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    DEFENSE LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL AWARENESS TRANSFORMATION: TO WHAT END? AT
                                   WHAT COST?

                                   __________

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                   OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                                  HEARING HELD

                                  JULY 9, 2008

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                   OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

                         VIC SNYDER, Arkansas, Chairman
    JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina          W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
    LORETTA SANCHEZ, California          ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
    ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California        WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
    ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey           JEFF MILLER, Florida
    SUSAN A. DAVIS, California           PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
    JIM COOPER, Tennessee                K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
    HANK JOHNSON, Georgia                GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
    JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania
                     Andrew Hyde, Professional Staff Member
                     Tom Hawley, Professional Staff Member
                    Roger Zakheim, Professional Staff Member
                        Sasha Rogers, Research Assistant

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                         CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
                                      2008

                                                                       Page

    Hearing:

    Wednesday, July 9, 2008, Defense Language and Cultural Awareness
      Transformation: To What End? At What Cost?.....................     1

    Appendix:

    Wednesday, July 9, 2008..........................................    31
                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2008
    DEFENSE LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL AWARENESS TRANSFORMATION: TO WHAT END? AT
                                   WHAT COST?
                  STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

    Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking
      Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee..............     2
    Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Chairman,
      Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee......................     1

                                   WITNESSES

    Brecht, Dr. Richard D., Executive Director, Center for Advanced
      Study of Language, University of Maryland......................     3
    Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F., Jr., President, Center for Strategic
      and Budgetary Assessments......................................     9
    McFate, Dr. Montgomery, Senior Social Science Advisor, Joint
      Advanced Warfighting Division, Institute for Defense Analyses..     7
    Zalman, Dr. Amy, Policy Analyst, Science Applications
      International Corporation (SAIC)...............................     5

                                    APPENDIX

    Prepared Statements:

        Akin, Hon. W. Todd...........................................    37
        Brecht, Dr. Richard D........................................    39
        Krepinevich, Dr. Andrew F., Jr...............................   104
        McFate, Dr. Montgomery.......................................    95
        Snyder, Hon. Vic.............................................    35
        Zalman, Dr. Amy..............................................    86

    Documents Submitted for the Record:

        ``Outlines of a National Language Education Policy in the
          Nation's Interest: Why? How? Who is Responsible for What?''
          paper delivered by Richard D. Brecht to the Foreign
          Language Education Policy Colloquium, University of
          California at Berkeley, October 2005, submitted by Dr.
          Richard D. Brecht..........................................   119

    Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

        [There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]

    Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

        Mr. Johnson..................................................   148
        Dr. Snyder...................................................   145
    DEFENSE LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL AWARENESS TRANSFORMATION: TO WHAT END? AT
                                   WHAT COST?

                                  ----------

                      House of Representatives,
                           Committee on Armed Services,
                     Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
                               Washington, DC, Wednesday, July 9, 2008.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:34 p.m. in
    room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Vic Snyder
    (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
     ARKANSAS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

        Dr. Snyder. Why don't we go ahead and get started.
        We have got votes coming up sometime in a half hour, 45
    minutes or somewhere in that range, and I don't think it will
    be a terribly long break. I don't think we have a very
    complicated day. So whenever that occurs, we will leave and
    hope that you will stay with us.
        Welcome to all of you today to our witnesses and folks in
    attendance and to the members. Our topic today is Defense
    Language and Cultural Awareness Transformation: To what end? At
    what cost?
        And the witnesses may not know it, but our staff puts
    together a hearing memo before each of these events. And I
    liked the one so much for today, I am going to lift it. I am
    going to read from a couple of paragraphs from it as my opening
    statement.
        Many experts say as there will be a continuous need for the
    Department of Defense (DOD) to focus on irregular warfare,
    building partnerships with foreign countries and the sustained
    effort required by the long war, all spotlighting a need for
    greater foreign language proficiency and cultural competency in
    U.S. forces. If this is indeed the environment in which we
    expect our forces to operate, then that forms the fundamental
    basis for looking at the range of these capabilities. Deciding
    on the optimal level and extent of proficiency, given resource
    limitations is the difficult part.
        Today's hearing will focus, I hope, on the following
    questions: What should be the military's overarching goal in
    terms of the distribution and level of language skills and
    cultural awareness capabilities to support national security
    requirements? And given that acquiring these capabilities comes
    at a cost in terms of money, time and readiness in other areas,
    what price should the Nation be willing to pay? As a result,
    what is the vision of the future?
        And to put it another way, for every time or hour or month
    spent in language school, a person in the military is not
    learning something else, and so the question becomes language
    capability at what risk.
        And I would say the other question is, also, if we don't do
    the language training, at what risk? And I think that is the
    core of what we are trying to get at today.
        Most seem to agree that more language and cultural
    awareness is a necessary and desirable trait for the 21st
    century U.S. military in its role supporting national security.
    But how much is appropriate for the military and what career
    fields and in what ranks should it be concentrated? How widely
    should it be dispersed among military and civilian personnel?
    How much can be gained through a reserve corps or contractors?
    What should the needed training aim to emphasize? And no matter
    how worthy an objective, what will not get done as a result?
    Will other aspects of readiness be sacrificed?
        And, Mr. Akin, I think I will let you do your opening
    statement now, and then I will show my film clip, and then I
    will go to our witnesses. So Mr. Akin for any comments he would
    like to make.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be found in the
    Appendix on page 35.]

    STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI,
       RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE

        Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        This is a topic that I think continuously is generated more
    and more from other work that we have done and other witnesses
    that we have had. And certainly, I think that Vic put it in a
    very good light, the kind of question, I think if you are
    taking a look at what is it that we are going to train our
    soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and all, there are all kinds
    of things competing for resources. The question is, where
    does--not just the language but the language combined with the
    cultural awareness kind of training, where does that fit in and
    what form does it take?
        My own experience came more from watching years ago the
    Green Berets training in specific to go into Czechoslovakia and
    how they were trained. It was very, very effective training but
    probably very costly training.
        What is the model? What are the career paths? How does that
    priority stack against basic infantry skills? All those kinds
    of questions, those are all here on the table.
        I thank you for coming. We are looking forward to your
    testimony.
        And, Vic, as far as--I yield back, and you can roll the
    film.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the
    Appendix on page 37.]
        Dr. Snyder. What we are going to show now is just about a
    2- or 3-minute clip, very brief, about a couple of folks. The
    first is from a film, and then some audio called ``The Untold
    True Story of Guy Gabaldon,'' which depicts Marine PFC
    Gabaldon's single-handed success in persuading over 1,500
    Japanese soldiers on Saipan in 1944 to surrender, including--
    this is all by himself, solitary. He stumbled into a Japanese
    regimental headquarters and at one time had 800 surrender at
    one time.
        There will be a brief film clip. It will then go blank, but
    you will hear an audio that we lifted from a National Public
    Radio (NPR) story a few months ago. And then you will see a
    clip probably more familiar to you from the Ken Burns film
    about World War II, the War of Senator Inouye.
        Let's go ahead and roll that now. And for those of you who
    can't see any screen, you are welcome to get up and move
    around.
        [Video played.]
        Dr. Snyder. Well, both of those stories are from times many
    years ago, decades ago in our history.
        Today, we are joined by Dr. Richard Brecht, Executive
    Director at the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced
    Study of Language, who has extensive experience in the best
    ways to acquire and sustain language skills; Dr. Amy Zalman,
    who is an expert in how cultural awareness factors into
    successful strategic communications; Dr. Montgomery McFate, who
    has worked to develop a framework for fielding anthropologists
    and other social scientists to support combat brigades and
    other deployed forces; and Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, the
    President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
    Assessments, who will discuss the capabilities our future
    military force will require in the area of language skills and
    cultural awareness.
        And shall we begin over here, Dr. Brecht? And what we will
    do, Dr. Brecht, is we are going to put this little light on;
    and it will flash on red at five minutes. I don't want you to
    feel like you are automatically cut off, but I would encourage
    you all to stay as close to that five minutes as we can so that
    members can ask questions and learn from you as the day goes.
        Dr. Snyder. So Dr. Brecht.

    STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD D. BRECHT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER
         FOR ADVANCED STUDY OF LANGUAGE, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

        Dr. Brecht. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I
    appreciate that quite a bit.
        I guess my role here is to suggest to you in the very
    broadest terms that the Defense Language Transformation
    Roadmap, which I have studied quite a bit, is on its way to
    building the first U.S.-based globalized workforce in the
    history of this country. It has a long way to go, and there are
    many things to do and to complete, and it has to be sustained.
    But I would say that, basically, we are set out on the right
    path. The question is, what still remains?
        And, in my view, this building of this workforce--if you
    look at my testimony, I spend a long time on a scenario in
    North Africa, in Niger, suggesting that, in 10 or 12 years,
    what a workforce, a military globalized workforce would look
    like, and that workforce basically comprises three strong
    components.
        The first one--and this is the thing that is missing, from
    my point of view, in all the things I have read and studied
    about what the military and the Defense Department is doing--is
    that every member of this globalized civilian and military
    workforce has to be trained in communications competence. The
    first thing people have to know is do they have a language task
    they are facing or a cultural understanding task that they are
    facing? And if they do, do they have the capability to deal
    with it? And if they don't, do they know where to get the
    resources that are actually positioned to be brought to bear?
    And if they get those resources, have they worked in that
    particular task? That is basically the overall global workforce
    capability that is needed.
        After that, you have an inherent and in-house capability of
    people with languages and skills from very low level to very
    high level, and we can talk about which languages those could
    be.
        And the third thing that this workforce has at its
    advantage, it has the ability to outsource, the ability to
    localize, and the ability to reach back.
        Those are the capabilities that are here so that the
    Department of Defense and the military and the Army and the
    Marines and the people on the ground don't have to have the
    full capabilities that a workforce deployed in 130 countries
    basically dealing with probably something on the order of 5,000
    languages and maybe 50,000 dialects has to deal with. And so it
    is this picture that I am trying to present to you.
        How do you build this workforce? If you look at my
    statement to you, it is basically we have to have much better
    recruitment. The emphasis can't only be on training. The
    emphasis has to be a much stronger emphasis on recruitment, and
    that is being dramatically assisted by the roadmap's emphasis
    on reaching out to the K-12 and university system. Because if
    you have a better education system you will have a more
    effective recruitment system.
        The training is, obviously, the DL--Defense Language
    Institute Foreign Language Center will still lead the way with
    the command language programs. But, basically, this training
    has to also, besides language at all levels, include the
    communication skills and the cultural knowledge as well.
        We have also had a lot to do with lifelong training which
    has been made available to a lot of online resources which are
    now available as well.
        The point I guess I am making--and I would love to go into
    details on this--is that you have started down the path and I
    think the path is the right one. This workforce, though, that
    you are building has a lot of capabilities inherent in it and
    it has a lot of capabilities waiting to be deployed if you
    build a system to bring those reach-back capabilities,
    outsourcing and localization capabilities to bear. That is the
    real trick.
        And if you build a system, a database, a net-centric
    operation that will allow them in the field to reach back to
    those capabilities and if you skill the people in the right
    languages and that is based on, if you will, language futures,
    what are the languages you need to put in the right place at
    the right time, we are capable projecting that. You tell us
    what areas you are interested in, and linguists and
    sociolinguists can start talking about what languages you need.
        I will end with the simple fact that, in Africa now,
    because Africans are basically multilingual and everyone, most
    of them, speak 2 or 3 languages, there are 15 core languages in
    Africa which 85 percent of the population speaks. If you divide
    Africa into five zones the way the African Union does, then
    each one of those U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) components can
    only have to deal with two or three languages as part of its
    in-house capabilities.
        These things are possible; and my message to you, again, it
    is possible to build that workforce. And I have talked to
    people and they say it is too big a task to do. It is not too
    big a task to do. It takes a much more strategic,
    collaborative, cohesive approach, which I think the academic
    ministry and the military together can build.
        Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Brecht.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Brecht can be found in the
    Appendix on page 39.]
        Dr. Snyder. Dr. Zalman.

