Join the Army and See the World

Nobody has a bigger stake in successful global cultural education than West Point.

By Francis A. Galgano Jr.

During the two hundred years since the founding of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, for the purpose of training army officers, the strategic interests of the United States have varied, and so too has the focus of the academy's general education curriculum. The most recent, and perhaps most dramatic, change occurred after the decline of the Soviet Union. Since the early 1990s, a bipolar world dominated by two superpowers has evolved into a world with a far less certain strategic outlook. This has spawned an increase in nontraditional military missions such as humanitarian support, peacekeeping, and stability and support operations. Clearly, for our graduates, this new paradigm demands an enhanced regional expertise and understanding of cultural diversity.

American military units have addressed the humanitarian dimensions of regional conflict in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and the Asian tsunami, and more and more pressure exists to commit military units to humanitarian support and peacemaking missions. These missions require a strong understanding of the cultural dynamics of the conflict zone as well as the environmental factors that may have ignited a smoldering ethnic conflict into violent, open warfare. Because the U.S. Department of Defense's ability to manage multiple conflicts is limited, military leaders must assess and identify the causes of conflicts before they occur. Thus, the USMA has striven to inculcate recent graduates with a sense of the dynamics of culture and to link issues of culture and science so that our graduates can make careful assessments and develop useful courses of action.

The evolution of the global strategic situation since the end of the cold war has stimulated a completely new approach to viewing U.S. security interests and an acknowledgment that there is a relationship between international and regional stability and critical environmental factors. A de facto strategic partitioning of the world by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War era restricted regional conflicts, or at least helped to keep them from escalating. Now, with the proliferation of ungoverned space and the absence of superpower control, smoldering regional, ethnic, and religious enmities have erupted into violent regional wars that typically challenge international management and in some cases have threatened U.S. security interests. Many such conflicts are instigated or fueled by environmental factors such as drought, famine, and disease. In this new context our graduates have to understand the critical nexus of culture and science.

The USMA core curriculum aims to empower cadets intellectually and morally for the challenges ahead. We want our graduates to be aware of the breadth, depth, and limits of their own understanding. But we also want them to be confident in their abilities to undertake self-directed, independent study. They should be able to communicate effectively new ideas and insights, generalize or infer new principles about the world, and apply these inferences appropriately. We train them to appreciate cultural diversity, both at home and abroad, and to know what questions to ask to learn more about the unfamiliar cultures they are sure to encounter in their military careers. Our graduates will bring diverse perspectives to complex situations and employ interdisciplinary methods of analysis and resolution. We want them to be able to survey the social, political, economic, scientific, and technological environments to identify new ideas and trends and to imagine the range of possible consequences these changes have for the army and the nation.

Culture in the Core Curriculum

One of the fundamental changes to our core curriculum over the past decade has been our effort better to integrate the study of culture into the cadet learning experience. The USMA Culture Perspective Goal Statement establishes the scope of cultural instruction at USMA, stating that "graduates draw from an appreciation of culture to understand, in a global context, human behavior, achievements, and ideas."

USMA graduates who achieve this goal recognize cultural diversity in America as well as recognizing the inherent challenges of performing the full spectrum of duties such as peacetime and humanitarian support in complex, challenging multicultural environments. An appreciation of cultural diversity in America prepares our graduates to lead soldiers of diverse backgrounds. The recognition and understanding of a wide variety of culture systems and multicultural issues enables graduates to meet the demands of professional duties in uncertain environments around the world and while serving with coalition forces.

Culture reflects and shapes human thought and action, and today's army officer is increasingly expected to interact with people of diverse cultures. Because military leaders must understand people to operate effectively in various environments, they must be able to recognize the fundamental elements of culture. Thus, there is a twofold requirement for a successful leader: he or she must both understand the meaning of culture and recognize the components that shape culture in different regions of the world. In "Educating Future Army Officers for a Changing World," which enacts USMA's academic program goals, culture is defined as a shared way of life that is passed on to new members of a group. A complete and practical investigation of culture requires the examination of its substance and forms, which are typically referred to as the components of culture. The substance of culture includes beliefs, values, religion, and norms that are sometimes laden with emotion and interconnected in such a way that they bind groups together in discernible patterns. The forms of culture consist of symbols, language, narratives, societal structure, customs, and practices.

Our graduates may serve anywhere in the world, so they cannot conceivably know in advance every culture or subculture that may become significant. Therefore, they need systematic instruction on the components and patterns of culture so they can apply this knowledge to learning about whatever cultures they encounter.

Culture and the Cadet

Although there is no single course dedicated to culture and cultural systems in the core curriculum, cadets are receiving culture-related instruction in a number of core courses and extra-classroom settings during their four-year USMA experience. Formal classroom instruction is supplemented by opportunities to interact with international cadets and officers in a variety of venues. Exchange cadets attend USMA and exchange officers are members of the faculty. International groups of officers and cadets visit campus each year. In turn, USMA cadets also visit other national academies.

USMA offers overseas summer travel experiences that support academic program goals; additionally, there are extracurricular activities for cadets, including a model United Nations, and an international affairs club. USMA's Foreign Academy Exchange Program enables formal visits of between ten days and two weeks by cadets to foreign academies. Select cadets may also study abroad and spend a semester taking classes at a foreign university.

These and other extracurricular experiences extend cadet cultural awareness. Thus, within the constraints of a four-year curriculum, cadets develop culture awareness in many ways. For example, they study cultural elements in different cultural contexts, and examine contemporary political and historical events from different cultural perspectives. They transfer their knowledge of specific cultures to the study of new cultures through methods developed in the academic study of the components of culture.

The core curriculum includes a hierarchy of humanities and social science courses that support the culture perspective goal. Two clusters of courses guide cadets from introductions to humanities substance, theory, and methodology to more expansive social science analyses. Cadets are exposed to the introductory cluster (comprising English, foreign language, history, leadership, psychology, philosophy, social science, and geography) during their first two terms, and to the second, analytic cluster (comprising English, history, law, leadership, and international relations) during their last two years.

Cadets concentrating in English, foreign languages, history, law, human geography, or social science can select from elective courses that have significant culturerelated content. In addition, each major has a capstone course that ties together the major and the core curriculum requirements that graduates anticipate and respond effectively to the uncertainties of a changing technological, social, political, and economic world.

The USMA graduate will need extensive knowledge of the beliefs, values, and norms influencing the behavior and actions of allies, neutrals, and potential enemies. Officers who are capable of seeing the world from various perspectives and understanding diverse historical interpretations of world events will more likely be successful in modern military environments that increasingly inject young officers into difficult cultural and ethnic scenarios. Graduates who have been exposed to different cultures are more likely to respect other people and to appreciate similarities and differences in the way others think, act, and appear.

Francis A. Galgano Jr. is associate professor of geography at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.

(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Military Academy)

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