Military Review English Edition July-August 2016

FOREIGN LANGUAGE U.S. policymakers, and perhaps military leaders, have given short shrift to the ideas, beliefs, motivations, and dreams of human beings. The discipline given the shortest shrift is the learning, truly learning, of a foreign language. Arguably, foreign languages are viewed as just another adjunct in the fixer’s toolbox. That language proficiency takes time to inculcate and constant attention to maintain is not readily recognized. As good as Americans are at technology and its myriad offshoots, they are dejectedly abysmal in fostering anything approaching an appreciation for, or recognition of, the need for individuals to learn a foreign language. Spillover of this attitude into the military realm is natural. For years, the military has deluded itself, particularly when dealing within the Western Hemisphere, with the illusion that given the number of Hispanics, particularly among its enlisted personnel, there exists little need for a formalized approach to ensuring Spanish language proficiency. The officer ranks suffer a disproportionately small number of individuals who can claim foreign language fluency. Often as not, fluency in another tongue has not been acquired through any formal education or dedicated immersion into a foreign culture. In addition, the fact that an individual is, say, from Puerto Rico, and is fluent in Spanish, does not mean she or he will work well with indigenous tribes in the jungles of Peru. Americans typically consider Peru a Spanish-speaking country, but what if those indigenous peoples speak only Quechua or Aymara? The dearth of linguistic and cultural knowledge— not to mention historical acumen—was a contributing factor of no small consequence in the morass of Vietnam, the tragedy of Beirut in 1983, the failure of Mogadishu in 1993, and the current serious confrontation with Islamic fundamentalism.7 Would military leaders having a firm grasp of language and an in-depth appreciation of regional history have avoided these conflicts? Could U.S. military failures have been averted if the military had made the necessary concerted adjustments to the education of the officer corps, so that officers understood human factors? Perhaps not, but these two faculties, properly employed and applied, would have pragmatically enhanced decision making. The nature of the interventions, and possibly their outcomes, might not have been so tragic. Therefore, might we not be subjectively committing the nation to living a lie when we trundle off on some MILITARY REVIEW July-August 2016 quixotic fore ign errand? In any case, the point is that within a Clausewitzian context, the United States has failed significantly in inculcating the “influence of the great diversity of intellectual qualities” within the officer corps of the armed forces. The Study of Languages The George and Carol Olmsted Foundation, known as the Olmsted Foundation, offers scholarships to active duty junior officers recommended by the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force. They must have completed at least three years of commissioned service, but not more than eleven years of total active military service at time of selection. Each year, selected officers receive the unparalleled opportunity to study in a foreign language at a foreign university. The nature of the program is particularly suited for the military challenges today’s officers will face. Further, officers have the opportunity to study languages and cultures in depth relatively early in their careers. How the services view the Olmsted program is somewhat inconsistent, if not assumptive. None treats the Olmsted program as a separate and distinct entity. For example, the Marine Corps offers the program within a Marine Corps order that also announces Burke Equivalent Scholars, Fulbright, Rhodes, and Guggenheim Scholarships. Given the Olmsted Foundation’s vision and success, the services ought to consider the program as a separate entity when soliciting candidates. If properly utilized, the Olmsted program permits an essential introduction to foreign language and culture that can be expanded on throughout an officer’s career. Nineteen Olmsted scholars were selected in March 2016 for the fifty-seventh Olmsted Scholar Class. To date, 620 scholars have completed or are completing studies, or are preparing for two years of study abroad. Scholars have studied in forty languages in over two hundred foreign universities spanning sixty countries worldwide.8 The Study of History History fares little better than foreign language in terms of how the services prepare officers. The serious study of history languishes in the supposed dusty and sterile realms of academe. It is something pursued at one’s whim rather than, in the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “to come to the root of the matter” for 105

Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 107