         STATEMENT OF DR. AMY ZALMAN, POLICY ANALYST, SCIENCE
             APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION (SAIC)

        Dr. Zalman. I hope you will forgive me if I read my
    remarks. They are directed primarily toward the long term and
    to the training and education component of cultural awareness.
        Chairman Snyder and members of the subcommittee, thank you
    for the opportunity to discuss the future direction of language
    and cultural awareness in the U.S. military. My remarks are
    divided into three parts: the challenge, the issue of
    transformation, and a few potential action routes.
        The U.S. military confronts particular challenges with
    respect to cross-cultural awareness. The majority of deployed
    forces rotate from one distinct linguistic and cultural arena
    to another with relative frequency. It would be implausible for
    all regular forces to become area or linguistic experts in one
    region, let alone several.
        Second, warfighters lack the luxury of time to reflect on
    or learn organically from their surroundings. They may find
    themselves thrust into situations in which they must make
    decisions rapidly.
        To make matters more complex, members of the 21st century
    military are likely to find themselves in situations other than
    war and engaged with civilians. These conditions suggest a
    paradox. The military at all levels has a vital need for
    cultural awareness, yet these same conditions constrain the
    practical ability of many military members to acquire it.
        Moreover, the current turn of events arguably has distorted
    the path the DOD may take to forge a long-term cultural
    awareness strategy. I might suggest that a preoccupation with
    the September 11, 2001, attacks as a point of historic
    departure and the subsequent focus on Islamic societies has led
    to a habit of confusing knowledge of particular cultures, such
    as Afghan cultures, with cultural awareness in a more
    comprehensive sense. This habit can be found within and beyond
    the military.
        The military has tended to define cultural awareness as
    facts about other cultures, especially those that appear on
    their face to be least familiar. That is, of course, a
    simplification. However, because regular forces cannot be
    expected to accumulate nor process nearly enough information to
    make this definition useful, another framework is required.
        Force transformation suggests itself. This subcommittee has
    already revised the existing paradigm by incorporating cultural
    and linguistic awareness into the broader concept of force
    transformation. The transformation framework offers a
    productive conceptual vehicle for the defense community to
    elaborate what it means to have a culturally aware military.
        The absence of cultural and linguistic awareness from even
    recent statements on transformation indicates there is work to
    be done. The 2003 document, Military Transformation, calls for
    processes to enable innovation and adaptability, arguing that
    if we do not transform, our enemies will surely find new ways
    to attack us. Despite the claim that no aspect of defense
    should be left untouched if we are to maintain a competitive
    advantage in the information age, the cultural aspect of
    defense is left untouched.
        Transformation's key concepts align well with those of
    cultural awareness. The DOD defines transformation as a process
    that changes--pardon me--that shapes the changing nature of
    military competition and cooperation through new combinations
    of concepts, capabilities, people and organizations. This
    umbrella concept could easily comprehend a parallel process to
    shape the changing role of cultural interaction and cultural
    competence in military endeavors and to prepare for that role
    through new combinations of concepts, capabilities, people and
    organizations.
        The directive to enable innovation and adaptability is
    perfectly or at least well attuned with the 21st century
    cultural awareness paradigm. In this case however, it is
    people, members of the military, from regular forces to their
    top leadership, who must be enabled to innovate and adapt. To
    that end, a new paradigm will correspond to the operational
    landscape where human communities, cultures, are also
    innovating and adapting to new technological, social, material
    and other realities of this millennium. Culture, in a new
    paradigm, will be seen as an element of human interaction and
    perhaps not only as something out there.
        In the transformation paradigm, although a member of the
    military may be called on to deploy in three different areas in
    as many years, they will recognize in all three that they must
    be watchful for their own and their interlocutor's habits of
    interaction. They will have enough elementary knowledge and
    language to enter into interactions, and they will have
    training that gives them the cognitive tools to innovate,
    adapt, and learn more or perhaps reach back as that interaction
    deepens. They will not be allowed by responsible leadership to
    deploy culturally unarmed.
        I have three suggestions, which I won't elaborate here,
    that may be followed immediately. One is to develop a cultural
    and linguistic awareness transformation strategy, a top-level
    document. Another is to conduct a cultural awareness training
    and education audit to assess capabilities now against a
    transformation set of goals. And the third is to design and
    test a requisite first layer of cultural awareness learning
    that would be required of all military members, although
    perhaps in slightly different ways in the future.
        Thank you again for this opportunity.
        Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Zalman.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Zalman can be found in the
    Appendix on page 86.]
        Dr. Snyder. Dr. McFate.

       STATEMENT OF DR. MONTGOMERY MCFATE, SENIOR SOCIAL SCIENCE
      ADVISOR, JOINT ADVANCED WARFIGHTING DIVISION, INSTITUTE FOR
                            DEFENSE ANALYSES

        Dr. McFate. Mr. Chairman and ranking members of the
    Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed
    Services Committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to
    testify on the importance of sociocultural knowledge to U.S.
    military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq.
        I am appearing today in my personal capacity vice my
    official capacity. As such, my comments should not be construed
    as official Department of Defense or U.S. Army policy.
        Sociocultural knowledge is a critical enabler for stability
    operations in irregular warfare. Stability and reconstruction
    operations pose a tremendous challenge to the U.S. Government
    because they require different skills, knowledge, training and
    coordination than those tasks commonly required by major combat
    operations.
        Unlike major combat operations, stability and
    reconstruction operations must be conducted among and with the
    support of the indigenous civilian population. Working
    effectively with local civilians in order to rebuild a country
    requires knowledge of how the society is organized, who has
    power, what their values and beliefs are, and how they
    interpret their own history, among other things.
        Experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past few years
    have demonstrated the benefits of having this knowledge and the
    drawbacks of not having it in terms of lives, money and mission
    success.
        A critical question is how U.S. military personnel should
    acquire this knowledge. There are multiple possible means, to
    include education, training, advisors and databases.
        An additional question concerns the optimal amount of
    sociocultural knowledge that U.S. military personnel should
    have and the trade-offs in terms of time, money and manpower
    that acquiring this knowledge entails. After all, making every
    soldier and Marine into a social scientist is neither feasible
    nor desirable.
        Professional military education is a long-term solution to
    ensuring that the U.S. military has the requisite level of
    knowledge about foreign cultures and societies. Lessons
    learned, insight gained and skills acquired in a classroom
    influence how problems are conceived, solutions are developed
    and decisions made in subsequent professional positions.
        Most professional military education institutions in the
    United States face a number of challenges right now:
        First, a lack of qualitative social scientists within the
    curricula, inadequate attention to developing intercultural and
    cognitive skills, et cetera.
        Second, recognizing that sociocultural knowledge has
    improved the effectiveness of operations in Iraq and
    Afghanistan, all branches of the military have now began
    cultural pre-deployment training programs. Creating training
    programs was initially a ``bottom-up'' movement in response to
    lessons learned, rather than a ``top-down'' push resulting from
    official Department of Defense requirements. As a result of
    this process, cultural training varies widely in content,
    structure and time allotted. However, the DOD, Army and other
    military services are now developing comprehensive cultural and
    language strategies.
        Third, collecting sociocultural information in a
    computerized database is another means to provide U.S. forces
    with information about the local population in their area of
    operations. When Operation Iraqi Freedom began, there was no
    readymade repository for the collective knowledge about a given
    local area. Because brigades had no system to store, sort,
    organize or effectively transfer this information, much of it
    was lost during transfer of authority between units.
    Recognizing this issue, the DOD made an effort to develop such
    a database in 2004.
        Subsequently, in field testing this database, we discovered
    that commanders and their staffs had little time available to
    use such a tool and little inclination to do so. What
    commanders actually wanted was an advisory staff element that
    would be attached 24/7 to the brigade who could develop, use
    and maintain such a database.
        Fourth, operating forces can also acquire the requisite
    knowledge about the local population through the use of
    cultural advisors. At the present time, the U.S. Army's human
    terrain system is probably the best-known example of such an
    advisor program, although it is not the first and it is not the
    only one. Colonel Schweitzer testified on April 24 to another
    House subcommittee on the same issue.
        To recap, the Human Terrain System (HTS) mission is to
    provide commanders in the field with relevant sociocultural
    understanding in order to assist them in developing courses of
    action that are better harmonized with the interests of the
    local population and which entail less lethal force. This
    mission is achieved through five- to eight-person teams of
    military and reservist personnel who are attached on orders to
    the military unit that they support.
        The team does not rotate out with the brigade at the end of
    their tour but remains in place. For example, the human terrain
    team in Taji will remain in Taji as long as U.S. forces do.
    Individual team members are rotated out on a staggered basis,
    ensuring the continuity of sociocultural knowledge and enabling
    each brigade to start their tour at a higher place on the
    learning curve.
        In addition, HTS supports these teams through a research
    reach-back center and a network of subject matter experts who
    are able to conduct research and analysis to meet the brigade
    commander and staff's requirements.
        In conclusion, solutions to the military's immediate
    sociocultural knowledge requirement have been ad hoc, bottom up
    and developed by the respective military services in response
    to their own perceived needs. For any of these solutions to be
    sustainable beyond the immediate conflicts, they should be
    rationalized, coordinated and institutionalized. Otherwise, the
    capabilities will be lost, as happened after the Vietnam war,
    and will have to be rebuilt yet again.
        Thank you for this opportunity to comment, and I look
    forward to your questions.
        Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. McFate.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. McFate can be found in the
    Appendix on page 95.]
        Dr. Snyder. Dr. Krepinevich.

