Cultural Intelligence

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." - Sun Tzu

"Geography, tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards were at my finger-ends. The enemy I knew almost like my own side. I risk myself among them many times, to learn." - T.E. Lawrence

"...the value of military intelligence is exceeded by that of social and cultural intelligence. We need the ability to look, understand, and operate deeply into the fault lines of societies where, increasingly, we find the frontiers of national security."- ADM Arthur Cebrowski, USN, (Ret.), former Director of the Office of Force Transformation.

Does Culture Matter?: The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture by Montgomery McFate, Joint Forces Quarterly Video

Military Cultural Education by COL Maxie McFarland, U.S. Army (Ret.), Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command

Through the Lens of Cultural Awareness: A Primer for US Armed Forces Deploying to Arab and Middle Eastern Countries by LTC William D. Wunderle, U.S. Army. Combat Studies Institute (CSI) Special Study

Know your Enemy: Human Intelligence Key to SOF Missions by Scott Swanson, Delphi International Research

USMC Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL)

Conflict, Culture, and History: Regional Dimensions

Five specialists examine the historical relationship of culture and conflict in various regional societies. The authors use Adda B. Bozeman's theories on conflict and culture as the basis for their analyses of the causes, nature, and conduct of war and conflict in the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Sinic Asia (China, Japan, and Vietnam), Latin America, and Africa. Drs. Blank, Lawrence Grinter, Karl P. Magyar, Lewis B. Ware, and Bynum E. Weathers conclude that non-Western cultures and societies do not reject war but look at violence and conflict as a normal and legitimate aspect of sociopolitical behavior.

The Asymmetric Warfare Group

The Asymmetric Warfare Group: Closing the Capability Gaps by Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace Jr. & Brig. Gen. Joseph L.Votel, U.S. Army

Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace Jr. is deputy chief of staff, G-3.

Brig. Gen. Joseph L. Votel is the deputy director, Information Operations/director, Army Improvised Explosive Device Task Force, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3.

This article outlines the vision and mission of the U.S. Army Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG), currently formed to enhance Army and joint force commanders' abilities to confront and defeat current and future asymmetric threats.

Center for Asymmetric Warfare

Doctrine for Asymmetric Warfare; Colonel Clinton J. Ancker III, U.S. Army (Ret.) Director, Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate (CADD), U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC), Fort Leavenworth; and LTC Michael D. Burke, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Asymmetry and US Military Strategy: Definition, Background, and Strategic Concepts. Steven Metz, and Douglas V. Johnson II. ; Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
Defining Asymmetric Warfare. MAJ David L. Buffaloe; U.S. Army
Rethinking Asymmetric Threats Stephen Blank; Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
The New Craft of Intelligence: Achieving Asymmetric Advantage in the Face of Nontraditional Threats. Robert D. Steele; Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
Street Smart: Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield for Urban Operations By Jamison Jo Medby, Russell W. Glenn; RAND Corporation

Asymmetric Warfare Bibliography USAF Air University.

Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) Annual Report

China’s Revolution in Doctrinal Affairs: Emerging Trends in the Operational Art of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army by James Mulvenon, David Finke

The papers in this volume offer a rich source of insight into the initial outlines of the PLA’s changing approaches to the conduct of operations. All of the authors used a body of professional materials published by the PLA in the original Chinese that represent some of the key writings to come out of this period of doctrinal reexamination. The papers likely represent the most current thinking on the PLA’s changing operational doctrine as can be found anywhere to this point in the English language. What is unique about this volume is that it focuses on PLA doctrine at the operational-level of warfare—the very level of conflict at which the PLA itself has put its own emphasis in its new doctrinal literature.

The Outsourcing of U.S. Intelligence Analysis: Will it Make Us More or Less Safe by Sebastian Abbot

This article was written as part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, which is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism also provided valuable support.

Sebastian Abbot is a 2006 graduate of the Master in Public Policy program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and recently completed a summer journalism fellowship at Columbia University where he spent his time researching and writing about the private intelligence industry. Prior to attending the Kennedy School, he worked as a financial analyst in the investment banking and private equity industries with J.P. Morgan and Affiliated Managers Group. He has also worked as a freelance journalist in the Middle East and as a policy analyst with the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the U.S. Department of State. He received an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University in 1998.

CIRA and the Business of Revolutionizing Intelligence Analysis

Homeland Security: The Money Trail (Interactive flash presentation) The Department of Homeland Security receives roughly $40 billion each year to carry out its duties. This interactive presentation shows which companies have received the most money, what products have been purchased, which states have been awarded the largest anti-terror grants, who influences the decisions and which lobbyists are knocking on their doors.

HUMINT-Centric Operations: Developing Actionable Intelligence in the Urban Counterinsurgency Environment by COL Ralph O. Baker, U.S. Army

The purpose of this article is to share insights and lessons learned from the reform of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division intelligence operations; specifically, lessons learned by conducting human intelligence (HUMINT)-centric operations in Iraq.

