The U. S. Army Future Concept for the Human Dimension

3-4. Developing Socio-cultural Awareness

In 1969, British historian, Sir Michael Howard, pointed out that modern armed conflicts (post World War II) were “not simply military conflicts with a complex political background; they are rather political conflicts which involve an unusually high level of violence”⁸⁶ Howard wrote principally of post-colonial wars, where developed industrial powers (including the U.S. and Soviet Union) sought either to extend collapsing colonial mandates or influence the character of successor governments as they, an ally, or a rival power, withdrew.

Today’s “Wars amongst the peoples,”⁸⁷ as General Sir Rupert Smith has characterized interventions into areas lacking effective civil powers, share with the conflicts Howard characterized the fundamental fact that foreign military forces employ for political purposes. In the case of post-modern conflicts, those political purposes often have the aim of producing sufficient local public stability and support to permit building or rebuilding a reasonably responsible civil society. This can require operations against other dedicated foreign fighters who claim to share common values with the host society, hostile factions within the host society contending for power within the wider emerging or declining political structure, or a shifting combination of both. After Vietnam, the U.S. and the Army avoided accepting nation building as a core mission. American military culture and Army mantra and doctrinal preference goes to closing with and destroying the enemy in decisive battle. However, most conflicts since 1945 have been at the lower end of the spectrum. These kinds of interventions will likely continue to dominate military activities in future full spectrum operations.

Americans normally recoil at employing draconian violence to impose our will on a disaffected people. American forces will require at least the toleration if not the full support of the local population to defeat hostile insurgent forces. Negotiation, as well as coercion and command, are essential skills for the types of conflict that will continue to dominate the future. To win the cooperation, compliance, and support of a foreign people as well as that of the American people, American Soldiers must understand the culture and their actual, often unintended, effects on the local population. However, the Army may only be able to provide rudimentary cultural orientations to deploying units. This places the burden on senior leaders and specialists, such as foreign area officers, to guide and direct cultural interaction.

Thus, an essential element of the human dimension will be a developed understanding and respect for the importance of culture, something anthropologist Clifford Geertz has referred to as “webs of meaning they [all societies] themselves have spun.”⁸⁸ Culture is the collective sum of the subjective worldview everyone forms around him or herself. Shared worldviews, and particularly common values and expectations, separate groups and thereby define communities.⁸⁹ Developing such an understanding will require an increased emphasis on language training and proficiency, the acquisition of which increases socio-cultural awareness.

Cultural awareness will not necessarily always enable us to predict what the enemy and noncombatants will do, but it will help us better understand what motivates them, what is important to the host nation in which we serve, and how we can either elicit the support of the population or at least diminish their support and aid to the enemy.

Major General Benjamin C. Freakley Commanding General, CJTF-76 Afghanistan, 2006

As important as the physical terrain, in future full spectrum operations, commanders require the capability to understand and address the “human terrain,” of social, cultural, historical, political, economic, and population and urban geography of the area of operations (AO). Culture is common beliefs, values, and attitudes, which together define collective and individual identity. Culture determines meaning assigned to particular events. It helps define, what behaviors are acceptable, and unacceptable as well behaviors to avoid.
The Army conducts operations in a joint, multinational, and interagency environment today. Army leaders increasingly confront the need to negotiate and coordinate operations with other interested parties. These negotiations are complex, multi-party, multi-issue, cross-cultural, repetitive, and frequently relationship-based. The stakes are enormous. FM 3-24 and Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5, lists six institutional groups whose integrated collaboration is essential for successful COIN but could apply equally to other operations. They include U.S. government agencies other than DOD; other nation’s defense and non-defense agencies and ministries; international government organizations, such as the UN and its subordinate organizations; nongovernmental organizations; private corporations, including contractors; and, other organizations that wield diplomatic, informational, and economic power.
Each represents unique cultures, all of which the Army must understand, and, to some extent accommodate, to achieve effective collaboration. This characteristic of current operations will only expand and gain more importance as America remains engaged in persistent conflict.