    STATEMENT OF DR. ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, JR., PRESIDENT, CENTER
                FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS

        Dr. Krepinevich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The need for cultural awareness and language competence is
    really greatest in the area of irregular warfare, whether we
    call it counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense or the
    latest buzz phrase: stability, security, transition and
    reconstruction operations.
        In these kind of conflicts, the population is really the
    center of gravity. Hence, the phrase, trying to win the hearts
    and minds to mobilize the population to your side. Very
    difficult to do that if you can't operate on what some people
    in the military call complex cultural terrain.
        So one of the critical questions is, is irregular warfare
    going to be an important staple of the future in terms of what
    kind of challenges our military has to confront?
        I have talked to one general in particular who told me,
    look, the Army's had its hand on the stove here for about five
    years. Once we finally leave Iraq and Afghanistan, we are not
    going to do this for another 30 years. The American people
    won't stand for it.
        That may be the case, but I think there are powerful trends
    arguing the opposite. And there is also an old Army saying that
    the enemy gets a vote in terms of what kind of conflict, what
    kind of challenge he presents.
        If you look at trends, it is hard to see how we are not
    going to be challenged by an increasingly what I would call
    disordered world. If you look at demographic trends throughout
    Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, also Central
    America, parts of northwest Latin America, there is a huge
    bulge, a huge percentage of the population under the age of 15.
    In places like Nigeria, that percentage is over 40 percent of
    the entire population.
        What we are going to see in the coming years is this rising
    youth bulge reach the age of maturity where they have to be
    absorbed into that particular country or region's economy. Yet,
    in many of these areas, you have this rising large number of
    young people who generally are undereducated and uneducated,
    who are going to be expected to compete not in the local
    economy but in a global economy, not just against Nigerians or
    Colombians but also Indonesians, Indians, South Koreans and so
    on, that are unfortunate enough for the most part to live in
    countries where the governments are corrupt or incompetent or,
    typically, both. And this, again, presents a situation where
    you are going to have a rising number of highly frustrated
    people.
        There is scholarship that indicates in these kinds of
    situations you are looking at raised levels of internal
    instability. And so there is motive here. There is motive to
    create higher levels of disruption.
        When you look at the communications revolution, you will
    add to this the fact that more and more people, even in the
    developing parts of the world, understand just how badly off
    they are relative to the rest of the world. The fact that they
    could be more easily proselytized, organized, recruited,
    organized and trained and even equipped.
        If you look at financial transfers, if you look at the
    kinds of means that are falling into the hands of these groups,
    over a decade ago, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan developing nerve
    agents and chemical weapons, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
    Colombia (FARC) looking for radiological bombs, al Qaeda
    looking for nuclear weapons, and Hezbollah practicing in 2006 a
    kind of hybrid war using rockets, artillery, mortars,
    munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles. And not only the means but
    a track record of forcing the U.S. out of Lebanon in 1983;
    Somalia, 1993; the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989; and the
    Israelis losing the second Lebanon war in 2006.
        So means, motive and a track record of success.
        If you look at what that means in terms of a requirement
    coming out of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), you
    see in terms of the way the Army, for example, is structuring
    its brigade formations with the need for a surge capability,
    the ability to surge brigades forward and keep them on station
    for a protracted period of time, for advisors, for trainers as
    part the QDR's admonition that the military needs to begin to
    think of building partner capacity on an enduring basis as a
    key part of our defense strategy.
        And not just that but also the need for U.S. forces and
    capabilities in terms of humanitarian relief operations and
    what the military calls phase zero operations, trying to engage
    in prophylactic effects like we have in places like the
    Philippines to keep nasty situations from turning worse.
        So, again, a strong need. And I would say if we are talking
    about trade-offs, I would be happy to discuss this in detail.
        But I think, in the area of conventional war capabilities,
    nobody wants to build the next tank Army to take on the
    Americans. Nobody wants to build the next combined arms
    Republican Guard to take on the American military. They are
    gravitating toward weapons of mass destruction and, as I said,
    irregular warfare.
        So, in summary, I think irregular warfare, whether we look
    it or not, is here is stay. I don't think it's a fad or a run-
    off. I think it is a trend. I think it's going to increase in
    importance. I think the challenges are going to become more
    difficult. And the key to executing this well, the key to
    operating well on complex human terrain--one of the keys at
    least--is going to be cultural awareness and language
    proficiency.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Krepinevich can be found in
    the Appendix on page 104.]
        Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Dr. Krepinevich.
        We will go ahead and start the five-minute clock.
        I want to ask my first question. It is just very, I guess,
    straightforward and not very subtle.
        But it is my understanding that the foreign language
    proficiency bonus is paid to a little over 17,000 service
    members. So that is about 1.2 percent of DOD personnel, which
    totals about $1.3 million.
        Now, of that number, probably a significant number of those
    are senior folks that are in intelligence, so they're not going
    to be the people that are out doing street patrols and, you
    know, training foreign militaries. My question is, what should
    that percentage look like? Should we have 20 percent of our
    folks getting the foreign language proficiency bonus? Should it
    be 10 percent?
        Now, I suspect every one of you are going to hedge on that,
    but I want to hear the hedges. What should our specific goal
    be? How do we measure it? How are we going to arrive what that
    specific goal would be?
        Andy, why don't we start with you this time and let's go
    back the other way.
        Dr. Krepinevich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I think a lot of it has to do--as long as we are hedging--
    to do with how you see your forces being employed. So, for
    example, if you look at the Marines right now, they are trying
    to organize themselves around units that can really break down
    from the regimental level down to battalion and even company
    and platoon level. And one of the examples they give is that a
    battalion could have multiple deployments in different parts of
    Africa performing different kinds of missions in different
    locales. If that is the case, the more you break these units
    down--and a lot of this kind of conflict environment or
    operational environment is a series of microclimates--then that
    is going to drive up the needs for language proficiency and
    certainly cultural awareness.
        If you are taking more of an outsourcing approach--and I am
    not an expert this, but my understanding is the Army is looking
    at these kinds of human terrain teams and operating in larger
    units. Then, if that is the case, you might be able to get away
    with a lower level of language proficiency.
        But, again, I think the trade space here isn't between
    necessarily how you organize. The trade space here really is
    the ability to conduct this mission and be very flexible and
    adaptable. So the Marines could scale up to perform Army-like
    operations and the Army could break down to conduct Marine-
    style operations or small unit operations. The trade space
    really is between that and what I think is some of the high-
    density, low-demand capability, which I think has to do more
    with conventional or traditional kinds of military operations.
        Dr. Snyder. Dr. McFate.
        Dr. McFate. I once had a trip down to Fort Bragg which was
    very interesting. I went to go visit with Army Special Forces,
    and someone down there explained to me that, in terms of how
    they assign people to learn languages and what languages they
    choose to learn, that to some degree it's always best guess and
    it always requires a little bit of crystal ball gazing. Because
    you are trying to make an assessment about what's going to be
    needed by the military in the future, and it is hard to know
    exactly what that is going to be.
        Even if you had 25 or 30 percent of general purpose forces
    collecting the language incentive bonus, you still would not
    end up with a comprehensive coverage of all the languages in
    the world that might need to be spoken, given contingency
    operations, et cetera.
        So I think what's important for the committee to consider
    is what are the other resources out there that can be brought
    to bear to allow the military to work effectively in
    environments where you may find that you don't have anybody or
    you have very few people who do speak the local languages. And
    I believe that Dr. Brecht could probably speak better to that
    than I can.
        Dr. Snyder. Dr. Zalman.
        Dr. Zalman. I would also work backwards from needs. I would
    hope that everybody who--I can't speak to the military levels--
    but that everybody who is to deploy to a particular area has
    minimal language competence and the ability to discern when
    they need some greater competence. They need to be able to
    enter into an interaction in a local scenario, but I don't
    think that they need to have--that everybody needs to be a
    linguist.
        Dr. Snyder. And I agree with that. The issue is I don't
    think we are satisfied where we are today, but we don't know
    what the end point is.
        Dr. Brecht.
        Dr. Brecht. That is a really tough question. Because,
    basically, as I see it from my--I mean, the last time I was in
    the military was in 1963, so my perspective may be a little
    off. But the mission has changed dramatically, and what the
    military language requirements were in the 1980's were very
    high-level skills of a pretty elite cadre, mostly for intel
    purposes and so on. And in the last 20 years, because of
    irregular warfare and everything we have done, that base has
    spread immensely.
        Now, we still--so trying to get a percentage on that is
    extremely difficult. It is still difficult to acquire those
    three level on a scale of zero to five takes an immense
    investment, and so rewarding the people who stay with that--
    basically, it takes years and years of intense language study
    and exposure in the country to reach that level. So
    incentivizing those people is really important.
        As we go down to the lower levels, where you have a much
    broader population and having to do many more jobs which we
    have never calibrated on that scale basically of pay, that is a
    real different kind of task.
        And if I were sending people over--and I am a language
    person, so my language colleagues are going to be offended at
    this--but the first thing people need is what I talk about, is
    they have to recognize when they are in a communications
    dilemma or a cultural awareness issue. They have to be
    culturally sensitive and aware of the communication task they
    are facing and where to get the resources. That is the first
    thing they need.
        The second thing they need is some experience in that
    culture so that they don't do some things that are really
    damaging. But, in that problem, it's always sometimes a little
    culture that can be a dangerous thing.
        And then the third thing they need is the language
    capability.
        So we are tying everything to do with language at this
    stage. We are tying--kind of an older system that was based on
    fairly high-level, narrow cadres and very high-level skills.
    And what it appears to me you are doing is changing the
    paradigm and asking a question that is extremely hard to get
    at. Because you can't separate the culture and the language at
    those levels, and you can't separate those tasks at those
    levels.
        So is that enough hedging?
        Dr. Snyder. That is pretty good hedging. We don't want to
    separate it at all.
        Mr. Akin for five minutes.
        Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        First of all, Dr. Krepinevich, most civilian organizations
    or big companies, there is a promotion path. Sometimes you have
    to be an accounting kind of guy, a bean counter to get to be
    president. Other times, you are a line operating person or
    maybe you are a lawyer or whatever. I used to work for IBM. It
    was marketing. In the military, is there a certain pattern for
    promotion for people who want to move up the line? Are there
    certain places that you have to touch base?
        Dr. Krepinevich. I will speak to the Army in particular,
    because that is the service I am most familiar with. Certainly
    there are a series of hoops you have to jump through, say, if
    you want to become a brigade commander, a colonel.
        Recently, I received a briefing from the Army. They took a
    look at 20 people who had recently been selected for brigade
