 1945a, b). In the first category, for example, Geoffrey Gorer noted that “All cases of military occupation can be subsumed under the larger sociological category of ‘culture contact,’ a technical term to describe the interaction of members of two cultures or civilizations. Military occupation differs from other types of culture contact in the fact that the members of the intruding culture or cultures are self-conscious concerning the way in which they wish to transform the occupied society, and that they are able to employ force, as well as persuasion and imitation, in their efforts to achieve their goals” (1943). Among other recommendations  regarding post-WWII Japan, Gorer suggested utilizing a small occupation force; reforming the educational system and the Shinto religion to reduce aggression; and retaining the Emperor as a symbol. Most of these recommendations were indeed adopted by the US military. The study of culture contact fell out of fashion among anthropologists in the 1960s. Many anthropologists viewed culture contact (and the resulting social change in non-Western societies) negatively since it entailed destruction of traditional cultures. Trapped by their “romanticization of nonliterate peoples,” many anthropologists condemned all forms of culture contact, including public health initiatives, agricultural programs, educational improvements, and other form of aid (Shelton 1965). Anthropologists who did not condemn culture contact outright tended to see its most negative aspects. For example, Robert Edgerton noted in 1965 that “our accumulated knowledge of acculturation, while substantial in many respects, is

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deficient in some of the social-psychological dimensions of interpersonal process.” Edgerton observed that in the interaction between ‘natives’ and ‘Westerners’ an offer of friendship is often followed by misunderstanding, mistrust, indirection, outrage and finally disillusionment of both parties (1965). Beginning in the 1970s, anthropologists went even further and rejected the whole idea of acculturation. Acculturation and ‘culture contact’ were concepts premised on the notion that human cultures were fundamentally different from one another. But anthropologists in the 1970s rejected the notion of cultural difference, asserting instead that all people were fundamentally similar. “Whereas the Boasians took cultural difference as given and emphasized people’s ability to overcome it through acculturation and transcultural insight,” Ira Bashkow has noted, anthropologists in our time have become skeptical of the concept of ‘cultural difference’ in general and wary of specifying cultural contrasts in particular cases for fear of overstating them. Our anxiety stems from our heightened awareness of the negative dimension of essentialized otherness and exoticism… (2004, p. 454).

Secondarily, anthropologists’ rejection of the concept of ‘culture contact’ was a result of new politics in the discipline, including criticism of anthropology’s historic connection to colonialism and emergent Marxist approaches to understanding non-­ Western societies. Thus, anthropologists not only rejected the notion of cultural difference, but the notion of cultural boundaries. In 1972, for example, Eric Wolf complained that cultures were treated by anthropologists as “bounded objects…like so many hard and round billiard balls” (1972, p. 6, 14). In the view of some anthropologists, treating cultures as discrete entities promoted separatism and nationalism (Asad 1973), excluded subaltern groups thereby legitimating inequality and domination, and objectified and reified culture (Abu-Lughod 1991; Kahn 1989). In the 1980s and 90s, anthropologists returned again to the idea of culture contact in the form of the “tribal zone” theory. The central question of the debate was: is tribal warfare an indigenous development or the result of contact with Western States? Some anthropologists such as Lawrence Keely asserted that pre-historic archaeological evidence and statistics on non-state warring peoples indicated that warfare was common throughout human history (and well before the rise of the state) (Keeley 1997). Other anthropologists argued that indigenous warfare was caused by state expansion to appropriate resources and means of production (Ferguson and Whitehead 2000a, b). In War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare, for example, R.  Brian Ferguson and Neil Whitehead argued that European contact with Amazonian tribes increased the tempo, intensity and form of warfare. What anthropologists “assumed to be ‘pristine’ warfare now seems more likely to be a reflection of the European presence” (Ferguson and Whitehead 2000a, b, p. 27). Warfare among the Yanomami, according to Ferguson, is “a result of antagonistic interests regarding access to or control over trade in Western manufactured goods” (Ferguson 2000, p. 201). While there can be no doubt that the rise of the state created havoc among segmentary societies, voluminous evidence suggests on the contrary that warfare has always been part of the human experience (Gat 2008).

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Anthropology has been rather useless in terms of theorizing transcultural warfare. What about history? As Jeremy Black has noted “most military history…concentrates on Western history and is very much Euro-centered even when it considers developments elsewhere in the world” (2000, p. 1). Military historians have been reluctant to grasp the “wider global context,” and thus history becomes a story of how “small numbers of Europeans were able to defeat, indeed destroy, the military ‘other’, that is large numbers of alien non-Europeans. The military culture of the latter was and is largely neglected, not simply because of problems in studying the subject…but also because non-Europeans appeared then and now anachronistic and bound to fail” (Black 2000, p.  1–2). Although military history tends to focus on wars between Western states, it should be noted that some exceptional books on the military history of transcultural wars do exist (Wells and Wilson 1999; Goodwin 1971; Belich 2015; Parker 2007; Keegan 1994). In particular, military historians researching the colonial period in North America have developed a rich literature on the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans, which helps us answer the question: what happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war. Effects noted by military historians in early North America include territorial expansion, adaptation between resources and population, displacement of population, acquisition of resources, development of sedentary/agricultural societies, change in organization of production, professional differentiation, social stratification, development of tribal systems, formation of ethnic and racial identities, and (as some scholars have argued) development of the state itself (Abler 1992; Hirsch 1988; Little 2001; Arndt 2010). Perhaps the most interesting consequence of transcultural war is the process of acculturation between combatants. For example, James Axtell observes that scalping – a pre-Columbian Native American practice – was adopted by the British and quickly became not just a symbol but also an economy. Colonial warfare could therefore give rise to strange cultural hybrids, such as a victory march through Boston in 1725, in which British officers paraded in wigs made from human scalps (Axtell 1982). In 2006, an edited volume on Transcultural Wars from the Middle Age to the 21st Century was published. The introduction to the collection offers a typology of transcultural warfare, which distinguishes intercultural, intracultural and subcultural warfare according to different levels of comprehension, limitations on conflict, and whether the result is stability, acculturation, or annihilation. The book grew out of a conference in Regensburg in 2004 that brought together historians of medieval and modern warfare, and most of the chapters in the volume focus on armed encounters between the West and the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and the Crusades in the Islamic world (Kortüm 2006). While the individual chapters offer a smattering of examples drawn from ancient and modern transcultural warfare, the general typology does not answer the question at the heart of my course: what happens when military personnel interact with cultural different than themselves? In sum, military historians have focused their attention on war and state development in the European context, “although, as is characteristic, in general, of their methodology, this has tended to be empirical rather than theoretical” (Black 1999). The study of transcultural war has not developed as a specialty among military

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historians, but examples can be found scattered in the history of colonial warfare, African warfare, Native American, and so on. However, no over-arching theory exists. Given the lack of relevant theory in either anthropology or history, I had to start from the beginning in order to answer the question: what happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force? The first step was acknowledging that US military strategy often ignores cultural differences between adversaries. Adversaries are often assumed to be ‘rational’ in the Western sense of the term. Adversaries are  generally assumed to have Clausewitzian centers of gravity. Adversaries are often assumed to have the same norms for the use of weapons, same concept of the warrior, same tolerance for civilian casualties, and so on. These assumptions may result in a variety of negative outcomes, including surprise and escalation. The second step to answering this question requires understanding that culture provides the some of the raw conceptual material utilized in warfare. John Keegan wrote in the History of Warfare that “war is always an expression of culture, often a determinant of cultural forms, and in some societies the culture itself” (1994, p. 12). If war is indeed an expression of culture, how does this manifest in different societies at different times? Culture may influence warfare through the use of pre-existing cultural models to structure violence (such as ‘honor’ and ‘face’ employed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). In other cases, belligerents may employ historical narratives as a model for war (such as the history of the Arab conquest or Afghan campaign). In addition to culture, social structure influences how various societies practice warfare. Social structure (whether feudal, tribal, clan-based, or Western democratic) provides the basis for group identity, influences how groups fight, and may determine their level of military efficiency. With this foundation, we can begin to answer the question of what happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war by looking at specific psycho-social processes. In transcultural wars, enemies interact with each other not just in the battlespace, but in the mind. As combatants engage, they do not just fight their enemy  – they also ‘think’ their enemy: categorizing, judging, constructing. Conceptualization of the adversary is often clouded by fallacies (deadly paradigms, ethnocentrism, orientalism, etc.), dehumanization and intentional development of enemy images through propaganda. Difference between adversaries in ‘transcultural wars’ may lead to normative mismatch between belligerents. Combatant is a status  – found almost universally  – but the roles associated with it vary cross-­ culturally. The standard of conduct for social roles is known as a ‘social norm.’ Social norms – expectations about behavior –govern the conduct of war, including treatment of enemy dead, treatment of prisoners, treatment of non-combatants, use of tactics and weapons, and so on. Another psycho-social processes that occurs when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war is narrative divergence. In war, narratives have the power to consolidate collective identities and guide strategies and actions for belligerent parties. The narratives of the belligerent parties often intersect in unexpected ways, such as temporally, in terms of the sequencing of events. Another way in which narratives may intersect is structurally, in terms of the

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type of events. The final way in which narratives may intersect is geographically, in terms of the meaning of place. Transcultural wars may involve the process of acculturation, in which belligerents become more alike over time, as they adopt each other’s tactics and organizational structures. During transcultural war, combatants may witness or participate in acts of violence which transgress their own moral or normative framework. Witnessing or participating in such ‘transgressive’ acts may result in what is now currently called ‘moral injury.’ In some cases, combatants reach something like transcendence of difference, recognizing each other as soldiers, as warriors across a cultural divide who share an ethos that transcends their enmity. The final step requires that we identify the potential strategic and operational consequences of these psycho-social processes in transcultural wars, and whether these consequences can be mitigated. Strategy formulation involves ends-ways-­ means reasoning, and culture may influence how people in other societies identify policy objectives (ends), course of action (ways) and instruments of national power (means). Because culture intrudes on priorities and preferences for ends, ways and means, strategy is not always fully rational. Our own cultural values may, in fact, create a strategic weakness.

Conclusion Now that the US has disengaged from both Iraq and Afghanistan and has adopted the notion of great power competition, the military has lost interest in counterinsurgency, stability operations and other types of small wars. These conflicts brought US forces into confrontation with a culturally different adversary and forced them to work in close proximity to a civilian population, tasks for which the knowledge and methods of anthropology had value. Now that the military is no longer focused on anthropology’s utility to strategy or operations, the lessons learned over a decade of war about the importance of culture in counterinsurgency must be retained in order to prepare the military for the next war where such competence is required. One of the few places where this knowledge currently resides in the US defense establishment is in PME institutions. Ensuring that anthropology remains relevant to US military personnel depends on how it is taught. As I discovered over 8 years of teaching an elective on the topic of anthropology and warfare, the quickest way to lose the attention of military professionals is to drift into jargon-laced theoretical debates about the nature of humanity, the origins of the state, or the social contract. To teach the anthropology of war to professional military officers, I needed to eschew the theoretical and focus on anthropology for people whose job is war. The students at the US Naval War College arrive with deep and complex professional experience that can only be described as “transcultural warfare.” Military professionals tend to be intelligent, technically oriented and intensely pragmatic, yet they are generally not introspective. With multiple, back-­ to-­back deployments with little opportunity to think and reflect, these students need a framework for understanding their own experiences with warfare across

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cultural  boundaries. This is not something they get in the curriculum at the US Naval War College, which tends to focus on military history and national security policy. Therefore, the central question addressed in the course is: what happens when two ‘culturally distant’ societies go to war, each having their own norms and ideas regarding the organized deployment of military force? In short, what are the dynamics between combatants in transcultural war? Unfortunately, over 200  years of anthropological research provides no direct answer to that question. War and violence – being as much a part of human behavior as table manners and sexual practices – has been of interest to anthropologists since the dawn of the discipline in the nineteenth century. However, as an academic subject, the anthropology of war has traditionally focused on the origins, evolution, and causes of war, offering little explanation of how different cultures actually fight and the complex psychological/social/cultural results of transcultural wars. Likewise, military history has not adequately addressed the complexities of transcultural wars, focusing instead on Western powers, technology development, great battles, and so on. Thus, there was no pre-existing curriculum that I could assign. Rather, the material had to be curated and organized from history, psychology, and anthropology to meet the need of the students. Hopefully, this approach will preserve some of the lessons learned during a decade of war, should they be needed in the future.