Army Culture
Armies have cultures that influence their members’ worldview. These beliefs arise from the nature of the military function; the nature of the government and parent society; and from history and traditions. How an Army thinks about itself affects its ability to adapt to new requirements.
In November 2005, DOD Directive Number 3000.05 acknowledged new realities and elevated stability operations to the status of a core U.S. military mission, requiring that, “They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DOD activities including DOTMLPF, and planning.” Observing that civilians perform many tasks associated with stability operations, the directive went on to direct: “Nonetheless, U.S. military forces shall be prepared to perform all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so.”
By 2005, the realities of Afghanistan and Iraq combined to initiate change in Army’s perception of its role. What remains is to reframe the institutional identity so that it is more consistent with the experience of the current generation of Army leaders, while avoiding the pitfall of forgetting that conducting major combat operations remains a core capability the Army cannot abandon in order to focus exclusively on COIN operations. This trend requires an Army culture that develops, sustains, and rewards self-aware, adaptable leaders and formations, capable of making seamless transitions from one mode of conflict to another. This cultural change will serve as the catalyst to revise doctrine, organizations, training, leader education, material development, and Soldier recruitment.
Culture of Other Governmental Agencies and Contractors
As the joint warfare culture continues to grow, in the future, the gap between service cultures might shrink, but competition for resources will remain a challenge should specialization differences between the services increase. Soldiers deployed to conflicts in future operations will have to understand and be sensitive to cultural differences between the Army and other military Services, and the military and other government agencies. Increasingly, more non-DOD government agencies expect to have representatives in or near the AO. Representatives of non-DOD executive departments provide a very large share of the expertise and capability to help failed states gain their footing and provide necessary services and functions to the local population.

Regardless of which department or agency has the lead in future operations, the military will have a significant role. For this reason Army leaders must learn the capabilities, expectations and world view of executive department civilian employees from outside the DOD to insure that unity of effort results even where unity of command may not exist. This requires an acceptance of the priority of task over ego; negotiation over direction; and a willingness to capitalize on skills, such as detailed planning, which military professionals possess. Leaders who expect and accept cultural difference as an opportunity will prosper in such collaboration.

