Monthly Archives: June 2010

CREED AND CULTURE IN THE AMERICAN FOUNDING

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by Bradley C. S. Watson, Ph.D. 
Reprinted from Intercollegiate Review, a journal of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Volume 41, Number 2, Fall 2006

The nature and implications of the American founding are notoriously matters of dispute. Within various schools of American conservative thought, there are those who claim that America was founded upon a principled understanding of natural rights, and those who maintain instead that America grew primarily from a set of inherited or customary understandings. The former group finds the roots of American order and liberty in philosophic principle, the latter in an historically evolved tradition. Or, more simply, the former emphasizes the creedal or universal side of America, the latter the cultural or particular side. The creedal understanding relies heavily on Locke’s plain teaching, while the cultural understanding relies on America’s inheritances from, most broadly, the Judeo- Christian tradition and, more specifically, the English common law tradition.1
        It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this long-running dispute, or to take sides with or against any of its estimable participants. Rather, I want to suggest that America and Americans have been, and continue to be, formed by both creed and culture. By integrating to the extent possible these sometimes hostile positions, we can begin to see more clearly the true nature of America—and the nature of the intellectual resources we might bring to bear to offer a sustained defense of American principles and practices. The American founders themselves borrowed freely and non-dogmatically from both creedal and cultural sources, and so should we.2
        The founders relied most notably on ideas articulated by John Locke and David Hume, the leading philosophical exponents, respectively, of principled and historical arguments about the foundations of political life. Reconsidering the American founding in light of the relationship between these two philosophers—rather than dilating on one or another of their arguments independently—allows us to address a question of central concern to all politics: the vexing relationship between freedom and order. It also allows us to address the extent to which America is a nation defined by universals—that is to say, ideas or principles, including natural rights, which apply to all men everywhere—or a nation defined by a much more particular and historically situated moral, political, religious, and cultural inheritance.
        I will first deal with the meaning and significance of our creed, then of our cultural inheritance, and I will suggest two ways in which America might be seen as culturally constituted.

