Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research

Intercultural training in the military and the emerging role of interculturalists

Sandra Fowler moderated a panel discussion about intercultural work in the military. She began by reminding us of a wide array of classic intercultural training that was originally developed and paid for by the military.

Edward Retta and Cynthia Brink, two rank and file SIETAR-USA members, partnered to create a pilot cross cultural training program for the USAF Air War College and for US Army Psychological Operations Units deploying to Iraq. They do their work through Cross Culture Communications.

Edward talked about being a child of the cold war, attending college at Texas A & M military service academy, where he was exposed to the culture of the military. Creating training for the military has shown him that there is vast learning in the military, on cross cultural issues they are way ahead of private corporations. The military is looking for resources on intercultural communication, yet SIETAR is not on their radar. He reminded us that we have skepticism and negative bias in our ranks in regard to the military. A biased media hasn’t helped. Yet, he has seen that every branch of the military is working on intercultural communication. There is a critical mass of top military who get it.

Cynthia had no prior exposure to the military. She went into the training at the Air War College skeptical of the perspectives she might find in the room. Instead, she found them to be highly educated and open minded. She investigated the resources on their website and found 74 articles on why they should study intercultural communication, and a wide array of other materials. She also found them to be way ahead of every other organization she has seen. They are open, bought in, and willing to listen.

Cynthia was surprised by how many references she heard to how the various branches of the military do not understand each other. She also learned in order to be successful reaching a military audience, you need to have military partners who can speak to how the concepts play out in context. Not everything works. When they tried to use the BARNGA simulation, the response from participants was to just tell us the rules that we will follow, which prevented the learning value from surfacing.

Brain Selmeski resigned his Army commission to pursue a PhD in cultural anthropology. He went to Canada to do his research until the US military began to seek cultural anthropologists a year ago. He will be joining the faculty of the USAF Air War College soon. Here is an overview of what he had to say.

The Air Force is taking a bold move by including cross cultural learning outcomes on their balanced scorecard. Officers all the way to the top are putting their careers on the line. Half of the learning is about us, and half is moving toward culture general learning.

Why? The Marines did training specific to Iraq including language training in Arabic, bringing in Iraqui ex-pats, even putting linguists and scholars on the ships as they shipped out. On route, they were redirected to tsunami relief. They had no knowledge of Indonesia or how to adapt.

Now we know we need to know more culture general. From academic as well as corporate. Need to all work together to build bridges. There is a small group of us who work full time in the military teaching cross-cultural communication. There are many more who teach language and culture through language. We are not in this to help people become better killing machines. They do that, but they also give out water. In each moment, they have the ability to NOT SHOOT. We try to make sure they have the skills to pick that option. They don’t get to chose when they go, but we want violence to be a last resort.

Lieutenant General (retired) David Barno joined us from the National Defense University in Washington DC where he is the director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. He joined the military when he was seventeen; was a ranger in Grenada, in combat in Panama, as well as commanding 20,000 US and Coalition forces in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He told he not only had a feel for being on the ground being shot at, but also watching Powerpoint with the other generals, as well as having his sons deployed, and the sons and daughters of many of his family and friends. It’s very personal for him and his children.

The best preparation for being the overall commander in Afghanistan was my civilian based education at Georgetown University. I was able to form relationships with others in the State Department. I needed to build political, social, and economic relationships with Americans, UN, other foreigners and Afghanis.

There has been an extraordinary change in the military. Conflict is evolving, it’s not just destroy or kill. It’s shifting to a focus on the populations of the area, helping them to be more successful. Not traditional thinking. My background helped me to see it, to help them have a better future.

I’m the Director of one of three US Defense Department regional centers. We bring in security professionals for month long seminars centered on the issues of the day. So there may be 16 countries from the Middle East learning about the US government. Multinational groups discussing security issues, there may be Israelis with Arabs and Pakistanis. We are providing the venue, there may only be a few Americans. We stay in touch after they go back, and provide access to information from the West. After seven years we have 1400 alumni in the Middle East who we have continual dialogue with. We listen to them and feed their insights into high levels of the military and government to educate policy makers, its a two way conversation.

There is debate in the US Military, raging in the US Defense department. There is a bias toward conventional warfare. The irregular war we have in Iraq has the hooks in it for the intercultural. But there is a call for us to go back to conventional war, those who think our involvement with the conflicts are preventing us from performing our core tasks.

After each person got a chance to talk, audience members asked questions.

Q: If all this great training is happening, why is that not the public perception?

Edward: A recent study showed 2/3 of journalists self-identified as liberal. It’s important to know since it have an impact on what we see. There is an ignorance of purpose and role and we don’t know much about it. Every officer in the Air Force has to have foreign language fluency, you never see that in corporations.

Brian: What is the problem definition? We have stove pipes of excellence, we don’t have total workplace development. Don’t have a road map, we don’t have a framework yet. Cultural learning will affect the whole range of conflict. The current climate of asymmetrical warfare opens the door to the intercultural.

Q: What impact have you seen on our government?

General Barno: We have seen some changes. When the Army created a counter insurgency manual in December 2006, the author took out some verbiage about Islam due to information from the school. We do get feedback from the State Department, and while changing policy is sizable, they are seeing and listening.

Q: What kinds of re-entry training is provided for returning military?

General Barno: The Veterans Administration provides training for vets. Re-entry means a lot. For those military on active duty there are a number of programs. There is training before they return, on the way back, how to re-enter the family, families get training, and how to reestablish a civilian life.

In the last five or six years there has been a lack of terrible incidents, and there seems to be less PTSD. The VA has a range of programs for those who need help with readjustment. It’s one of the best systems the public isn’t conscious of.

Brian: Re-entry is understood differently in the military. It’s not cultural it’s psychological re-entry with a PTSD focus. They don’t know about cultural re-entry. Most on active duty deploy together and come back with that support system.The ones with the most need are the Reservists and Guard. They have the most need and are the furthest away from services.

Q: When the Air Force says it’s goal is ‘every Airman is Ambassador’, does it mean it is transporting US Values?

Brian: There has been concern with that. All look alike from 35,000 feet, but now there are sandbox Airmen patrolling in Baghdad. They are in close contact with locals, and we need to shift from US values to helping them listen. The military are sent for a mission. I would rather them be Ambassadors than imposition. The military are struggling to find the right words.

Last comments?

Edward: Is there an implicit perception of malice? Are we listening for US culture being forced?

Cynthia: I heard that participants wanted to reduce violence.

Brian: The military wants it to be neat and predictive, but it’s messy. It’s a hard shift. We all need to think about ethics first. I don’t ever see an ethical challenge to teach. We do desperately need researchers and assistants.

General Barno: Education is value. It’s better to educate on intercultural, it will make better decision making in the future. We can prevent violence by teaching up and coming leadership. Please continue to engage as the military struggles for the future.