| Carl,
Scary work. One problem the US Army has is that it has a very good program to train and provide experience to officers in other cultures and histories and provide insight and expertise in dealing with them. This is SC 48 -- Foreign Area Officer or FAO for short. Most of them have two to three years' training and education in the designated countries they will focus on, and then serve tours in the embassies there as military attaches or other duties. Too often the Army ignores them when dealing with third world nations, and this is to their undying regret. Part of the problem is that a FAO is neither fish (operations oriented) or fowl (intelligence oriented) and as a result tends to be ignored by both communities. We need more of them and more in key positions. As a point of observation, if we had a good one sharp on the emerging Red Chinese threat in 1950 he could have provided MacArthur with the requisite insight as to how far he could go without stimulating a certified PLA response to actions in Korea. Cookie Sewell AMPS |