SWJ Mag Vol 9 - America's Cultural First Battles

[SWCAdmin]

In volume 9, SWJ Magazine:

America's First Cultural Battles:
Understanding the Influence of Culture on War
by LTC Thomas P. Odom, US Army (ret.)

Open thread….

[wm]

The more similar the coalition members are to each other, the stronger the coalition and the less vulnerable it is to the enemy's efforts to disrupt it.

While this may seem intuitively obvious, history does not seem to bear out the truth of this point. For example, one would expect that the Central Powers in WWI would have been an extremely strong coalition, given that the Germans and Austro-Hungarian ruling elites were largely from the same Teutonic stock. Yet, as it turns out, they were their own worst enemies. Each had very different war aims and very different plans for achieving those aims. The Austrians even started to negotiate a separate armistice. Another counterexample from WWI is the Western Front where a single country (the German Empire) was unable to beat a coalition that had centuries of animosity between its members (Britain and France).

The expressed example of Ike's greatest accomplishment also runs counter to the point it is supposed to support. I suspect that Eisenhower's greatest accomplishment in the WWII ETO was not keeping the US and British working together, but rather having the ability to give them diverse enough tasks that they did not have to work together very much. He kept the coalition together by keeping the partners apart, starting with the Normandy invasion--Brits in the north, Americans in the center and south. (Even the reduction of the Geman penetration in the Ardennes followed this pattern). A similar claim is worth making regarding his deployment of French forces late in the war.
I believe that the American desire to maintain separation of commands is also a legacy of the American experience from WWI. The French and British wished to commit US troops piecemeal, as battalion level replacements into British and French formations. Pershing fought against this effort, only allowing a small number of units to be so committed.

I think the truly important point to be made about coalitions is to recognize that there will always be areas of potential conflict between coalition partners. What effective leaders must do is prepare for that conflict and look for ways to mitigate it when it happens.

I suspect what is operative here is strongly akin to the tactical and operational problem of unit boundaries. One tries to hide one's boundaries from their opponents so the opponent cannot exploit those boundaries. Simultaneouly one seeks to find and exploit the boundaries of the opponent. These boundaries need not be an operational control measure or a line on a map. They can just as easily be alternative views on the nature of orthodox faith, the role of women, or the control of the means of production. Given the likelihood of discovrery of these boundaries, a good leader has a plan to mitigate the effects of their exploitation. For example, while on defense, one keeps a reserve to commit to threatened sectors; on offense one uses a reserve to exploit success (most often by splitting theopposing forces boundaries).

The hard part about coalition war is figuring out what to use as the reserve to commit when a cultural seam or boundary has been exploited (by us or by our oppoents). This work puts us squarely in the area of information operations (IO), and I submit that producing some answers to this issue could produce a very high payoff were it given a great deal of consideration by our IO wunderkind.

[Tom Odom]

The expressed example of Ike's greatest accomplishment also runs counter to the point it is supposed to support. I suspect that Eisenhower's greatest accomplishment in the WWII ETO was not keeping the US and British working together, but rather having the ability to give them diverse enough tasks that they did not have to work together very much. He kept the coalition together by keeping the partners apart, starting with the Normandy invasion--Brits in the north, Americans in the center and south. (Even the reduction of the Geman penetration in the Ardennes followed this pattern).

Essentially you are stating the same thing I did.

As for your use of a single quote to open, the entire article is one devoted to the edges and friction involved in cross-cultural operations whether by a culturally diverse coalition or a relatively homogenous body. And yes, one can start turning up the historiacl examples to show that homogenous coalitions can sometimes be weaker. That said, I feel quite comfortable in offering the example of the Anglo-American coalition in WWII as an example where this proved true. The quote cited is a consideration for understanding weaknesses and strengths as part of a cultural IPB. You suggest a repackaging using the idea of military boundaries and seems. That may work; I prefer clearer meaning rather than cluttering it will military metaphors.

As for Ike's role, I used that in support of the point about command structures to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. That included separation at times and in others forced unity--as when Patton wanted priority for fuel and Ike kept up the broad front. If you are saying that Ike's troubles in working the Anglo-American alliance undermine the citation you quote, I again say that cultural considerations are just that, considerations, not had and fast rules.

Tom

[wm]

Tom,

The point I was trying to make was not to show

that homogenous coalitions can sometimes be weaker.