Our Creed and Its Critics
The word “creed” derives from the Latin for “belief” (credo) and is commonly understood to mean a formal and authoritative statement of doctrine. In the present context, I use it to refer to a philosophic, systematic account of fundamental principles that define America, because they are ideas to which Americans look in order to understand and articulate their purposes as a nation. Used in this sense, we can indeed say that the American experience, especially at the founding—but also since—has in fact been quite principled or creedal. The American creed, by the common assent of supporters and detractors both, is most notably expressed in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence with the assertion that we “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
        Of course, there have been many disputes over the meaning of this formulation of American principles, the most notable one centering around understandings of the Civil War. Whatever one might think of the rectitude of the various positions on the Civil War, it is impossible to deny that a creedal or principled interpretation of America was central to the thinking of Abraham Lincoln, and that in some important respects, this interpretation triumphed, at least temporarily.
        For Lincoln, we are a people—as are all people—endowed with certain inalienable natural rights. Natural rights stem from a fact of nature—our being equal as human beings. By equal, we can only mean politically equal, not the self-evident falsehood that men are equal in all respects. But how do we know we are politically equal? We use our reason to observe ourselves and others, and hence to come to the rational conclusion that no man is so markedly superior to another, or specifically marked out by God, so as to be entitled to rule without the consent of the ruled. We exist as in-between beings, neither beasts nor gods. Consent— and therefore, the legitimate formation of government by means of a social contract— is an inexorable conclusion of an observable fact of nature, independent of all customs, conventions, traditions, and cultures. And indeed, all liberal democratic forms of government recognize, if not explicitly then at least implicitly, the fundamental fact of human equality. Not to recognize such equality is to argue for another form of government, a non-liberal-democratic form.
        All this, of course, can be gleaned from John Locke’s Second Treatise. The influence of Lockean ideas is quite evident not only in the Declaration of Independence and Jeffersonian thought, but also in the thinking of most other prominent founders, representing a wide spectrum of views in the founding era. It is also evident in some sermons of the period, in various ratification debates leading up to state constitutions, and in various state constitutional documents.3
        None of this is to deny that particular grievances, and Protestant piety, moved the hearts of Americans during the founding era. But at the same time, the intellectual coherence of the political actions of Americans in this era is provided by a principled social-contractarian formulation. One way to express this principled formulation is that America is a nation of Lockean natural rights. That America, and many of the most prominent Americans, have dedicated themselves to this proposition is clear: it remains the 800-pound gorilla in the living room of American politics. We see its influence even today. George W. Bush’s claim that freedom is not America’s gift to the world, but God’s gift to all mankind, might to some sound a note of Wilsonian progressivism. But as a statement of principle, duly limited by prudent statesmanship as to what is actually attainable, it is quite compatible with the American creed—and in particular, with a theory of natural rights that shows rights exist by nature, the bequest not of a government but of a just and omnipotent God.
        Lockean social contract theory was stillborn in Europe, due in no small part to the intellectual assault launched upon it by David Hume, its greatest critic. In America, by contrast, the doctrine lived—albeit fighting for its life at times—through the early twentieth century. It succumbed (notwithstanding occasional restatements by figures as diverse as Calvin Coolidge, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald Reagan, and the current president) only to a dogma of historical progress marshalling the combined forces of social Darwinism, pragmatism, twentieth-century Progressivism, and modern liberalism. Such longevity and resilience is difficult to account for except by recourse to the importance of the creed to the American founding, and the importance of the founding to later Americans.
        The natural rights interpretation of the American founding has many critics, on both the left and right. Common to the left liberal critiques are several intertwined concerns. Political and economic statists fear natural rights doctrines because they see them tied up with property (as Locke indeed says they are), and therefore as standing in the way of the growth and flourishing of the administrative state. Multiculturalists attack natural rights doctrines because natural rights emphasize what is common to human beings, showing further that human commonalities have priority over human differences. Moral skeptics, in alliance with multiculturalists, claim that natural rights simply do not exist, because no common or universal morality does. Meanwhile, the atheist strain of left-liberalism will not countenance anything being God-given, much less rights that might stand as principled bulwarks in the path of certain political, economic, and cultural goals.
        Conservatives evince other suspicions of natural rights doctrines. For many traditionalist conservatives, natural rights language has a revolutionary appeal (which they see in the rhetoric of George W. Bush). In this view, universal natural rights principles applying equally to all quickly lead away from the preservation of the existing rights of citizens in actual political communities to a kind of unlimited, French-Revolutionary style of politics dedicated to radical theoretical abstractions. These traditionalists prefer to see America as a continuation of a certain religious inheritance and of Anglo-American traditions and governmental forms. For them, continuities— not discontinuities—are what define the American founding, and therefore America. They see American rights as outgrowths of distinctly British (as opposed to natural) rights. Another, overlapping type of conservative critique—what we might call the “classical republican” variant of conservatism—sees an emphasis on rights, natural or otherwise, as undermining something more important to the maintenance of a decent civil society: namely, virtue, and indeed citizenship, as opposed to mere aggressive individualism.4

Our Culture as an Intellectual Inheritance
“Culture” derives from the Latin (cultura/ colo), meaning to care for, refine, grow, or raise up, especially in an agricultural sense. When applied to public questions, culture is commonly understood to have an organic or historical as opposed to a philosophic or creedal connotation. Cultural conditions are the soil and fertilizer in which political systems take root and grow and out of which they define themselves with reference to particulars: this land and this people, as opposed to the cosmos.
        We cannot gloss over the fact that our creed reveals itself in the context of a particular history and culture. Indeed, if we grant that natural rights principles are universal, this by no means implies that they can be implemented universally, or even recognized by all. Cultural traditions often cut against the acknowledgment of natural rights. Even in the United States, one can say that constitutional democracy was by no means inevitable. The American founders thought and acted with great originality and boldness, and they had broad sympathy for the nascent principles of liberty. But had America not been settled largely by Englishmen, or at least those familiar with the English conception of liberty, it would, without question, have been a very different country. American understandings and institutions simply would not have taken the shape they did had not the founders been profoundly influenced by the constitutional history, political philosophy, and common law doctrines that came from England.
        For many of the founders, the constitutional history of England was the story of the gradual limitation of royal power, from Magna Charta (1215), to the Petition of Right (1628), to the development of the common law and independent courts, to the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688-89. Of this latter event, Locke’s Second Treatise gave a theoretical account, arguing that legitimate sovereign power comes only from a compact between the people, acting through parliament, and the king.5 By the mid-1760s, this social compact theory was explicitly influencing many members of the founding generation, from the pulpits to the pamphlets. As Henry Steele Commager has argued, what united the founders— even a Jefferson and Hamilton—far outweighed what divided them.6 Beyond English constitutional history, they were steeped in a uniquely American Enlightenment, which drew on a great wellspring of common ideas and historical events, from classical to modern times. This background was the soil in which a vigorous Whig history took root.    
        In expounding and institutionalizing certain principles, the founders relied on an historically situated narrative, which led to their—our—creed. Natural rights and social compact theory do not exhaust the founders’ understanding of founding.
And there is a lesson in this for the present, a cultural imperative of the highest order. A reinvigorated history of the kind the founders were exposed to would help us get our story straight. To get it straight, we do in fact need to know where we came from, not simply what our philosophical premises are. For the founders understood well that these premises could inform the American experiment only because they were made plain in a particular tradition. And the founders knew yet more: that in the here-and-now, the realization of natural rights does not happen merely in accordance with philosophical reasoning. Rather, the extent and limits of rights—and obligations— are marked out in time, organically as it were, as a society grows.