    command. And the Army has this phrase, officers should be
    pentathletes. They should be capable in many different skills.
    Well, in looking at this matrix of assignments of these 15
    different officers, overwhelmingly I think out of the matrix
    only 3 slots weren't directly related to line troop
    assignments, field assignments. And of course, you want to be
    proficient in combat. That is what these assignments were
    oriented on. But it certainly didn't lead to brigade commanders
    who were pentathletes.
        If you look at the Army's foreign area officer program,
    typically not an area to get into if you want to get promoted.
    You are not going to be the future Chief of Staff of the Army.
    You probably won't even make general if you pursue that path.
        Mr. Akin. Are you saying that the people who were being
    promoted were not really people who were on the front lines or
    line officers? They tended to be more staff kinds of people?
        Dr. Krepinevich. No. What I am saying is people who are
    promoted are people who spend most--as much time as possible
    out with the field Army. That means either in troop assignments
    as a commander, platoon leader, company commander, battalion
    commander or in troop, staff assignments such as a battalion
    operations officer. Those are the ones that get you the
    greatest credit in terms of future advancement. And you can go
    all the way back to the Vietnam war, and I can tell you stories
    if you are interested.
        But that has been the theme and the trend for a very long
    time now in the Army, and whether the Army can change that
    culture I don't know. There is a lot of institutional
    credibility built up in terms of the field Army career path.
        One of the things that I think is very interesting for the
    Army in particular at this point in time is I think as an
    institution it really is at a crossroads. Because if you asked
    the Army in the 20th century what kind of an Army do we need,
    the first half of the century is we need an Army to beat the
    Germans. The Germans fought us like we fought them. The second
    half is we need an army to beat the Soviets. They fought us
    like we fought them.
        Nobody wants to fight us that way anymore. And so when you
    ask the question, what kind of an Army and you look at where
    the trend lines are going, it really is an Army more and more
    focused on irregular warfare.
        Mr. Akin. I appreciate your setting the background and the
    tone as to how that works.
        So now, taking what you are saying where the Army is going,
    does that mean that the higher-level leaders should be very
    effective in terms of communications in cultural and language?
    Or does that say those people maybe should be operating at a
    lower level, and you have the people who are what the military
    calls the pointy end of the spear, they are the ones that don't
    necessarily have to have language. Or do you think it should be
    spread up and down the chain of command?
        Dr. Krepinevich. Let me give you an alternative career path
    for an Army general.
        You come in. You are assigned to an Army brigade that has a
    high capability to deal with irregular warfare operations. You
    are engaged in a lot of phase zero operations. You may be in
    sub-Saharan Africa under General Ward, and you are doing sort
    of reconstruction operations, security assistance these sorts
    of things.
        Eventually, you go off to graduate school. You go off to
    graduate school in an area studies program. Your duty
    assignment or your utilization tour after that is you go to
    sub-Saharan Africa for a couple of years in civilian clothes,
    and you wander around. And you come back in two years, and your
    performance is what you wrote up of what you learned being
    Lawrence of Arabia for two years.
        Then maybe you go on to command that brigade that you were
    in that had units operating in terms of security assistance,
    training, advising in sub-Saharan Africa. Eventually, you might
    command a military assistance group that is responsible for
    several brigades as a general officer operating and supporting
    sub-Saharan African militaries and societies and so on. And
    eventually you might be the next General Kip Ward, a four-star
    who is head of AFRICOM.
        And so you have built that competence over time. It is a
    mix of what I would call field and warfighting competence but
    also that other competence that becomes critical when the
    population becomes the center of gravity.
        And again, if you look at the officers who have been quite
    successful in Iraq and Afghanistan, people like Barno and
    Corelli and Petraeus and so on, they were sent off to serious
    graduate schools to get serious grad school educations and
    developed an understanding for the fact that warfare can be a
    lot more than just kinetics, as General Corelli says. There are
    these other aspects.
        Mr. Akin. What you painted is a very geocentric kind of
    career path, though, to a certain degree.
        Dr. Krepinevich. That is right. You would have to--and,
    again, you would have to take into account the fact that you
    could pick the wrong geographic area. And then you might have
    to consider what I think the Army sometimes calls cross-
    leveling. So if I had two brigades operating in sub-Saharan
    Africa and all of a sudden I need eight, I may have to transfer
    some of the staff and elements of those two brigades to sort of
    even things out among the eight so that I don't have great
    competence in two brigades and no competence in the six others.
        And, again, there is no perfect answer, but you can
    position yourself so that when you are surprised you could
    adapt more critically.
        Mr. Akin. Thank you.
        Dr. Snyder. Mr. Bartlett for five minutes.
        Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much.
        Following up on the question Mr. Akin asked about
    promotion, I guess it was 56 years ago I left government
    service as a GS-15, which was the highest grade, unless you
    were at that time PL-313, which was super grade. I guess they
    have changed that since.
        And nobody reported to me. Nobody. I was all alone. And
    that is because I was a scientist and I didn't need to have 49
    or 450 people reporting to me to be a GS-15.
        Do we have a similar thing in the military to reward people
    who are really, really good at something? And what we are
    talking about today could be an absolutely invaluable asset,
    somebody who is really, really good at knowing the language and
    knowing the culture? Can we reward them the way I was rewarded,
    without having a whole Army report to me?
        Dr. Krepinevich. Is that a question for me, Congressman?
        Mr. Bartlett. Or whoever, yeah. Or do they remain buck
    private forever because they don't have anybody to report to?
        Dr. Krepinevich. My understanding--and I am not an expert
    on the promotion system--but it has been quite centralized over
    the years and so there is limited opportunity for sort of spot
    promotions, as they used to call it, as you had in World War II
    or even back in the 1950's. There are still stories about
    General LeMay, when he commanded the Strategic Air Command,
    promoting people on the spot and also firing people on the
    spot. So that is much more, I think, limited today.
        And, also, I think there is limited ability for sort of
    horizontal accession into the military. In other words, in the
    medical field, medical doctors, I believe still come in at a
    higher rank reflective of their expertise and skill. But if you
    are talking about, you know, somebody who comes in off the
    street and enlists and has expert knowledge of Farsi, I don't
    think they start out anywhere ahead of anybody else that comes
    in off the street and enlists in the military.
        Mr. Bartlett. Recognizing how valuable those skills could
    be, shouldn't we have a way of rewarding them like we do
    doctors?
        Dr. Krepinevich. Well, yeah. I think there is a number of
    opportunities here. One is, we are blessed more than the other
    great powers of the world by the fact that we have a very
    diverse population. Just going around Washington you can find
    people who speak Spanish, Persian, Afghan, Pakistani,
    Vietnamese. I mean, just get in a taxi cab. And we do make a
    priority of recruiting these kind of people. We certainly set
    certain--we want people with these kinds of education
    backgrounds and these kinds of physical characteristics and so
    on. We have to begin to orient our recruitment efforts on
    trying to recruit people who maybe have English as a second
    language who live in this country.
        We have allies. I was at a conference last year, a
    conference of European armies, and I found myself sitting next
    to the French Army Chief of Staff. And he says to me, I want to
    meet General Casey. Do you know General Casey? I said, I know
    General Casey, but General Casey doesn't know me. But he wanted
    to talk to General Casey about AFRICOM and start to say, look,
    we have cultural competence in certain parts of Africa. We know
    Morocco. We know West Africa. We have cultural terrain
    competence in those areas, language competence, so let's sit
    down and work together as allies.
        The Turks, you know, another long-standing ally of the
    United States. I see us having to rely a lot more on allies.
    And if you look at allies that we have in the developing world
    and if you look at our allies who were colonial powers at one
    time, they may not be able to send 200,000 troops someplace,
    but they do have an advantage over us in terms of understanding
    cultural terrain and having language facility in certain
    important parts of the world that we don't.
        Dr. Brecht. Can I just say, there was a study of
    corporate--Fortune 500 companies about 8 years ago about what
    qualifications they want in their managers. And the first
    qualification that the survey did--the University of Washington
    also did it. They wanted, first, core competency in their
    skill, in their specialty. The second is they wanted good
    English. The third is they wanted experience living abroad. The
    fourth one was language capabilities, for the simple reason
    they didn't want to pay for language capabilities in Japanese
    at a high level when they are moving someone to Santiago,
    Chile, in the next--after two years. And so even corporate
    America does not have what you are asking for, a focus on a
    specialty in that language.
        The high-level managers in the Officer Corps, they want
    people who adapt to any circumstance in any part of the world;
    and that is what we are seeing from the corporate sector.
        Dr. Zalman. May I add two brief comments?
        One is that, over the long term, as the paradigm of the
    current military shifts so that cultural awareness and language
    ability to some extent are not seen as exceptional or as needed
    in this situation or only in that situation, the issue of
    reward for most would become more of a moot one, I would think.
        The second is that I would suggest that, at the lower
    levels, people from heritage language communities, non-native,
    non-English speakers aren't necessarily more culturally aware.
    They will bring their biases, whatever they are, just as
    anybody else will, to their perception of the situation and
    they will enact them or communicate them. So they are in as
    much need as anyone else, I would think, of a sense of
    awareness that they are in a cultural situation.
        Dr. Snyder. Dr. Gingrey.
        Dr. Gingrey. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
        I guess this mike is on.
        You know, it seems that everybody agrees that we need more
    of this type training that is cultural awareness and language
    training. But the big question in my mind is how much is
    appropriate for the military and in what career fields and in
    what rank should it be concentrated. We had touched on that a
    little bit. Or should we rely on civilians and contractors?
    Would this be an area maybe where a civilian reserve corps
    could be an asset?
        Dr. Brecht, you just mentioned about corporate America and
    multinational companies that don't seem to reward language
    expertise because, you know, they may be in one area for two
    years and then go to another one and they're not expert in this
    particular language. And the same thing I think Dr. Zalman
    maybe referenced in regard to the military.
        But to my way of thinking, that possibly it is time for a
    change in that way of thinking and that concept, that maybe the
    multinational corporations would do very well to recruit and
    reward individuals that have the cultural awareness and
    language expertise and send them to China if that is the
    appropriate language and keep them there for a while and not
    move them in two years and get the full bang for the buck out
    of these people. And the same thing with the military.
        I know, back in my home State, North Georgia College and
    State University trains their cadets in Chinese language to
    better prepare them for their military careers, and they are
    trying to and will with our help be starting an Arabic language
    curriculum, too.
        So, in the future, I guess my question is, do you believe--
    this is a specific question--that in order to be promoted in
    the military, knowledge of a foreign language will ultimately
    be a prerequisite? And how is the Defense Department partnering
    with universities to help develop these skills and how can we
    improve in this area?
        Dr. Gingrey. Any of you, of course.
        Dr. Brecht. I think your point is exactly right. Corporate
    America uses workarounds. They basically use localized talent,
    and they outsource and they do everything else except bring in
    an in-house capability in language and culture. That is
    characteristic of corporate America. And that is because they
    can. You can't localize warfighting, you can't localize intel,
    and you can't outsource that kind of thing the way corporate
