A New Angle on the U.S. Military’s Emphasis on Developing Cross-Cultural Competence: Connecting In-Ranks’ Cultural Diversity to Cross-Cultural Competence

See Brian Selmelski, "Military Cross-Cultural Competence: Core Concepts and Individual Development," Occasional Papers Series 1 (Montreal, Royal Military College of Canada; Centre for Security, Armed Forces and Society, April 19, 2007); and Allison Abbe, Lisa M. V. Gulick, and Jeffrey L. Herman, "Cross-Cultural Competence in Army Leaders: A Conceptual and Empirical Foundation," Study Report 2008-01 (Washington, D.C., United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, October 2007).

The Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Culture Center (TCC), located at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center, at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, officially opened in February 2006. The Culture Center’s main purpose is to provide the U.S. Army, military, and Department of Defense with mission-focused culture education and training for global requirements. The TCC has also provided insights and information to international military peers regarding culture education and training.

See Abbe, Gulick, and Herman, "Cross-Cultural Competence in Army Leaders"; and Selmeski, "Military Cross-Cultural Competence." The author has received feedback on this project’s core cross-cultural competence concept from Allison Abbe, Brian Selmeski, and Kerry Fosher. Dr. Fosher worked on the cross-cultural competence project for the Center for Language and Culture at the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, in 2007.

Myriad regional and cultural analytical models exist in the U.S. military today, and some of these models influenced the variables applied in this article. Some models include the Culture Profile used by the TRADOC Culture Center; the developing system and model (called the "MAP Human Terrain" model) in use by the experimental Human Terrain Teams in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and Iraq; the Command and General Staff College Culture Work-sheet (from the Culture and Military Operations manual, 2005) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; the Center for the Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL is the U.S. Marine Corps’ culture and language center) concept of operational culture; the "DoD Regional and Cultural Capabilities: the Way Ahead" (October 2007) concept paper that summarizes findings from the Department of Defense Regional and Cultural Expertise Summit sponsored by the Defense Language Office, June 2007; and Selmeski, "Military Cross-Cultural Competence," 38. Similarities in these analytical models-as well as concepts from cultural anthropology and sociology-influenced the regional variable examples used in this article.

See Spencer Case, "‘Haji’ Disrespects Iraqis," Army Times 66, 31 (February 20, 2006): 52. Case voices his concerns of his firsthand experiences of hearing and witnessing U.S. Army soldiers (officers and enlisted) deployed to Iraq using the term Haji as a negative label for all Iraqi people. He heard soldiers use "Haji" (a significant word in Islam associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca) as a synonym for insurgents, terrorists, or "the enemy," among other derogatory meanings linked to Iraqi people and culture. The author has also discussed this issue with U.S. Army veterans who served in Iraq-including several officers-who confirmed that a tension exists in the U.S. military’s deployed ranks regarding the use of "Haji" by soldiers.

The Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL) of the U.S. Marine Corps and the TRADOC Culture Center of the U.S. Army analyze military cultural lessons learned from active theaters worldwide to enhance cultural instruction and curriculum development. In a working group between these organizations held at the TRADOC Culture Center on August 6-10, 2007, the topic of cultural lessons from theater received explicit discussion. Reports from the CAOCL and insights shared in this working group provided some of the data cited in this article.

See Robert Markiewicz, "Mitt Team Leader: 7th Division Iraqi Army," CAOCL Report, September 14, 2006, 19.

See Barak Salmoni, "1st Battalion, 6th Marines," CAOCL Report, July 24, 2006, 18.

See Farhana Ali, "Developing a Framework for Foreign Language and Foreign Competencies," in RAND Project Air Force (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, October 2006), 7.

See Nigel Aylwin-Foster, "Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations," Military Review, November-December 2005, 3.

See Jeffrey Bearor, "First Lieutenant M and First Lieutenant G," CAOCL Report, April 2006, 18.

See Barak Salmoni, "1st Battalion, 6th Marines," 17.

See Jeffrey Bearor, "First Lieutenant M and First Lieutenant G," 17.

See Richard D. Hooker, "Soldiers of the State: Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations," Parameters, Winter 2003-4, 4-8; and Rebecca L. Schiff, The Military and Domestic Politics: A Concordance Theory of Civil-Military Relations (New York: Routledge, 2009).

Ibid.

Hooker, "Soldiers of the State," 8; Jason K. Dempsey and Robert Y. Shapiro, "A Divided Team: Understanding the Underlying Ideology and Content of the Partisan Affiliations of Members of the US Army," a presently unpublished manuscript that draws on and updates the findings from the 1998-1999 Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) study. TISS found that 67.4 percent of Army majors and above identified with the Republican Party, and Dempsey and Shapiro’s study found that 69.5 percent of Army majors through colonels self-identified as conservatives (p. 11). Dempsey and Shapiro further found that the ratio of Republican to Democrat self-identifiers in the Army officer corps as a whole is five to one, and among lieutenant colonels and colonels, it is six to one (p. 19). Dempsey and Shapiro expressed concerns with the finding of a generally polarized partisanship in the officer corps including the potential for groupthink; biased appraisals of world events that can create faulty military policy; out-grouping of nonconservatives; and the potential for the Army to gain an even greater reputation as a conservative body, which would impact those who self-select into the commissioned ranks (thereby exacerbating the problem).

See Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

Members of the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), particularly a lead chaplain in that organization, provided significant insights and articles that contributed substantially to this section of the article. Most of the communications between DEOMI and the author about these topics took place in March 2007.

