USA — Program Bolsters Department’s Language Capabilities

WASHINGTON — Coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tions are based on pro­tect­ing the pop­u­la­tion, and to do that, you have to be able to com­mu­ni­cate.
Dur­ing a meet­ing in Afghanistan’s Hel­mand province, an Army spe­cial­ist stood between the Hel­mand gov­er­nor and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The young man ensured that both Mullen and the gov­er­nor under­stood not only what was being said, but the nuances in the con­ver­sa­tion.

The spe­cial­ist was an expert in Dari, the lan­guage of the region. But he also was an expert on the cul­ture. For three hours, he ensured that Mullen and the assem­bled Afghan lead­ers communicated. 

Because the Unit­ed States has world­wide com­mit­ments, the mil­i­tary, the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and diplo­mats need peo­ple expert in the lan­guages of the world. But Amer­i­cans gen­er­al­ly don’t study for­eign lan­guages in much depth. Trav­el to the Nether­lands, and almost every­one speaks Eng­lish. Many also speak French and Ger­man and, of course, Dutch. But if you trav­el in the Unit­ed States, you’d bet­ter speak English. 

The Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Edu­ca­tion pro­gram seeks to change this par­a­digm. The pro­gram – aimed at civil­ians – has award­ed more than 4,200 schol­ar­ships and fel­low­ships to U.S. cit­i­zens to study crit­i­cal lan­guages and cul­tures. The ser­vices also recruit mil­i­tary per­son­nel to serve these com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs. 

The pro­gram gained momen­tum fol­low­ing the 9/11 attacks, and it is pay­ing off. 

Pro­gram offi­cials recent­ly hon­ored two par­tic­i­pants. Paul Mein­shausen, a 2006 pro­gram par­tic­i­pant, received the Howard Bak­er Jr. Award. Mein­shausen stud­ied Turk­ish and used the pro­gram to receive a master’s degree in Eurasian stud­ies. He is a gen­er­al mil­i­tary ana­lyst at the Nation­al Ground Intel­li­gence Center. 

Glen­da Jakubows­ki received the Sol Linowitz Award. Jakubows­ki holds a master’s degree in inter­na­tion­al and secu­ri­ty stud­ies and serves in Iraq as senior ana­lyst at the Joint Intel­li­gence Oper­a­tions Cen­ter. She speaks Ara­bic, and stud­ied in Cairo. 

The pro­gram was found­ed by for­mer Okla­homa Sen. David Boren in 1991. Boren rec­og­nized that nation­al secu­ri­ty orga­ni­za­tions need­ed these capa­bil­i­ties, and pro­posed the leg­is­la­tion found­ing the pro­gram. He now is pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oklahoma. 

U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand has par­tic­u­lar­ly been push­ing the pro­gram, said Nan­cy Weaver of the Defense Lan­guage Office. 

Lan­guage and cul­ture are essen­tial to the fight,” she said dur­ing a recent inter­view. All ser­vice­mem­bers deploy­ing to the Cent­com area of oper­a­tions should receive at least an intro­duc­tion to lan­guage and cul­ture in their train­ing, she said, not­ing that lan­guage is key to under­stand­ing a culture. 

There are clues to a cul­ture that are hid­den in the lan­guage,” she explained. “That learn­ing process is con­tin­u­al. It does­n’t stop when you leave the class­room. You’ve got to inter­act with the local pop­u­la­tion in order to bet­ter under­stand what their con­cerns are and to get the infor­ma­tion you need to keep your peo­ple safe.” 

The need for lan­guage skills in a coun­terin­sur­gency fight is under­stood, but oth­er mil­i­tary oper­a­tions also require the capa­bil­i­ty, Weaver said. “After the earth­quake in Haiti, we need­ed per­son­nel who could speak Cre­ole,” she not­ed. “We were able to get many native and her­itage speak­ers there quickly.” 

Native speak­ers are those Amer­i­cans who were born in a coun­try and learned the lan­guage grow­ing up. Her­itage speak­ers are first-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­cans who learned the lan­guage from their families. 

More than 7,000 dif­fer­ent lan­guages spo­ken in the world, and defense per­son­nel can be need­ed any­where. Still, the depart­ment has to focus on a few so-called strate­gic lan­guages, includ­ing Ara­bic, Chi­nese, Hin­di, Urdu and Dari. 

If you want to nego­ti­ate, if you want to inter­act, if you want to bet­ter under­stand the peo­ple you deal with, then you’ve got to make the effort to learn their lan­guage,” Weaver said. 

Defense Depart­ment offi­cials also look at what lan­guages are like­ly to be need­ed in the future. 

Giv­en the emerg­ing coun­tries in Africa, learn­ing those lan­guages will be impor­tant in the com­ing years,” Weaver said. “If we can start build­ing the capa­bil­i­ty now, we can have those [capa­bil­i­ties] when the need arises.” 

The pro­gram is not large by DOD stan­dards at $37 mil­lion, said Robert Slater, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram. He empha­sized that the pro­gram teach­es lan­guage “as a com­mu­nica­tive skill, rather than for a lit­er­a­ture major.” A gen­er­a­tion ago, he said, the empha­sis was on read­ing, not in conversation. 

Slater said the high­er-edu­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ty made a mis­take in drop­ping the for­eign-lan­guage require­ment, and not­ed that many uni­ver­si­ties are rein­stat­ing it. 

Pro­gram offi­cials are work­ing not only with col­leges, but also with high schools and ele­men­tary schools to pre­pare the next gen­er­a­tion of lan­guage stu­dents, he said. 

This is not a short-term pro­gram,” Weaver said. “It will be need­ed. You could get along with one lan­guage 25 years ago. But with tech­nol­o­gy the way it is, glob­al­iza­tion is here. Amer­i­cans real­ize that as a nation we need to work on lan­guage capability.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →