Last October I trekked through the high Atlas Mountains in central Morocco with four other midshipmen studying Arabic on a semester-abroad program. While hiking, we discovered to our dismay that the few local shepherds in the area spoke only Berber. This added more excitement to a low-budget adventure. With no guide, we navigated with free maps of questionable quality downloaded from the Internet. As we struggled to communicate, we thought of recent U.S. struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past decade, and how our military leaders and strategists had slowly realized how difficult it would be to achieve success in those nations. Despite having more capability and precision weaponry than ever before, we lacked a deep understanding about those we were fighting, which allowed disadvantaged insurgent forces in two separate theaters to achieve surprising success against the best-trained and -armed military in the world.
Sun Tzu famously attributed success in war to two important factors: knowledge of oneself and of one’s enemy. Several key historical military thinkers understood this concept better than most, to their tremendous benefit. British Colonel T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) is responsible for running arguably the West’s most successful military campaign in the Middle East. His achievements were made possible by his archaeological experiences traveling throughout the region in the years leading up to World War I. The knowledge he gained would play a critical role in his accomplishments as a military officer. His success was due to a combination of deep understanding of the Arab culture, his study of the region and critical terrain, and his humble commitment to learning how to wage war in the Arab world. The strategies he developed are pillars of successful asymmetric warfare and contribute to tactics that are still in use today.
In 1941, a newly minted U.S. Army lieutenant colonel named Albert C. Wedemeyer provided most of the intellectual heavy lifting for the development of the “Victory Plan,” the United States’ grand strategy for defeating Nazi Germany. Wedemeyer was brought up on a healthy diet of the concepts of Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and other classic military strategists. This formed a basis for his understanding of warfare. However, more critical to his development was assignment to the German Kriegsakademie (general staff school) from 1936 to 1938. Wedemeyer participated in the huge exercises the German army conducted in 1938, and, through those two years of immersion, he became an expert on that nation’s war tactics and strategy. The insight he gained abroad was integral to his Victory Plan strategy, which helped the United States to succeed in a two-theater war.
As Sun Tzu observed, there is an undeniable link between military success and understanding how an adversary behaves. This comprehension cannot be gained quickly. To truly learn how a group of people thinks, time must be spent living in the culture, eating the food, and speaking the language. Many ideas can only be grasped through face-to-face interactions and personal relationships.
My experience among my classmates at the Naval Academy is anomalous. I have studied in the Middle East three times for a combined six months while at the Academy, mostly as a result of my attempts to complete an Arabic minor. My experiences abroad, which include living with a Moroccan host family for three and half months, profoundly impacted my perspective and understanding of the Arab mindset.
This involvement with another culture sent me back to the Academy wondering what it would take to give all my classmates the level of engagement I’d had. If we are to achieve our full potential as a fighting force, we must begin developing a new class of warrior-diplomats. In addition to knowing the technical side of our craft, accomplishing true victory in the low-level conflicts that are becoming the norm will continue to depend on our understanding of the enemy we face.
Perhaps it is time to rebalance the education of the junior officer. Long-term success for U.S. interests abroad cannot be achieved by pounding the enemy into submission. Immersion in the cultures with which we continue to be involved is essential and can only be attained through focused travel. This type of learning takes time, effort, and resources. But the strategic returns from such an investment will provide priceless context in the struggle for understanding our opponents in the battles of tomorrow.