Our Culture as Accretion
We are thus led to another sense of culture, one that has particular appeal to many conservatives. That is, culture or tradition not as an explicit intellectual borrowing and building, but as a more inchoate set of inheritances, and incremental articulations of these inheritances. Here, I am speaking of traditions that are understood, in many cases, pre-rationally. That is, they are understood as things that are given, imbibed, or revealed, rather than argued for. They might well have a kind of collective rationality arising from usage and long experience, but they are not understood this way by most people—they are simply accepted. They include traditions that predate Lockean natural rights liberalism, or anything that directly led up to it, and they do not necessarily argue—at least unequivocally— for equality and consent as organizing principles of just societies.
        One way to express this cultural or organic formulation is to suggest that America is less a Lockean, and more a Humean nation, i.e., one that can be understood along the customary lines suggested by David Hume.7 Hume claims that man’s moral and political sense come not from reason but from sentiment rooted in long experience with the moral and political things— with culture. There are few if any absolutes or universal principles that can define our loyalties or guide our actions. We rely less on reason than on cultural memory for our sense of the just. Therefore, the act of political founding relies on the fixing of sentiments around certain ideas and political forms rather than on abstract philosophic reasoning—and certainly the maintenance of these forms depends on unity of sentiment, or cultural consensus. Hume notes that most people actually experience their allegiances in terms of historical accident rather than rational principles. To hold open the possibility of uprooting habitual ways of thinking and being by recourse to an abstract principle is radically destabilizing, not only for politics or public morality, but for private morality as well. Government’s job is to tame the most destructive passions rather than to inflame them by reliance on abstractions. For a decent politics, spontaneous order is far more crucial than philosophic reason.
        There is indeed something to be said for the importance of this view to the founders’ way of thinking. One can find universal, liberal principles embedded through and through the founding, but so can one find genuinely conservative principles. Reason and custom were blended in a set of ideas and institutions that were understood to rely on prescription for their force.
        Even the Declaration of Independence itself pointedly notes that “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.” (The emphases are mine.) If there be outrage in the Declaration, it comes not from a dangerous attachment to abstractions, but from a set of very particular grievances that are grievous only by comparison with customary expectations. A particular notion of constitutionalism— only later to be written down—is embedded in the Declaration. As James R. Stoner has noted, “The outrage comes from a hidden premise: the English constitutional tradition, or at least the common law rights and liberties of that tradition, which the Americans claim as their rightful heritage.”8 This is a tradition that contains within it something it has not yet fully achieved, and what it has achieved, it has not yet transferred to America. The Declaration looks forward only because it also looks backward.
        In the second Federalist we also find arguments quite far from social compact theory. There, John Jay claims that, “This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest [historical and cultural] ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.” Here we see a markedly Humean understanding of founding: one that emphasizes culture and de-emphasizes reason, or at least suggests that our creed cannot be separated from our culture.
        In the constitutional scheme, the founders attach great importance to the slow development of public sentiments, sometimes uniting for common purposes, other times placing checks on destructive passions. Reason, or high philosophic principle, cannot much aid in this process, which occurs by the coalescing and dividing of public opinion in a large republic that is suspicious of hastily arrived at or shoddily interpreted absolutes. We might be created equal, but society naturally articulates itself into interests, opinions, and passions that require tempering by allowing them to compete for a hold on the public attention.9 Private rights and the public good are promoted not through immediate recourse to high principle, but organically. Destructive impulses are controlled, and collective reason asserts itself incrementally. In Federalist 49, Madison argues against Jefferson’s plan to turn constitutional controversies over to the people because agitating the popular passions would make constitutional government unlovable. Despite the apparent consonance of Jefferson’s plan with the principle of consent, the Constitution recognizes that all functioning consensual mechanisms require the support of prejudice and habit. There are many other particular mechanisms and institutions (such as the Senate) that were designed to act as decisive checks on immediate, unreflective popular sovereignty, with the aim, among other things, of preventing radical swings of public mood from affecting public policy.
        And apart from, or rather assumed by, the constitutional framework are all the things the founders did not change, despite their “new science of politics.” The founders rarely doubted the centrality of Christian religion and morality to the success of the American experiment. They believed that reason and revelation were true guides to human affairs, both pointing in the same direction on questions of natural rights and moral conduct. Despite this comity, George Washington in his Farewell Address makes plain his view that traditional religion, more than philosophy, can reliably instruct and discipline the many.
        The English common law also was accepted by most of the founders, who were steeped in it through their readings of Sir Edward Coke and William Blackstone. In his Institutes of the Laws of England, Coke saw the common law as a working out and application of fundamental law in English circumstances. Law emerges slowly, incrementally, but the law of nature—God’s law—is always in the background, preceding, grounding, and restricting all human law. Human law grows out of the soil—out of the culture of the nation—as it confronts practical problems. But long experience and the prescriptive wisdom of past generations move the law toward perfection, such that English positive law, rooted in this wisdom, reflects divine reason. Hence the glory of the common law—it confronts problems individually and specifically without excessive reliance on grand philosophical theorizing. For Coke, law does not rely on an unrooted “natural” reason that can be used to upend traditional arrangements. Rather, the reason of things reveals itself in the details. For the founders, the inherent value of the rule of law comes to sight through this deeply conservative understanding of the common law.10
        By the 1790s, Blackstone’s relatively new Commentaries on the Laws of England outstripped Coke as the definitive expositor of common law principles for the Americans. Blackstone, unlike Coke, concerned himself with modern rights theory and its relationship to the common law. In other words, there is more Enlightenment liberalism in Blackstone, who was writing a century later. The point of political community for Blackstone is to preserve the rights of each individual member—though he does not subscribe to a state of nature theory as does Locke. Blackstone is able to put Lockean and Humean ideas together and weave them into a common law constitutionalism. In reading Blackstone, the founders came to see natural rights and the social compact as congruent with the common law. As Michael Zuckert has argued, they therefore did not, like the French, feel the need to throw out their ancient legal code, for it was at once both ancient and modern, protecting the rights not only of Englishmen, but of men simply. “Partly because of Blackstone, the Americans could at once think of political society as a rationalist product of a social compact and as an entity shaped and governed by a law built on custom, deriving its authority from its antiquity and ‘grown’ character.”11 