See Alan Cooperman, "Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star," Washington Post, July 4, 2006, 2.

See Dale Eisman, "Army Officer’s Remarks Providing a Lesson in Military Law," Norfolk Virginia Pilot-Online, October 25, 2003. The article discusses how the U.S. president and other high-ranking government officials apologized to prominent Muslim allies and heads of state due to Lieutenant General Boykins’s controversial remarks.

See Sally Jenkins, "Football’s Religious Kick," Washington Post, May 21, 2005, D01.

Ibid.

See Barry S. Fagin, "Faith and Tolerance at the Air Force Academy," Air Force Print News, July 29, 2005; and Jim Garamone, "Air Force Addressing Problems of Religious Intolerance," American Forces Information Service News Articles, June 22, 2005.

The head of the U.S. Military Academy’s (USMA’s) Working Group on Diversity sent out a letter to USMA faculty and staff delineating concerns over personalized quotes and signature lines on official e-mails, particularly quotes of a spiritual nature (May 2005). He explained that biblical quotes did not belong on official e-mails as they had the potential to alienate or frustrate members of the West Point community and corps of cadets. He thought these biblical quotes were unprofessional and inappropriate.

See Mady Wechsler Segal and Chris Bourg, "Professional Leadership and Diversity in the Army," in Don M. Snider and Lloyd J. Matthews, The Future of the Army Profession (New York: McGraw Custom Publishing, 2005), 710-12. Despite the increase of women in the U.S. armed forces over the past several decades, their overarching representation in the military (about 15 percent) still significantly lags behind their representation in the civilian sector. The military has resisted gender integration and is one of the last organizations to adapt to its society’s changing values regarding the role of women in the workplace.

Ibid., 711.

See Laura L. Miller, "Not Just Weapons of the Weak: Gender Harassment as a Form of Protest for Army Men," Social Psychology Quarterly 60(1997, 32-51); and Segal and Bourg, "Professional Leadership and Diversity in the Army," 711.

See R. Jeffery Smith, "Sexual Assault in Army on Rise," Washington Post, June 3, 2004, section A, 1; Sara Corbett, "The Women’s War," New York Times Magazine, March 18, 2007; and Lolita C. Baldor, "Sex Assault Reports in U.S. Military Increase by 24 Percent in 2006," Associated Press, March 21, 2007. It merits mentioning that increased reports of sexual assault and rape of military women does not necessarily mean that the number of occurrences of these crimes has increased in the military. Insofar as reporting of these incidents by military women is low (e.g., many military women, not unlike civilian women, but perhaps in greater proportions, do not report these problems), the increased reporting of these crimes might not indicate an actual rise in cases (in fact, this development might indicate that more military women have selected to report these crimes). Corbett’s article in particular discusses the problems that contemporary military women deployed to combat theaters face. Corbett argues that women face a double risk of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder given their potential to experience more traditional causes (e.g., the stressors of contemporary battlefields) plus the potential to experience rape, sexual assault, and other abuses from military peers. Dr. Laura Miller, a military sociologist who has served on numerous committees charged with studying the problem of sexual assault in the U.S. military, corroborated the point that sexual assault and rape occurring in combat theaters in the ranks of the armed forces constitutes an ongoing, current challenge. The author spoke with Dr. Miller on November 26, 2007.

See Kirby L. Bowling, Juanita M. Firestone, and Richard J. Harris, "Analyzing Questions That Cannot Be Asked of Respondents Who Cannot Respond," Armed Forces & Society, 31, Spring 2005, 416; and Segal and Bourg, "Professional Leadership and Diversity in the Army," 713.

Bowling et al., "Analyzing Questions That Cannot Be Asked of Respondents Who Cannot Respond," 417.

Ibid., 432-33.

Ibid., 434.

Ibid., 433.

Segal and Bourg, "Professional Leadership and Diversity in the Army," 713.

See Nathaniel Frank, "Gays and Lesbians at War: Military Service in Iraq and Afghanistan under, "‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’" This unpublished manuscript presents the results from a study performed with the support of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, University of California, Santa Barbara, September 15, 2005. The study uses data from thirty interviews with gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members from across the U.S. military who were deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan between October 7, 2001, and September 1, 2004.

See Steven L. Myers, "Survey of Troops Finds Antigay Bias Common in Service," New York Times, March 25, 2000, section A, 1. The article cites the secretary of defense’s assertion that antihomosexual harassment "seriously undermines the good order and discipline that is critical to an effective fighting force."

See Aaron Belkin, "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Is the Gay Ban Based on Military Necessity?" Parameters, Summer 2003, 108-119. Belkin discusses how twenty-four nations allow homosexuals to openly serve in the military, and only a small handful of NATO members continue policies that ban gay and lesbian soldiers.

Of the numerous measurement instruments for cultural intelligence, emotional intelligence, and other relevant personality assessments, the U.S. military needs to identify the models most likely to address its unique needs and experiment to find the most useful, salient models. Ongoing initiatives aimed at accomplishing this objective, such as Dr. Allison Abbe’s (from the U.S. Army Research Institute) near-term plans to measure Army soldiers for this purpose, are important preliminary steps towards identifying and implementing a long-term instrument for the armed forces.

Future studies of U.S. military units that showed insufficient cross-cultural competence in combat theaters should seek to determine whether those units have in-ranks’ cultural diversity problems, or if those units had such problems prior to the deployment. These kinds of studies would more clearly illustrate whether units that experience internal cultural diversity problems also perform less effectively in situations with diverse, foreign people.