Reinforcing the Status Quo: Training of Foreign
Area Officers
by Major Patrick Crabb
It has taken the United States military ten years to realize that the Cold War is
over. How long will it take until we realize that the countries of the former Soviet Union
are indeed independent, with their own languages, cultures and histories? We need to
reevaluate the training of area specialists for this region. If we do not change the way
we look at the countries in the former Soviet Union, we will find ourselves in a
disadvantageous position in the future.
For those not familiar with the system, Army Foreign Area Officers (FAOs)
specialize in one of nine regions of concentration. Geography, history and common
culture determine the regions of concentration. The newly independent states of the
former Soviet Union are classified as the Eurasian area of concentration. The training
timeline for all Foreign Area Officers, regardless of concentration is pretty much the
same, with some differences that I will point out later in this article. In the first stage of
training each officer receives language training in one of the languages in his area of
concentration. The officer then will spend 18 months of familiarization training in one of
the countries in his region. During this phase of training, the officer will either attend
one of that country's military schools or travel throughout that country. The final phase
of training is graduate studies in a pre-approved graduate program.
There are two significant differences between the training of Eurasian Foreign
Area Officers and the training of FAOs with other areas of concentration. The most
significant to my argument is that while other FAOs are assigned a concentration
country and trained in the language of that country, Eurasian FAOs all learn Russian.
The other difference is that Eurasian Foreign Area Officers do not spend the full 18
months of in-country training in a target country. Instead, they are assigned to the
George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany.
While assigned to the Marshall Center, Foreign Area Officers will continue language
training, take classes in policy and security and participate in one to three internships in
one of the Newly Independent States or as a liaison officer to the Russian contingents in
Bosnia or Kosovo. The only language requirement for any of these internships is
proficiency in Russian.
Army personnel assignment officers say that the reason for the emphasis on
Russian language is that Russian is the "lingua franca" of the region and officers that
have a knowledge of Russian can work in any of the countries of the area. I believe that
this line of thinking is mistaken and is counter-productive in our efforts to reinforce the
independent nature of these countries.
There are three main reasons why I feel our emphasis on Russian is counter-
productive. First of these is the message we send to the Russian speakers in who live in
the countries of the Newly Independent States. When bilateral meetings automatically
default to Russian as the language of common understanding the Russian speakers in
those countries have less incentive to learn the language of the country in which they
live. This is particularly important in countries with large Russian speaking minorities
like Ukraine.
Ukraine is a country of almost 50 million people, with an army that is second
largest in Europe after Russia's. The country is strategically located between Russia
and new NATO members Poland and Hungary. There is a large, politically vocal
Russian minority that is concentrated in the Donbas region in the eastern part of the
country. Ten years ago, shortly after declaring Ukraine an independent state, the
government announced that Ukrainian would be the state language and Ukrainian
would be used in all official government meetings and correspondence. Unfortunately,
this law has never been enforced. Many government officials continue to use Russian
in official and private conversations.
One organization that has had much success in the Ukrainization effort has been
the military. Most military officers use Ukrainian in all official meetings with one major
exception- meetings with Americans. I have been a part of many bilateral meetings with
Ukrainians in which the American FAOs start by apologizing for their lack of knowledge
of Ukrainian and ask that the meeting be conducted in Russian. I have seen this in
Georgia and Kazakhstan also. The Ukrainians always comply, but I wonder about the
message we are sending to the Ukrainians when we ask them to violate their own laws.
In the coming years it will harder to fall back to Russian as the common language
in these countries. There is no requirement to speak Russian in the Ukrainian,
Georgian, Kazakh or Uzbek armies. The proportion of Russian speakers in these
countries is growing smaller each year. In Ukraine, arguably the most Russified of
these counties, the percentage of students taught in Russian dropped by almost one
half in the last ten years 1.
The second problem of defaulting to Russian as the lingua franca is the
message we send to Russia and those who believe that Russia has a special influence
in the area. Russia is clearly trying to establish a sphere of influence in the region. The
most telling indicator of the Russian attitude to this area is the label of "near abroad"
that is attached to it. Russian is not native and did not come naturally to places like
Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Baltic States. Tsarist and Soviet
governments purposefully tried to separate the inhabitants of these areas from their
language in an attempt to dilute national identities. Promotion of the local language in
these countries is one method of solidifying their national identities. Our continued
recognition of Russian as the language of the area hurts these attempts to establish a
national identity.
The final reason I find the emphasis on Russian problematic has to do with the gap
in cultural understanding that we continue to have toward these countries. One of the
beneficial side effects of language training is an increased understanding of the culture
of the countries that use that language. I experienced some of this cultural
misunderstanding during a recent trip to Tblisi, Georgia. At a dinner with officers of the
Georgian military our officers offered toasts in the Russian style, each saying a few
words about whatever subject came to mind. Only later did we learn about the
Georgian toastmaster tradition of adding to a theme set by the host. While Georgian
officers were adding to the theme of brotherhood- we were toasting to the good health
of our hosts. This is but a small example of the wider problem of area specialists that
do not truly understand the culture of one of the countries of their area. We have
Eurasian area specialists that can speak intelligently of Pushkin yet have very little
knowledge of Shevchenko and Tamerlane.
One of the unspoken arguments against training Eurasian FAOs in languages
other than Russian is cost. It is much cheaper and more efficient to teach Russian
language skills to all Eurasian FAOs because they can use it throughout the region.
The first response to that statement would be that it would be cheaper and more
efficient still to not teach any language because almost everybody speaks some English
in the region these days. However, if you accept my earlier argument that the study of
language brings with it a deeper understanding of culture, there are efficient ways to
train.
Currently, Basic Russian is taught at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey,
California and Advanced Russian is taught in Garmisch at the Marshall Center. There
is a proposal awaiting Army approval to move all language training for Eurasian FAOs
to the Marshall Center. The Marshall Center already employs two Ukrainian instructors
and would be easy to add contract instructors that could teach Georgian, Uzbek,
Kazakh or one of the other languages of the region. While assigned to the Marshall
Center, FAOs could be sent on internships in their target countries while also gaining
regional exposure through the class trips, lectures and sponsorship opportunities that
already exist there. The officers who specialize in these non-Russian languages would
also have the opportunity to take some survival Russian or even pick up Russian as a
second language.
The world is changing. It is the responsibility of the area specialists in the Army to
recognize these changes and be prepared for them. I recognize the importance of
Russia in this region. It is by far the largest country in the region that maintains a
powerful military armed with nuclear weapons. We must also recognize that we are
now dealing with 15 independent states with their own national interests, foreign policy
dilemmas, culture and language. In the wake of recent events in the world and the new
importance of Central Asia in our war on terrorism I can't help but think what the Army
would give for two or three Eurasian FAOs with a deep cultural and linguistic
understanding of Uzbek or Tadjik. Maybe now we can start looking at these countries
as independent.
Endnotes
1.1 Ministerstvo Ukrainy u spravakh
natsional'nostei, mihratsii ta kul'tiv, Informatsiinyi biuleten' 1 (3)
September 1995: 40; Statystychnyi shchorichnyk Ukrainy za 1998 rik, p
424. In 1991, 48.8 percent of preschoolers were taught in Russian; in 1998 only 25.3
percent were taught in Russian. BACK
2002, Foreign Area Officer Association
Springfield,
Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve
Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org