    America does. So corporate America is a very bad example.
        And, in this case, I think the Department of Defense is
    leading the way--and I will come back to the term I have used--
    toward a truly globalized workforce, because you can't
    localize, you can't outsource. And how to build in that
    capability is--and one of the things that I am particularly
    admiring of the road map is that basically it has incentives,
    it has requirements, it has management structure, and it sets
    the tone in leadership, that you can't get promoted
    presumably--officers have to have this language capability.
    They have to have the experience of engaging other cultures.
    And I believe any military that we have in the future, the
    leadership has to have that capability. And they are not
    looking at global America for that.
        Dr. Gingrey. Dr. Zalman or Dr. Krepinevich, any of the
    panel, I would be glad to have you respond.
        Dr. Krepinevich. Just a couple of quick observations.
        One is I don't think certainly 100 percent of the officer
    corps has to be cultural and language experts, but I do think
    it is possible. And I defer to my colleagues here. My
    understanding is it is not terribly difficult to get a certain
    level of cultural familiarity and some basic language training.
    And if you have time, these units, on a rotation basis, they
    are supposed to have at least about a year to train up before
    they go on their next deployment. They typically are supposed
    to know where they are going. That certainly provides an
    opportunity to do those sorts of things.
        I would say in terms of outsourcing language support as
    opposed to cultural support, if the military is doing what is
    called for, at least in terms of the QDR and some of the other
    public statements, which is building partner capacity and
    engaging in phase-zero prophylactic kinds of operations--and
    this is a steady state. This isn't a surge capability. This is
    a capability you need because the military, particularly the
    Army and to a lesser extent the Marine Corps, the Navy and to
    some extent the Air Force engage in this all the time.
        And then finally you say knowledge of a foreign language. I
    am not quite sure what level of capacity you are talking about.
        Dr. Gingrey. Well, I am talking about speaking ability.
        Dr. Krepinevich. The familiarity with a foreign language,
    again, it has been a long time since I was in high school or
    even college, but you used to have to take four years of a
    foreign language in high school and at least a few years in
    college. And I think there is a lot to criticize about our K-
    to-12 education system and some other aspects of even our
    college.
        Dr. Gingrey. Well, we don't have time to get into all of
    that, and I have already expended my five minutes, but let me
    just say that I believe--and maybe you alluded to this or one
    of the other panelists--in regard to rewarding these skills of
    all this time that it takes to require an ability to speak and
    understand a language, maybe it should be rewarded, just like a
    higher ranking given to a physician who is coming in and has a
    skill to provide for health care.
        Thank you.
        Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis for five minutes, and then we will
    go break for votes.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I am sorry I missed your testimony, but I wanted to maybe
    just ask a few general questions, and you can certainly let me
    know whether you have already answered them.
        But also share just very briefly, my community is San
    Diego, and San Diego State University has embarked on a program
    with the ROTC, and they are training young people in that
    program in three major languages.
        The beauty of that--and I met with them just the other
    day--is that, instead of taking other courses in the summer,
    that is all they are doing. So they are not immersed in the
    same way that--I will mention another program that the Marines
    from Camp Pendleton are involved in, but at least that is all
    that is on their plate. And I think that has made a tremendous
    difference. In fact, several people mentioned that in two weeks
    they basically finished a semester, and they could really
    benefit from that experience. And so that is something to think
    about.
        And I certainly want to follow up on that and see where,
    within the ROTC programs, we can do more of that. The young
    people are being paid to be part of that program; that is an
    incentive. But they also feel that they are getting valuable
    skills, and there may be a role there.
        The other piece of that with Camp Pendleton is we are
    fortunate that we have Iraqis in San Diego, and so they are
    immersing these young people in the Iraqi community. They are
    not living with families, which I think should be a good next
    step actually, but they are going to meals, they are in the
    community, they are really trying to get a better feel. And I
    think that is critical.
        And when I have asked them, well, what should we be giving
    up? You know, when we are preparing people for deployment,
    obviously there are a lot of things that need to be learned in
    addition to all the basic training and the other skills that
    people have. And they basically said, you know, there are
    plenty of people who can be identified who don't need to be
    doing everything that is going on. So pick the skills that you
    need, and relieve those people of their obligations to be there
    with their unit through that entire period and give them this
    kind of an experience.
        So I just throw that out. You know, is that the kind of
    advice you might give someone if they are thinking about these
    kinds of programs? Or is there something else that is critical
    in doing that? Can we find the time, really, to give people? I
    think it is really the--having that kind of time to study is
    remarkable, if we can do that.
        Dr. Zalman. Well, as you were speaking, and I was
    remembering the question that was just asked previously, I
    mean, this seems to me a very good idea, because he raised for
    me the reminder that any language training to a certain depth,
    let's say three years, every day--I mean, languages differ, but
    from a serious endeavor, people tend to come out knowing about
    language learning in general and about the culture that they
    have been immersed in and about its history, because it is
    embedded in the language.
        And that, even if you go somewhere else where you need to
    speak a different language, is a portable kind of knowledge, in
    a sense, a portable skill. So you can go from one linguistic
    environment to another but with a greater sense of self-
    awareness of what people are doing when they are speaking a
    language.
        So if that opportunity were made available, I would think
    people would want to take advantage of it for that reason. It
    compounds the benefit.
        Dr. McFate. Just to follow up on this, it is sometimes said
    that General Petraeus is the best social scientist in Iraq. And
    I think that there is actually a lot of truth in that. And that
    can be said about a number of other senior leaders, as well.
        And I think if you look at the life experience and at the
    professional experience of people like General Corelli and
    General Petraeus, they didn't have time in their otherwise very
    busy military careers to engage in higher education at civilian
    institutions. And I think that that opportunity is particularly
    important.
        To follow up on what Dr. Zalman was just saying, I think it
    is very important to look at the ability of the military to
    acquire general cross-cultural communication skills and general
    cultural competency, specific regional knowledge and specific
    language competency. These are two different approaches to the
    same goal.
        And I think that there is a definite benefit in terms of
    thinking about this in general skills terms, because this is
    transferrable and it is portable, so you don't get a whole
    bunch of people who have been trained to go to China and they
    all speak beautiful Cantonese or Mandarin but we are going to
    actually send them instead to Bosnia. If they have general
    skills and they have general knowledge about language
    acquisition, that knowledge and that language skill, it doesn't
    rot on the vine, it can be transferred.
        Dr. Brecht. Could I underline your question about the ROTC?
    As I understand, these grants now are going to ROTC programs
    around the country. One of the critical things they should do
    is send them abroad for an immersion in country. That is what
    they should do in the summer. It would be a terrific thing to
    get them in the country that is not a lot of money. And these
    young future officers would profit immensely simply by exposure
    to that other culture, but real exposure and immersion in that
    authentic environment.
        Dr. Snyder. We need to break for votes. And if you need
    anything, the staff will be glad to help you. And we will come
    back after the votes, two votes.
        [Recess.]
        Dr. Snyder. I resisted the temptation, Dr. Krepinevich, to
    call you to the table just to show off that I could pronounce
    your name. See, I went ahead and did it anyway.
        We are going to go ahead and start. Mr. Akin will not be
    able to return, which gives me free rein here until we have
    another member come.
        I wanted to ask, so far, probably justifiably so, we have
    been pretty squishy. But I think that is an okay thing. I don't
    fault you for it. I think we are just squishy as a Nation on
    what we think our goals are to be, with regard to foreign
    language skills and cultural awareness. So, I want to kind of
    poke at it a bit around the edges.
        Maybe the first thing I would get at is the video that we
    showed of Mr. Gabaldon and Senator Inouye, with the contrast
    between a person who had not only foreign language skills, Dr.
    Zalman, but getting to your point in your thing, I think it
    didn't come out in that video, but how Mr. Gabaldon learned his
    skills was he had Japanese friends as a teenager, and he
    traveled with them. I don't know if it was, like, right after
    the Depression, or if they traveled in work; I think
    agricultural work.
        He had Japanese friends, so it wasn't just his language
    skill in some classroom. It was, I think, he liked the Japanese
    people. I think he didn't want to kill any more Japanese than
    he had to. And he risked his life to keep 1,500 of them from
    getting killed in a very dramatic way. And you think about, how
    many U.S. soldiers would we have lost if we had to kill another
    1,500 Japanese?
        And the point I am getting at, Dr. Krepinevich, is these
    are skills not just in irregular warfare. I mean, that is a
    dramatic example of potentially the value of language skills
    and I say cultural awareness in a very conventional war
    setting. What if we had another 10 of the Gabaldons on that
    island? What if we had 15,000 less Japanese that would have had
    to have been killed before that battle would have been over?
    What that would have meant for those families and to our
    Marines that would have died in it.
        So I think this issue of cultural awareness goes hand in
    hand with language skills, but it gets right, I think, down to
    the level of different kinds of combat. It has value in a lot
    of different areas of combat.
        I want to give you some specific scenarios, maybe get away
    from some of the squishiness of it. I know a young Marine in
    town here. He is one of our fellows who did a couple of tours
    in Iraq. And because of some civilian life experiences, his
    Arabic skills are good enough he could go on street patrols
    with Iraqi troops without an interpreter, and the value that
    comes from that.
        Now, what does that tell us about--you know, anybody who
    wants to comment; don't feel like you have to comment--but you
    are talking about somebody right down at the street level. One-
    point-seven percent of a lot of intelligence officers doesn't
    get to that level unless we greatly enhance the number of
    folks.
        Now, is that an important goal or not? Do you have any
    immediate reaction? Or is the expense of it too great?
        I think in your statement, Andy, you talk a lot about it is
    the Marines and Army that needs to benefit from this the most
    because of their proximity to being on the ground. But that is
    a street patrol situation, not just a----
        Dr. Krepinevich. Well, again, if the Pentagon is serious
    about its determination to help build partner capacity,
    building partner capacity is going to involve training
    indigenous forces, it is going to involve advising them once
    they are trained. And language skills here, obviously, among
    the trainers is going to be important, and certainly the
    cultural aspect of it, and certainly advisors.
        Typically, there may be a handful of advisors in, say, an
    Iraqi battalion. And so, unless you are counting on the Iraqis
    to have a high degree of English proficiency or you are going
    to outsource translators and bring them in, it can make a
    significant difference in terms of having American advisors and
    trainers who do speak the language who can go out on patrols as
    advisors.
        Dr. Snyder. The question, then, is significant difference;
    that it is significant to such an extent that it is worth the
    investment in doing things differently and enhancing the road
    map and setting as a national priority for this country that we
    have to do better at kindergarten level up.
        Dr. Krepinevich. You know, there is the interesting debate
    that you raised in the questions leading up to the hearings
    about, well, what do you give up? And there are certain people
    in the Pentagon who are willing to give up things to accomplish
    this, certain people who aren't.
        Two years ago, I sat on a Marine Corps professional
    military education review board with a number of retired Marine