Training the Iraqi Army: an LNO shares his experiences with the 205th 'tigers'. Infantry Magazine

Maneuver Warfare Handbook by Bill Lind

Maneuver warfare, often controversial and requiring operational and tactical innovation, poses perhaps the most important doctrinal questions currently facing the conventional military forces of the U.S. Its purpose is to defeat the enemy by disrupting the opponent's ability to react, rather than by physical destruction of forces. This book develops and explains the theory of maneuver warfare and offers specific tactical, operational, and organizational recommendations for improving ground combat forces. The authors translate concepts-too often vaguely stated by manuever warfare advocates-into concrete doctrine. Although the book uses the Marine Corps as a model, the concepts, tactics, and doctrine discussed apply to any ground combat force.

Center of Gravity Analysis

Joint Operation Planning ( JP 5-0 ), clearly states the critical role of COG analysis: “The most important task confronting campaign planners in this process is being able to identify friendly and adversary strategic centers of gravity; that is, the sources of strength, power, and resistance.”

The reason identifying centers of gravity is the most important task is because a “faulty analysis of friendly or adversary centers of gravity can have very serious consequences; specifically, the inability to accomplish the military objectives at an acceptable cost and the unconscionable expenditure of lives, time, and materiel in efforts that do not produce decisive strategic or operational results.

Understanding Centers of Gravity and Critical Vulnerabilities: What Clausewitz (Really) meant by Center of Gravity by Dr. Joe Strange, USMC War College and Colonel Richard Iron, UK Army

The CG-CC-CR-CV Construct: A Useful Tool to Understand and Analyze the Relationship between Centers of Gravity and their Critical Vulnerabilities by Dr. Joe Strange, USMC War College and Colonel Richard Iron, UK Army

Center of Gravity Analysis by Colonel Dale E. Eikmeier, U. S. Army

Center of Gravity and Asymmetric Conflict: Factoring in Culture. John W. Jandora, Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue 39, 4th Quarter, p. 78-83, 2005.

A New COIN Center-of-Gravity Analysis by Colonel Peter R. Mansoor, and Major Mark S. Ulrich, U.S. Army

On War by Carl von Clausewitz

On War, unquestionably the most important single work ever written on the theory of warfare and of strategy, was written by the Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz is widely acknowledged as the most important of the major strategic theorists. Even though he's been dead for over a century and a half, he remains the most frequently cited, the most controversial, and in many respects the most modern.

The Command of the Air by Giulio Douhet

Published in 1921, Douhet states the cases forcefully for the employment of independent military air forces in war. He theorizes that aircraft should be used as offensive weapons to cripple an enemy air force on the ground and force capitulation through a sustained bombing campaign on the enemy’s homeland.

FM 34-2 Collection Management and Synchronization Planning

Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. Edited by Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington

A developed nation provides two things to its citizens: political freedom and a decent standard of living. Why are some countries able to accomplish this and others not? The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is more divided than ever between the rich and the poor, between those living in freedom and those under oppression. Even in prosperous democracies, troubling gaps in well-being persist. As the credibility of traditional explanations-colonialism, dependency, racism-declines, many now believe that the principal reason why some countries and ethnic groups are better off than others lies in the cultural values that powerfully shape nations and peoples' political, economic, and social performance. Many of the distinguished contributors to Culture Matters believe that value and attitude change is indispensable to progress for those who are lagging. Among the prominent scholars and journalists contributing to the volume are Francis Fukuyama, Nathan Glazer, David Landes, Seymour Martin Lipset, Orlando Patterson, Michael Porter, Jeffrey Sachs, and Richard Shweder. Lawrence E. Harrison is a senior fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and the author of Who Prospers? and The Pan-American Dream.

Global Intelligence: The World's Secret Services Today by Paul Todd & Jonathan Bloch

The CIA, the KGB, MI5, Mossad, Boss, Savak, Dina - the names read like a rollcall of the seamier side of history in the years following the Second World War. In the 21st century the Cold War is dead; there are fewer dictatorships; and 9/11 has created a whole new raison d'etre for covert action. This volume explains the impact of the war on terrorism on the world's secret services and intelligence agencies and describes how ultra-modern new technologies have vastly increased their power to spy and eavesdrop. It also reveals the changing priorities and working methods of intelligence services around the world and raises issues including the new roles of the secret services as they target rogue states , the war on drugs , and terrorists . The authors explore the unsolved contradiction between secretive and unaccountable agencies operating on the fringes of the law, and the requirements of a free and democratic society.

Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years by Jared M. Diamond

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the other way around? In this groundbreaking work, an evolutionary biologist dismantles racially-based theories and reveals the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. A whirlwind tour through 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire population. Here is a truly a world history, brilliantly written and radically new.
Jared Diamond argues that both geography and the environment played major roles in determining the shape of the modern world. This argument runs counter to the usual theories that cite biology as the crucial factor. Diamond claims that the cultures that were first able to domesticate plants and animals were then able to develop writing skills, as well as make advances in the creation of government, technology, weaponry, and immunity to disease.

Guns, Germs and Steel was initially subtitled ‘The Fates of Human Societies.’ Within a few months, this subtitle had evolved into ‘A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years.’ Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, the Rhone Poulenc Science Book Prize, along with three other international literary prizes, Guns, Germs and Steel has been translated into 25 languages and has sold millions of copies around the world.

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