Talking Past Each Other

A decade of multinational operations and global engagement has forced the U.S. military into a deeper and more sustained set of military-to-military relationships than previous strategic conditions required. In many cases, this experience has demonstrated differences between how our current generation of oficers and their international peers view and discuss the exercise of U.S. power and inluence overseas. Anecdotally, it has sometimes seemed as if American oficers and their foreign partners were talking past each other-not only coming to different conclusions, but using entirely different premises and reasoning to explain the exercise of U.S. power abroad. In some cases, friction driven by miscommunication has manifested as low-level dissatisfaction and has been contained by professional norms and institutional processes. In other cases, especially when dealing with predominantly Muslim militaries-Turkey and Pakistan...