Cultural Links

Foreign area officers help forge relationships between U.S. forces and indigenous populations

By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor

Although the Navy was the first responder in the relief effort for victims of the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia in December, it was foreign area officers (FAOs) — specialists in the language, culture, military and politics of a region — from the Army and Air Force who directed the food and medical supplies where they were needed most.

Without them, the Navy would have been far less successful in its assistance efforts there, said Capt. Tom Mangold, head of the Strategy & Concept Development Branch in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Inspired by the impact that a few FAO officers could have, at least one Navy pilot involved in the operation is now applying to the Navy’s FAO program, he said.

As a result of such experiences in humanitarian operations and the global war on terrorism, the Navy in December will begin selecting officers for a new, distinct FAO community it hopes to meld into a small corps of dedicated specialists to help it navigate the world’s cultural minefields. The new specialty will give officers skilled in foreign languages and culture viable career paths to more fully exploit their extensive — and relatively rare — talents to the benefit of national defense.

The Marine Corps also is reviewing its established FAO community to better align it with the service’s current needs. Marine FAOs in Iraq act as links between U.S. and Iraqi leaders.

Lt. Col. Patrick J. Carroll, a Marine FAO, served as military aide-de-camp and military spokesman for Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the former coalition provisional authority in Iraq, and as military liaison to the Iraqi governing council. He also conducted daily liaison with State Department representatives, the Fallujah city council, and various clerics and tribal sheiks. His chief purpose was ensuring the success of the Iraqi elections.

Marine Capt. Sherif A. Aziz, regional advisor to the ground combat element of II Marine Expeditionary Force, said FAOs in Iraq “develop relationships with Iraqi civic and military leaders, as well as the sheiks and imams, that allow them a venue to air their grievances to someone who understands their concerns and passes those concerns on [to higher authority] in a way to help moderate progress and minimize negative fallout.”

The Navy has long had FAO subspecialists, line officers such as surface warriors, aviators and submariners, who qualified as experts in certain areas of the world and served in positions such as staff advisors to commanders with regional responsibilities. But the long educational track required to produce subspecialists crowded out other tours of duty necessary for an officer to obtain a well-rounded, successful career.

FAO subspecialists who stayed in their field often gave up career-enhancing assignments, and the service lost their expertise as they went unpromoted. In short, it became too difficult to be proficient both as a warrior and an FAO, and careers suffered as a result.

Congress stepped in this year, noting in the House version of the 2006 National Defense Appropriations Act that “it has become increasingly difficult to retain these skilled officers” as the demand for them has increased. Citing the Army’s difficulty in retaining FAOs, the bill directs the Department of Defense to study the feasibility of establishing separate career fields for them as a means to retain their skills and expertise.

Mangold, a surface warfare officer and FAO subspecialist on Europe, led the Navy’s effort to create an FAO community even before Congress and the Office of the Secretary of Defense encouraged it.

“FAO rose to the top [of the list of ideas to enhance warfighting capabilities] as a one of the programs we really wanted to exploit,” he said. “It was a fallout from the experience in Iraq and in Afghanistan fighting the GWOT (global war on terrorism) — language, cultural specialization, regional knowledge — something all the services need.”

The Navy wants to broaden the role of FAOs, which are currently stereotyped as staff officers and advisors. Although Mangold envisions most of the FAO billets as advisory positions, he also sees them as operators, “getting much more in the field and helping with things such the GWOT, theater security cooperation and humanitarian disaster relief … a certain group at the tip of the spear who are frontmen to represent the fleet on the beach.”

In the future, many of the naval and defense attaché billets in embassies abroad — currently staffed by warfare specialists and intelligence officers — likely will be filled by FAOs, Mangold said.

The Navy wants officers to gain experience in warfare specialties before they are considered for the FAO community.

“They have to have a credibility and knowledge of naval warfare, and you only get that professionally,” Mangold said. “They’re going to be guys that have the right stuff, but they really like international affairs as well.”

The Navy envisions a corps of 300-400 FAOs, and will try to fill the requirement without increasing officer end-strength. Eventually, the FAO community will be headed by at least one flag officer.

