DEF UK: Case for an officer cadre of language and culture experts in UK defence
First published 20 Dec 2016
Disclaimer. The views expressed in this blog are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent those of the UK Ministry of Defence, any other department of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom or indeed any other Government. Further, publication of those views should not be considered as constituting an official endorsement of factual accuracy, opinion, conclusion or recommendation by the UK Ministry of Defence, any other department of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom, or that of any other Government.
By Ben Harrold — Serving Officer, Royal Air Force; with thanks and acknowledgement to John Hetherington, Neill Hunt and Keith Dear for their support and input.
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
Confucius 551–479 BC
Introduction
Given that language is the mechanism by which people understand and influence each other, then the lack of a cadre of officers within UK Defence that can communicate directly with non-English speaking counterparts is likely reducing our operational effectiveness.
The MOD has taken steps to increase language training amongst its servicemen and women (e.g. the Army requirement that all officers must achieve a standardised language profile (SLP) level 1- very basic, sub-GCSE level language proficiency — before they can take on sub-unit command). However, delivering a comprehensive and effective approach across the three Services has been challenging, as reflected by internal memos calling for ideas as to how best to approach the issue.
Current approaches to delivering linguistic expertise focus on training interpreters who can relay messages between two individuals, or on training individuals to listen to and interpret signals intelligence (SIGINT). There is presently no mechanism for training military officers to communicate directly with their counterparts — in spite of the fact that it is almost always officers who deploy into the key liaison roles and who carry the greater authority to make decisions and influence international partners.
Why Train Officers as Language Experts?
Languages are critical to current and future operations for many reasons, but two stand out:
a. Alliances. The UK strategic consensus suggests future wars are to be fought principally alongside allies. Speaking the language of our allies allows the development of stronger, more effective relationships, increasing operational effectiveness.
b. Influence. Perceptions, messaging and understanding are shaped largely by communication. Language is key at all levels, inter-personally, and in achieving information effects. Language training also confers an ability to more effectively choose what is appropriate to say in a given context, as well as how to say it.
In April 2016 UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon argued that it was “hard to see the circumstance” in which the UK would go into conflict on its own. Further, the 2015 National Security Strategy states: “strong alliances and partnerships worldwide are more important than ever”. In this context, it is critical that Defence can draw on a cadre of staff officers able to effectively communicate the UK’s key messages and to appropriately influence our allies.
Challenges
Now that we have outlined why investing in language training is important, what are the challenges to implementation? While it is widely recognised across the 3 Services that languages are important, there remains a general resistance to implementing effective language training. This resistance is particularly strong when it comes to training officers. There are many good reasons for this resistance, the most significant of which are detailed below:
1. We cannot be sure we will predict where the next war will be, and we cannot train people to speak every language in the world. This reason is frequently given as a counter to generating language expertise in advance of a conflict or crisis. In short, the risk is that Defence invests time and money in training an officer in a language they never use. Thus, time and money are wasted.
2. Training language experts takes time and language skills quickly degrade. Though estimates on language-training time differ depending on the tutor, the student, the language learned and the desired language outcome, it remains the case that learning languages to a high standard is a time consuming process. For European languages, 9 months of full-time training is a reasonable estimate to achieve a credible standard. For non-European languages, the training time is closer to 15 months. For high-level fluency in non-European languages, some scholars estimate 3 years of training is required. Further, once trained, linguists must continue to use their languages regularly to avoid skill fade.
3. There is no language-specific promotion pathway. In the present system, there is no mechanism for an officer who is a language/cultural expert to advance their career. This means that those people who are trained are either not utilised effectively or become disenfranchised and leave the military. This results in a high-turnover of a demanding skillset, and places a significant burden on training staff.
4. Each officer employed in a linguistic/liaison role is one less committed to their primary function. As above, training officers to be able to engage with and influence allies would be time consuming — not just in the initial training phase but throughout that officer’s career, as language proficiency must be maintained through ‘top up’ training or in-country deployments. This is particularly problematic at a time when the Armed Forces are already stretched and manning authorities are unwilling to release their personnel from key operational appointments. Each officer being trained to communicate in a foreign language is one less available to do their primary role. When we can employ local national interpreters, why should we invest in this capability?
The Way Forward
It is acknowledged that the challenges above are complex and longstanding. However, there are several approaches that could be taken to mitigate against these challenges:
1. Big Bets. While we cannot speak with certainty about where or how the next war will be fought, we can predict with reasonable confidence the region it will be fought in and what language the local population will likely speak. For example, it is not a stretch to argue that the UK will be tied, in one way or another, to allies and conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa for the next decade. Therefore, training a small number of officers to a high standard in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and French would be a wise investment. Given the widespread use of Russian in the often fragile states of the former USSR, and evidence of Russian resurgence as a global power, investing in Russian speakers would also be a safe bet.