References Abler, T. (1992). Scalping, torture, cannibalism and rape: An ethnohistorical analysis of conflicting cultural values in war. Anthropologica, 34(1), 3–20. Abu-Lughod, L. (1991). Writing against culture. In R.  Fox (Ed.), Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Air War College. (2019). Faculty biographies. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/tf_biographies.aspx Arndt, J. (2010). Treacherous savages and merciless barbarians: Knowledge, discourse and violence during the cape frontier wars, 1834 – 1853. Journal of Military History, 74(3), 709–735. Asad, T. (Ed.). (1973). Anthropology and the colonial encounter. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. Axtell, J. (1982). The European and the Indian: Essays in the ethnohistory of colonial North America. New York: Oxford University Press. Bashkow, I. (2004). A Neo-Boasian conception of cultural boundaries. American Anthropologist, 106(3), 433–458. Belich, J. (2015). The New Zealand wars and the victorian interpretation of racial conflict. Auckland: Auckland University Press. Black, J. (2000). War and the world: Military power and the fate of continents, 1450–2000. New Haven: Yale University Press. Black, J. (1999). War and the world, 1450-2000. Journal of Military History, 63(3), 669–681. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (2009, July 15). Officer professional military education policy, 1800.01D. Washington, DC: CJCS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (2015, May 29). Officer professional military education policy, 1800.01D. Washington, DC: CJCS Cumings, B. (2004). North Korea: Another country. New York: The New Press. Defense Manpower Data Center. (2019). DoD personnel workforce report. Retrieved from https:// www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp

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Department of Defense. (2005, November). Directive 3000.05, military support for stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR) operations. Washington, DC: DOD. Devereux, G., & Loeb, E. (1943). Antagonistic acculturation. American Sociological Review, 8(2), 133–147. Dohrenwend, B., & Smith, R. (1962). Toward a theory of acculturation. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 18(1), 30–39. Edgerton, R. (1965). Some dimensions of disillusionment in culture contact. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 21(3), 231–243. Embree, J. (1946). Micronesia: The Navy and democracy. Far Eastern Survey, 15(11), 161–164. Feldman, A. (1991). Formation of violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ferguson, R. B., & Whitehead, N. (Eds.). (2000a). War in the tribal zone: Expanding states and indigenous warfare. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Ferguson, R.  B., & Whitehead, N. (2000b). The violent edge of empire. In R.  B. Ferguson & N. Whitehead (Eds.), War in the tribal zone: Expanding states and indigenous warfare. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Ferguson, R. B. (2000). A savage encounter: Western contact and the Yanomami war complex. In R. B. Ferguson & N. Whitehead (Eds.), War in the tribal zone: Expanding states and indigenous warfare. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Freedberg Jr, S. (2012, July 02). Army makes case for funding culture skills beyond COIN. Breaking Defense. http://breakingdefense.com/2012/07/ army-makes-case-for-culture-skills-beyond-coin/ Foster, G. (1960). Culture and conquest. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. Fry, D. (2007). Beyond war: The human potential for peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gat, A. (2008). War in human civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodwin, G. (1971). Western Apache raiding and warfare. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Gorer, G. (1943). The special case of Japan. Public Opinion Quarterly, 7(4), 567–582. Gross, D. (1975). Protein capture and cultural development in the Amazon Basin. American Anthropologist, 77(3), 526–549. Harris, M. (1971). Culture, man and nature. New York: Crowell. Harris, M. (2001). Cultural materialism: The struggle for a science of culture. New  York: AltaMira Press. Hartland, E. S. (1893). Report on folk-tale research, 1892. Folklore, 4(1), 80–101. Herskovits, M. (1938). Acculturation: The study of culture contact. New York: J. J. Augustin. Hirsch, A. (1988). The collision of military cultures in seventeenth-century New England. Journal of American History, 74(4), 1187–1212. Hoffman, F., & Davies, M. (2013, June 10). Joint force 2020 and the human domain: Time for a new conceptual framework? Small Wars Journal. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/ joint-force-2020-and-the-human-domain-time-for-a-new-conceptual-framework Judson, J. (2018, October 9). From multi-domain battle to multi-domain operations: Army evolves its guiding concept. Defense News. Kahn, J. (1989). Culture: Demise or resurrection? Critique of Anthropology, 9(2), 5–25. Keegan, J. (1994). History of warfare. New York: Vintage. Keeley, L. (1997). War before civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kortüm, H. H. (Ed.). (2006). Transcultural wars from the middle age to the 21st century. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Le Blanc, S. (2004). Constant battles: Why we fight. London: St. Martin’s. Little, A. (2001). “Shoot that rogue, for he hath an englishman’s coat on!”: Cultural cross-dressing on the New England frontier, 1620-1760. New England Quarterly, 74(2), 238–273. Mair, L. (1934). The study of culture contact as a practical problem. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 7(4), 415–422. Marine Corps University. (2019). Faculty directory. https://www.usmcu.edu/About-MCU/Faculty/ Faculty-and-Staff-Directory/

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McFate, M. (2018). Military anthropology: Soldiers, scholars and subjects at the margins of empire. New York: Oxford University Press. McHugh, J. M. (2013, October 28). Memorandum on designation of PKSOI as the US Army’s lead as joint proponent for peacekeeping and stability operations. Meggers, B. J. (1971). Amazonia: Man and culture in a counterfeit paradise. Chicago: Aldine. Obama, B. (2010, December 16). Remarks on the strategy in Afghanistan. New York Times. https:// www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/world/asia/17afghan-text.html Parker, G. (2007). Military revolution: Military innovation and the rise of the west. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Redfield, R., Linton, R., & Herskovits, M. (1936). Memorandum for the study of acculturation. American Anthropologist, 36(1), 149–152. Rivers, W. H. R. (1914). History of Melanesian society. Cambridge: The University Press. Scales, R. (2006, July 1) Clausewitz and world war IV. Armed Forces Journal. http://armedforcesjournal.com/clausewitz-and-world-war-iv/ Scheper-Hughes, N., & Bourgois, P. (2003). Violence in war and peace: An anthology. New York: Blackwell Publishing. Shelton, A. (1965). Anthropological “values” and culture change: A note. American Anthropologist, 67(1), 103–107. Silliman, S. (2008). The “old west” in the Middle East: U.S. military metaphors in real and imagined Indian country. American Anthropologist, 110(2), 237–247. Slobodin, R. (1997). W. H. R. Rivers: Pioneer anthropologist and psychiatrist of the “ghost road” (2nd ed.). Stroud: Sutton Publishing. Teske, R., Jr., & Nelson, B. (1974). Acculturation and assimilation: A clarification. American Ethnologist, 1(2), 351–367. Turney-High, H. (1949). Primitive war: Its practices and concepts. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Useem, J. (1945a). American pattern of military government in Micronesia. American Journal of Sociology, 51(2), 93–102. Useem, J. (1945b). Governing the occupied areas of the South Pacific: War time lessons and peace time proposals. Applied Anthropology, 4(3), 1–10. US Army War College Deputy Provost. (2018, 7 December). [email] US Joint Special Operations University Public Affairs Office. (2018, December 19). [telephone communication] US National Defense University Director of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment. (2019, February 1). [email] US Naval Postgraduate School Public Affairs Office. (2018, December 19). [telephone communication] US Naval War College Associate Provost. (2018, December, 19). [email] US Special Operations Command. (2015, August 3). Operating in the human domain. Tampa: USSOCOM Wagner, G. (1936). The study of culture contact and the determination of policy. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 9(3), 317–331. Wells, D., & Wilson, S. (Eds.). (1999). Russo-Japanese war in cultural perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. White House. (2017). National security strategy. Washington, DC: White House. Wolf, E. (1972). Europe and the people without history. Berkeley: University of California Press. Montgomery  McFate  is a professor at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Formerly, she was the Senior Social Scientist for the US Army’s Human Terrain System. Dr. McFate received a BA from UC Berkeley, a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University, and a JD from Harvard Law School. She is the author of Military Anthropology (Oxford University Press, 2018) and editor of Social Science Goes to War (Oxford University Press, 2015). She is member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Redefining the Past to Become the Present: Culture Policy and U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Paula Holmes-Eber

Abstract  This chapter examines the challenges of developing cultural skills, not from the military student’s or instructor’s perspective but rather from the perspective of the military organization required to implement the new cultural policies and programs. Using data from a 6  year ethnographic research project, I provide a focused case study of the Marine Corps’ efforts to institute a radical new culture policy into a military organization that has been structured and trained to fight conventional wars. Using the specific case of Marine Corps recruiting and recruit training, I examine how Marine Corps leadership at the Parris Island Recruit Depot and Recruiting Command has been able to incorporate two seemingly incompatible identities—fearless warrior and culturally savvy peacekeeper—into recruit training. By reshaping the external policy directives to fit within Marine Corps values and ideals, culture becomes “Marinized”—transformed into something that looks, smells and tastes Marine. Thus, the external policy directive becomes redefined so that the new policy is no longer a threat to Marine Corps ideals, but simply a modern version of the long and honorable past identity of the Corps. Keywords  Military culture · Military identity · Culture training · US Marine Corps · Policy implementation

P. Holmes-Eber (*) Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_12

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United States Marine Corps and Parris Island Recruit Depot U.S. population 327 million U.S. Active Duty military service members Army 470,500; Navy 333,000 Air Force 327,800; Marine Corps 186,100 Total (excluding Coast Guard): 1,317,600 or .4% of U.S. population (Defense Manpower Data Center 2019). U.S. Marine Corps Founded on November 10, 1775, the Marine Corps is the smallest of the U.S. services (excluding the Coast Guard). It is an all-­volunteer service composed of 21,400 officers (12%) and 164,700 (88%) enlisted Marines, and it combines all of the functions of a sea-based, (naval), land-based (army) and air-based (air force) military. Women may serve in all Military Occupational Specialties. Currently 8.7% (16,300) of Marines are female. Location and nature of recent operations The Marine Corps is an ‘expeditionary service’ or ‘force in readiness.’ Marines deploy around the world at a moment’s notice to resolve an immediate crisis. They conduct an enormous range of operations from humanitarian aid to peacekeeping to combat operations to military training and partnerships. In recent years, Marines have become a more stationary ground force in Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, the Corps is focusing on returning to its traditional expeditionary nature. Parris Island Recruit Depot was founded on Nov 1, 1915 in South Carolina, USA. All enlisted Marines must complete a 12-week training course at either the Parris Island or San Diego recruit depot (sometimes called ‘boot camps’) before going on to a military occupational specialty school. Approximately 17,000 recruits (age 17–29) graduate each year. Although a large part of the training focuses on physical skills, recruits also learn about Marine Corps history, customs and courtesies, basic first aid, uniforms, and leadership. They also receive a curriculum on core values and ethics (described in this chapter). Instructors The new recruits are trained by Drill Instructors (DIs)—senior enlisted Marines who have been in the Corps a minimum of 4 years. The DI is a highly selective position. While most of the courses are taught by the DIs, retired Marine civilians do teach some of the academic classes. Every instructor, however, has been a Marine at some point in their career: there are no ‘academic’ civilian instructors. In response to the political, social and cultural challenges facing the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2005, General James Mattis established a new Marine Corps cultural initiative. The goal was simple: teach Marines to interact successfully with the local population in areas of conflict. The implications, however, were anything but

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simple: transform an elite Spartan military culture founded on the principles of “locate, close with and destroy the enemy”1 into a “culturally savvy” Marine Corps. Yet how does one create a Marine as equally capable of sitting down crossed-legged and drinking tea with Iraqi sheikhs as seizing the famed island of Tarawa in a bloody and brutal fight?2 This chapter examines the challenges of developing cultural skills, not from the military student’s or instructor’s perspective but rather from the perspective of the military organization required to implement the new cultural policies and programs. Using data from a 6 year ethnographic study, I provide a focused case study of the Marine Corps’ efforts to institute a radical new culture policy into a military organization that has been structured and trained to fight conventional wars. Although the majority of studies of policy change focus on the development or implementation of policy, in this paper I focus instead on the recipient of the policy, the Marine Corps. This chapter examines how Marine Corps leadership at Parris Island Recruit Depot and Recruiting Command have been able to incorporate and reconcile two seemingly incompatible identities—fearless warrior and culturally effective peacekeeper—into recruit training. This analysis views the Marine Corps as an organization with an independent cultural identity and will—separate and unique from that of the larger Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. government or other U.S. military services. I argue that the Corps is not simply a passive recipient of external policy directed from above; rather individuals and groups within the Corps interpret, reject, redefine and shape policy directives to fit within the norms and ideals shared within the organization. As I demonstrate in the following pages, in the case of the Marine Corps recruit depots, DoD policies requiring the U.S. military to develop cultural skills have become redefined to mean developing Marines who act ethically with honor, integrity, and self-discipline during their deployments: cultural values that are compatible with Marine Corps identity and history. This policy reshaping thus synthesizes two seemingly contradictory identities (warrior versus peacekeeper) into one coherent identity centered on upholding the mythical honorable legacy and glory of the past. Since these ideals have “always” been part of Marine Corps training, the new cultural imperatives thus become redefined as “something Marines have always done.” External policy directives become Marinized—a term Marines use to describe making “something look and sound Marine.” And the change “that has always been” is not viewed as a foreign intrusion coming from outside, but rather is simply the Marine Corps’ updated way of doing business as usual.

