Which foreign language will be most valuable in the next 20 years?
To a young college student who has an interest in contemporary issues in the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan region – but no particular preference regarding any country – which foreign language/country studies would you recommend that he/she study if the intent is to play a role in the major national security challenges of the next generation? (At least the largest challenges among the locales applicable to the languages given).
This is kind of a crystal ball question, since the answer depends on how you expect us to leverage our national power in those regions. I was recently asked this by a college junior (in the fall) who is considering pursuing OCS, State, or CIA. (My first question was to ask him, “you realize those are three different universes, right?”). I gave him my rationale – which is paraphrased below. I also made it abundantly clear to him that I have no idea what I am talking about and that he would be wise to ask his professors.
For my pick, I am thinking Urdu. Pakistan has nukes. Even if we miraculously manage to extract ourselves from Afghanistan, we’ll still be knee deep in Pakistani security issues.
Runner-up – I’m thinking Arabic. We’ll be living, working, and operating in the Arabic-speaking countries for a long time. Kuwait may as well be a PCS (maybe it already is?).
I suspect that Dari and Pashtu will become exponentially less critical as we search for ways to escape from Afghanistan. There seem to be a lot of Indians who speak English, so I’m also thinking not Hindi. Iran may become as problematic as Pakistan, due to its pursuit of nukes and possible internal instability, but I don’t think we’ll have as much dialogue with them as with the Pakistanis – so not Farsi.
Thoughts?
Under the "Other" option...
I'm fairly disappointed that noone has mentioned the language of the fourth most populous country in the world, with the largest Muslim population. Astride a critical maritime line of communication, in possesion of significant oil reserves, (not to mention a source of truly critical resources: coffee and chocolate), Indonesia is a place the U.S. needs to concern itself with, so Bahasa (the Indonesian language) deserves a place on the list.
Languages, focus on Arabic
In my opinion as an old Pakistani hand, Urdu is a waste of time. Almost everyone in Pakistan speaks English, whether they can read or write it is another matter.
Arabic makes a lot of sense as long as the oil wells are still pumping.
Pashtu is ethnocentric and those who speak it also are educated in both English and Urdu (in Pakistan) and Dari if in Afghanistan.
What makes a language important?
Schmedlap did request we focus on languages specifically for the Middle East and S. Asia (Afghanistan/Pakistan), but when he put the 20 years in the future qualifier on it, I decided to look not just in CENTCOM, but globally (another crystal ball).
Concur with the languages identified for the Middle East, but would weight the effort on Persian and Arabic (one can argue that Arabic is now a global language due to the global distribution of Islamic schools funded by NGOs from the Middle East).
Concur with Bob's World that the SOUTHCOM AOR is becoming increasingly important for both countering security threats to our nation and facilitating our economic interests, so I suspect that Spanish and Portuguese will "remain" important.
China and India will remain strategic players, so Chinese is a must add, but since India has several languages, to include English I wouldn't invest too much time learning Hindi.
In Europe it is hard to say. For Africa French, Portuguese, and Arabic will probably remain the key languages (in addition to English).
I agree with WILF, we can make a "guess", but we'll never know with any degree of certainty. Unfortunately, language training is an investment that takes considerable time to see a return on, so we're forced to use our crystal ball and make the best quessimate possible before we invest resources, and after we invest we then we cross our fingers and hope we got it right. If not, we do what we have always done, we scramble to try to get it right.
Hey I finally have a nickname!
I have been posting here for over a year, and I am finally referred to informally.
I agree with your point about Arabic. I guess the question would really depend on what your perspective is. If you are trying to study things like the international relations as it applies to the Middle East, then Chinese probably wins out. However, if you are studying/in the Middle East my vote goes to Arabic, although Farsi is probably also important. After all, you are going to run into a lot more people who speak Arabic or Farsi than Chinese.
Interestingly, the other languages would rise or fall in importance depending on how you define middle east. It is interesting that in many older text from the 19th to mid 20th Century refer to Palestine, Mesopotamia and Turkey as the Near East. The Middle East was more towards the Arabian Gulf, and for some authors included India. If we use that definition, Hindi might win.