Conclusion
All these things point to the inherent caution and prudence of the founders, and their understanding of the necessity to rely to some degree on Burke’s wisdom of the species. The founders intentionally, and sometimes unintentionally, blended and blurred Lockean individualism and Humean traditionalism. At the very end of The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton is moved to quote Hume: “To balance a large state or society…on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able, by the mere dint of reason and reflection, to effect it. The judgments of many must unite in the work: Experience must guide their labor: Time must bring it to perfection: And the feeling of inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into in their first trials and experiments.”12
        Hamilton then immediately goes on to exalt as a prodigy the establishment of the Constitution with the consent of the whole people.

Bradley C.S. Watson is an associate professor of political science at Saint Vincent College, and a fellow of Claremont Institute. He has held visiting faculty appointments at Princeton University and Claremont McKenna College. He is the editor of Civic Education and Culture (ISI Books, 2005). This is a reprint of an essay that was first published in the Fall 2006 edition of Intercollegiate Review, a journal of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.  Used by permission.

Notes:
1. Those who see America in creedal terms, though they disagree over the nature and significance of the creed, include Michael Zuckert and Thomas G. West. See, for example, Zuckert’s The Natural Rights Republic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), and his “Natural Rights and Protestant Politics,” in Thomas S. Engemann and Michael P. Zuckert, Protestantism and the American Founding (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004): 21-75, and West’s Vindicating the Founders (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), and his “The Transformation of Protestant Theology as a Condition of the American Revolution,” in Engemann and Zuckert, Protestantism: 187-223. Those who emphasize cultural continuities, and particularly religious continuities, include Barry Alan Shain and Peter Lawler. See, for example, Shain’s The Myth of American Individualism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), and Lawler’s “Religion, Philosophy, and the American Founding,” in Engemann and Zuckert, Protestantism: 165-185. James R. Stoner has made the case in these pages that there is much more to the Declaration than its most famous lines. It contains a list of grievances—not much read anymore— indicting the king for acts contrary to the common law rights and liberties of Englishmen. See Stoner, “Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?” The Intercollegiate Review, vol. 40, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2005): 3-11. These readings are merely the tip of a very large iceberg.
2. The debate over the founding is to some extent a debate over who the founders were and therefore the kinds of documentary evidence one should rely on to understand the nature of the founding moment or moments. Those who favor the creedal interpretation tend to understand the founders as the most prominent statesmen and opinion leaders of the day, who expressed their understanding in public documents, pronouncements, and sermons, and in private correspondence. They were the “authors” of important state papers, including the Constitution. Those who favor cultural interpretations tend to see the founders more as the ordinary citizens of the day, whose lives and correspondence seem on the whole markedly unphilosophical. They were the “ratifiers” and “receivers” of the founding texts. I am here concentrating on the former group in order to avoid the myriad problems associated with reducing the political to the subpolitical. Yet at the same time, I hope, I am givingculture its due—even in the understandings of America’s greatest founding statesmen.
3. For example, the Delaware and Maryland Declarations of Rights (1776) assert that, “All government of right originates from the people and is founded in compact only”; the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) claims that “all men are by nature equally free and independent,” with certain “inherent rights” that they cannot by “compact” divest themselves of; the Pennsylvania constitution (1776) asserts that “all men are born equally free and independent”; the New Hampshire constitution (1776) claims, “All men are born equally free and independent; therefore, all government of right originates from the people, is founded in consent, and instituted for the general good,” while the New Hampshire constitution of 1784 asserts that “All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights—among which are, the enjoying and defending of life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and, in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness”; and the Massachusetts constitution of 1780 asserts that, “The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good…. All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”
4. The other side of this argument is that Lockean theory as the founders understood it serves not as an accelerator but as a brake on demagogic egalitarianism or individualism—as Lincoln argued in his Lyceum and Temperance addresses. Natural rights are self-limiting in that they invoke nature. One needs first to know what human nature is—what type of creature one is referring to, or what is appropriate to this type of creature by nature. This knowledge is necessary to begin, and ultimately to end, the discussion of rights and their corresponding duties. And these are things that can be reasoned about. They do not, and cannot, depend on mere will, or tradition, for will is fickle and tradition sometimes indefinite and sometimes simply wrong. Even the most strident critics of some of the founders do not accuse them of moral libertinism. One can, of course, make the case that the founders were steeped in the notion of virtue, public and private, from their reading of the classics. But natural rights too provide the ground for a manly assertiveness in pursuit of something beyond individual satisfaction. See Harvey C. Mansfield, “Democratic Greatness in the American Founding,” The Intercollegiate Review, vol. 40, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2005): 12-17.
5. Hume too praised the Glorious Revolution, but emphasized its moderation and conservative nature as a reassertion of established practices.
6. Henry Steele Commager, “Leadership in Eighteenth Century America and Today,” in Excellence and Leadership in a Democracy, ed. Stephen R. Graubard and Gerald Holton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962): 25-46.
7. I develop this argument at greater length, concentrating on its specific connection to David Hume, in “Hume, Historical Inheritance, and the Problem of Founding,” in Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West, eds., The American Founding and the Social Compact (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003): 75-94.
8. “Is There a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?”: 5.
9. This is an idea that Madison, in Federalist 10, borrows in part from Hume, especially his essay on the “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.”
10. For a good short summary of this conservatism, see Kevin Ryan, “Coke, the Rule of Law, and Executive Power,” The Vermont Bar Journal, vol. 31, no. 1 (Spring 2005).
11. Michael Zuckert, “Social Compact, Common Law, and the American Amalgam: The Contribution of William Blackstone,” in Pestritto and West, eds., The American Founding and the Social Compact, 42-43.
12. See Hume, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 124.