 Marine Corps Infantry Squad leader mission statement  Portions of this chapter have been adapted from the author’s book Culture in Conflict (HolmesEber 2014) 1 2

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 ilitary Culture, Organizational Change M and Policy Implementation To date, most research on military culture and policy change has focused on either: a) strategic level studies of national military cultures and the international and political implications of changing policy or b) micro-level studies of military groups and/or the impact of policy changes on the socio-psychological dimensions of military life such as gender, race, family or psychological trauma (See Burke 2005; Coker 2007; Dorn et al. 2000; English 2004; Luft 2010; Johnson 2018; Johnson and Zellen 2014). In-depth organizational studies of the cultures of individual military services and the role of these cultures in influencing and reworking policy implementation, however, have been almost completely absent from this literature. Furthermore, a predominant number of these studies of military culture focus on the role of leadership or “national/strategic” cultures in creating, fostering, or changing a specific military organization (see e.g. Adamsky 2010; Buley 2008; Cassidy 2008; Russell 2010; Simpson 2016). The assumption in many of these studies is that change originates from the top and is pushed down into the organization. Such studies view the military as a passive recipient of external change—with few options other than to obstruct change or to swallow it whole. As a result, we have little understanding of the process of internal military cultural and organizational change over time—particularly in response to policy initiatives. Anthropological approaches, which focus on a ‘bottom up’ perspective, and emphasize the internal dynamics and processes within cultures, have largely been absent from this literature until recently. This gap is, in part, due to theoretical and political prejudices by anthropologists who have tended to avoid research on the topic. Despite Laura Nader’s influential article (written in 1972) on the importance of “studying up” to powerful institutions, in the field of anthropology the preference still remains to “study down” and focus on exotic, disempowered minority and foreign cultures. Anthropological hostility towards the military’s engagement in the Middle East during the past decade (see Network of Concerned Anthropologists 2009) has also inhibited anthropological research on the military (Albro et  al. 2012). Consequently, in anthropology, the study of militaries as unique cultures has been generally overlooked with a few notable exceptions (Ben-Ari 1998; Fujimura 2012; Hawkins 2001; Holmes-Eber 2014; Simons 1997). In order to fill in some of this gap, this paper takes an anthropological approach to understanding the Marine Corps—both as a military organization and as a unique culture of its own.

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Method In September 2006, I began a new position as Professor of Operational Culture at the Marine Corps University with additional responsibilities supporting the new Marine Corps Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL). As an anthropologist with no background or understanding of the military, I quickly realized that to design a culture curriculum that would fit the needs of the Corps, I needed to understand the culture of the Marines in my classes. This study, thus, first began as research on how Marines’ internal military culture influenced their ability to learn about and make sense of the new DoD cultural directives in the university classroom. My research approach focused initially on the resident Marine Corps officer and enlisted education programs. Over time, however, the project expanded to focus not only on ways that culture was being incorporated into educational programs, but how the new culture requirements were being interpreted and implemented across the Marine Corps—from the recruit depots to field exercises and training prior to deployment to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other locations that Marines were being sent. With the support of the Marine Corps Training and Education Command (TECOM)3 I observed Marine Corps cultural training programs and pre-deployment exercises at four Marine Corps bases: Camp LeJeune, N.C., 29 Palms, CA, 8th and I in Washington D.C. and in Quantico, VA.  One of my most eye-opening field projects, however, was an intense week of observation and interviews (and several months of follow-up emails and discussions) with the leadership, instructors, and recruits at Parris Island Recruit Depot in South Carolina—resulting in this paper. Field data were analyzed using a combination of several methods. First a thematic approach was employed to identify recurring themes and ideals in the interviews and observed activities. Thematic analysis offers a picture of the ideals and beliefs that form the basis of central cultural values to a group. This analysis was employed in order to identify core Marine Corps beliefs and values underlying their presentations of identity. However, in everyday life, not all people follow or agree with a set of cultural ideals; and culture in practice often does not match with culture in theory (see e.g. Bourdieu’s (1977) discussion of the habitus). To account for change and variation in both ideals and behavior, three other analytical approaches were employed. First, a chronological analysis was used to compare past materials on ideals and values (centered on the values expressed in early Marine Corps posters and popular sayings) with more current presentations of ideals (expressed in videos and contemporary advertising media and recent narratives). Secondly, oral narratives were examined to identify periods of disagreement over time and space.

 Support for this project was provided by TECOM under the guidance of Jeffry Bearor, SES as well by the Marine Corps University under Vice President Dr. Jerre Wilson and George Dallas, Director of CAOCL is gratefully acknowledged. 3

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Finally, I used field observations and official Marine Corps materials to calculate the amount of time recruits actually dedicated to certain activities in practice— observations that were then combined with interview data regarding training. Comparing “traditional” versions of Marines’ identity to contemporary realities makes it possible to identify shifts in response to external pressures for change. The resulting picture is not of a simple unidirectional transfer of a Department of Defense cultural policy directive to the Marine Corps. Marine Corps Recruiting Command has not merely acquiesced to external pressure and adopted the new policy changes; nor have they simply rejected external directives. Instead, the Marine Corps has taken a third path—reshaping the external policies to fit within Marine Corps ideals, beliefs and culture.

 ulture Policy, the Marine Corps and the Struggle C for Autonomy In 2005, in response to the U.S. military’s difficulties in conducting the war in Iraq and varying external pressures by the press and the U.S. government, General Mattis4 founded a Marine Corps Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL) to provide urgently needed basic culture and language training to the troops. Within a year, most of the other U.S. military services had begun similar programs. Each program had its own guidance from its service leadership. As a result, very quickly, policies and interpretations of what “cultural training” and “language skills” meant began to vary significantly within and among the services (Holmes-Eber forthcoming). Recognizing the need for a central organization to oversee and coordinate the situation, the U.S. Congress appointed the Defense Language Office (DLO) to lead the military’s culture and language programs. A rather vigorous battle between the individual military services and the DLO ensued—an event worthy of study in itself, but too complex to be narrated here. The result was the recognition by the DLO that each U.S. military service had different operational needs, and that each service should have latitude in designing and implementing cultural and language programs to fit their unique requirements (Holmes-Eber 2014). In 2008, the DLO issued a study that significantly reshaped the culture and language training landscape by identifying a concept called “Cross-Cultural Competency” or 3C for short (Abbe et  al. 2008). This study separated cultural understanding into three categories: language skills, regional skills and culture general skills. While language and regional skills required specific knowledge and training relevant to a specific destination, culture general skills, or Cross Cultural Competence, were skills that could apply in any cultural situation. These skills, derived from the fields of psychology and communication, included traits such as  Then the Commander of Training and Education Command in the Marine Corps

4

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flexibility, tolerance for ambiguity, emotional regulation, and self-monitoring. The concept of 3C was refined 8 years later with the publication by DLNSEO5 of a new document outlining four key competency areas necessary to work effectively in cross-cultural situations: diplomatic mindset, cultural learning, cultural reasoning, and intercultural interaction (Rasmussen et al. 2016). The problem for the Marine Corps (and the other U.S. services) was that these 3C competencies were difficult, if not impossible, to train, particularly to young Marines with no prior deployment experience. The following story, then, is a tale of how the Marine Corp Recruiting Command interpreted this loose and general guidance to create ‘culturally competent’ Marines. More specifically, it is a story of—as Marines would say—“what happens when the boots actually hit the ground”.

 ecruiting and Building Culturally Competent Marines— R Devil Dog Style In contrast to most non-organizational cultures, where socialization begins at birth and is not optional, Marines choose to enter their culture in young adulthood (generally between age 17 and 26).6 Since the U.S. has an all-volunteer military, one of the most critical tasks of the Marine Corps is recruiting new Marines to take the place of those who have chosen not to renew their contracts, retired, died, or been injured in combat—a difficult job for a country that has unofficially been at war in the Middle East continuously since 2001. Consequently, the Marine Corps must invest considerable time and energy into defining who and what a Marine is: marketing this identity to potential recruits through posters, online videos and other advertising. Once, a recruit has signed up for the Marine Corps, he or she must then go through an intensive 12-week training program at either the Parris Island or San Diego recruit depot (colloquially referred to as “boot camp”) to become a Marine. This training program not only focuses on developing physical skills, but also on educating recruits about Marine Corps culture, values and ethos. The Marine Corps’ recruiting and initial training process, therefore, provides a fascinating and unique window into Marines’ identity. In the following pages I compare and contrast the Marine Corps’ advertising and recruit training over time, offering a window into shifts in the way that the Corps perceives itself. As I will illustrate, contemporary Marine Corps advertising does not challenge or directly change “traditional” stereotypical images of the tough, ferocious Marine. Instead it simply expands the identity to include more humanitarian aspects of the Marines’ job. Likewise, the recruit depots do not dismiss core enduring values of Marine 5  In 2012, DLO was merged with NSEO to form the Defense Language and National Security Education Office 6  Although entry into the Marine Corps is voluntary, a meaningful percentage of Marines come from Marine or military families—sometimes a hereditary pattern that can be continued for generations. It could be argued in this case, that socialization into Marine Corps culture begins at birth.

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pride and their role in upholding the legacy of Marine Corps history. Instead, the role of the Marine as an honorable member of a glorious legacy is used as the basis of building and teaching a values-based training (VBT) program founded on the principles of “honor, courage and commitment.” By reshaping the new cultural imperatives to fit within existing Marine Corps paradigms of who they are and always have been, cultural competence thus becomes reinvented into the past.

Recruiting the Fierce Warrior Who Delivers Humanitarian Aid In today’s media-saturated world, catchy television and radio ads, poster-board slogans, websites, videos, and YouTube sell a particular identity of the Marine to would-be recruits and their parents. Although a complete study of Marine Corps advertising and media representations (both past and present) would require a book in itself, a quick glance at a few of the more popular Marine Corps websites, videos, films, posters, and sayings reveals some of the images that the Marine Corps uses today to attract its new recruits. The first and traditionally accepted image promoted is of a physically strong and courageous fighter. In the YouTube video series, “U.S.  Marine Corps: Making a Marine (Parts I, II and III),” (FallenUSSoldiers 2019a, b, c) which shows live footage of Marine Corps initial training on Parris Island, the viewer is dazzled with video clips of new recruits who learn to fight with bayonets and pugil sticks, shoot rifles, attack their opponents using martial arts, rappel down sheer walls, climb over and under obstacle courses filled with barbed wire, and survive the grueling night marches, hunger, and challenges of the Crucible (a 54-hour culminating endurance test). Throughout the video, close-ups of the new recruits show faces racked with pain, sweat dripping down their brows, bulging arm muscles straining. Sound tracks include heavy panting, groans and thuds, machine gun fire, and, over it all, the screaming voices of the Drill Instructors. As the videos display, an equally important aspect of their culture that Marines advertise—and frequently use to distinguish themselves from the other U.S. services—is that of the tough determined warrior who endures pain, hardship, and suffering in order to always get the job done. The Marines’ unofficial “mascot” is a bulldog—mean, ferocious, tough, and scary. Marines adopted this icon after the Germans nicknamed them ‘Teufelhunden’ or ‘Devil Dogs’ after the ferocious mountain dogs of Bavaria. Teufelhunden is an icon and nickname that Marines carry proudly—even using it in a famous recruiting poster during World War I. Other classic recruiting posters have also attracted prospective Marines by advertising this tough, fighting image. These earlier posters displayed slogans such as, “Want action? Join the Marine Corps,” “First to fight. Join now and test your courage. Real fighting with real fighters,” and “We don’t promise you a rose garden.” Indeed, in contrast to the other U.S. services, the Marine Corps does not advertise goodies and bonuses to attract new recruits (although college tuition, travel etc. are part of the benefits of joining

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the Corps). As Sturkey writes in his unofficial guide to Marine Corps Warrior ­culture, “Instead the Marine Corps recruiting advertisements tout the challenge of their Warrior Culture” (2003, p. 123). Contemporary Marine Corps television advertisements continue to sell a tough, hard, Spartan image to potential recruits. However, there is a second, more recent identity being sold to prospective Marines. While the physically tough ground combat warrior still dominates the traditional advertising media used to attract recruits to the Corps, recent ads now market a second identity of the chivalrous knight. This identity focuses on the Marine as a rescuer and protector of justice and freedom for those who are oppressed. A Marine Corps recruit depot brief (U.S. MCRD 2011) describes the contemporary recruit generation as focused on service to their country and community (in a reversal from their self-absorbed predecessors Generation X). Current Marine Corps recruiting ads focus on these characteristics, merging the identities of the strong warrior with the chivalrous knight. According to Colonel Tun,7 a commanding officer at one of the Marine Corps schools, “The new recruit generation is devoted to service. [We are now focusing on] the Marine Corps as a public service. We have a new ad campaign to show that the Marine Corps is an opportunity to serve, just like Americorps.” For example, in the video “241 years of battles won” (Marine Corps Recruiting 2019) traditional images of Marines jumping out of airplanes, driving tanks in the Iraqi desert, and flying the flag over Iwo Jima alternate with new images and stories: of a heroic Marine who stops a robbery in a U.S. supermarket, Marines distributing Toys for Tots, and Marines carrying civilians out of a disaster. The current Marine Corps recruiting website includes a page titled “What we do: Rapid response” which describes the contemporary socially responsible warrior. The page states: “From combat engagement to humanitarian missions, Marines are our first responders—our nation’s 911 force” (Marines.com 2019). The page provides an option for the viewer to listen to first-hand reports from Marines who provided aid to Haitians after a 7.0 earthquake and delivered 160,000 pounds of relief supplies to the Japanese after a devastating tsunami. And a fascinating advertisement for the Corps titled, ‘Towards the sounds of chaos’ focuses on this notion of service combined with bravery and protection of the weak. The video starts out with sounds of desperate people screaming and images of Marines running to a tsunami strewn beach. As images of trucks carrying boxes with the words AID printed on them appear, a narrator voices over: “There are a few who move towards the sounds of chaos ready to respond at a moment’s notice. When the time comes, they are the first to run towards the sounds of tyranny, injustice, and despair.” The video ends with the challenge: “Which way would you run?” (Marine OCS blog 2019). 7  To protect the identity of all participants in this study, all names are pseudonyms. These pseudonyms are based on Marine Corps history and language in order to ensure that readers do not accidentally equate a particular name with a specific Marine. Where rank and billet (position) could identify the speaker, Marines’ titles and ranks may also be altered, along with gender, age, or any other identifying demographic information.