    generals. And they certainly thought that this was an important
    skill-set.
        Now, one thing we got into was the need, for example, to
    send American officers overseas to the staff colleges of
    foreign countries, the Indian Staff College, the Pakistani
    Staff College and so on, not only for the purpose of language
    and cultural awareness, but also for the purpose of building
    relationships among our mid-career officers with theirs so that
    someday 5, 8, 10 years down the road our generals know their
    generals.
        I had a Brit talk to me, it was a couple years ago, had
    worked with the Pakistani military for quite some time, said
    that he went back to Pakistan not too long ago and was greeted
    very warmly in the officer club by a lot of the senior officers
    and was treated very frostily by a lot of the junior officers.
    And he was very much concerned that the British military was
    losing that kind of relationship with the Pakistanis that had
    always helped them to, sort of, deal with difficult times in
    the past.
        So I think this works on a number of different levels, all
    the way from that street patrol in Baghdad, all the way up to
    the senior officer level.
        Dr. Snyder. I think it is well-accepted at the senior
    level. I don't think that is an issue.
        Dr. Brecht, you wanted to comment?
        Dr. Brecht. I would like to direct your attention to the
    written statement that I gave, which basically sets a future
    scenario in Niger, in northern Africa. And the argument is that
    presumably AFRICOM is divided into five regions, like the
    Africa Union does. And so these troops now, they are facing
    crowd control insecurity in food distribution because of a
    drought, say. And so the idea is that every one of these people
    has some idea, they are trained, basically they are aware of
    the cultural issues in this area. Many of them have basic
    phrases in the principal languages in Niger. Others can perform
    at the 2-2-plus level in 2 of the 15 core languages which are
    spoken there, Hausa and Fulfulda, okay. And so some officers,
    they know French, because they are communicating with the
    leadership there.
        And then if you take this notion that there is your
    internal capacity, but when you have someone, you are in an
    interrogation and this person is speaking in Arabic that we
    don't recognize, we can pull down this tool online which
    identifies Arabic dialects, and we find out that this is, you
    know, Shuwa Arabic, but nobody knows what that is, and so now
    we draw back and we reach back for that capability. We don't
    have to build it in there. And then we have a telephonic,
    online telephonic interpretation ability and things like that.
        What I try to demonstrate in this is that, if every unit,
    every person in that battalion had some idea of what the
    language and culture requirements are, they had a really good
    idea of what the capabilities, whether they had them themselves
    or whether they could draw them out, where they could reach
    back, outsource, or even rely on localized populations, but
    they will know in that area you can't localize the Arabic
    because we have insurrections.
        So I would agree with you very clearly that, if you want to
    build something new, we have to build this total force that
    everyone in the force is aware of the language and cultural
    requirements. They know where to get the expertise; they don't
    all have to have it. That is, I think, the lesson in this.
        Dr. Snyder. Of course, what I thought your scenario was--it
    is on page four and five of your written statement, of course,
    but it was at the very beginning, I noticed, when you said in
    the year 2021, which may be----
        Dr. Brecht. A little off.
        Dr. Snyder [continuing]. May be a realistic analysis of
    when we would have those skills.
        The other thing, Dr. Brecht, that you talked about is K
    through 12. And I forget when our next hearing is on this, but
    it is going to be hearing from the Administration, the
    Pentagon, about what they are doing on the defense language
    roadmap, which I look forward to.
        But Dr. Chu has been very candid about, for some years now,
    this is a national problem. And we have actually got defense
    dollars going to States. I think we are funding a language
    roadmap kind of scenario in three States. And then we have
    money going to K-through-12 programs, because you just can't
    keep recruiting people who don't speak any language at all and
    think that you can train your way somehow through a military
    career and language training to the levels you want to get. I
    mean, it is a national issue.
        You refer to, ``The DOD should continue to support and
    serve as the bully pulpit for improvement in the Nation's
    schools, colleges and universities,'' which I think is a really
    interesting statement. I mean, what you are saying is this is a
    national security challenge for us that is so great that it has
    to be solved in our schools. I mean, it has to start in
    kindergarten through all the schools, secondary, elementary,
    colleges, universities. And the Pentagon has to lead the charge
    in this, which I think is an interesting statement.
        By the way, we are hoping to have a hearing with these
    States that are getting Pentagon money to do the language
    programs, defense dollars, and see what they are doing. And
    George Miller, who is the chairman of our Education Committee,
    is going to plan to sit in with us on that, because he is very
    interested in that too.
        My time is up, but does anybody have any other comments?
        Dr. Krepinevich. I would just say there is a great
    historical analogy. I am old enough to remember when Sputnik
    went up. And right thereafter, my schoolteacher was wondering
    why little Krepinevich couldn't do his sums better. There was
    this huge sense that we were falling behind in science and
    technology against the Soviets. And there was a great deal of
    emphasis, resources, emphasis in the curriculum on science and
    mathematics to make sure that we either caught up or didn't
    fall further behind.
        And, again, the sense was that that was a national security
    problem for the United States, that the way to solve it was by
    increasing the competence of the American people writ large in
    terms of science and technology and engineering. Sadly, we
    have, kind of, fallen back in that hole again, if you look at a
    lot of the recent trends in science and technology.
        But, certainly, language and global economy, where when
    things go wrong it can affect our security, our economic well-
    being because, you know, there is this kind of environment,
    certainly I think there is a legitimate case to be made that
    this needs to be a priority.
        Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis for five minutes.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
    Chairman.
        And, again, I am afraid I might repeat a question. But if
    we could go back for a second to the ROTC issue that we talked
    about. And you made the suggestion that, instead of training
    people here in the States, even if they have good instructors,
    it would be better off to send them to a foreign country and
    have them learn in a better immersion program.
        Is that discussion being held? I mean, where should that
    discussion be held?
        I think with a lot of the issues that you have talked
    about, the roadmap, I think, and also the Defense Language
    Institute Foreign Language Center----
        Dr. Brecht. It is being held----
        Mrs. Davis of California. Who is driving that train, I
    guess? How do we really develop that conversation more to
    really identify the best programs?
        Dr. Brecht. It is my understanding that this program
    resides in the National Security Education Program Office, and
    Dr. Robert Slater is driving this. And I do believe that the
    Senior Language Authority in the Pentagon and Dr. Slater are
    talking about this issue and particularly maybe directing some
    of these funds more toward immersion. But I don't know anything
    more than that.
        Dr. Snyder. Susan, I am meeting with him tomorrow, and you
    are welcome to join us in my office.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Okay, that would be great.
        Do you think that the Defense Language Institute is doing
    what needs to be done today? Is there something that we should
    be speaking to that would push them in an expanded role here?
        Dr. Brecht. I think the Defense Language Institute is doing
    a remarkable job taking 19-year-olds and giving them language.
    The challenge they face is that the requirements have expanded
    so much that the Special Forces have requirements at the 0-
    plus, 1-1-plus. And the Marines have different requirements and
    so on. Across the board the requirements are so broad, and no
    one institution can do it all.
        What they are doing I think they are doing very well, but
    they also have the mandate to reach out to the command language
    programs and so on. And I just think that the task they have
    taken on is huge. Raising, going to the 2-plus-2-plus-2 level
    is a huge challenge, to take a 19-year-old who may not want to
    be studying Pashto and take that person, where you can't even
    define standard Pashto, and take that person to a 2-plus is an
    incredible challenge.
        And so I think that, basically, I have seen a lot of
    language programs. And for full disclosure, I am on their board
    of visitors, so I don't want to seem like an advocate too much.
    But what I have seen, they are doing a remarkable job. It is
    just a very tough, uphill climb for them, for anybody trying to
    get those skills.
        And they can't satisfy the broad requirements of the whole
    military. Special Forces have different requirements. And the
    soldiers on the ground and the Marines, it is so broad, the new
    requirements of the day.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Yeah. Yeah.
        Does anybody else want to comment on that, the best way to
    get there?
        Obviously, earlier in elementary and secondary, having been
    on a school board at a time that we were trying to expand some
    languages, many, many years ago--and, you know, when you have
    budget problems, what goes first? You are just not able to
    follow through with that.
        I am pleased that there are some programs in the country
    that are doing a lot, a lot more than we were doing at that
    time. But part of it is the training of teachers. It is
    training them in a way that they weren't trained. Because even
    if you have language teachers, they were trained in a way that
    doesn't expand a student's ability to be fluent in a language,
    only to read and write. And that has to change, as well.
        I guess I would be interested in just hearing from you--
    and, again, I am sorry I missed a lot of the earlier
    testimony--you know, what message would you really like to
    leave with us? What hasn't been asked that you want to be sure
    that we are aware of, that we are thinking about?
        Dr. Brecht. In K-12, I don't think there is any question,
    if you took $30 million and seeded dual language immersion
    programs across the United States, one in each State, where for
    half a day they are learning English and the other half of the
    day they are learning Hindi or Telugu or whatever. And those
    programs, those dual language programs are spreading across the
    country. They are one of the most successful K-12 experiments.
    And they get adult support, because the heritage communities
    are supporting them. And they fit No Child Left Behind, because
    they are doing English as well as the other languages, and so
    on.
        If I had one magic wand wave, it would be that, because the
    K-12 system has to be demonstrated that they can learn language
    and the education system can succeed. And I think that is the
    base of everything else.
        Mrs. Davis of California. With DOD funding?
        Dr. Brecht. No, that has to be Department of Education
    funding.
        Dr. Krepinevich. Well, a lot of the funding is local.
        There are some interesting studies out recently. One is
    called ``Falling Off the Flat Earth.'' It was done, I think, by
    the National Academy of Sciences. You can Google it. It talks
    about the terrible condition our science and engineering
    education is, in terms of K-12.
        I think the system is in crisis across the board; it is not
    just in science and engineering. And, again, there is
    precedent. I was just in a session with the chairman of Intel
    last week. You know, Intel is pouring tens of millions of
    dollars into the public education system, trying to encourage
    science, the study of science and so on. And one of the big
    problems they are finding is you can't get qualified public
    school teachers in those fields because they are in demand
    elsewhere because there is a growing shortage. The ones you can
    get in may know the field, but they may not necessarily be good
    teachers. And he said he had data that showed a lot of people
    who are teaching in these disciplines aren't qualified. So that
    turns the students off even further who might have originally
    had an interest in it.
        So you are in this downward spiral. And I don't know if it
    is the same in the language disciplines, but certainly, as I
    said, there is precedence. Fifty years ago, almost exactly 50
    years ago, there was this push that said you can't be
    competitive as a Nation, you can't have the underlying
    foundation for a strong economy that can produce a strong
    military that produces qualified, capable, literate soldiers if
    you don't have a good education system.
        Dr. Brecht. You said is there one thing, one message. The
    message is, and to answer the chairman's question: The Pentagon
    led racial integration. The Pentagon led gender equity issues,
    not out of altruism, but out of strictly pragmatic approaches
    to solving major problems that were endemic to the Pentagon's