I had a much stronger point in mind: namely, that all coalitions have weaknesses. I concur with the article's overall point that one must do cultural IPB. However, I submit that the depth of that analysis must be much greater than the article's examples suggest. Coalitions, as a military term of art, imply using forces from multiple nations in an operation. The point I was trying to make with my extrapolation to the boundary problem is that that we need to expand the analysis to include not only other national and ethnic cultures. In our planning, we need to consider differences within our own joint force structure, and, for that matter, within our own individual services. These, too, are forms of coalitions. We have had these kinds of conversation about different mindsets across services and branches in various threads throughout the discussion fora. A US Air Force fighter jock leading a COIN CAS campaign with Navy, Marine, and Army aviators as part of the force has to consider all those cultural frameworks to be most effective. A mech guy who gets a light infantry force chopped to him needs to consider the cultural differences between those two types of forces just as much as the differences between his national values and those of his coalition partner or his opponent.

I suspect that Army Cav guys and Marine folks with MEU/MEF backgrounds have a leg up on most others because they've already had to deal with that from an early military "age." and so it has become a basic consideration in their planning. Similarly, an intel guy who grew up running HUMINT sources will have a tough time doing all source work right out of the box, and even after much all source work will probably still show a decided, probably unconscious, analytic preference for HUMINT data collected. Someone who started working in intelligence on all source problem set analysis probably has less systemic bias.

Good leaders anticipate points of potential failure and plan for ways to exploit them, mitigate them, or avoid them. One important possible point of failure in any organizational endeavor is group interoperability. A likely cause for such interoperability failures is a lack of shared cultural norms. Your article makes that point at the Big Coalition level. I just want to push that envelope a lot further.

[Tom Odom]

I had a much stronger point in mind: namely, that all coalitions have weaknesses. I concur with the article's overall point that one must do cultural IPB. However, I submit that the depth of that analysis must be much greater than the article's examples suggest. Coalitions, as a military term of art, imply using forces from multiple nations in an operation. The point I was trying to make with my extrapolation to the boundary problem is that that we need to expand the analysis to include not only other national and ethnic cultures. In our planning, we need to consider differences within our own joint force structure, and, for that matter, within our own individual services. These, too, are forms of coalitions. We have had these kinds of conversation about different mindsets across services and branches in various threads throughout the discussion fora. A US Air Force fighter jock leading a COIN CAS campaign with Navy, Marine, and Army aviators as part of the force has to consider all those cultural frameworks to be most effective. A mech guy who gets a light infantry force chopped to him needs to consider the cultural differences between those two types of forces just as much as the differences between his national values and those of his coalition partner or his opponent.

While I have no disagreement with any of this, it is simply beyond the scope of this single article. Moreover I would have to say it is entirely unrealistic because no one has the time to do the introspection you are suggesting in the course of operations. I have heard similar points from IO and CA types pushing the idea that everyone should be a Lawrence of Arabia. It all sounds good until it is matched against METL, money, and most importantly time. I deliberately kept it simple because complexity is self-defeating. Eyes glaze over.

Finally I would say you are conflating missions and cultures when you make the statement that cultural differences between types of US forces are as important as the differences between a US infantry company and an Iraqi infantry battalion working the same AO or same mission. In the case of the US forces, our language, our cultural ties, and our mutual understanding is exponentially greater than what we can expect to have with our counterparts unless we concentrate on that arena. Damn few US soldiers have the background for it; many are learning by doing right now and I hope we preserve that experience. The same holds true to an even greater degree when you make the leap to analyzing the enemy.

Tom

[wm]

Interesting that this point was made on a different thread even as we are engaged in this exchange:

What if I (who leans towards a fundamentalist belief) and a Catholic are on the same peacekeeping team who meet up with a Muslim religious leaders/spokespeople. We start an open dialogue and the Muslim may ask a question like, "But your Bible teaches xxxxx". One of us will say, "That's what he believes, but I don't, yet we still like, respect, and accept one another." The conversation alone may not solve the problems of the world, but it's still a good example of respect for one another. And the main thing is, it starts an open dialogue. People have done this before and it worked.

I find the following disquieting:

[I]t is entirely unrealistic because no one has the time to do the introspection you are suggesting in the course of operations. I have heard similar points from IO and CA types pushing the idea that everyone should be a Lawrence of Arabia. It all sounds good until it is matched against METL, money, and most importantly time. I deliberately kept it simple because complexity is self-defeating. Eyes glaze over.

In the Army that raised me, planning and wargaming were a continuous activity of command. We can't resolve problems when we put them in the "too tough to do barrel" without first trying for some resolution. In the subsequent paragraph, I think you are selling our serving members short. I further want to reemphasize that the need to understand cultural differences at all levels is a leadership function, aided, as always, by the efforts of one's staff. I do not expect Private/Airman/Seaman Snuffy to consider the ramifications of cultural diversity in achieving their assigned missions. I expect their leaders to point out where and when those ramifications may have mission impacts and identify workarounds where appropriate.