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Just as contemporary recruit advertising markets a dual identity of the tough brave, yet chivalrous warrior, current Marine Corps recruit training also merges these two identities under the single banner of upholding the Marine Corps’ past through honorable actions in the present.

Training the Honorable Marine at Parris Island Recruit Depot I arrived at hot, sticky Parris Island in South Carolina on a sunny September afternoon excited to watch a new crop of recruits go through a tough physically demanding training program designed to create Marines that were prepared to “close, kill and destroy” the enemy. I was immediately placed on a hectic daily schedule that was exhausting to observe, let alone actually undertake. I watched the new arrivals step into the famed yellow footprints; observed Marines shooting rifles, crawling through a barbed wire obstacle course and choking one another in the martial arts training program; and even received a personalized class on water survival training (which included a demonstration of an instructor tied at the feet and hands, jumping from a twenty foot diving board and wobbling his way to the edge of the pool). All of these activities had filled my stereotypical expectations of what recruits had to endure to earn the title Marine. However, as I quickly discovered, recruit training was far more than an enormous sports program. A meaningful amount of the recruit’s time was spent filling out forms, practicing drill, going for medical check-ups and hair-cuts, and most surprising to me—sitting in classes on such subjects as “Marine Corps History,” “Marine Corps Customs and Courtesies,” “Core beliefs,” “Ethical decision making,” “Substance Abuse,” “UCMJ” (Uniform code of military justice), “Adultery,” “Personal Conduct,” “Operational Culture,” and “Combating trafficking in persons.” My review of the depot’s 12-week recruit training schedule (U.S. MCRD 2011) indicated an average of 1–2 hours per day devoted to classroom instruction, as well as another hour per day to SDI time (mentoring time with the Senior Drill Instructor). As the titles of the courses listed above suggest, a large percentage of these classes focused on teaching central Marine Corps values to the recruits—values that are emphasized and reinforced during SDI time. In addition, underscoring the importance of Marine Corps history in developing Corps values, recruits received six separate classes on the history of the Corps. (The only other class given as much time on the calendar was Combat Care (first aid), a six-part course). Given the extremely tight recruit training schedule (broken down into 15-minute intervals during each 16-hour day), why would the Marine Corps dedicate approximately 80–100 hours to classes on Marine Corps history, traditions, ethics, and core beliefs? As my interviews and review of Marine Corps literature and advertising revealed, Marine identity is firmly rooted in pride in the Marine Corps’ history and the belief that Marines are the elite fighting force in the world. Membership in this elite group is considered a privilege, and it is the duty of all Marines to uphold the great legacy of past Marines through their honorable deeds in the present.

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More than any other U.S. military service, Marines create a cohesive identity through their shared pride and personal identification with the history of the Corps. This was brought home powerfully to me during a ‘backbrief’ (a summary report back to a unit) of some of my work on Marine Corps identity and the warrior ethos. Due to the iterative and collaborative nature of my research—reflecting in great part the culture of the Corps itself—at one point in my research I created a several-slide PowerPoint for some of the Marine officers who had assisted in my research. My slides described Marine Corps identity using such categories as warrior fierceness, warrior toughness, team spirit, self-control, and leadership. After a few minutes of looking at the slides, however, Colonel Marjeh remarked that I was missing perhaps one of the most important aspects of being a Marine. “An understanding of history, of legacy, has to be added,” he remarked. “Our myths, our legends, our traditions…If we ever lose that sense of history, the ethos aspect of it, [we will stop being Marines.] We are really big on our legacy. We have the Birthday Ball (the annual Marine Corps ball which celebrates the birth of the Marine Corps on Nov 10, 1775). We know we have icons [like Chesty Puller—one of the bravest and most decorated Marines in the Corps’ history].” For Marines, history is much more than simply a boring list of names and places from the past. As General Guadalcanal stated in his speech at the Marine Corps Birthday Ball (an annual celebration and gala ball observed all around the world wherever there are Marines): To us, as United States Marines, our history is everything. [We] are following in the footsteps of some very amazing people. Marines who sacrificed, fought and died to establish the honor and traditions of our Corps. And it’s our duty to uphold the honor and to carry on the traditions of those who have gone before.

This moral obligation of Marines to live up to the legacy of their forefathers and indeed, to add to this glorious history, is illustrated in General Guadalcanal’s following remarks. Addressing the Marines in the room who had returned from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, he stated proudly: Trust me when I tell you that future generations of Marines will recall the valor, heroism, and sacrifice that you and your fellow Marines have demonstrated over the past decade of war. You and all Americans should be proud of the legacy you’ve established.

In this ideology, Marines are not simply the recipients of history but the makers and shapers of history, both upholding the honor of the past and also creating the glorious history of the future. Marines remind each other daily of their bonds to each other and the legacy of the past, by ending most interactions with the saying, “Semper Fi”—based on the Latin Semper Fidelis or “always faithful”. Each Marine is, in essence, a part of the body of the Corps—not an irrelevant name considering that no other U.S. service refers to itself as a corps. This connection to a long lineage of courageous warriors is reminiscent of the Sufi Arab silsila: a historical chain of mentorship that ties novice Sufis to their teachers and teachers’ teachers in an unbroken line to the founding order’s saint. In some ways it is also echoes of the tradition of ancestor worship and the notion that those who have gone before are not dead, but live on through the glorious deeds of

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contemporary Marines. “There is this belief that we’re being watched. Chesty Puller or your grandfather, who was a Marine [is looking down on us],” Colonel Tripoli explains. “There’s a spirit out there. It’s not about us, it’s about the institution.” I was told repeatedly in my interviews that Marine identity has remained basically the same throughout its history. As the Marine instructors and leadership at Parris Island explained to me, the “changes” I was seeing in Marine Corps recruiting and training were actually not something new: for the values and ideals that were being transmitted during the training have always been the same. The methods might shift, but the core identity of the Corps did not. As Colonel Tripoli explained to me, “The other services try to reinvent themselves. In the Marine Corps we don’t need to do that. We have our myths, our legacy, our shared traditions and history [that hold us together].” Paradoxically, it is the Marine Corps’ cultural ideal of upholding the honor of the sacred past, of carrying on the glorious deeds of the Marines who have gone before, that ultimately has become the vehicle for incorporating cultural competence into Marine Corps training at the recruit depots. It is this central identity of the Marine— as someone who belongs to a long famous and honorable line of Marines—that has been the basis for “expanding” Marine identity to include cultural competency. In this cultural logic, a Marine who adheres to the code of honor among the band of brothers will automatically be able to handle himself or herself well when dealing with the contemporary ambiguity of war and interactions with civilians. And such an ideal Marine would never dishonor the Corps by taking actions against civilians that would end up being broadcast around the world to the shame of his fellow brothers and sisters.

Values-Based Training at the Depots In current U.S. military thinking, today’s modern warfare is viewed as complicated and messy—requiring Marines to switch roles quickly from that of a fierce warrior one minute  to offering humanitarian aid or peacekeeping the next. In this “new” reality, warfare is not as simple as it was in the past: there are no obvious good and bad guys, which makes ethical decision making more complex. Compounding the issue, due to modern media, today’s Marines are on stage with all the world watching their actions in the news, on television, and even on Facebook and Twitter. Given that Marine identity is intimately tied to upholding its proud and honorable history, today’s Marines must behave honorably wherever they go. A Marine’s actions both on and off duty are evaluated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no “personal life” for a Marine. During a recruit class I observed on “Combatting Human Trafficking,” Sergeant Belleau stated, “If people think that we’re the elite fighting force and we have Marines doing [bad] things, what will people think of us? Marines are ambassadors to the world. How we behave is a reflection of the character of the Corps.”

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To prepare new recruits for this complex role, the Marine Corps has instituted a new values-based training program (VBT) that “prepares Marines to make ethical and moral decisions over their careers and during their lifetime” (U.S.  MCRD 2011). The link between VBT and the public role of the Marine is not coincidental as Major Wake explains, “Values-based training is partly tied to the ‘strategic corporal’—a corporal being graded and a standard bearer for a country with CNN watching. Where do you get that? Less tactical (on-the-ground combat focused) and more ethical decision making.” According to Major Wake, an officer at Parris Island, “We’re not here to teach how to knock a door down and clear a room. We’re here to teach basic Marine Corps values.” Echoing a similar sentiment, in a discussion about recruit training, Colonel Tripoli stated, “Character development and discipline is the most important part. Many people think it’s the physical but it’s not. Esprit de corps—it’s about teaching them the history of the Corps, pride in the Corps.” He continued, “People see the physical events that the recruit has to do. But that’s not what’s most important. What’s most important is the mental, moral transformation.” In an interview with three recruits, they too expressed the notion that recruit training was not about developing physical skills, but rather was a personal moral transformation. Recruit A: After being here this recruit has been humbled. Recruit B: You become a not entirely brand new person, but you become a better person. You think about others more and are less selfish. Recruit C: This recruit thought boot camp would be a lot more physical. This recruit found that it is 99% mental. Recruit B: This recruit believes that it’s all mental. When recruits think, “I can’t do this” then the day is very hard.

Because VBT is seen as foundational to creating an ethical Marine who displays the values of the Corps, it is woven throughout the recruit training program. Values-­ based training is taught using a combination of formal lectures in the classroom, discipline, role modeling, and discussions with the Drill Instructor. All of these approaches rely on one key figure in the training: the Drill Instructor. As Colonel Suribachi explained in an interview: The Drill Instructor School is a very tough school—three months, very rigorous. We are teaching them very nuanced types of ways of instruction. It’s tough to teach values-based training. How do you teach honor, courage, and commitment? What we’ve found is what we’re teaching was OK, but it’s how the instructor delivers it.

The Drill Instructor is viewed as providing the moral and personal role model of the ideal Marine. “The model of the DI, their behavior, that should be the epitome [recruits] are trying to achieve.” (Colonel Iwo Jima). According to Major Wake, “Modeling—you should be conducting yourself the way you want your recruits to be. That’s why the DIs don’t smoke in front of the recruits.” “It takes character to be an instructor. You need character to teach it.” (Sergeant Major Chesty). In addition to their job as a role model, the Senior Drill Instructor plays a specific role in VBT through their dedicated hours of SDI time with the recruits. Colonel Tripoli describes this role:

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A second approach to instilling values in recruits is through teaching discipline and self-control. “We teach core values through repetition and example. We’re building a Marine who is disciplined,” Colonel Tripoli explained. Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Con Thien elaborated, “All we’re trying to do is force everyone to do it the same way so that we have a standard. We can’t crack open the Marine’s heart and see if you have a brand but we can say ‘You’ve been through 12 weeks of training and you’ve been given this’.” At first, it seemed strange to me that ethical decision making could be taught through discipline, drill, and obedience. However, as I discussed the issue further with Colonel Tripoli, it became clear that recruit training was truly not another sports training program, but a complete re-enculturation program, requiring absolute acceptance of the new culture by the recruit. “It’s behavior modification,” he stated. I don’t care if you’re from Georgia and you hate blacks. [We don’t tolerate racism and so] you are going to adopt our values. We’ll drop a recruit that can’t adhere to the values of the Corps. That is a serious example. Our first tool is to recycle. One of the most painful things you can do to a kid is drop them back two weeks.

He continued, “The Army wants to modify their training to each kid’s individual character. We don’t do that. They have to adapt to us.” In fact, he added, “One of the reasons we have difficulty attracting [certain minority] populations is we require total assimilation.” These are no hollow statements. Today, the Marine Corps is so serious about ensuring that graduating recruits have committed to the Marine warrior ethos and values that they will actually fail a recruit on the basis of his or her inability to adopt the Corps’ ideals. In discussing the requirements for graduation from boot camp with several Marine officers, I listed all the formal tasks that a recruit must pass: The physical fitness tests, the water survival test, rifle qualifications, MCMAP (martial arts program), academics (the formal classes described earlier), the battalion commander’s inspection, and the culminating test, the Crucible. “But,” Colonel Choisin, one of the senior commanders, interjected, “a recruit can do all these things and still not graduate to the outside forces if he does not adapt. These are the requirements, but if that young man or woman does not demonstrate core Marine Corps values, we have the moral responsibility not to send them to the fleet (the general Marine Corps forces).” Staff Sergeant Hashmark narrated a story that illustrated just how seriously the Marine Corps views commitment to their core values. It’s all about the intangibles—pride, integrity, maturity. We’re expecting an 18-year-old [to demonstrate] maturity. Integrity is a huge one. I had this kid—he had the pride, he had the commitment. But he wrote his platoon number up inside the [bathroom] stall. And we asked, “Who did this?” And no-one volunteered. Someone finally told. He was the best

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recruit I had, and I asked him, “Why did he destroy government property?” and he finally “fessed up” [that he wanted to show pride in his unit!] And so we ended up recycling him. And he was broken [by it]. But I saw him in the chow hall later and he said, “It’s the best thing I had to do.”

According to the Marine leadership that I interviewed at Parris Island, this apparently “new” values-based program was really just a reinvention of traditional Marine Corps activities and ways of doing things. In speaking about the VBT, Major Wake described this sense of continuity and reinvention of the past, “You’re dealing with it with cultural education. We’re dealing with it with values training. It’s not really new. We’ve being teaching values since 1775. But we’ve not codified it.” Staff Sergeant Hashmark also emphasized this sense that the new human-centered, values-­based training was really simply another way of doing what Marines have always done, “You can either call it VBT or small unit leadership. It’s our entire culture. The way we do things.” Yet, despite the current emphasis on values-based training, recent Marine Corps history has demonstrated a rather uneven commitment to the concept. In 1996, viewing the ethical aspects of the Marine as a critical formative part of recruit training, General Krulak (the 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps) added one final culminating test to prove that the recruit has developed not only the physical, but also the mental and moral qualities required to become a Marine—a 54-hour challenge called the Crucible.

