D

URING several months of temporary duty in Vietnam two years ago, I met no Air Force officer with a background in Far Eastern affairs, let alone knowledge in depth of Vietnam. The intelligence unit with which I served was a particularly good example of the inadequacy of the Air Force approach to area training. The officers (and some airmen) of the unit dealt daily with Vietnamese and other Far Eastern nationals on the most sensitive matters. But what had been their preparation? Two-thirds of the thirty officers had been drafted on a crash basis from the Security Service, Strategic Air Command, or Tactical Air Command intelligence and sent to Vietnam with no training in the area. The remaining ten had been through the Vietnamese language program at the Defense Language Institute. The course had lasted some ten months, but because of the inordinate difficulty of Vietnamese, few of the graduates could carry on more than the most rudimentary conversation. Moreover, none of the officers with language training had had any courses in the culture, politics, or economics of Vietnam. It should not be surprising that the unit's successes were few.

The problem was all too familiar. As in other crises, our approach had been to train individuals-regardless of whether they were really interested-in a crash program of area study after the crisis had developed. Unfortunately, it is impossible to create instant area experts.

The need for area experts in the armed forces first became evident during World War II. The United States was the most powerful country in the world and the key nation in the Allied coalition against the Axis. American troops inevitably became involved on every continent. Intelligence about every facet of the societies of our enemies was critical, as was the ability to understand the languages and cultures of our allies.

What kind of training program could produce "experts" with this broad knowledge? What kind of educational approach would work? The traditional disciplines, such as economics and political science, were highly specialized by 1941. A knowledge of any so

ciety in its totality through study of one discipline was impossible. The area approach could correct this fragmentation of knowledge by combining the perspectives of the various disciplines. Hopefully, the unified treatment would give the student a multidimensional picture of the life and thought of the chosen geographical area. As prototypes, armed forces schools used the few prewar area study programs carried on by lonely experimenters at Yale and Princeton. Crash training of area specialists then, as now, did not fill the bill. It was a case of too few, too late. Specialists needed experience as well as classroom instruction, and they had to be spread through all echelons to have a significant impact.

Ignorance of the true nature of other societies was compounded by a belief that military strategy could and should be planned without considering postwar political objectives. The American chiefs of staff were concerned with one thing, military victory in the shortest possible time. And their military advice tended to determine foreign policy.

Churchill's pleas for an invasion of Europe through its "soft underbelly," the Balkans, were anathema to the American chiefs. It would detract from the cross-Channel project. The chiefs also suspected that the Prime Minister was more interested in the future of the British Empire than in winning the war. Yet the Balkan invasion is perhaps the one strategy that would have saved eastern Europe from the Russians. Few American officers, however, worried about Russia-or even thought it their duty to worry about Russia.1 A profound misunderstanding of Soviet behavior resulted.

Our ignorance of another ally, the Chinese, was also appalling. We would soon pay for the facile assumption that Chiang Kai-shek could produce a unified, democratic country, the anchor on which our postwar Far Eastern policy was to be built. (In this instance we were concerned with political objectives.)

We certainly should have had a better understanding of Japan, a known enemy. Japan was on the verge of surrender before the first atomic bomb was dropped. Instead, our chiefs still foresaw a long, bloody war and wanted Russian military aid for the planned

invasion of the main Japanese islands. As a result, Russia entered the war in the Far East a few days before Japan's collapse. The Soviets legitimately collected the booty promised them at Yalta in return for attacking the Japanese.

The mere presence of area specialists, of course, would not necessarily have changed the course of the war. George Kennan, perhaps our foremost expert on Russia even then, had great difficulty finding an audience for his warnings about Stalin's goals. This only illustrates the critical lack of preparation of our policy-making apparatus for the role the U.S. played in World War II and, more important, for the role it would soon play in the postwar world.

There is a more compelling reason today for training armed forces area specialists than during World War II. The United States is now the leader of the Free World. Almost any crisis in any region of the world can affect our security or that of our allies. And the world is much more complex than in the era of Pax Britannica. Gunboat diplomacy no longer works. The indiscriminate use of naked power can backfire. We have to comprehend and sometimes deal with developments which only began to reach full flower after 1945: the age of mass communications, the clash of ideologies, and the revolution of rising expectations. Communism, anticolonialism, and nationalism in varying mixtures are potent forces in almost every conflict in almost every sector of the globe.

