Global Skills: Vital Components of Global Engagement
Abstract
The United States still lacks adequate foreign-language capabilities despite the best intentions (and many dollars) of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the similar National Security Education Act of 1991. The 1979 "wake-up call" from the Presidential Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, which called this situation "scandalous," went unheard. According to former congressman Leon Panetta, "the situation is no longer scandalous, as it was described; our current national situation with regard to international skills and understanding is merely appalling." Consistent with national trends, the foreign-language and area expertise capabilities of the Department of Defense (DoD) are equally appalling: "In every war in its history, the US Army has turned to native speakers of one kind or another to meet its language needs. Each time, it was a last-minute expedient. Desert Storm was no different." DoD, Air Force, and other governmental agency studies, audits, inspections, and reports have consistently criticized the dearth of foreign-language and foreign-area skills in the military services. These well-documented deficiencies during more predictable challenges bode poorly for the less predictable and far more diverse challenges of a new engagement-and-enlargement strategy. The Air Force's Global Engagement vision, which implements air power and space power in support of that strategy, makes a discussion of global skills relevant, timely, and necessary. For purposes of this article, we define global skills as language proficiency within a cultural and regional context.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA529521
Entities
People
- Carl Daubach
- Gunther A. Mueller
Organizations
- Air University