Significant Excerpts
“And there is a lesson in this [the founders understanding of what they were doing] for the present, a cultural imperative of the highest order. A reinvigorated history of the kind the founders were exposed to would help us get our story straight. To get it straight, we do in fact need to know where we came from, not simply what our philosophical premises are. For the founders understood well that these premises could inform the American experiment only because they were made plain in a particular tradition. And the founders knew yet more: that in the here-and-now, the realization of natural rights does not happen merely in accordance with philosophical reasoning. Rather, the extent and limits of rights—and obligations— are marked out in time, organically as it were, as a society grows.”

“Hume claims that man’s moral and political sense come not from reason but from sentiment rooted in long experience with the moral and political things— with culture.”

“The founders rarely doubted the centrality of Christian religion and morality to the success of the American experiment. They believed that reason and revelation were true guides to human affairs, both pointing in the same direction on questions of natural rights and moral conduct. Despite this comity, George Washington in his Farewell Address makes plain his view that traditional religion, more than philosophy, can reliably instruct and discipline the many.”

INFLUENCING SECURITY OPERATIONS ACROSS A CULTURAL BOUNDARY

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By Chaplain (Lieutenant Colonel) Bruce Sidebotham, U.S. Army Reserve, D.Min.

Nearly all kinds of operations in the spectrum of conflict involve exerting influence across a cultural boundary. Part of accomplishing this influence almost always involves putting some military personnel from one culture on the other side of a cultural boundary.
During my recent deployment to Mosul, Iraq, I provided pastoral care to 39 different small teams of Americans in 15 different locations who were advising senior leaders in Iraqi police, military, and border enforcement units. I lived on an Iraqi Army base with some of these teams. The guards on our compound gates were not Americans. They were Iraqis. When the soldiers for whom I cared rolled out on missions, they went embedded in Iraqi units and not with other Americans.
I quickly discovered that teams of advisors went through common stages of adjustment. Different levels of influence resulted from how they negotiated these stages. These stages are inevitable and normal. They are predictable, like stages of grief after losing a loved one. This article explains: 1) what the stages are, 2) why they exist, and 3) how to find healthy roles for achieving influence.