The Battle Over the Crucible Over the past 15 years, the Marine Corps has struggled with the question of whether it should focus on core values and ethical decision making—a more “human-­ centered/cultural approach” to combat—or to emphasize more physical, basic warrior skills such as rifle training and combat training. This fascinating internal debate regarding the Marine Corps’ identity has focused in large part around the role of the Crucible: a 54-hour final challenge which includes food and sleep deprivation and over 45 miles of marching.8 The fascinating oscillation between warrior skills versus values-based skills was narrated to me by Lieutenant Colonel (ret) Con Thien, who had lived through it all—first as an enlisted Marine, then as an officer, and now as a civilian developing Marine Corps training programs at TECOM (Training and Education Command). I went through recruit training in the summer of ‘91. At that point, under the auspices of General Gray (29th Commandant of the Corps), his efforts were to reintroduce warrior training. General Gray got the Marine Corps thinking about the lessons from Combat Desert Storm. So when I was a recruit, basic warrior and combat training was the focus. Fast forward to General Krulak and values-based training. Honor, courage, and commitment became the big thing, and he instituted the Crucible. After he left—General Krulak was kind of polarizing—either you liked him, or you didn’t—he left a pretty powerful legacy.

 For a complete description of the Crucible events, see Woulfe 1998.

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So now it’s 9–11, we’ve been doing the Crucible for a few years. And we’ve become a Corps of War. Up to now, the two recruit depots—Parris and Island and San Diego—we’d tried to make them identical. Then in the 2001–2 time frame the two depots stopped talking to each other. There’s a big effort to bring back basic warrior training. Both depots start to run on their own programs. General Flynn9 comes down in 2006. Parris Island gives this big brief on turning the Crucible into a tactical (physical combat) event like SULE II (small unit leader’s exercise) at OCS (Officers Candidate School). Well General Krulak got wind of this and comes back to visit. Every officer and staff NCO (non-commissioned officer) was required to come into the lyceum, and he gave them the exact same PowerPoint he had given in 1996. The general message is, “Don’t mess with my Crucible.” We go back. We have to rewrite the POI (program of instruction) to include values again. We went back and reread General Krulak’s articles—the whole millennial discussion. We have these unfortunate events—Haditha, Mahmudiyah—all were pivotal events. And they made us take another look at how we’re teaching values. Honor, courage, commitment was becoming a bumper sticker. So we went from General Gray and warrior training, then General Krulak and values-based training and the Crucible, then 9–11 and a nation at war. Then some negative events led us to refocus on values-based training. A sine wave of tactics versus values versus tactics, and now we’re back at values again.

The period 2006–7 turned out to be a pivotal turning point in the Marine Corps’ alternation between culture/values training and basic combat skills training at the recruit depots. Both the Haditha killings in 200510 and the Mahmudiya rape and killings in 200611 focused great negative public scrutiny on the U.S. military services. The result was a decisive shift towards Values Based Training at the depots. Major Wake describes this shift: [Then there was] the issue of the Crucible. What is its role? We needed to make it less about enduring pain for 54 hours and focus on the ethical dimension. [Regarding] values-based training—a lot of great work was done with General Krulak. But we didn’t formalize it. We had a lot of classes on VBT but it was instructor dependent. There was no DI instruction on how to teach it. Our focus was tactical not cultural. And the Commandant wanted “Values imprinted on their souls.” We were debating whether to cut recruit training to eleven weeks. And we had to decide whether the “bill payer” was the SDI and drill time—those intangibles. But those are the times when values-based training is taught. The guided instructions are all about that the DI can see the young recruit, “Does he get it?” So the Commandant kept twelve weeks and said we’re actually going to cut some other things to add more time for VBT…We created a values evaluation card for the Crucible. Technically, you can fail the Crucible on values.

Today, as Colonel Choisin explains, “The Crucible evaluates the recruit’s mental, moral, and physical development in order to validate their transformation into a Marine. It’s a subjective staff assessment—not just a physical gut check. We’re not looking for individual athletes but for moral character and mental skills.” One of the main ways this is accomplished is through requiring recruits to pass through core values stations which are based on real-world events.  At the time, he was the Commanding Officer of TECOM (Training and Education Command)  24 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed by a group of Marines. All of the Marines were later acquitted. 11  An Iraqi girl was raped and murdered and her family killed by five U.S. Army soldiers—all of whom were found guilty. 9

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The Crucible begins with a night hike at 0200 into Paige Field. Over the next two-and-a-half days, the recruits receive only two periods of 4 hours of sleep and four MRE (meals ready to eat—military dried food rations). Despite being tired, hungry, and physically exhausted, the recruits must succeed in completing ten major events and passing through 28 stations—a test of their ability to make decisions and act courageously and ethically under duress. Many of the stations are named “Warrior Stations” bearing the names of previous medal-of-honor Marines. Significantly, the heroic namesakes of these stations are not highly ranked officers, but courageous enlisted Marines—Private First Class Garcia; Lance Corporal Noonan; Private First Class Anderson. Each station is made to replicate a problem or crisis that these courageous Marines had to face: “PFC Garcia’s leap,” “Lance Corporal Noonan’s casualty evacuation,” “PFC Anderson’s fall.” As the recruits arrive at the stations, physically and mentally exhausted from the strain of the exercise, they are required to read about the history of the warrior whose name is on the station and then undertake a challenge simulating the physical and moral dilemmas each warrior faced. At the end of each challenge the recruits sit down with their drill instructor and discuss the challenge, how their team solved it, and the ethical and practical lessons they learned. Through the heroic examples and lessons of their predecessors, recruits are taught to look to the past to provide practical and moral guidance for the future. Thus, through this penultimate test of the recruit, history is linked to ethics, courage and pride, completing and reinforcing Marines’ identity and moral obligations as members of a long, brave, and honorable lineage dating back to their origins in 1775. Values and honorable behavior become an integral part of Marines’ history and glory (the less honorable parts being conveniently forgotten or ignored). And the new recruit is socialized into an identity that combines courage, strength, honor, self-discipline, and commitment to the Corps. The present becomes the ongoing ideal mythical past in which Marines have always acted in culturally appropriate and ethically responsible ways.

Conclusion By comparing past or accepted “traditional” ideals of Marines’ identity, to contemporary realities, practices, and beliefs, this research has sought to locate areas of shift and adjustment in Marines’ self-concept and actions. This examination of shifting and recreated ideals permits a deeper analysis of the ways that ideals—as well as practice—are negotiated and reinvented in response to external pressures for change. The result is a fascinating picture of how the U.S. military culture policy has been reworked and integrated into a new, yet “unchanging” Marine Corps identity. This notion of an “unchanging” Marine Corps is quite paradoxical, considering that it is apparent that over the past two decades the Corps has been struggling with an internal debate between two distinct identities: hard-charging, fierce combat

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warrior and honorable, ethical protector of the weak (aka local population). These two seemingly disparate identities have been merged in contemporary Marine Corps ideology into one ideal with two balanced aspects. Rather than view Marine Corps culture as changing (which would challenge Marines’ veneration of history and their belief in one unbroken connection between the Corps of the past and the Corps of today), Marines have simply expanded their identity to incorporate this new identity of a “culturally capable Marine” by re-emphasizing a different aspect of “what Marines have always been”—that of the brave, chivalrous, and honorable warrior who protects civilians. This fascinating reworking of external policy directives to fit within existing cultural narratives and frameworks poses two interesting questions. First, this case forces us to reconsider the notion of policy implementation as a “top down” process simply forced upon a passive recipient group or organization. Instead, as is clear from the Marine Corps case, cultural and organizational change is not a one-way street, but a creative, dynamic process in which in-coming policy is reinvented, rewritten, and retold in the history and cultural idioms of the recipient organization. Second, the study forces us to consider whether there may be similarities and differences across military organizations in the degree to which external culture policy directives can be incorporated into existing military culture and ideals. While the U.S. Marine Corps found a match between teaching cultural understanding and inculcating Marine Corps values of honor and upholding a long historical legacy, is this the case with other military institutions with different values and ideals? Several of the militaries described in the previous chapters do appear to have found a congruence between new, external cultural imperatives and their own identity and mission. For example, Tomforde explains that the German Bundeswehr has framed cultural understanding as a way for German soldiers to demonstrate their new international role as peacekeepers and socially responsible world partners—a particularly sensitive issue given the history of the German military in World Wars I and II. Likewise, according to Dahle and Mostulien, language and culture training has found an accepted place in developing the skills of Norwegian intelligence officers, whose roles and identity already require research and understanding of the operational environment—including human aspects. On the other hand, as McFate argues in her narration of the misadventures of teaching culture at the US Naval War College, the US military as a whole has had a very conflicted relationship with anthropology and cultural approaches to conflict. Viewing culture more as a necessary backup strategy when conventional methods have failed, the US Department of Defense prefers to maintain its “traditional” role in combat—as a large conventional military force that wins by technology, not by influencing “hearts and minds.” Equally problematic, Enstad points out that in some cases, cultural concepts may be squeezed and reworked into military norms of conducting business (such as creating the ASCOPE/PMESII framework) to such an absurd extent that, while culture may be “ingested” into the organization, it becomes essentially useless. As a result, the external culture policy directives become effectively neutralized, much in the way that a human body’s immune system neutralizes an undesirable and dangerous virus or foreign object.

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Perhaps the one important lesson that we can take from the Marine Corps case and the preceding chapters in this book is that teaching culture in the military is— well—a culturally embedded activity. Military organizations each have their own unique cultures, which significantly influence the way that culture training and education programs are accepted, developed and implemented. Indeed, a study of teaching culture in the military might just paradoxically teach us about military culture instead!

References Abbe, A., Gulick, L. M., & Herman, J. L. (2008). Cross-cultural competence in Army leaders: A conceptual and empirical foundation. United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Adamsky, D. (2010). The culture of military innovation: The impact of cultural factors on the revolution in military affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel. Stanford: Stanford Security Studies. Albro, R., Marcus, G. E., McNamara, L. A., & Schoch-Spana, M. (Eds.). (2012). Anthropologists in the securityscape: Ethics, practice and professional identity. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Ben-Ari, E. (1998). Mastering soldiers: Conflict, emotions and the enemy in an Israeli military unit. Oxford: Bergham Books. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R.  Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Buley, B. (2008). The new American way of war: Military culture and the political utility of force. London: Routledge. Burke, C. (2005). Camp all American, Hanoi Jane and the high-and-tight: Gender, folklore and changing military culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Cassidy, R.  M. (2008). Counterinsurgency and the global war on terror: Military culture and irregular war. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Coker, C. (2007). The warrior ethos: Military culture and the war on terror. New York: Routledge. Defense Manpower Data Center. (2019). DoD personnel workforce report. Retrieved from https:// www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp Dorn, E., Graves, H.  D., & Ulmer, W.  F. (2000). American military culture in the twenty-first century: A report of the CSIS International Security Program. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies. English, A. D. (2004). Understanding military culture: A Canadian perspective. Montreal: McGill-­ Queen's University Press. FallenUSSoldiers. (2019a). U.S. Marine Corps—Making a Marine part 1. Retrieved July 11, 2019, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYRccSZgXV4 FallenUSSoldiers. (2019b). U.S. Marine Corps—Making a Marine part 2. Retrieved July 11, 2019, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPgkACv7grk&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL FallenUSSoldiers. (2019c). U.S. Marine Corps—Making a Marine part 3. Retrieved July 11, 2019, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPRzONdtgN0 Fujimura, C. (2012). Culture in/culture of the United States naval academy. In R. Albro, G. E. Marcus, L.  A. McNamara, & M.  Schoch-Spana (Eds.), Anthropologists in the s­ ecurityscape: Ethics, practice and professional identity (pp. 115–128). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Holmes-Eber, P. (forthcoming). Lost in translation: Anthropologists and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Small Wars and Insurgencies. Holmes-Eber, P. (2014). Culture in conflict: Irregular warfare, culture policy, and the Marine Corps. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Hawkins, J. P. (2001). Army of hope, army of alienation: Culture and contradiction in the American Army communities of cold war Germany. Westport: Praeger Publishers. Johnson, J. L. (2018). The Marines, counterinsurgency and strategic culture: Lessons learned and lost in America’s wars. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Johnson, T. H., & Zellen, B. (2014). Culture, conflict and counterinsurgency. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Luft, G. (2010). Beer, bacon and bullets: Culture in coalition warfare from Gallipoli to Iraq. Charleston: BookSurge Publishing. Marine Corps Recruiting. (2019). 241 years of battles won. Retrieved July 11, 2019, from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdH5MbL6fIg Marine OCS blog. (2019). Marine corps commercial: Toward the sounds of chaos. Retrieved July 11, 2019, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYrBSTBHCS4 Marines.com. (2019). What we do: Rapid response. Retrieved July 11, 2019, from https://www. marines.com/what-we-do/rapid-response.html Nader, L. (1972). Up the anthropologist—Perspectives gained from studying up. In D. H. Hymes (Ed.), Reinventing anthropology (pp. 284–311). New York: Pantheon Books. Network of Concerned Anthropologists. (2009). The counter-counterinsurgency manual. Chicago: IL Prickly Paradigm Press. Rasmussen, L. J., Sieck, W. R., & Duran, J. L. (2016). A model of culture-general competence for education and training: Validation across services and key specialties. Global Cognition: Yellow Springs. Russell, J.  A. (2010). Innovation, transformation, and war: Counterinsurgency operations in Anbar and Ninewa provinces, Iraq, 2005–2007. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Simons, A. (1997). The company they keep: Life inside the U.S. Army special forces. New York: Free Press. Simpson, E. (2016). War from the ground up: Twenty-first century combat as politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sturkey, M.  F. (2003). Warrior culture of the U.S.  Marines: Axioms for warriors, Marine quotations, battle history, reflections on combat, corps legacy, humor—and much more—for the World’s warrior elite. Plum Branch: Heritage Press International. U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) Parris Island. (2011). Command Brief Woulfe, J.  B. (1998). Into the crucible: Making Marines for the 21st century. Novato: Presidio Press. Paula Holmes-Eber  holds a doctorate in Anthropology from Northwestern University. She is the author of five books and numerous scholarly publications on culture and conflict. Her previous books include: Culture in Conflict: Irregular Warfare, Culture Policy and the Marine Corps and Operational Culture for the Warfighter. For almost a decade, Dr. Holmes-Eber taught thousands of senior level military and government officials on the cultural aspects of conflict as Professor of Operational Culture at Marine Corps University. At the same time, she assisted the U.S. Marine Corps and US government in developing its culture policy, training and programs as Senior Social Scientist at the Center for Advanced Operational Culture (CAOCL). She is currently Affiliate Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington

Teaching Cultural Competence: Lessons Learned from Seven Countries Paula Holmes-Eber and Kjetil Enstad

Abstract The eleven diverse chapters of Warriors or Peacekeepers: Building Military Cultural Competence, offer research from three continents in seven countries. These studies provide a unique opportunity for an international comparison of military cultural education. This final chapter offers a meta-analysis of the various chapters to identify key themes, patterns and findings among the studies, providing valuable lessons learned about both the successes and challenges of preparing military leaders for the cultural aspects of conflict. While there are some issues that are unique to a specific country or military program, there are far more commonalities among the contributions. We compare and contrast military culture education at two distinct levels of analysis: (1) The individual level and (2) The institutional level.

This set of eleven diverse chapters spanning research on three continents in seven countries provides a unique opportunity for an international comparison of military cultural education. Contributors offer perspectives on teaching culture across different military services (army, navy and marine corps) and to military leaders in specific occupational specialties (such as intelligence officers or military planners). While most programs described in this anthology focus on military cultural education at the bachelor’s level, there are studies from the recruit level to senior officers at a top-level war college. Given the rich opportunities to make comparisons across the studies, we decided to conduct a short meta-analysis of the various chapters to identify key themes, patterns and findings among the studies. We hope that this chapter may provide valuable lessons learned about both the successes and challenges of preparing military leaders for the cultural aspects of conflict. Interestingly, while there are some issues P. Holmes-Eber (*) Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. Enstad The Military Academy, Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 K. Enstad, P. Holmes-Eber (eds.), Warriors or Peacekeepers?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36766-4_13

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that are unique to a specific country or military program, there are far more commonalities among the contributions. Below, we compare and contrast military culture education at two distinct levels of analysis: 1. The individual level and 2. The institutional level.

Teaching Culture at the Individual Level Virtually every paper in this collection addresses the question of teaching culture at the level of the individual soldier, sailor, marine or civilian working in conflict environments. Significantly, regardless of nationality or military service branch, several common patterns and findings emerge from the chapters. These patterns focus around the questions of who receives the culture education—the student (as well as who teaches it); what the content of the education should be—the curriculum; and how the curriculum should be taught—the appropriate methods.

 hat Should Military Students Learn?: The Culture W Curriculum If there is one overarching argument among this diverse set of chapters, it is that to develop cultural understanding, military students cannot simply be given a mere checklist of skills or facts. Rather cultural competencies involve developing new attitudes and ways of seeing the world: capabilities that must be built over time in a manner similar to the way that the military develops leadership qualities. As Enstad argues, culture cannot be reduced to a matrix or list of (culturally preconceived) categories such as the ASCOPE/PMESII framework. Teaching culture requires instructors to help students shift their ‘horizon of understanding’; in other words to expand their viewpoint and consider alternative explanations of events. Arguing that cultural competence is a necessary virtue that all officers should cultivate, Parenteau pushes our discussion even further to view the development of cultural competence as a career long process for military officers. As several of the authors point out (Holen; Tomforde; Enstad; and Brown and Okros), one of the primary obstacles in developing an effective military cultural curriculum is the cultural disconnect between military ways of thinking and teaching about the conflict environment (linear, concrete, deductive, following prescribed methodologies) versus the more abstract, multi-faceted, iterative and inductive approaches required for successful development of cultural competence. According to Cormier, this oversimplification (and consequent stereotyping by the military) of culture in the battlespace may have long-standing roots reaching back to Clausewitz, who addressed the role of culture in conflict but failed to recognize the Euro- (and Prussian) centric prejudices that biased his evaluation of other cultures.

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Who Should Receive Culture Education?: The Student Although perhaps obvious to experts in pedagogy, one of the most significant findings reported repeatedly in the studies was the observation that military students’ age, gender, deployment experience, and military occupational specialty (MOS) had a direct influence on the degree to which students were open to and capable of developing higher level cultural competencies. Masson and Moelker, for example, found that military students from the Netherlands (who were predominantly young, inexperienced and male) were significantly less able to suspend judgement and develop higher-level cultural competencies than Argentinean students who were generally older, had much more deployment experience, and had a much higher proportion of females in the classroom. Similarly, Tomforde reports that military students who had deployed to Afghanistan were much more able to grasp the cultural significance and implications of military interventions than their inexperienced colleagues. Focusing on military occupational skills (MOS) rather than deployment, Dahle and Mostulien argue that cultural education is more effective when tied directly to building skills that are compatible with a specific (culturally relevant) MOS such as intelligence. Perhaps most convincing of all, Haugegaard explains how— based on lessons learned during the six-year development of their culture program– the Danish Defense College instituted a prerequisite that students desiring to be admitted to the culture course must have at least one previous deployment experience. In an interesting twist to the argument that officers who have experience in previous culturally diverse environments will be better able to develop cultural competence, Brown and Okros make a strong case that to develop a culturally competent Canadian military, the military itself should actually recruit a more diverse workforce. In other words, by employing a diverse military, the institution itself will become more culturally competent. Our collection of papers provides convincing evidence that culture education cannot be a one-size-fits-all program, but may be best suited to older and more experienced military students.

How Should Culture Be Taught?: The Methodology A third area of agreement among the papers, regardless of the country or specific military service, was the finding that to teach culture, one must offer a holistic pedagogical approach, incorporating a variety of different methods and learning techniques. Practice-oriented learning appears to be the method of choice in many of the  cultural education programs described in this book–from the recruit level (Holmes-Eber) to the senior officer war college level (McFate). Several authors (Masson and Moelker; Haugegaard; Holmes-Eber) describe the importance of using case studies and scenarios to engage students in lively debate and critical thinking about culture.

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Equally important, the contributors (Haugegaard, Tomforde, McFate, Dahle and Mostulien) emphasize offering operationally and mission focused readings and materials to make the classes relevant to the military students. In an enlightening commentary, McFate argues, however, that part of the challenge of teaching culture in the military today is the dearth of scholarly literature providing relevant and appropriate material for military officers. Finally, a few authors emphasized the importance of incorporating student experiences and perspectives into a more collaborative form of learning. Brown and Okros propose that the ideal methodology for teaching culture to the military is heutagogy, in which learning is student driven and more adapted to adult learning styles.

Teaching Culture at the Institutional Level Interestingly, while the chapters in this book provide a rather coherent perspective on the best pedagogical frameworks for teaching culture to military students at the individual level, there is a much greater variation of perspectives at the institutional level. This divergence may reflect in part, the diverse cultures and histories of the various military institutions described in this book—ranging from a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station (Holmes-Eber) to a Norwegian language and culture program for new intelligence officers (Dahle and Mostulien) to an Argentinian course on culture and gender for a mixed civilian and experienced officer corps (Masson and Moelker). However, it may also reflect the rather inconsistent and incoherent approach to culture education that appears to characterize most military institutions today. For example, a major issue cited in some of the chapters (Tomforde; Haugegaard; Enstad) is the marginal role of the cultural curriculum within the context of the military institution where it is taught. Culture courses are offered as an optional elective and subject to the vagaries of the institution’s schedule and shifting priorities. Tomforde argues that because of the structural discrepancies between the German military’s institutional goals and the culture curriculum, culture education is given low priority—a concern also echoed by Haugegaard and McFate. Addressing a parallel institutional challenge, Tomforde, Enstad, Dahle and Mostulien discuss the paradigmatic differences confronted by civilian faculty working with military instructors in a military institution. As Enstad notes, military instructors at the Norwegian Defence University College perceive culture instruction as the transmission of yet another hard, measurable, military skill. This is in direct contrast to the more holistic and analytical approach to conceptualizing and teaching culture that many of the civilian scholars in this book recommend. Holen’s chapter illustrates how civilian (NATO/peacekeeping) perspectives and approaches to concepts of threat and conflict are sometimes in direct opposition to military approaches and analyses. Her chapter suggests that the contrasts between

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civilian and military ways of conceptualizing the conflict environment may extend much deeper than mere differences in instructors’ background and training—a concern also echoed by Brown and Okros and Tomforde. Seeking to resolve this issue, Dahle and Mostulien argue that for culture to be taught successfully, both military and civilian faculty must work together to understand better each other’s perspectives. However, given the tight time schedules and other institutional barriers, the authors were unsure how or if such integration could be achieved. The inconsistent nature of culture education may not simply be an internal institutional issue but may also reflect the fluctuating relationship of military institutions to their government and the international arena. Haugegaard, Holmes-Eber and McFate all note that culture training and programs tend to rise and fall according to the specific operations in which the country’s military is engaged. Haugegaard, for example, follows the trajectory of the Danish Defense College’s cultural curriculum over six years, illustrating how the curriculum has shifted over time to reflect the changing role and nature of Danish military operations. Taking an even wider view, McFate focuses on the larger patterns of strategic shifts in U.S. government international policy and engagement, arguing that for the U.S., military cultural education follows a cyclical pattern—rising in relevance only when conventional methods of war fail. McFate’s chapter forces us to consider a critical question underlying many of the papers in this book: Is cultural understanding a necessary competence for military leaders or merely a necessary evil to be accepted when conventional warfare does not yield desired results? As Cormier argues, perhaps even Clausewitz was undecided on this issue. Holmes-Eber’s chapter suggests that military identity—wrapped in the unique history, culture and current political narrative of a specific country or service—may influence the degree to which any specific military institution may be willing or able to incorporate culture as a valid and necessary part of professional military education and training. This leads us to ask, what is the direction of military cultural education in the coming decades? While the chapters in this book cannot answer this, they do leave some intriguing clues. Military size and strength do seem to matter. Smaller militaries (such as the Norwegian and Danish Defence forces—see e.g. Dahle and Mostulien and Haugegaard) whose operations require that they collaborate with international partners seem to remain invested in building cultural education programs. In contrast, larger, more powerful militaries such as the U.S., appear to be retrenching, and turning back to more conventional force strategies (McFate). Still, there is hope. As Tomforde points out for the German Bundeswehr, perhaps world opinion—as measured in response to both conventional and social media—has become such a highly valued measure of military success, that all militaries today must require culturally appropriate behavior from their service members or face major international backlash (Holmes-Eber). It will remain for the coming decades to decide the fate of military cultural education and whether the hard lessons learned within these pages will be remembered by generations to come.

