New Studies from CSI

[marct]

Hi Tom,

I think some reflections on training Anthroplogists may be useful here.

It requires a certain mindset, personality, and adaptability to operate as an advisor. Ramsey goes on to say, "Not everybody can or should do advisory duty. Former advisors acknowl*edge this; studies reinforce it. This means, “to have a valid set of selection criteria that works, the military has to formulate a hard set of required skills for advisor duty. It should . . . then test them to ensure some level of proficiency.”"

After a decade and a half as a Foreign Area Officer, I cannot suggest a list of hard skills that we could test applicants on as we do in the Expert Infantryman Badge process. Rather I would suggest that selection for advisory duty be more on the basis of traits. A problem solving course/psychiatric evaluation process might be more useful. Ramsey himself concludes, "Those soldiers considered the best and most experienced are not always well suited for advisory duty; often the normal approach is also not well suited," suggesting that we not solved this particular dilemma.

Part of the problem is with the limits of precision on testing. For one thing, depending on the culture in which the advisor is working, the actual expectations of what the advisor will do will be different. Take, as a limited example, whether or not the advisor will be expected to go into combat and, if so, what their specific role will be. Since advisors will, inevitably, end up being required in places where they will have to prove their personal honour by fighting and others where they will not be allowed to fight, do you test / train for personal combat skills?

We have a similar problem when training Anthropologists to go into the field. Admittedly, we have built a reputation based on non-combat and we are not really expected to fight by anyone. On the other hand, we are generally expected to "stand up" for the people we are working with and studying and to become "involved" in the local community. The limits of this involvement are, at best, fuzzy, and all of our training reflects this.

This goes back to the idea of cultural understanding versus cultural awareness. It also incorporates the need to define the role of advisors and then training them to fulfill such roles. If you are training advisors in basic military skills, you are at best wasting their time retraining them on something they already know. If they do not have those basic military skills before training starts, they are in the wrong place.

Yup. Honestly, I wouldtry and break down the "cultural training" into two separate forms:

1. Training in "cultural recognition";
2. Training in a specific culture.

The first would be a general theoretical grounding in how cultures are built and maintained and, most importantly, how to recognize and organize these observations, while the second would be a grounding in the specifics of the culture where the individual advisor would be placed. The two must be organized and taught separately.

.... Lengthening tours would help build better advisors and foster greater trust between counterparts. Repeat tours would compound those benefits. Aside from effects on morale --serious in their own right--longer and repetitive tours harbor the pitfalls of "going native." Truly effective advisors must guard against losing the perspective; they are advisors of indigenous forces, not members of the indigenous forces. Lawrence fell body and soul into that trap.

Again, this is a problem we have faced for over a century. I'm not sure if we have chosen the best way to handle it, but we have evolved certain methodologies that allow us to stay sane.

First off, "going native" is a situation that will happen to anyone who is going to be a good advisor or Anthropologist - accept it and deal with it You have to "go native", to some degree, in order to a) understand the people you are working with and b) to be understandable to them in such a way that trust is established. For us, the problem is not really with "going native" but, rather, with maintaning a "self while native" and "returning from native". This is somethng we are taught informally (i.e. not in the classroom), as I realized when one of my students tackled me on it. My "solution" was to take him on a limited field placement so that he could get a feel for how to deal with field work while I was there as back-up and a counsellor.

This is certainly an option available in training advisors: make their graduating tests a field placement in an organization that is totally outside of their normal experience with a culture that is quite different from the military. Try placements in AIDS clinics or with Amnesty International or an animal rights organization. <evil grin>.

If I were to select anyone of Ramsey's concluding thoughts as most important, I would have to say it has to be the importance of rapport. Rapport trumps language skills in my experience. An advisor with prefect fluency who cannot achieve rapport with his counterpart is to my mind the worst possible scenario because he will alienate his counterparts and he will not be able to blame it on language. In contrast, a less than fluent advisor who can establish and maintain rapport with a host nation counterpart who is equally committed can overcome most if not all issues that may arise.

I would agree with this completely (see my comments about "going native" above). In fact, while an ability with languages is useful, knowing a specific language may be a limitation. Anthropologists have a long history of going into a field setting with the basics of a language and learning to speak the rest of it in the field. This actually helps to establish rapport by allowing the "native" to realize that they are superior to the "Great White ___", at least in some areas. What is really going on here is a way of cutting through stereotypes fairly quickly so that things can move to a personal level fairly quickly.

....I would add to that question an issue I have raised in counterinsurgency classes: are we as a military willing to invest the personnel talent necessary to make such an advisory program effective? I believe that we have no other choice.

Honestly, Tom, that is the $64,000,000 question.

Marc