18 April 2022

Revisiting Military Cultural Intelligence: Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq

Tomos Holmes Davies

The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has cost thousands of lives, displaced millions and presented a serious challenge for the international community. In this increasingly fraught geopolitical climate, NATO and its allies may be faced with additional threats. One of these is the proliferation of irregular war, and there have been calls for Western militaries to re-evaluate their approaches to irregular forms of conflict such as insurgency to prepare for the future.[1] Accordingly, this paper revisits military cultural intelligence, a capability that played a significant role in coalition counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Drawing on first-hand accounts of a small group of British and American military personnel, I reflect on three problems with the application of military cultural intelligence in these conflicts and discuss how it might be improved in the future.

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