Teaching Cultural Competence: Lessons Learned from Seven Countries

Abstract

The eleven diverse chapters of Warriors or Peacekeepers: Building Military Cultural Competence, offer research from three continents in seven countries. These studies provide a unique opportunity for an international comparison of military cultural education. This final chapter offers a meta-analysis of the various chapters to identify key themes, patterns and findings among the studies, providing valuable lessons learned about both the successes and challenges of preparing military leaders for the cultural aspects of conflict. While there are some issues that are unique to a specific country or military program, there are far more commonalities among the contributions. We compare and contrast military culture education at two distinct levels of analysis: (1) The individual level and (2) The institutional level.