The Navy’s FAO community will be closely modeled on the Army’s FAO program. The Navy’s tentative plan is that officers selected for FAO transition would spend 18 months at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif., earning a master’s degree specializing in a certain region of the world. That would be followed by up to 15 months of language training at Defense Language Institute, also in Monterey, or other language school and six months of immersion in the foreign culture.

Language proficiency is being emphasized, with languages such as Arabic and Chinese in high demand.

Although officers may request training in certain regional expertise, the FAO program will control the numbers of specialists by region based on the needs of the service. An officer with comparable education, real-world experience and language proficiency in a region can apply for the FAO community under a waiver.

Marine Corps FAOs and RAOs (regional experts who do not have applicable language skill) also serve in higher-level staffs to advise commanders of the cultural nuances of local populations. The Corps fields approximately 250 FAOs and 105 RAOs. All are Marines with combat arms specialties dual-tracked with their foreign expertise, and the Corps wants to keep it that way. The small service cannot afford to man a separate FAO/RAO corps.

“Our model is that every Marine officer is a MAGTF (Marine Air-Ground Task Force) officer first, and adds specialties later,” said Col. Daniel C. Hahne, a helicopter pilot who is head of the International Issues Branch at Headquarters Marine Corps.

A Marine FAO will compete for promotion against other Marines, not just FAOs, and FAOs will maintain proficiency in their primary specialty.

This fall, the Corps is taking a hard look at its FAO/RAO billet structure to align it more with the current and future needs of the service, Hahne said. The service expects to be placing more FAOs with combat forces. For example, a new naval gunfire liaison company in Okinawa requires three FAOs to accomplish its mission.

A majority of the Corps’ current FAOs are experts in Latin America or Europe — largely because many FAOs speak Spanish or French through family heritage. The service would like to change the ratio by training more Middle Eastern and East Asian experts.

Maj. Michael Oppenheim, a logistician and Russian major who became an FAO specializing in China, manages the International Affairs Officer Programs under Hahne. He projects the Corps’ FAO requirements eight years out, fine-tuning them annually based on intelligence analyses about the geographical areas in which the service can expect to be involved. The Corps is expanding its Middle East FAO ranks, but not at the expense of other areas, citing the need to maintain variety.

The Marine Corps also is increasing the language proficiency requirement for its FAOs and developing a program to help them sustain their proficiency, Hahne said.

A Marine officer’s path to FAO is stringent: 18 months at NPS for a master’s degree in a region; six-to-18 months (depending on difficulty) of language school; and one year of immersion in a foreign culture, during which an officer lives on the local economy, takes classes and travels extensively within the country.

Today, three of the Corps’ general officers are FAOs, including the former commandant, Gen. James L. Jones, currently commander, U.S. European Command.

About one-third of Marine FAOs are attachés at U.S. embassies abroad. Maj. Mike Barnes, an artillery officer and a Russian-speaking FAO, recently completed a tour as Marine Corps attaché to the Ukraine, where he assisted the naval attaché and conducted liaison with the small Ukrainian Marine Corps, as well as with that nation’s border guards, intelligence community and arms exporters. He also advised the U.S. European Command’s plans officer and the Office of the Secretary of Defense on Ukrainian matters.

Maj. Darren Duke, who spent a year in Israel for cultural immersion, chose the FAO program as a Middle East expert in the mid-1990s because of the increasing asymmetric threats that brought “cultural linguistic issues to the forefront.”

Hahne said metrics are hard to apply to the value of an FAO. He recalled comments from battlefield commanders in Iraq who did not know what an FAO was until one showed up.

But, Hahne added, the commanders told him that when FAOs were sent out with the Iraqis, relationships always improved.

He said FAOs “are folks willing to get off the beaten path. [When a ship pulls into a foreign port,] FAOs are the guys that’ll go past the beer tent on the pier and actually go out into town. They’re willing to learn … by mixing in the culture, learn another language and step out beyond the comfort zone of the straight-up-the-middle career path.”