Victory in the various types of conflict we now face depends upon a sensitive appreciation of the issues involved. The contest rarely is clearly drawn between the forces of evil and the forces of good. Vietnam is not a simple contest between "democracy" and "communism." The Congo crisis was even more complex.

The Air Force can argue that these questions belong to the President and the State Department. But this argument is even more fallacious today than in World War II. More than ever, military operations must be carefully and precisely related to political objectives. Military men must discard the assump

tion-which never was correct-that there is no substitute for victory on the battlefield. Wars today, and in the foreseeable future, are fought for limited political objectives with limited military means.

Given the complex interrelationship between political objectives and the use of force, military men need a sophisticated understanding of potential enemies. We need to appreciate their aspirations, objectives, and basic concerns-what makes them tick. Only with this knowledge can we begin to have an accurate picture of their strengths and weaknesses, their strategies. If we lack this knowledge, our military planning will be ineffective and our military force poorly applied. The Communist World, for example, is hardly monolithic, if it ever was. Yet some still talk about the "threat" as if it could be abstracted from the intense strains within the Communist sphere. It can be argued that the U.S.S.R. now is more worried about Communist China than about the United States. In short, we need a much more sophisticated appreciation of what the Communist "threat" entails.

It is just as important that we understand our allies and their problems. This means, in effect, the totality of their cultures. Today we rarely can apply military power and quickly depart. American troops are still in Korea, more than a decade after the cease-fire. American military power is used today to create political stability as well as to defeat enemies on the battlefield. Weapons are provided through the Military Assistance Program for the same dual purpose.

These are facts of life in the 1960s and will be in the 70s and 80s. The problems are more difficult than ever. We will need great expertise in order to find feasible solutions. In the armed forces, we will need men who understand all facets of the societies, both enemy and ally, with which we may deal. They will work in intelligence, in plans and operations, in military assistance, as advisers to allied forces, as attachés. The need for at least a small corps of area experts at all levels will be greater than ever.

The Army already has responded with its Foreign Area Specialist Training Program

Meanwhile, the Air Force Academy has instituted area study majors on the undergraduate level in the belief that the Air Force could not find a better source for its future area experts who also are dedicated, professional officers. In doing so, we have followed a growing trend toward area study in the civilian educational community. Let's examine briefly the status of area study in the United States and then note how the Academy established its own programs.

Shortly after World War II, Robert B. Hall wrote in his pioneering pamphlet on area study:

Two ghastly wars within a generation have proved beyond reasonable doubt that we must know more of the other nations of the earth.

We have not had the answers to pressing questions concerning other lands nor have we built up our materials so that we could find the answers when they were needed. In each war, we promise that we will do better. With each peace, we again forget. This knowledge that we must somehow acquire-this understanding of other people's potentials, aspirations, and ways of life-is as necessary to maintain the peace as to win a war.3

The civilian educational community responded. There were a dozen area study programs at the graduate level in 1946; in 1964 there were 154. There were apparently no programs at the undergraduate level immediately after the war; in 1964 there were 250. Almost 150 were at small, four-year liberal arts colleges. For example, Earlham College (Richmond, Indiana, 1061 students) offers a major in Far Eastern Studies and is planning programs for Latin America and the Middle East. Florida Presbyterian College (Saint Petersburg, 560 students) has a program in Asian Studies.

4

In 1966 a number of faculty members at the Academy began to discuss informally the concept of area study majors." It was apparent that the Academy could institute area training with much greater ease than many civilian colleges and universities. Because of the increasing richness and sophistication of our cur

to construct four academically sound area study programs-Soviet Russian, Latin American, Western European, and Asian. In addition, an unusually large proportion of our faculty already had area expertise. Most schools of our size were lucky to have three or four area experts, yet we had five instructors with Ph.D.s in the Russian area alone. Finally, we taught the languages required for the four programs listed. The major courses lacking for area study at the Academy were in the field of literature. But the Department of English (and Foreign Languages, in the case of Spanish) agreed to establish the required courses if area study majors were approved.

