Introduction: Military Cultural Capacity after Afghanistan

This introduction offers a brief overview of the context for the US military’s efforts to build its cultural capacity over the previous decade. It goes on to highlight three modalities represented across the volume’s chapters for addressing the question of military cultural awareness: the institutionalization of military cultural education and training, and of cultural heritage management and protection, but also assessments of prevailing models and lessons learned in the pursuit of this capacity. The introduction also identifies different perspectives represented in this volume with respect to these developments. As discussed across the chapters, it gives particular attention to the challenges for expertise and the several conceptions of culture as a dimension of: military culture, culture training, counterinsurgency, humanitarian cooperation, and technology-driven problem-solving respectively.