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Document created: 1 March 2007
Air & Space Power Journal - Spring 2007

More and more, the call has gone out to increase our military’s awareness of other cultures. For example, to prevail in the long war and to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, former secretary of defense ­Donald Rumsfeld, in the Quadrennial Defense Review Report of 2006, identified a need to develop broader linguistic capability and cultural understanding.¹ Along those lines, the US Marine Corps created the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning and requires language training at Marine Corps University. Furthermore, Army soldiers bound for Iraq receive detailed instruction on the local culture. All of this reflects a growing recognition of the need to understand how current and potential adversaries think and how the billions of other people in the world perceive and respond to our actions. The requirement for cultural understanding and regional expertise is no longer unique to special operations forces.

The old paradigm of destroying an enemy’s military forces to change his national behavior does not fit when the enemy is not a nation-state and does not field organized military forces. It applies even less when we must deal with insurgents hidden among a population. Changing the behavior of these adversaries requires us to understand the culture that shapes their actions and reactions. Toward that end, we need effects-based operations in their most basic sense—actions calculated to have an effect on the attitude and behavior of individual enemies, insurgents, neutrals, and allies. Ultimately, we will have to fight a battle inside the enemy’s head, and to win that battle we must understand the mental terrain where it takes place.

When we plan and conduct military operations, that terrain becomes every bit as important as the physical geography. Just as airpower’s exploitation of the third dimension vastly increases commanders’ options, so does operating in the mental terrain generate further opportunities for commanders. Understanding an adversary enables us to anticipate his likely actions, improve our defensive capability, and plan for further exploitation of any openings. That same understanding also proves crucial when we plan our operations. Clausewitz described war as a duel against an active enemy ruled by both logic and passion.² The effects of any action on our part, other than mere physical destruction, will be determined by the enemy’s reactions, as shaped by his underlying worldview as well as the unconscious blend of history, religion, society, education, and other factors that make up a culture.

Since its establishment in 1967, the US Air Force Special Operations School (USAFSOS) at Hurlburt Field, Florida, has prepared warriors to understand and operate in this mental terrain. Its first offering, the Special Air Warfare Indoctrination Course, readied air commandos for duty in Southeast Asia. Today the USAFSOS makes available a series of courses to meet the requirements of all regional combatant commanders.

For instance, the school’s one-week Cross-Cultural Communications Course helps students recognize, understand, and adapt to cultural differences when they work in an international environment. Instruction focuses on strategies for effective interaction with people from a variety of cultures. Starting with a look at American culture, the course shows how members of other cultures perceive us. It then examines several specific regions in order to give students an idea of the values, thought processes, and reactions of people in those cultures. The course includes a cultural-application exercise that demonstrates how culture affects personal interaction.

Regional-orientation courses for Russia/Eurasia, Asia/Pacific, the Middle East, South-Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America cover the cultural, historical, political, economic, and security issues of each particular region. A broad range of experts, including academics, ambassadors, and senior Department of Defense (DOD) and civilian leaders, delivers timely and relevant blocks of instruction designed to enable personnel to work effectively with military forces and civilian populations in each region. Unique in the DOD, these one-week courses serve as a foundation for understanding the why behind regional issues as well as individual and group behavior in these countries.

In addition to offering regional and cultural studies, the USAFSOS addresses the mental terrain of combat with operationally oriented courses, such as the Contemporary Insurgent Warfare Course—the latest incarnation of the school’s original counterinsurgency course. Providing a strategic- and operational-level overview of insurgent warfare, it covers the ideology, strategy, and theory of insurgency; current doctrine; role of the US Country Team; civil-affairs operations; and case studies of current and past internal conflicts. A panel discussion explores the future of insurgency and guerilla warfare, culminating with an in-class planning exercise.

For 40 years, the USAFSOS has equipped air commandos for irregular challenges. The needs of today’s fight bring increasing numbers of airmen, soldiers, sailors, and marines to the school. In addition the USAFSOS has taken the Middle East orientation course to deploying Army division staffs, Marine expeditionary units, and Navy strike groups. In 2006 it developed and executed a five-week course for US Central Command Air Forces, preparing 100 Airmen to conduct the foreign-internal-defense mission of rebuilding the Iraqi air force.

The USAFSOS makes its courses available to all members of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and the joint special operations community. It accommodates conventional forces, other government agencies, and coalition partners on a space-available basis. Space permitting, military members’ spouses are welcome to attend unclassified sessions of the regional orientation courses. Interested parties should call the school registrar at (850) 884-4731/DSN 579-4731 for course dates and registration information or access the Air Force Portal on the Internet and click on the link for AFSOC’s “Primary Subordinate Units.”

Notes

1. Donald Rumsfeld, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 6 February 2006), 15, 56, 78–79, 92.

2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 75–76.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University

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