2. Train Early & Invest in Languages. There are several capabilities in Defence in which training personnel takes a significant period of time — training pilots, for example. Capabilities such as pilot training are invested in because they deliver a critical capability for UK Defence. Training an officer cadre of linguistic experts has the potential to deliver an equally critical capability. Therefore, lengthy training should not preclude training officers as linguists. However, there may be benefit in training officers as early in their careers as possible so that they can provide the greatest possible value for money for Defence, once trained.
3. Bursaries & Scholarships. One option might be to offer small sponsorships for aspiring officers to study languages during their final years (A Level) of school, or at university before they join the military either as their main subject or alongside their subject of choice with an associated return-of-service or repayment clause. Such scholarships might also include incentives to go abroad to study for a year and/or to travel/work overseas during Summer breaks with an associated return of service. This would be low-cost compared to sending officers abroad once they are serving, salaried and entitled to additional allowances and support.
4. Cadre of Linguist Officers. The current system is structured such that language training cannot be value for money. Languages are treated as a peripheral skill set, purely to translate messages of others, rather than to directly engage and influence. Under this mechanism, there can be no career reward for an officer who is able to effectively engage with allies and bring this capability to bear across their career, as they progress through the ranks. The establishment of a tri-service cadre of officers who double as language and regional experts counters this problem. For example, experienced linguists demonstrating the appropriate potential could be employed in Defence Attaché roles. Military Intelligence Liaison Officers, roles within Defence HUMINT and the Defence Cultural Specialist Unit also present opportunities for regional experts to bring their knowledge to bear.
5. Linguists & Branch Officers. Officers who speak languages need not be only linguists. In fact it would be preferable if they were also experts in their own specialisations. This would enable them to offer the benefit of their own professional experience directly to their partners when deployed into liaison roles. For example, by becoming a part of the operational staff and contributing as much as a native speaker, increasing their influence. Therefore, ‘double-hatting’ need not be a hindrance to Defence outputs, rather it could boost operational effect, by putting the right person in the right place alongside the right partners.
6. Whole-of-Government Training. The FCO continues to invest in language training. There would be merit in seeking to train our officers alongside FCO staff both for financial efficiency and to foster cross-Government links improving future cooperation and collaboration.
7. Tech Outliers. The UK has experimented in the past with seeking to employ more people from the UK’s increasingly diverse ethnic communities, who speak many of the languages needed as their mother-tongue. This has often foundered on the difficulty of gaining security clearances for those who have dual-nationality, whose parents grew up abroad or who have themselves lived in their family’s country of origin for prolonged period — making vetting complicated, expensive and sometimes impossible. To overcome this, experiments are believed to have taken place using such individuals to translate text outside of the context in which it was collected, reducing the need for clearances in order to be able to see the information. Technology, can now enable foreign-born or 2nd generation immigrants who want to help to do so remotely. A central cell of translators connected to the field using head-mounted cameras and body-worn microphones, translating direct to the soldier, sailor or airman’s earpiece; a virtual reality link up could help them understand context. There are precedents for this: UK-based companies already link midwives in the developed world to those in the developing world via smart devices to enable them to provide expertise and support. A US based company uses Google Glass to link doctors to medically trained support workers in India to record notes and support. A further outlier: ongoing work on tech-enabled body-worn real-time translation tools proceeds apace. The military could and should consider investing in supporting the development and procurement of such technology to enable those without linguistic skill in foreign languages to engage more easily when deployed overseas. The tech solutions proffered are supportive to the main effort of developing language skills to build the cultural understanding and relationships for influence, but could be significant force multipliers if deployed with a force that also sustained the cadre of experts we call for.
Conclusion
If the Defence requirement for linguistic expertise is to be addressed seriously, and achieve effect, it must be addressed amongst the staff who, over their careers, wield the greatest influence. Investing in language skills in promising officers early in their careers would deliver a capability to influence allies in a way that is entirely lacking at present. This training will be time-intensive and deprive the Armed Forces of staff when they are already stretched. However, the short-term pain will deliver significant long-term gains in effective Defence Engagement, an area that is widely seen as critical to the UK’s future success. With a shrinking Armed Forces and a rapidly changing operational environment, the lack of a sustainable, consistent and cohesive strategy for language training limits our ability to protect our national strategic interest in the long term.
Addendum
We leave you with this, that more eloquently says all that underlies our argument than we would ever be able to:
The first duty both of the theorist and of the practitioner of international relations, therefore, is empathy; the capacity to enter into other minds and understand ideologies which have been formed by environment, history and education in a very different mould from our own.
The most direct way of doing this is of course to study the languages which both express and create these differences between nations. For many this will be a counsel of perfection, but at least we should be conscious of our imperfections. To study international relations without understanding linguistic diversities is like studying painting with the handicap of being colour-blind. The fact that an increasing amount of the business of the world is conducted in English is undeniably a functional convenience, but it can be deceptive. English is not the native language of those with whom we are dealing, and it is not a natural or effective vehicle of their ideas. It enables them to understand us better than we can understand them, but it can give an illusion of mutual understanding where none in fact exists.
Michal Howard, Empires, Nations and Wars p.142 Spellmount 2007
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the authors concerned, not necessarily the MOD. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form without prior permission in writing from the editor.