Index

A Acculturation, 196–198, 200 Adult learning, 78, 228 Adversarial outlooks, 79, 83, 92 See also Adversary Adversary(-ies), 6, 29–33, 78, 79, 82, 90, 165, 166, 187, 189, 192, 195, 199, 200 See also Threat Advisors, 61, 65, 120, 145, 146, 156 Afghanistan, 6, 31, 60, 67, 69, 71, 76, 98, 102–104, 107, 118, 140–144, 146, 149–155, 168, 170, 186–191, 194, 200, 206, 209, 215, 227 Afghan National Army, 102, 151, 152 Al Qaeda, 13, 48, 188 Anarchism, 50 Anthropology anthropology of war, 191–194, 200, 201 Arabic, 4, 117–136 Area of operation (AO), 30, 33, 63, 68, 109 Area specific training, see Training (cultural) Argentina, 4, 7, 162–164, 166, 168, 175, 177 Aristotle, 15, 16 Armed conflict, see Conflict Armed forces, 5, 12, 25, 47, 60, 76, 98, 118, 140, 162 ASCOPE/PMESII, 59–73, 222, 226 Assimilation, 80, 141, 218 Assumptions, 4, 5, 30–32, 34, 45, 62, 63, 67–70, 72, 73, 78, 83, 86, 88, 89, 92, 119, 122, 124, 126, 131, 133, 135, 199, 208 See also Structured analytic techniques Asymmetrical operations, 12 Asymmetrical war, 43 See also War

B Bacha Bazi, 162, 168–172 Bakunin, M., 51 Barth, F., 69 Behavior, 3, 7, 12–16, 18, 27, 28, 30, 32–36, 38, 68, 84, 86, 87, 123, 126, 132, 148, 154, 157, 165, 169, 179, 188, 190, 195, 199, 201, 209, 217, 218, 221, 229 Bhabha, H.K., 70 Bias bias erosion, 93 gendered biases, 90 (see also Gender) latent biases, 79, 83, 87, 89, 92 tacit biases, 79 Binaries, 79, 83, 85 Binary categories, 83 Blended learning, 103, 114, 167, 170 Bloom’s taxonomy, 180 Boko Haram, 27, 48 Borges, J.L., 75–93 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 142, 154 Bourdieu, P., 6, 89, 111, 112, 209 Brown, V., 5, 7, 75–93, 226–229 Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146 Bundeswehr, 5, 6, 12, 139–157, 222, 229 Bureau of Ethnology, 189 C Canada, 5, 7, 76, 77, 79–81, 85, 86 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), 7, 12, 76–78, 80–82, 84–86, 91 Canadian Defense Academy, 12 Canadian Employment Equity Act, 80 Canadian Human Rights Act, 80

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232 Capacity building, 76, 98, 102, 109, 115 Case studies, 90, 227 Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL), 209, 210 Central Coordination Office for Intercultural Competence (ZKIKK), 12, 145, 151, 156 Character education, 16 Clausewitz, Carl von, 1, 3 Coalition, 12, 61, 98, 100, 101, 105, 107, 109, 186, 188 COIN, 31, 36, 62, 66, 67 See also Counterinsurgency (COIN) Colonialism, 41, 50, 197 Colonizing, 85 Communication, 11–15, 17, 19, 51, 52, 87, 89, 123, 126, 144, 145, 148, 151, 168, 210 See also Cultural competence Communism, 51, 52 Community of practice, 3, 90 Competence, 1–5, 11–20, 32, 36, 63, 66, 70–72, 75–93, 123, 124, 127, 129, 140–145, 147, 151–153, 156, 164, 166–168, 177–181, 185–201, 210, 212, 216, 225–229 Comprehensive Operational Planning Directive (COPD), 24, 29, 67, 68 Conceptual dualism, 78 Conceptual openness, 79, 83 Confidence, 14, 151, 155, 174 See also Cultural competence Conflict armed, 23, 25, 26, 32, 34, 163, 165 contemporary, 23, 25, 37 culture, 33 environment, 33, 226, 229 resolution, 24, 36, 37, 108 sensitivity, 33, 34 transnational, 25 Contextual awareness, 27, 31, 36 Continuation of politics by other means, 43 See also Clausewitz, Carl von Core philosophy, 141–144, 156 See also Innere Führung Cormier, Y., 44, 48, 226, 229 Counterinsurgency (COIN), 2, 31, 62, 67, 186, 188–190, 192, 200 Counter-intuitive thinking, 126 See also Structured analytic techniques Country specific training, see Training (cultural) Critical thinking, 17, 18, 85–87, 120, 125, 129, 130, 134, 135, 227

Index Cross Cultural Competency (3C), 12, 13, 210, 211 Crucible (U.S. Marine Corps), 205–223, 228 Cultural assumptions, 4, 5, 119, 122, 126 Cultural awareness, 1, 2, 4, 11, 13, 19, 36, 41, 62, 73, 125, 131, 141, 155, 164, 166, 167, 177, 180 Cultural bias, 93, 119 Cultural codes, 13–15, 18, 19, 131 Cultural competence(s) curiosity, 16, 19, 169, 171, 177, 178 empathy, 79, 83, 87, 92, 93, 166, 171, 177–179 flexibility, 166, 171, 177, 178, 188, 211 openness, 7, 19, 79, 83, 130, 148, 166, 177 respect, 166, 171, 177 stability, 2, 27, 32, 147, 166, 171, 177–179, 188, 189, 198, 200 trust, 14, 43, 44, 53, 115, 145, 152, 155, 166, 171, 179, 197, 215 Cultural competency(-ies), 24, 36–38, 77, 163, 166, 167, 177–179, 216, 226, 227 Cultural complexity, 4, 102, 109, 113, 115 Cultural context, 11, 12, 14, 17, 91, 100, 123, 167 Cultural difference, 5, 7, 11, 45, 46, 59–73, 123, 141, 168, 197, 199 Cultural diversity, 11–15, 19, 79, 82, 85 Cultural dynamics, 18, 97–115 Cultural inclusion, 85 Cultural intelligence, 3, 11–20, 41, 49, 131, 166 Cultural knowledge, 120, 123–125, 131, 133, 188, 189, 191 Culturally complex environments, 92 Cultural materialism, 192 Cultural narratives, 6, 222 Cultural otherness, 4 Cultural perceptions, 99, 101, 102 Cultural relativism, 164, 168, 171, 175, 177 Cultural skills, 36, 59–73, 207 Cultural stereotypes, 101, 102, 113 Cultural theory of war, 3, 42, 54 See also War Cultural values, 34, 79, 119, 123, 132, 171, 174, 177–179, 200, 207, 209 Culture agents, 122 belief, 70, 118 bias, 53, 77, 83, 92, 93, 119, 130 contact, 195–197 curriculum, 107, 109, 226, 228

Index education, 5, 99, 101, 102, 106, 110, 226–229 general skills, 210 Marine Corps (U.S.), 7, 210, 211, 222 military, 6, 7, 35, 81, 82, 91, 92, 165, 183–201, 207–209, 221, 222, 226 organizational, 2, 5, 6, 43, 46, 51, 52, 192 policy, 7, 205–223 (see also Policy implementation) political, 49 programs, 227, 228 stereotypical, 6, 33, 124, 211, 214 theory, 99, 104, 159 training, 4, 180, 222, 223, 229 (see also Training (cultural)) understanding, 81, 132, 163 warrior, 35, 213 weaponization, 133 Curiosity, 16, 19, 169, 171, 177, 178 See also Cultural competence Curriculum curricula, 76, 77, 81, 134, 142, 145, 146, 156, 157, 180 flexible, 90 D Dahle, S.B., 117–137, 222, 227–229 Danish Defence, 4, 98, 101–107, 109, 114, 115, 229 Danish Defence College, 4, 98, 102, 103, 105, 107, 109, 114, 115 Decision support, 4, 119, 124–126, 132, 135 Defense Language Office (DLO), 210, 211 Dehumanization, 199 Denmark, 102, 113 Deployment, 6, 19, 60, 92, 99–106, 109, 111, 113, 114, 118, 131, 141–143, 145, 146, 148, 150, 151, 153–156, 163, 165, 167, 168, 170–173, 187, 191, 193–195, 199–201, 207, 209, 211, 227 Design analyses, 88 Dialogue, 12, 35, 80, 102, 112, 113, 115, 120, 147, 155 Directive 3000.05, 189 Discourse, 3–5, 7, 23–25, 62, 70, 78, 81, 101, 102, 134, 136, 192, 193 Discrimination, 80, 85 Diversity, 7, 11–15, 19, 76–86, 88, 89, 99, 127, 143, 153 Doctrine NATO doctrine, 125 Douglas, M, 64, 111

233 Dualistic thinking, 78 Duty With Honour, 7, 12, 80–82, 84, 85, 91 E Education adult education, 87 officer education, 3, 147 (see also Professional military education) Educational psychology, 99, 100 Educators, 79, 82, 87, 89–91, 119, 123, 127, 129–131, 133–135 Electives, 4, 98–100, 102–104, 107, 109, 111, 113, 114, 177, 186, 191, 200, 206, 228 Elites, 7, 49, 53, 73, 102, 127, 143, 207, 214, 216 Empathy, 79, 83, 87, 92, 93, 166, 171, 177–179 See also Cultural competence Employment Equity Act (EE), 77, 80 Enemy, 28, 30–32, 35, 37, 42, 45, 46, 51, 62, 68, 78, 82, 101, 149, 166, 189, 199, 207, 214 See also Threat, adversary Enstad, K., 1–7, 59–73, 225–229 Episodic memory, 100, 101, 114 Episteme, 62 Epistemological challenges, 5, 65, 141, 148, 155, 156 Epistemology, 5, 65, 68, 72, 141, 146, 148, 155, 156, 187, 194, 195 Essentialism heteronormative, 85 masculinist, 85 racial, 85 Ethics training, 177 See also Training (cultural) Ethnocentrism, 84, 119, 199 Ethnographic research, 6, 64, 194, 207 EU, 147, 153 Exchange, 50, 61, 110, 111, 146 F False narratives, 119 Fear of difference, 84 Femininities, 82, 86, 90, 91, 193 Feminist theories, 86 Feyerabend, P., 60, 70, 73 Field exercise, 113, 209 Field Manual 5-0 (FM 5-0), 67 Flexibility, 166, 171, 177, 178, 188, 211 See also Cultural competence

Index

234 Foreign languages, 19, 20 Formation of violence, 192 Foucault, M., 62, 65 French culture, 42, 45–47 G Gadamer, H.-G., 7, 62, 70–73 Galula, D., 31 Games, 4, 99, 110–114 Geertz, C., 2, 3, 5, 32, 35, 66, 70 Gender equality, 2, 86 expression, 80 gendered assessments of learning, 91 gendered construction (of identity), 90 gendered lenses, 90 gendered military culture, 91 gendered norms, 90, 91 identity, 80, 163, 165, 168 German Command and Staff College, 140, 141, 145, 155 Germany, 6, 7, 46, 142, 145, 147, 149–151, 153, 154, 156 Great power competition, 190, 200 Groupthink, 134 H Habermas, J., 71, 72 Habitus, 16, 209 Haditha, I., 220 Harassment, 81, 84 Haugegaard, R., 4, 97–115, 227–229 Hearts and minds, 42, 47, 151–153, 222 Hegel, G.W.F., 48 Heteronormative, 85 Heutagogic, 78, 87–91 Heutagogy, 5, 7, 78, 79, 87, 89–92, 228 Hexis, 16 HIPPO, 24, 26, 27 Historical guilt, 7, 154, 156 Holen, S.V., 3, 23–38, 226, 228 Holistic approach, 48, 54, 126, 227 Holmes-Eber, P., 1–7, 19, 69, 71, 109, 163, 180, 205–223, 225–229 Homogeneity, 80 Horizon of understanding, 62, 70, 226 Human domain, 190, 191 Human factors, 125 Human terrain, 62, 66, 67, 69, 73, 187, 188 Human Terrain System (HTS), 187, 188 Human violence, 193 Hypersensitivity, 154

See also Cultural competence Hypothesis, 124, 130, 131, 181 I Identity Marine Corps, 7, 207, 215, 219, 221 (see also Marine Corps) military, 92, 229 politics, 81 warrior, 6, 200, 207, 212–215, 219, 220, 222 (see also Warrior) Implicit understandings, 77, 92 Inclusion inclusive leadership, 143, 146, 188 inclusive social practices, 13, 64, 82, 85 inclusivity, 87 Indigenous peoples, 50, 80, 81, 84, 192 Indigenous warfare, 197 Innere Führung, 141, 143–146, 156 Insecure environment, 26–28 See also Conflict Institutional closure, 84, 91 Institutional coherence, 134 Institutional culture, 78, 91 Instructors civilian, 60, 98, 140, 206 military, 60, 98, 118, 140, 162, 163, 228 Insurgency, 2, 12, 31, 42, 50, 53 See also War Integration integration of women, 143 Intellectual virtue, 15 See also Virtue Intelligence analysis, 4, 120, 125, 131 assessment, 119 discourse, 134, 136 education, 4, 13, 118, 120, 132 educators, 119, 123, 127, 130, 131, 133–135 ethics, 134 failure, 119, 131 intelligence-driven, 132 processing, 120, 125 profession, 118, 120, 122 professional, 119, 121, 132 tradecraft, 134, 135 training, 4, 12, 119, 120, 128–130, 132, 134–136 Intercultural communication, 11–13, 145 Intercultural competencies, 1, 5, 6, 12, 123, 124, 139–157 See also Cultural competence

Index Intercultural meetings, 119, 128 Interdisciplinary studies, 82 International Humanitarian Law, 32, 164, 165 See also Law of Armed Conflict International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 143, 149–151, 162 Interoperability, 107, 109 Intersectionality intersecting identities, 81 Interstate war, 44 See also War Iraq, 31, 34, 69, 73, 98, 102, 104–106, 109, 118, 144, 186–190, 192, 194, 200, 206, 207, 209, 210, 213, 215, 220 ISIL/Islamic State, 27, 34, 44, 48, 162, 197 Iterative process, 91, 125, 131, 215, 226 See also Structured analytic techniques J James, C., 65, 70 Joint Special Operations University, 187 Just war, 49 See also War K Kaldor, M., 42–44 Keegan, J., 42–44, 198, 199 Key leader engagements, 120, 126 Kinetic action, 149, 150 Knowledge sharing, 90 Kosovo, 26, 98, 142, 144, 154 Krulak, General (U.S.), 219, 220 L Language acquisition, 123 proficiency, 19, 123 programs, 127, 210 skills, 19, 119, 124, 135, 210 teaching, 123 training, 19, 20, 153, 210 (see also Training (cultural)) translation, 123, 129 Law of Armed Conflict, 32 See also International Humanitarian Law Leadership, 14–15, 18, 19, 60, 61, 84, 88, 91, 98, 103, 140, 141, 143, 146, 151, 165, 170, 180, 186, 188, 206–210, 215, 216, 219, 226