Before launching four new academic majors, however, it was necessary to do a thorough study of the whole concept of area training. What was the optimum number of courses in an area study major? How many courses were needed from each discipline? How much language training was required? What level of area expertise could be expected at the undergraduate level? Could the academic departments recruit faculty members with area specialties on a continuing basis?

To make the study, the Ad Hoc Committee on Area Study was organized in September 1966. From the outset the thirteen members representing nine academic departments agreed that a comprehensive investigation was needed of the feasibility of training in all the main geographical areas. It was not enough to concentrate on the four areas in which faculty expertise and courses were already available. To undertake the necessary studies, six subcommittees were organized, consisting of all faculty members with relevant area specialties. The committees studied respectively Asia, the Soviet Union and East Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. In all, some thirty-six faculty members participated. The result was a fifty-page report entitled "A Proposal for Area Study at the Air Force Academy." The report was submitted to the Dean of the Faculty and the

heads of the various departments.

The ad hoc committee recommended that four area study programs be instituted immediately as prescribed curriculum majors: Soviet, Latin American, Western European, and Asian Studies. These four majors were subsequently approved. The members of the committee also recommended that the Academy begin planning two additional area study programs: Sub-Saharan Africa, and North Africa and the Middle East. The potential importance of these two areas to American security was obvious, but the Sub-Saharan program needed additional faculty members with appropriate area expertise, and the North Africa and Middle East program required considerable course planning.

In constructing the four area study majors now in the curriculum, the ad hoc committee was guided by several general principles:

• Core courses in each major consist of offerings in economics, geography, history, language, literature, and political science. Anthropology is included where applicable.

• Four semesters of language are required, including the two taken in the core curriculum by all cadets. (This is the standard language requirement in undergraduate area study programs throughout the nation.)

• Two open options are included in each major. A cadet may take additional work in a given discipline and may specialize in a specific country within an area by taking

tutorial courses.

• Area majors have several broad comparative courses to enhance their analysis of a specific area. Political Science 232: Contemporary Foreign Governments, provides this in the field of political science. Area majors also take Philosophy 400: Great Religions of the World.

• The capstone course in each major is an interdisciplinary seminar taught on a cooperative basis by the faculty members teaching other courses in the major. The seminar focuses on one broad topic. In Soviet Studies this could be a semester-long examination of all facets of the Sino-Soviet dispute. The political scientist normally teaching the course

in Soviet politics would examine the political aspects of the dispute, the economist the economic aspects, and so on.

• Cooperative master's programs for the four existing majors will not be developed at present for two reasons. First, cooperative programs generally require some 10 to 15 master's candidates in a given class; it is doubtful whether there will be more than this number of cadets in a particular class in any one undergraduate major, and some of these would not be of the caliber required for a cooperative master's program. Second, area master's degree programs usually require two years, and it would be difficult to construct a cooperative program within the normal seven months' limit.

• Graduate school fellowships appear to be a temporary solution for the further education of outstanding cadets in each area major. Such educational opportunities already exist for those specializing in most of the geographical areas, and the Academy cadets have had excellent success in winning scholarships (for example, the Fulbright competitions). Our success should be enhanced with betterprepared applicants. Ideally, we would like to see several graduate school assignments for study in each area in the annual education quota of the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Past experience suggests that we can expect no more than 30 to 40 area majors in each class, distributed over the four areas. These majors will be neither popular nor easy, if only because of the additional language required. But this number should serve the needs of the Air Force. Assume, for example, that the Academy can train ten Asian Studies majors each year for 20 years. Given normal attrition, the Air Force should have a corps of at least 100 officers at the end of this period, spread through all ranks. A group this size with some talent in analyzing Asian affairs could have a vital impact on Air Force effectiveness in furthering national interests in that area. The relatively small numbers in each major will not be an inordinate burden on the faculty or departments involved. Most of the courses will be taught anyhow because they are integral to other majors.