    needs and to society. Language is another one.
        And that is what the bully pulpit means. You can't pay for
    it, but you can lead it. And that is what I think your mission
    could be.
        Mrs. Davis of California. If I might, Mr. Chairman?
        Dr. Snyder. Sure.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Because you raised an issue that,
    obviously, is an emotional and difficult issue. But the don't-
    ask-don't-tell policy has been looked to as one area in which
    we had members of the services learning languages, being quite
    competent at them, who were separated from the service.
        Do you have anything you would like to say about that, in
    terms of how we use policy to, I guess, make a strong point
    that we really need people in the services that can speak
    languages? Does it impact on that at all?
        Don't want to touch it. Okay. That is all right.
        Dr. Snyder. Well, you will get another chance here.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Okay.
        Dr. Snyder. Dr. Brecht, I want to read a couple lines that
    you had here. On page six of your testimony, you say, quote,
    ``Particularly challenging is the fact that the language needs
    of the Department of Defense are real and critical, but at the
    same time they appear to be so daunting that immediate and
    practical workarounds seem more attractive than anything that
    is proposed under the guise of a long-term solution. With
    troops moving around the world on short-term, 1- or 2-year
    deployments with hundreds, if not thousands, of languages in
    play and with many funding priorities competing, a
    comprehensive end-state of a language-competent and culturally
    aware total workforce simply looks out of reach.''
        And I think the reason I have been prying at this--well,
    what percent? And I knew you weren't going to be able to answer
    that; it is unfair. The Pentagon can't answer that. But we need
    to at least say, we have it in reach. We need to at least get
    to the point through all this that we can see, okay, we have a
    sense of where we are going. I think the Pentagon has a sense
    that they are moving in the right direction. I just don't think
    they have a sense yet of what that end point is, if everything
    is going as well as they want.
        But I think that is a pretty good statement, it just looks
    out of reach. It looks so daunting, it looks so daunting, what
    we are talking about. How can we get it--it doesn't even look
    in--well, we need to get it so it is in reach.
        Dr. Zalman, I think you have been trying to get a word in.
    Go ahead.
        Dr. Zalman. Well, I am a little slow. Well, but this
    actually is the right question to say it to.
        I actually don't think that it is out of reach. The idea of
    full competence, that is to say full fluency, in a difficult
    language does seem out of reach. But, for example, the example
    you gave before of the guy on the street who knows something,
    there is a generalizable skill, a portable skill that he had.
    In this case, he didn't view his interlocutor as exotic; he
    could get up close. Somebody else can learn those skills with a
    general cultural awareness training, something more elementary
    without full-on language skills.
        So I would divide, in order to make this not so daunting
    and not so hard to swallow expense-wise and labor-wise, would
    start to look at what kinds of elementary, portable skills and
    capabilities can everyone be trained in. And then you have a
    more, sort of, elite cadre.
        And might add that there may be more places to look for
    that. You alluded, the way that I read it, when you opened to
    the fact that the topic today, cultural awareness in the
    military, actually is a function of strategic communication or
    whatever we are going to call it next. So there are other
    places like the State Department, not that they are so well-
    funded, but like Fulbrights, and there are so many places where
    this is important, that the military is only one of them, which
    is training a citizen to be a citizen in a globalized world.
        Dr. Snyder. That would be the Senator William Fulbright
    from Arkansas, is that correct, Dr. Zalman?
        Dr. Zalman. I benefitted from----
        Dr. Snyder. You were a Fulbright Scholar in Jordan, yes.
        I want to ask maybe Dr. Brecht, do you have any comment or
    did you form any opinion about the State roadmaps that the
    Pentagon is funding? I understand there are three States with
    pilots, and do you have a sense of how does it work? Are they
    called State language roadmaps?
        Dr. Brecht. Yes. They are a little uneven. But, frankly, I
    think we need 48 more, including the District. Because I have
    not seen business, local government and State government and
    academe collaborate more and hold a better dialogue on language
    and cultural understanding than in those. We have brought it
    down to actually real people with real local problems and
    dealing with the schools. And so, frankly, I think it was a
    wonderful experiment, and I just need 48 more.
        Dr. Snyder. Yeah.
        I have a couple more questions, I think. I have to throw
    out my off-the-wall idea. I have mentioned this off and on for
    the last several years. I actually did it initially almost as a
    kind of throwaway question, but I am not so sure that it is not
    a good idea, which is that this ought to start in boot camp.
        I was enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1967, Platoon 2059.
    And you ought to have some choice over it. But then you get
    assigned to the Farsi platoon. And for those 13 weeks that you
    are in boot camp or whatever boot camp is now, perhaps during
    meals--you would have to do it in a way that you wouldn't take
    away from learning to shoot a rifle or, God forbid, learning
    the march, but perhaps during meals you would have a native
    speaker in that language, not in that confrontational boot camp
    way, but your one break of the day, only you had to do it--all
    of you would converse, but it had to be in Farsi. And at the
    end of the 13 weeks, you would have probably some very basic
    exposure. Some would do well. Some would have chosen that
    language because they already had some background in it. And
    then see where that would lead.
        And maybe that would be--maybe they do that in that sense,
    Dr. Zalman, of cultural awareness. That that goes for some
    people that really hadn't had much foreign language training,
    hadn't traveled much, exposure to somebody from another
    country. For some it would perhaps be an early initiation to a
    language that they really didn't realize they had an aptitude
    for.
        But do you all have any comment about starting doing that
    kind of a thing?
        Dr. Zalman. Someone who was in the military once suggested
    to me that existing diversity training programs actually offer
    a platform for, within the military, offer a platform for
    learning about people who are beyond the military and in other
    countries.
        Dr. Brecht. Those of us who were in boot camp know that is
    mostly the first time anyone has left western Pennsylvania.
    They are already seeing cultures now, and being jammed up
    against a major culture, the military, and also subcultures for
    people from all over, and exploiting that would be a really
    good idea. Because we just jam them in there and make do, but
    no one has ever tried to make that first exposure to people
    from really different backgrounds a cultural experience that
    they could build on, leaving language aside, just on the
    cultural.
        Dr. Snyder. Mrs. Davis.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Earlier, just to go back a little
    bit, do we have the rewards in place to provide the kind of
    incentives for someone to go into a program, the ROTC one I
    mentioned, whether when they go on--are they there? Is it in
    terms of their ability to advance? Obviously, financial
    rewards.
        And what do you think it would take to really reward people
    for taking the time to learn a language in some depth? Any
    thoughts? The incentives aren't there now.
        Dr. Brecht. The foreign language proficiency pay incentive
    is significant that they put in place, but it is a very high
    level. It is a 3-3 in two languages, and, you know, that is
    huge, it is very high. And there are very few, if any, real
    incentives lower down.
        I think the ROTC issue is, if you said you have two months
    abroad, even if it is Kyrgyzstan, at least there is something
    that is there.
        And the simple answer is I don't think we have nearly
    enough in place to get people to stay long enough to reach
    those higher levels, let alone just deal with the lower levels
    that they need.
        Mrs. Davis of California. That is something that we need to
    work on.
        I might just tell a quick story. The captain who was
    working with the ROTC students who was in Iraq walked into a
    meeting that he said was so tense one day, you could just cut
    it in the tent, essentially. And he kind of walked in and was
    able to say in Arabic, you know, ``Where's the party?'' And it
    just relieved all the tension in the room, and people kind of
    decided to get down and try and work together.
        And I think that that says something about the ability to
    convey a message very strongly and to do it in the proper way.
    And that is what we need, people that are interested in wanting
    to do that.
        Dr. Brecht. We have another really good experiment: the
    National Language Service Corps, which is being put in place as
    we speak. You asked, what are the incentives for people joining
    that? There is patriotism. People will do it because it is good
    for the country, I believe. But one of the things that would be
    useful is, I don't think it is part of the program as yet, but
    their skills are assessed. But they also should be given some
    money to go take more language. And it may be a way, also, to
    support the academic programs in little languages in kind of a
    backdoor way.
        But this is another vital experiment done in the Department
    of Defense that could be very, very useful in building this
    cadre where you don't have to have everybody in every language
    but you have people in the warehouse waiting to be used.
        Mrs. Davis of California. Right. Thank you.
        Dr. Snyder. I have one final question, Dr. Brecht, and then
    I am going to tell a foreign language story, Susan.
        Very briefly, Dr. Brecht, you have one recommendation about
    that there should be somebody in the White House that oversees
    this. How did you come up with that idea? Just looking for ways
    to get it as a higher priority?
        Dr. Brecht. Senator Akaka, as you know, has a bill which
    hasn't gone anyplace at this moment, but there have been
    recommendations. We need somewhere high enough in the
    Government that says language, like science and technology, is
    a critical aspect of our society for the future. We don't have
    that. The fact you have the Office of Science and Technology
    Policy in the White House, that is the model; that at least
    there is someone, the bully pulpit.
        But it is not only defense. Defense shouldn't have to carry
    the whole language ball, obviously. And it crosses all the
    departments, and it also crosses into education, and getting
    someone high enough to bring the sectors of education, industry
    and Government and the heritage communities, and to get that
    position at least visible. That was where it comes from.
        Dr. Snyder. Let me extend to you the offer, I will ask it
    as a question for the record, if any of you come up with any
    written material you would like to provide or add on to any
    answers, feel free to do that, and it will be added as a
    question for the record.
        Let me close. I will tell you my one story about foreign
    language skills. I was working as a doctor in the Cambodian
    refugee relief effort along the Thai-Cambodian border in 1981.
    And we would go out in these Thai villages and hold clinics.
    And the hospital that I admitted sick patients to was run by
    Italians. And one day I went to a village, and there was a
    lovely young 19-year-old woman with a sky-high fever, a
    terrible dull pain, right-upper quadrant pain, and I knew she
    was sick and probably was going to need to have her belly
    opened up to see what was going on. I took her to the Italian
    hospital.
        Well, I was here, and then my interpreter who spoke English
    and Thai was here. And then he spoke to the woman who spoke
    Thai and Italian, and then the Italian doctor was down there.
    So there were four of us. And I would say something and boom,
    boom, boom, boom. I think it was old Danny Thomas event, with
    Uncle Tonoose, if you remember that show.
        So, anyway, in the course of this conversation, going back
    and forth, I said, ``It is possible this is an atypical
    presentation of appendicitis,'' a retrocecal appendix I think
    is what it was called back when I actually practiced medicine,
    meaning it can cause right-upper-quadrant pain rather than
    right-lower-quadrant pain. So I leave it there.
        I come back, like, three days later, I want to see how she
    is and what happened. And I go to her bed, and she is not
    there. And they say, well, she is outside getting water. I go
    out there, and she is carrying a bucket of water, walking
    around. I get her to come in and lay down. She doesn't speak
    any English. And she has this very neat, healing, short, small,
    right-lower-quadrant appendix scar. And I thought, how does an
    Italian doctor know that he just had to go in like that and not
    have to just open her up to see what is going on?
        So I get them lined up again; you know, the doctor down
    here. So I said, how did you know that was a retrocecal
    appendix? And he turns to the Italian doctor, and his eyes get
    big, and he says, ``I thought that was your diagnosis.''
    [Laughter.]
        So that is all. We are adjourned. Thank you all.
        [Whereupon, at 4:43 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.