Stages of Adjustment to Immersion

Orientation

In the orientation phase of adjusting to being immersed in a foreign context, you learn in controlled settings and experience only artificial representations. This stage features anticipation and excitement. In it you do all the research that you can. You gain some familiarity with the language, clothes, and food. You learn from a distance. You accumulate knowledge that is screened through others rather than from direct experience. The most important thing about this stage is that you develop expectations and assumptions. Rigid and unrealistic expectations will set you up for a difficult adjustment and perhaps failure. It will help if you can accept that you will inevitably face some later disappointments.

Tourist

In the tourist stage you are embedded in the host context—and you are learning rapidly from firsthand experience. You make some mistakes, and you sometimes get lost and confused, but your hosts are forgiving, and you are emotionally stimulated by the adventure. You experience uncomfortable twinges that are warnings of disappointments yet to come, but naiveté and denial keep your outlook positive and expectations high.

Disillusionment

Sooner or later, usually before the end of six months, everyone hits bottom. Emotional highs must come down. When they do, feelings of isolation, frustration, and being unappreciated reinforce the emotional let down to create disillusionment. Missionaries and diplomats call it “culture shock.” No one is exempt. Everyone goes through it. People vary only by degrees. Accepting this reality will help you get through it.

Resolution

From this third stage, you can go in one of three directions to find resolution. The one you choose depends upon how secure you are in your personal identity and how you cope with ethical dilemmas. The three choices are withdrawal, going native, and engagement. Before I reflect on these, I need to clarify identity and values.

Identity and Values

Values

All societies share basic values, but many of them also prioritize those values differently. Do the priorities of values come from society, or do those priorities fundamentally shape the society? Are some priorities of values better than others?

You should avoid the temptation to answer these questions. When you operate as an advisor to people in another social context, you will inevitably experience a crisis of identity coming from a challenge to the way that you sort your values. How you recover from culture shock and whether or not you can effectively advise depends upon how securely you can maintain your own identity while simultaneously communicating within the other social environment.

Two dynamics will help us to understand identity and values better. First, what people are willing to die for usually reveals their highest values. Second, how people handle ethical dilemmas usually reveals the priorities they set for their values.

Highest Values

Freedom is one of America’s highest values. Patrick Henry’s famous statement made in the days of the American Revolutionary War: “Give me liberty or give me death!” gloriously captures American sentiment regarding this value.

In Iraqi society, Arabs generally do not risk their lives for freedom. Iraqi citizens rarely risk their lives to give information that could liberate their neighborhoods from intimidating insurgent leaders.

Honor, in the sense of reputation, is the comparably high value for which Arabs are willing to sacrifice their lives. Honor is not a very high American value. Americans routinely humiliate elected officials with language and cartoons, and they tolerate blasphemous movies about Jesus even when they are highly offended, but just try circulating a caricature of Mohammad and see what happens.

Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical dilemmas occur when a situation demands a choice between two dearly held values. Hence, ethical dilemmas reveal a person’s priorities concerning values. Telling the truth is important in Western society. However, in Holland during Nazi occupation, many Dutch families hid Jews in their homes. Then, when SS soldiers knocked at their doors, they lied. Telling the truth wasn’t as important as preserving the lives of those Jews. The American Army demands soldiers give truthful reports to their superiors while simultaneously deceiving the enemy. Apparently, telling the truth, even for American service personnel, sometimes depends upon the situation.

Here are some ways that ethical dilemmas reveal different values priorities between Americans and Iraqis:

Integrity vs. Honor

Most Americans will sacrifice honor (reputation) to preserve integrity. Most Iraqis will sacrifice integrity to preserve their and their family’s honor.