Future operations are still going to involve large numbers of contract personnel performing support functions. The Army relies on dedicated contract personnel; yet, institutionally the Services, the Congress, and the Nation must come to terms with where contractors fit within the joint team, particularly during conflicts. Contractors can be perceived as outsiders whose first obligation is to their company, but the fact is that their first obligation is to the client—often the Army. They may lack formal status and authority. Contractors may have a different reward system from the uniformed members who depend on their skills. As more and more positions and functions are outsourced, Army civilians can see contractors as a threat to their continued professional career status. Often contractors supporting the military come from a military background, thus sharing some of the culture and values of their serving brethren. In the future finding ways to assimilate contractors whether in combat or normal operations will pay great dividends.
Culture of Allies and Co-belligerents
In his 1952 Kermit Roosevelt Lecture at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Field Marshall Sir William Slim observed the only thing worse than having allies, was not having allies. Alliances can be formal as they were in World Wars I and II. Alternatively, they can be informal as in Desert Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), and OIF. Whatever the form, allies come with their own values, traditions, capabilities, limitations, and often requirements. They can incorporate into the scheme of operations or not. Still Slim’s point remains valid. The only thing worse than having them there, is being alone, without them.
Smooth integration of allied units and individuals requires not only good will on both sides, but also a lot of preplanning. Operationally the rule is generally to design a role for allies or coalition partners consistent with their capabilities, commitment, and political constraints. Making formal or informal alliances work requires the ability to understand allies’ view points well enough to understand how the mission looks from their eyes. Army leaders must realize that allies’ commitment may be less than our own, that they are undoubtedly organized differently, think differently about how command functions, receive authority and operate under a different code of law, and behave differently.
Allies’ presence and participation in a coalition is a matter negotiated at the highest political levels. Often the strategic value of their participation will be enough to offset a lack of military capability. Cultural awareness and sensitivity to nuance and difference is essential. Normally exchanging liaison officers will continue to be essential to a healthy working relationship to bridge cultural differences or at least to make differences known in advance before they become operationally significant. As the Army transforms it is likely that potential future partners will not have kept pace. Efforts to collaborate with other nation’s military in exercises and experiments will help to expose potential coalition teammates to joint and Army concepts for future operations.
Culture of Nongovernmental Agencies
Support of indigenous populations in war depends largely on the provision of essential goods and services. A sheet of plastic to replace a roof destroyed by hostile or friendly fire can be invaluable. An objectively neutral party willing to accept high risks, even death, may be a valuable means of communication with the people at risk. The International Red Cross is one of the oldest such organizations, founded in the late nineteenth century to alleviate suffering by military members of captured opposing forces.⁹⁰ In the twentieth century, a wide variety of humanitarian organizations sprang up to alleviate all kinds of suffering. These organizations can become the battle tourists of the twenty-first century, appearing at the first sign of catastrophe to render aid, often without the means to distribute it on their own, yet determined to maintain their independence to decide when and where the need for their assistance exists.
Each agency has its own cultural-ethical template and does not necessarily share a common view of their mission with other agencies. Nongovernmental organizations like the Medècins Sans Frontiéres (doctors without borders) often operate with great moral authority and political influence in allied nations’ capitals, notwithstanding their efforts to remain neutral.⁹¹ In country, they often rely on military forces for security to do their job. They can compete with military organizations for in-country contract labor. Commanders trying to reestablish social order in an area of responsibility receive help as deliverers of required services or aid enter the area. Working with some of these humanitarian agencies requires great tact on the part of military officers, and what FM 3-24, refers to as “Hand Shake Con,” informal, situational, and personal agreements, based on mutual trust to do what is promised.
External Cultural Factors
Military operations are a manifestation of U.S foreign policy. Actions at all levels must be consistent with national law and norms of conduct while meeting the expectations of the American people, or they are doomed to fail. They must also be consistent with the message they convey to world audiences, those favorably disposed and neutral to the American endeavor, and those hostile. How these divergent audiences will interpret actions is a function of their culture and the messages they are given. Soldiers at every level must understand that their conduct can have catastrophic effects on how others perceive the U.S. Soldiers must act within the constraints of the U.S.’s expectations, even at the cost of accepting greater risk to their lives.
British General Rupert Smith had extensive experience dealing with the Global Media in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe. He reflects on the relationship between commanders and the press in his book, The Utility of Force. His analysis is worth quoting for its absolute importance of the role the press plays in modern conflict and the inherent contradiction in commander-press relations.⁹²
In the theater the forces of all sides, and in particular the political leaders and military commanders, have a symbiotic relationship with the media: the media needs the military because they are the cause and source of the story; the commanders need the media to tell the story to their force’s advantage, but also to tell their own people and government how well they are doing, or at worst, how gloriously they are losing. In addition, commanders and leaders alike need the media in order to learn the perceptions of the other side, and to explain their own version of events. To this extent the media is a crucially useful element in modern conflicts for attaining the political objective of winning the will of the people. It has become the medium that connects the people, government and the army, the three sides of the Clausewitzian triangle.
Smith then goes on to explain the cultural divide that separates the commander and the media.
The political leader and the commander expect the reporter to tell his story as he would wish it to be told and as he told it to the journalist. But the journalist sees them as a source of his story, and the events and meetings of the day are presented to support this story rather than that of the political or military leaders. . . the media claim to be objective, and tend not to be, whilst the political and military leaders persistently expect the objectivity of a shared perception where one is most unlikely to exist.
Two points are essential. First, the media plays an essential role now and in the future in contemporary conflict. Second, the commander sees him or herself and his or her force as the center of the story. However, the media sees the military as simply one actor in a set of events, statements, conditions, actors, and victims, about which the reporter writes from his vantage point. The principal cultural perspective the reporter brings to his task is the faith that he or she does so objectively. Army leaders at all levels must understand this view and learn to communicate with the press in full knowledge that the press has its own objectives.