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.

[Tom Odom]

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.

Again, this article has a target and it includes Soldiers. They do have to understand cultural effects on what they do everyday. Moreover we expect them to. That said, we do not expect every Soldier or even every company commander or battalion commander to be a Lawrence of Arabia. I have been engaged in this process for nearly three decades now; I am hardly assigning it to a "too hard to do" box. If I was, I would not have bothered to write the article in the first place. And by the way, I work shoulder to shoulder with active duty and I have discussed these very points with hundreds of them. I am hardly selling them short.

Tom

[Stan]

Hey WM !

Originally Posted by wm

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.

With all due respect, you're addressing an individual that knows first hand what a soldier goes through, each and every day of the year.

Now that I've removed my boot from my mouth, I agree with you

Private snuffy should not immediately be assigned to any mission before being properly trained and prepared for instances of cultural diversity, when said could negatively impact the success of the mission.

[Tom Odom]

Originally Posted by Stan

Hey WM !


With all due respect, you're addressing an individual that knows first hand what a soldier goes through, each and every day of the year.

Now that I've removed my boot from my mouth, I agree with you

Private snuffy should not immediately be assigned to any mission before being properly trained and prepared for instances of cultural diversity, when said could negatively impact the success of the mission.

And we do just that here at the JRTC and what is in this article has been part of the process. The point being that Private Snuffy and John Squad Leader are the key elements in the cross-cultural aspects of both OIF and OEF.

When I say making Snuffy Lawrence of Arabia is unrealistic, I am talking about Snuffy and the small unit leaders around him. I have in the past 6 years listened to any number of briefings, lectures, or discussions that center on the need to train "cultural understanding" like it is simply something to add to a lesson plan. You cannot train situational understanding; you can train how to develop situational awareness. Sustained SA leads to SU. The same thing applies to cultural understanding and cultural awareness; the first is the desired end state and it requires sustained investment in the latter. Where this goes astray is when a brief or a report says "more cultural understanding" and heads nod north and south, murmurs of "quite right" echo, and someone starts talking phraselators or similar crap. Again I have heard this before and it briefs well but falls on its face when attempted.

All of that said, we have to do something because the individual soldier is critical in this effort and it is not something that can be left to the staff. Staffs do not patrol; Soldiers and small units patrol. We have to give them a framework for understanding that goes beyond "don't use your left hand". At the sametime, we are loading ever greater mission sets on the individual soldiers and the small units. Training for those increased mission sets eats up time and priorities imevitably come into play.

Nonetheless we continue to work the issue; we have to because it is critical. I will say this one more time for emphasis; there is no comparison between 2 US units--say Marine and Army--working together and a US unit working intimately with an Iraqi or an Afghan unit. If you have not tried it, your inexperience limits your understanding of just how difficult it can be. Even FAOs get it wrong--Stan and I had one get it seriously wrong with the French in Goma in 1994.

Tom

[Steve Blair]

I think part of the fascination with "cultural understanding tools" is the American education system's neglect of history and other liberal arts. You don't necessarily "learn" history...you learn how to use a collection of tools that allow you to evaluate historical events and eventually synthesize those events into an understandable whole (the voyage from awareness to understanding). It is a slow process and involves many tools, some of which can only be mastered through experience.

As soon as the word "tool" pops up, many think that you just reach into the ol' Snap-On case and haul out the right bit of shiny metal and go to work. Historical and cultural "tools" are better thought of as a series of procedures, techniques, and ideas; each building on the other until it becomes a "tool." For example, and in simplified terms, the "don't use your left hand" thingie is more of a prompt for the tool "why," at least within the context of a social/historical tool kit. In answering that "why" you give your student a few new tools and bits of information (cultural context, background, variations based on region, and so on) and the ability to go out and find answers to his own "why" questions. In the process, he may discover some of the shadings and variations within the answers to that "why," and make the slow trip from awareness to understanding.

The catch is that some folks just can't master some of the bits that go into the final tool. Nothing wrong with that, but it's something that can drive the hard-wired analysts nuts. And when you factor that in with all the military lessons that need to be learned, it becomes a problem of much greater magnitude than can easily be briefed in a PowerPoint. That's when the hard choices Tom talks about come into play.

[wm]

If we are looking for a place to start, I suspect that we can find a lot of "clay" to mold in the past experiences of our soldiers. We just need to get a grip on how best to get that clay onto our potter's wheels for additional shaping.