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                                A P P E N D I X

                                  July 9, 2008

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                  PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                                  July 9, 2008

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                       DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

                                  July 9, 2008

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                  QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING

                                  July 9, 2008

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                       QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY DR. SNYDER

        Dr. Snyder. While the current focus is properly on Iraq and
    Afghanistan, do you feel DOD is doing enough to build up a resident
    capability in other languages and regions that might present
    opportunities for engagement in the future or become security risks?
        Dr. Brecht. In my view, the DOD could do more especially with the
    languages of Africa. As I indicated in my testimony, there is a sense
    among some leaders hard pressed for resources that the problem is
    simply too large to address. However, I believe there are practical
    steps that can be taken to begin to build an African language
    capability in the DOD. Indeed, while in many parts of Africa a colonial
    and official language are sufficient for official communication, the
    requirements of the department clearly extend well beyond
    communications within official channels as well as into areas of the
    continent where so-called official channels may not even exist. This
    requires a significant investment in regional languages as well as in
    many of the languages and dialects in critical areas of the continent.
        More generally, the Department has identified ``investment
    languages'' that reflect current and projected requirements. The
    problem is that, for any given geographical area, national and regional
    language policy, social conditions, and local linguistic habits are
    constantly evolving, and future DOD capabilities projections must take
    these factors into consideration. For example, will Russian be the
    lingua franca for Central Asian countries in twenty years as it is now?
    Will the trilingual habits of Africans change with the growing
    influence of national languages and global English? Which Arabic
    dialects will be most commonly used for insiders' speech in North
    Africa in the next ten years? Clearly, strategic planning and future
    projections in national security should be augmented by sociolinguistic
    research on future language usage in targeted areas.
        Finally, in order to be able to bring to bear the appropriate
    linguistic and cultural expertise for unanticipated developments around
    the world, the less-commonly-taught language expertise in the nation's
    colleges, universities, and heritage communities must be maintained and
    enhanced. Title VI/Fulbright Hays of the Higher Education Act is the
    nation's major asset in this regard, the major priority of which is to
    guarantee our nation's access to expertise, programs, and resources in
    world area, languages and cultures.
        In all respects, the DOD's shift to capabilities-based requirements
    in place of needs-based requirements is a critical step in the right
    direction. This focus on capabilities, enhanced with a ``language
    futures'' approach to strategic planning, could help address the
    problem inherent in the current requirements driven process that makes
    it difficult to invest in languages that may not be important today but
    could be critical to national security tomorrow.
        Dr. Snyder. What are your views about the success of the Defense
    Language Institute's Foreign Language Center in guiding the process and
    identifying the principal needs of DOD's language requirements? What
    about the Service centers for Language and Cultural Excellence? Can you
    give us an evaluation of them?
        Dr. Brecht. As far as I know, the DLIFLC is not responsible for
    identifying the DOD's language requirements, but it must respond to
    requirements formulated and passed on by the services. Unfortunately,
    these requirements seem to be focused on short term real needs and
    therefore changeable according to the latest crisis. This situation
    creates a significant challenge for the DLIFLC, given the fact that
    hiring and firing language faculty cannot be accomplished as rapidly as
    language requirements change in a system driven by immediate needs.
        In general, I believe the services' efforts at identify
    requirements have improved significantly; however, this is an area that
    needs constant attention. Overall, as stated above, the department's
    moving from threats to capabilities in the specification of language
    needs is a major improvement, and there are efforts at the highest
    levels to get the requirements right. Again, we still need to consider
    a ``language futures'' approach to determine which languages and
    dialects will be relevant in regions identified as critical in the
    future.
        Unfortunately, I am not in a position to evaluate the Service
    centers for Language and Cultural Excellence. I know that they are
    working very hard to address their specific service's needs, but I have
    not worked with them sufficiently to offer an opinion on their
    effectiveness.
        Dr. Snyder. How much can existing and likely technological
    improvements offset the need for actual language training?
        Dr. Brecht. Technology, together with advances in cognitive,
    cognitive neuroscience and language research, will greatly facilitate
    language learning in the future. (In fact, one of CASL's strategic
    goals is to dramatically reduce the time it takes to learn a language
    and measurably improve the effectiveness of the process.) If
    effectively deployed, this combination of tools and science can
    dramatically improve classroom learning. More importantly, in the
    future, language learning will be available on-demand on the job, thus
    enabling life-long language learning needed by DOD career
    professionals. While this will greatly relieve the classroom burden,
    there is always be a need for good classroom teaching in initial stages
    of instruction as well as in on-line courses delivered to the field.
        Dr. Snyder. In your testimony, you stated that the Department of
    Defense ``should continue to support and serve as the bully pulpit for
    improvement in the Nation's schools, colleges and universities'' and
    suggested that, for foreign language proficiency, as was the case for
    racial integration and gender equality, the Pentagon should lead the
    way with a pragmatic solution. You also argued for the drafting of
    state language roadmaps in the remaining 47 states and the District of
    Columbia and suggested that by using seed-money for dual language
    schools, the K-12 system could demonstrate that foreign language could
    be taught successfully in the education system.
        We'd like to hear more about your perspectives on the state
    language roadmaps.
        Dr. Brecht. The DOD-funded state roadmaps were an attempt to
    reenergize language education at the state and local levels, where
    education policy and funding have traditionally resided in the U.S.
    While national security concerns since 9/11 have focused federal
    efforts on language, the strategic view requires states and local
    jurisdictions to support language education as never before. The state
    roadmaps can create the first dialog and necessary synergy among
    government agencies, industry, not-for-profit organizations,
    foundations, and the language teaching professions.
        At this stage, we have seen three state roadmap efforts take place,
    and we have learned a lot about how to make them more effective and how
    to keep them moving forward. However, being limited to these three
    states, this initiative has not benefited the rest of the states, and
    thus the nation as a whole, by establishing models to be emulated and
    creating synergies among states. The state roadmap initiative could be
    made into an unprecedented national effort on behalf of language in the
    United States. We know from recent polls that the parents of our
    children are ready for action in this area; we just have not been able
    to come up with a practical strategy that limited state and local
    budgets and time constraints can support. No one school, district, or
    state education agency can do enough alone, but a combined effort of
    the constituents listed above might just ``tip'' the system towards a
    ``plurilingual'' America (to use a European Union term). Without this,
    the DOD will continue to expend huge amounts of resources to accomplish
    what the education system should have already done.
        Dr. Snyder. Can you provide more detail on what actions should be
    taken to improve the K-12 education system's ability to meet the
    Department of Defense's foreign language proficiency needs?
        Dr. Brecht. The underlying assumption of this question is, in my
    view, absolutely appropriate: The education system should assume more
    of the burden of language education, thus enabling the DOD to focus on
    rarely taught languages, high levels, and language for specific tasks
    and purposes. The Department has made this point of view clear in the
    last several years, and it must now continue its financial support of
    NSEP efforts as well as its advocacy of the role of the education
    system in meeting the language needs of the country.
        For the immediate future, I believe there are three distinct steps
    to be taken: First, State Language Roadmap efforts should be undertaken
    in all fifty states and District of Columbia. Second, the USED K-12
    component of the NSLI should be funded and implemented. Third, the
    Department of Education should launch a new dual language immersion
    program aimed at funding start-up dual language programs across the
    country, presumably under the NSLI mandate.
        Finally, in September 2005 I delivered a paper at a conference at
    the University of California Berkeley that lays out the broader,
    national perspective of the role of schools and universities in
    language education in the United States: ``Outlines of a National
    Language Education Policy in the Nation's Interest: Why? How? Who is
    Responsible for What?'' With some hesitancy, I attach it here in the
    belief that it provides the broader perspective on language education
    that you are seeking here. (See attachment.) This paper makes the case
    that a comprehensive plan is required, one that is cohesive and
    collaborative, and that its components are not beyond current budgetary
    and political realities.
        [The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on page
    119.]
        Dr. Snyder. Please outline the respective roles DOD, the Department
    of Education, and the states should play in taking those actions and
    how the drafting of state roadmaps can further those aims?
        Dr. Brecht. The DOD should continue the implementation of the
    Language Transformation Roadmap, moving on to a next phase of planning
    and development that continues to support the Flagship programs of the
    NSEP. The Department should also continue to be a major voice and bully
    pulpit in support of language education in the United States, given the
    fact that the DOD has influence among the American people and their
    elected representatives that no other constituency in this country has.
    The Department of Education, for its part, should add language to its
    English and mathematics priorities and put in place structures and
    funding to dramatically improve language education in this country.
    This USED effort should focus on supporting states and local
    jurisdictions as they implement state roadmaps that create the
    partnerships and synergies that will make language education change
    possible.
        It has been particularly damaging to the nation's language capacity
    that Congress has not funded the USED component of NSLI, and so the
    department should make this one of its priorities.
        Finally, dual language immersion programs should be launched across
    the country. These programs are composed of children, half of whom
    speak English as a native language and half speak a language other than
    English with their parents at home. In the morning the language of
    instruction is in the foreign language, say Mandarin, and the afternoon
    sessions are conducted in English. This kind of program has proven
    effective in giving English speaking children very impressive foreign
    language skills, while on the other hand it supports NCLB by
    strengthening the English skills of members of our heritage
    communities.
        In sum, there is no question that a significant investment at the
    K-12 level would raise the bar at every level of language education in
    this country, both in numbers of students and levels of proficiency,
    thus buttressing every other element of the NSLI.
        Dr. Snyder. While the current focus is properly on Iraq and
    Afghanistan, do you feel the DOD is doing enough to build up a resident
    capability in other languages and regions that might present
    opportunities for engagement in the future or become security risks?
        Dr. Zalman. As the outbreak of violence between Georgia and Russia
    and the subsequent aid shipments by US Navy and Air Force suggest, the
    U.S. has entered an era in which estimating potential military
    engagement is difficult, at best. The U.S. must be prepared for
    engagement anywhere, in a variety of modalities (military force,
    humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, nation-building, etc.). This
    recognition is evident in the DOD's vigorous emphasis on creating a
    global force capable of leveraging capabilities across regions.
        Given this reality, the DOD will be well served by committing
    resources to building up a generic resident cultural competence \1\
    capability, in addition to building regional/linguistic capabilities in
    currently foreseeable areas of potential engagement, such as Southeast
    Asia, and Africa's northern tier.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        \1\ The term cultural competence is used widely in health, mental
    health and educational contexts. It usefully denotes not only
    awareness, but also a skill; the ability to do something.
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Cultural competence is a composite skill set that enables people to
    enter into an unfamiliar situation with enough cognitive agility to
    interact, observe and learn from their interactions with others.
    Cultural competence is something people ``do'' in interactive
    situations, as opposed to a kind of knowledge that they ``have'' about
    others. Cultural awareness manifests itself when soldiers, sailors,
    airmen and marines can mobilize information about their own and others'
    cultural predispositions in order to influence adversaries or
    communicate collaboratively with partners.
        This capability can be created through training in basic skills
    such as: how to work in culturally diverse environments, cross-cultural
    management, negotiation and conflict mediation, and training in the
    tools of self-reflection. While Special Forces routinely train in these
    skills, the approach among regular forces is more haphazard.
        The experiences of those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have
    amply demonstrated the need to cultivate these skills among officers
    and senior enlisted members. Knowing etiquette or even basic
    demographic facts about their surroundings is not enough. Many require
    the ability to negotiate, distribute resources or manage competing
    demands in cross-cultural contexts.
        Training that helps military members practice and transport such
    skills across regional and linguistic lines will indicate a deepened
    commitment to preparing forces for the potential engagements of the
    future.
                                     ______

                       QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. JOHNSON
        Mr. Johnson. The Department of Defense established the National
    Language Services Corps pilot program in 2007. This effort will
    identify Americans with skills in critical languages and develop the
    capacity to mobilize them during times of national need or emergency.
    The National Language Services Corps represents the first organized
    national attempt to capitalize on our rich national diversity in
    language and culture. This organization has a goal of creating a cadre
    of 1,000 highly proficient people, in 10 languages, by 2010. What do
    you see as its potential to support broader national security
    objectives of increasing cultural awareness and foreign language
    capabilities?
        Dr. Brecht. In my view, the National Language Service Corps has the
    potential to play a critical role in our strategic approach to
    language, culture and national security in the United States. As I
    indicated in my testimony, no single element in the USG can house all
    the linguistic and cultural capabilities needed for the indefinite
    future. All agencies must find a way to recruit, train, and maintain an
    in-house language and culture capability, but they must also be ready
    to localize, outsource, and warehouse resources against unexpected
    requirements. The NLSC demonstrates the warehousing capability, serving
    as a pilot and model for the future.
        In addition, if as part of its design the NLSC would support the
    maintenance and enhancement of critical language abilities of its
    members, less commonly taught language programs around the country
    would have access to a broader clientele, thereby justifying their
    existence and traditionally low enrollments to managers in academe and
    industry.
        Mr. Johnson. How important do you believe it is to use a program
    like the National Language Services Corps to access Americans with
    diverse language and cultural skills to support our agencies during
    national emergencies in the near-term?
        Dr. Brecht. A major advantage of the NLSC is the potential to
    recruit heavily from our almost 50 million member heritage communities
    across the country. While there is a range of challenges involved in
    recruiting from many of these communities, these citizens can provide a
    level of language competence that is difficult to acquire for native
    English speakers. In addition, such a recruitment effort will also send
    an important message to speakers of other languages in this country:
    that their language abilities are critical to our common well-being and
    that, in addition to learning English, their duty as citizens is to
    maintain their native language as a service to this country.