235 Learning behaviorist level, 87 cognitive level, 87, 88 collaborative, 90, 103, 228 constructivist level, 87–89 environment, 88–92, 100, 103, 104, 108 experiential level, 88 inquiry-driven, 89 interactive, 88 learner-centric methodologies, 87, 89, 91, 92 reflective, 85 self-initiated development, 88 social-constructivist level, 87, 88 student-centered, 5, 89, 91 Lévi-Strauss, C., 63, 64 Liberalism, 49, 53 Linguistics, 63–65, 73, 118, 120, 122, 124, 126, 127, 130, 132–135 Linguists, 63, 98, 102, 119, 121, 122, 124, 134, 155 Low intensity conflict, 12 M Mahmudiya, Iraq, 220 Male dominance organization, 90 Mali, 98, 102–107, 109, 140, 144, 162 Marginalization marginalized groups, 80 socio-cultural, 81 Marine Corps (U.S.) beliefs, 209 culture, 211, 222 (see also Culture) history, 206, 212–214, 219 Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, 186 Marine Corps Recruiting Command, 210 Marine Corps War College, 187 recruit training, 205–223 (see also Training) traditions, 213–216, 219 values, 214, 217, 218, 222 Masculinities hegemonic, 86 masculinist, 84, 86 masculinized academic disciplines, 90 militarized masculinities, 82, 86 warrior forms of masculinity, 91 Masson, L., 4, 7, 161–181, 227, 228 Mattis, General (U.S.), 206, 210 McFate, M., 6, 72, 185–201, 222, 227–229

Index

236 Memory, 88, 100, 101, 110, 111, 114 Military academies, 2, 11–13, 16–20, 59, 60, 73, 171, 191 culture, 6, 7, 35, 81, 82, 91, 92, 164, 198, 207–210, 221–223, 226 (see also Culture) doctrine, 42, 68, 76 ethos, 84, 85 government, 196 history, 31, 103, 187, 190, 193, 198, 201 identity, 92, 229 (see also Identity) institutions, 2, 5, 17, 34, 78, 91, 104, 119, 136, 166, 188, 222, 228, 229 intelligence, 4, 118, 119, 132 (see also Intelligence) leadership, 151 Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP), 61 (see also Comprehensive Operational Planning Directive; Operational planning) military occupational specialty (MOS), 206, 227 military-to-military engagement, 35, 36 occupation, 196 officers, 29–31, 35, 37, 77, 98, 99, 101–104, 107, 112, 118, 133, 186, 187, 193, 194, 200, 226, 228 operations, 2, 4–7, 18, 24, 29, 31, 32, 60, 62, 66, 67, 97–115, 118, 120, 124, 126, 130–132, 135, 148, 190, 191, 229 organisation, 107 planning, 3, 31, 32, 88, 101, 103, 107–109 (see also Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP)) practice, 3, 5, 6 profession, 5, 7, 71, 72, 75–93, 200 recruiting, 34, 77, 211–213, 216, 228 skills, 147, 156, 228 theory, 3 Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP), 61 Moelker, R., 4, 7, 161, 164, 165, 168, 170, 177, 227, 228 Moore, D.T., 125 Moral compass, 144 See also Innere Führung Morale, 42, 46–48, 54, 189 Moral injury, 176, 200 Moral reasoning, 88 Moral virtue, 15 See also virtue Moran, P.M., 122, 123

Mostulien, I., 4, 117–136, 222, 227–229 Missions peace missions, 172 Muslims, 35, 65, 70, 143, 154, 155, 167 N Napoleon Bonaparte, 47 Narrative(s), 6, 29, 41, 48, 62, 65, 119, 124, 132, 199, 200, 209, 222, 229 National Defense University, 162, 163, 187 Nationalism, 47, 197 National Security Strategy, 186, 190, 194 Native Americans, 189, 198, 199 Naval Postgraduate School, 187 Netherlands, 4, 162–165, 168, 177, 180, 227 Networks, 13, 25, 27, 28, 34, 61, 107, 109, 145, 156, 194, 208 Non-fraternization, 170, 171 NORDIS, 119–122, 124, 125, 127–130, 132–136 See also Norwegian Defence Intelligence School Norms group norms, 90 social norms, 119, 199 North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATOs), 24–26, 29, 30, 62, 67, 76, 102, 109, 125, 147, 153, 228 Northern Ireland, 192 North Korea, 195 Norway, 7, 59, 60, 68, 69, 71, 122, 127, 136 Norwegian Committee on Knowledge and Education, 71 Norwegian Defence University College, 228 Norwegian Military Academy, 2, 60 O Office of Strategic Services, 189 Officer education, 3, 147 See also Education Officer Professional Military Education Policy (OPMEP), 188 Officers, 2–7, 11–20, 29–31, 35, 37, 45, 47, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76, 77, 88, 92, 97–115, 118–120, 129, 133, 135, 139–157, 162, 163, 169, 170, 186–188, 193–195, 198, 200, 206, 209, 213, 215, 217–222, 225–228 Officer training, 5, 66, 72, 73, 133, 139–157, 194 Okros, A., 5, 7, 75–93, 226–229

Index Openness, 7, 19, 79, 83, 130, 148, 166, 177 See also Cultural competence Operational area, 31, 68 See also Area of operation Operational Culture, 98, 99, 102, 103, 109, 209, 210, 217 Operational effectiveness, 163 Operational environment (OE), 12, 25, 26, 29, 33, 37, 62, 99, 108, 120, 124–126, 130, 131, 222 Operationally focused materials, 228 Operational planning, 24, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35, 37, 61, 63, 107, 188 See also Military Decision-Making Process, Comprehensive Planning Directive Organizational change, 6, 208, 222 Organizational culture, 2, 5, 6, 43, 46, 51, 52, 192, 211 See also Culture Orientalism, 70, 199 P Paradigm shift, 78, 85, 151 Parenteau, D., 3, 11–20, 226 Parris Island Recruit Depot, 6, 206, 207, 209, 214–216 Participant observation, 112, 113, 142, 146 Peace and security, 3, 24, 26–28, 163 Peacekeepers, 2, 6, 7, 150, 169, 170, 207, 222 Peacekeeping, 2, 54, 98, 107, 140, 142, 147, 162, 206, 216, 228 Peace operations, 24–26, 151, 153, 165 Pedagogical framework, 123, 228 Pedagogy, 62, 70–72, 92, 140, 145, 181, 191, 227, 228 People’s war, 46–53 See also War Petraeus, D.H., 2, 31, 151 PMESII, 5, 59–73, 107–109, 222, 226 See also ASCOPE/PMESII Policy, 6, 26, 43, 84, 119, 142, 185, 207, 229 Policy implementation, 207, 208, 222 Positionality, 79, 87, 89, 90 Postmodern thinking, 89 Powell, W.J., 189 Practice-oriented approach, 4, 99–102, 104, 114 Pre-deployment training, 141, 142, 145, 146, 151, 154, 156 See also Training (cultural) Principle of distinction, 32 Professional ethics, 134, 135

237 Professional military education (PME), 5, 76, 77, 81–83, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92, 187–189, 191, 200, 229 Professional practice, 4, 99, 104 Profession of arms, 13, 16, 17, 76, 86 Professions, 1, 13, 24, 71, 76, 104, 118, 166, 187, 229 Proficiency, 19, 123 Propaganda of the deed, 49, 51, 53 Protection force protection, 30, 126 Protection of civilians protecting civilians, 25, 26, 33, 37 Prototype ideal soldier, 82 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), 149, 152, 188 Prussian Culture, 42, 46 Psychomotor, 164, 167, 180 See also Skills Q Quadrennial Defense Review, 190 R Racialized identity, 78 Racism, 84, 318 Realist assumptions, 62, 67–69 Recruit training, 205–223 See also Training (cultural) Reflections, vi, 4, 17, 70, 71, 79, 82, 84, 86, 89, 99–102, 105, 106, 110, 113–115, 127, 128, 130, 194, 197, 216 Reflective habits, 85 Reflexive thinking, 17 Regional skills, 210 Region specific training, 19 See also Training (cultural) Religious wars, 50 See also Wars Research, 4, 12, 24, 69, 77, 99, 141, 181, 187, 208, 225 Respects, 3, 14, 102, 133, 144, 153–155, 157, 165, 166, 168, 171, 177, 178, 196 See also Cultural competence Royal Danish Defence College, 4, 98, 102, 103, 105, 107, 109, 114, 115 S Sahel, 18, 98, 106, 107 Saïd, E., 42, 43, 66, 70 Saussure, F.de, 63–65

Index

238 Scales, R., 186 Scenarios, 106, 107, 128, 130, 133, 156, 170, 175, 195, 218, 227 Security human security, 23, 37 state security, 37 Security forces, 23, 34, 61, 98, 102 Self-initiated development, 88 See also Learning Self-insight, 87, 89, 90 Self-perception, 155 Self-recognition, 87 Self-reflection, 75–93 Sexual assault, 81 Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), 50 Simulation, 130 Single-outcome forecasting, 131 See also Structured analytic techniques Situational awareness, 30, 118, 120, 124, 126, 132 Skills affective skills, 141, 148, 167 cognitive skills, 79, 83, 92 psychomotor skills, 167 Small war, 31, 47, 200 See also War Social categorization, 87 Social cohesion, 84 Social construction, 82 Social exclusion, 86 Social hierarchies, 82 Social inequity, 83 Socialization, 78, 80, 82–84, 89, 92, 211 Social media, 78, 229 Social order, 82 Social power, 83, 86 Social privilege, 82 Social structure, 109, 143, 189, 199 Social terrain, 31 Socio-cultural changes, 143 Sociocultural theory, 24, 32 Socratic method, 5, 72 Soft skill, 1, 147, 156 Somalia Affair (Canadian Armed Forces (CAF)), 84 Speech, 14, 15, 52, 127, 215 Spivak, G.C., 70 Stability, 2, 27, 32, 98, 147, 166, 171, 177–179, 188, 189, 198, 200 See also Cultural competence State-building, 50, 69 State centric model, 54 Stereotypes dominant, 27, 81

Stranger danger, 5, 7, 75–93 Structural challenges, 141, 144–146, 148 Structuralism, 63, 64, 193 Structured analytic techniques (SAT) analytical framework, 124 iteration, 130 Subjective thinking, 187, 195 T Taken for granted assumptions, 83, 89 Taliban, 65, 73, 149 Targeting, 25, 32, 49, 126, 131 Tartar culture, 42, 45, 46 Teaching strategies, 120, 134 Teaching styles, 89, 90 Threat actor, 31, 35, 36 actor-oriented, 24, 35, 36 analysis, 26, 33, 36, 37 to civilians, 24, 26, 27 context-oriented, 24, 28, 37 multipliers, 27 perspective, 23–38 Tolerance, 79, 144, 157, 177, 178, 199, 211 See also Cultural competence Tomforde, M., 5, 7, 139–157, 222, 226–229 Training (cultural) area specific training, 141 country specific training, 140, 145 culture training, 4, 180, 222, 223, 229 ethics training, 177 language training, 19, 20, 153, 210 officer training, 5, 66, 72, 73, 139–157 pre-deployment training, 141, 142, 145, 146, 151, 154 recruit training, 205–223 region specific training, 19 Train the trainer, 145 Transcultural competence, 119, 129 See also Cultural competence Transcultural war, 185–201 Tribal zone, 197 Trust, 14, 43, 44, 115, 145, 152, 155, 166, 171, 177, 179, 197, 215 See also Cultural competence Tupak Amaru, 50 Turney-High, H., 193 U United Nations (UN) UN Charter, 24 UN peace-building architecture, 24

Index UN Security Council, 23, 163 UN Women, Peace and Security Report (WPS), 24, 26, 34, 163 United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), 102, 106, 107, 144 United States (U.S.), 6, 7, 12, 31, 67, 90, 101, 126, 151, 165, 185–201, 205–223, 228, 229 Universals false universalities, 86 US Army War College, 187 US Department of Defense, 185, 188–190, 207, 210, 222 US Naval War College, 185–201, 222 US Special Operations Command, 190 us/them binaries, 79, 83 us/them dualities, 78, 79, 83, 92 V Values, 2, 3, 15–17, 19, 20, 33, 34, 44, 49, 54, 71, 73, 77, 79, 81, 82, 84–86, 89–92, 102, 119, 122, 123, 126, 132, 144, 153, 164, 169, 171–179, 194, 200, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 214, 216–222, 229 Values-based training (VBT), 212, 216–220 Vietnam, 189 Violence combat violence against civilians, 26 culture, 35 perpetrators, 35 targets, 23

239 victims, 28 violent cultures, 34–36 violent extremism, 27–28, 31 Virtue, 3, 11–20, 64, 180, 226 Visible minorities, 77, 80, 81, 84 W War asymmetrical war, 43 cultural theory of war, 3, 42, 54 interstate war, 44 just war, 49 people’s war, 46–53 religious war, 50 small war, 31, 47, 200 Warrior identity, 207 See also Identity “Whole-of-government” approach, 12 Wicked problems, 88 Women, peace and security, 24, 26, 163 “Wondrous trinity”, 42, 48, 54 See also Clausewitz, Carl von Worldviews, 48, 50, 79, 82, 83, 85, 87–89, 122, 192, 194 Writing, 4, 14, 15, 18, 47, 65, 99, 101, 110, 114, 118, 120, 129, 193 WWII, 193 X Xenophobic thinking, 78