What I mean is that we all bring some experience with cross-cultural understanding with us. It may not be based on anything as radical as being dropped into the middle of a desert with a folks who live in tents, ride camels, and speak a dialect of Arabic . It is more likely being exposed to folks from a different socio-economic stratum or region of the country, folks who talk with a "funny" accent, use a different set of idoms and slangs, wear their hair or hats in different ways, and happen to like very different types of music. This happens to our kids as they transition from a local elementary school to a regional junior high for example. It happens to us when we relocate from Caribou, Maine or East Los Angeles in California, where we were born and raised, to Lufkin in Texas, Salem in Oregon, or Topeka in Kansas. The point is that we are able to identify cultural differences and develop adaptive mechanisms that help us to "fit in" (without necessarily "going native"). I suggest that we can use these kinds of experiences as touch points, as a foundation to remind our forces of the need to be sensitive to cultural differences. We can work from these familiar examples to help our "ambassadors" in uniform realize what they need to be, know, and do in order to to be effective in the operations we are now conducting in the AOR.

We are rather like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, when she tells Glenda the Good Witch that we don't really need to look beyond the end of our noses for answers. ("If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with!") We all have always had some ability to use the ruby slippers of cultural awareness.

[goesh]

The learning curve is never accelerated, though perceived to be, it is evolutionary. There is no saltation when when it comes cultural interfacing. When I went to 'Nam, our cross-cultural training was brief, very brief. I can still hear the Instructor saying, " Don't be rubbing those F'n little buddhist kids on top of their heads - they think it brings them bad luck". I never in my time there saw any kid get the top of his head rubbed the way we will sometimes do in our culture, but look how far we've come in 40 years. That's what counts. I think we underestimate the power and significance of first contact/first impressions and for men in a combat zone, I think first contact/impression makes a huge difference. A good initial contact can really set the stage as can a bad first impression.

[Stan]

Originally Posted by goesh

The learning curve is never accelerated, though perceived to be, it is evolutionary. There is no saltation when when it comes cultural interfacing. When I went to 'Nam, our cross-cultural training was brief, very brief. I can still hear the Instructor saying, " Don't be rubbing those F'n little buddhist kids on top of their heads - they think it brings them bad luck". I never in my time there saw any kid get the top of his head rubbed the way we will sometimes do in our culture, but look how far we've come in 40 years. That's what counts. I think we underestimate the power and significance of first contact/first impressions and for men in a combat zone, I think first contact/impression makes a huge difference. A good initial contact can really set the stage as can a bad first impression.

I'll start and echo what Goesh just said. As the melting pot of the friggin world, we have yet to teach our soldiers what to do when going to country X.

My training at Bragg, Bowling and Leonard Wood concentrated on soldier skills, a tad of significant intel, but damn little about where we were going.

You can't take back that first mistake, regardless of how innocent it may have been, and how naive you were or still are.

[cptault]

Agreed, proper cultural training is was lacking back in 05 when I went through it at Camp Shelby and in 04 at Fort Bliss.

I agree with much that is posted here. This is graduate level stuff to be sure and we are scratching the surface as an organization to get this into the educational system and spread the word.

We are coming along and learning, this site and others are proof. Trouble is we have to overcome the attitude and years of education that young troopers have. Kids that are indoctrinated on first person shooter games and scared out of their minds in a totally foreign country where someone is trying to kill them.

In many soldiers and leaders minds offensive mindset is force protection. You have to assume a great deal of tactical risk to do COIN right. Leaders and soldiers are trained to avoid risk, to place Force Protection on a pedestal and exalt it.

Culture gets in the way of FP. Taking the time to understand and then adapt your communication and habits to elicit the response you want long term is too difficult and time consuming for most. Not to mention the risks associated with taking the Wileys off to look a guy in the eye and the hatch gloves off after you sling your weapon so you can shake his hand. Too close for most.

The leadership challenge is getting through to the young trigger pullers that they are the real cultural ambassadors and will make or break things. The strategic corporal concept is alive and well.

Unfortunately we are preaching to the choir on blogs like this. Not reaching the troops enough and arguing nuances most of the time. We all understand the importance of culture and the disastrous results of neglecting it.

How can we educate the Platoon leaders and members so they really 'get it'?