The American legend about George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, and how he told the truth even at great risk to his posterior dignity, underscores the relative positions of these values in American society. Sure, we tell white lies to keep from hurting someone’s feelings (“No, you don’t look fat in that dress.”), but our whole legal and economic system relies upon the principle that you don’t tell lies just to make yourself look good.

If you ask Iraqis a question that will embarrass them, or their family, or their tribe, or their leader, then they will lie to you to preserve honor. Asking an embarrassing question is more offensive than telling the honor-preserving lie.

In Indonesia I was a university professor of English language. The school had a rule that cheating was not allowed. Anyone caught cheating would automatically fail the course. When I gave my first mid-term exam my students were cheating like crazy. They boldly copied from neighbors and smuggled notes. When I asked other professors if their students cheated they all told me, “No.” With apparent sincerity they said, “We don’t allow cheating, and if anyone gets caught they fail the course.” But when I observed them giving exams, their students were boldly cheating just like mine. They weren’t only lying to me; they were allowing their students to cheat.

I discovered it was a greater social offense to embarrass a student by accusing him of cheating than it was for the student to cheat. Eventually, I found a way to stop cheating in my classroom. I never accused students of cheating. I would accuse them of not following directions, and the penalty was score reduction by a letter grade. The accusation and consequence to a student for making an “honest mistake” was socially acceptable enough that I could use it to stop students from cheating.

Service vs. Status

Americans tend to respect service more than status, but Iraqis usually respect status more than service.

In America we call elected officials “civil servants,” and we rank government employees according to their GS level, where GS stands for “government service.” We expect people in public service to earn less than their counterparts in the private sector, and we respect them for that sacrifice. The mechanic who works on our car may get more respect than the lawyer on the city council based upon the quality of the service he performs. In America, respect gets earned with service. In Iraq, respect gets ascribed according to status, and serving brings dishonor.

Iraqi society reverses the role of government from servant to served. Iraqi government workers, tribal leaders, and military commanders are patrons. Those beneath them are clients. Patrons are people of status. Their clients have a duty to give them honor but not necessarily service. In return, the patron cares for the clients. Allowing the patron to be above the law is one way to increase both status and potential to reward clients. Calling a patron out on corruption offends honor and reduces ability to care for clients. As long as a patron is caring for rather than exploiting clients, then corruption is overlooked. Corruption becomes noticed when it becomes exploitation.

The laws by which we as Americans hold Iraqi leaders to be corrupt are, to many Iraqis, like the anti-piracy laws that we choose to ignore so that soldiers can buy the latest movies in the haji shops outside the Exchange. Soldiers, to Americans, are people of honor. Commanders “look the other way” and allow soldiers to be above this law as long as they don’t exploit it to the point of serious economic harm.

Struggle vs. Submission

Americans demonstrate their faith by struggling to overcome adversity, while Iraqis demonstrate their spirituality by submitting to fate.

When Jesus calmed the storm, fed the hungry, and healed the sick, he gave to his followers, and eventually to Western civilization, the perspective that struggling against natural disasters, poverty, and sickness, is within God’s will. Before that time, general public opinion considered that disasters, poverty, and sickness were a judgment from God, so that struggling to overcome these would be resisting his will. Medical science, relief and development, natural disaster prediction and risk management have reached their zenith in Western civilization, where it is good and holy to struggle against abhorrent natural and social conditions. No one does international aid and disaster assistance better than America. No military does force protection, risk management, and medical evacuation better than America’s. For Americans, to struggle in these areas is consistent with their divine calling.

Iraqis have missed the heritage that comes to Western civilization from the example of Jesus. The word Islam actually means “submission.” You will not find Iraqis struggling with the same level of intensity as Americans for cutting edge medical care, preparing for natural disasters, or relief and development of disadvantaged communities. Doing so actually risks interfering with the will of God. Too much attention to detail in force protection and risk management actually appears like rebellion. The phrase, “Insha Allah” – “if God wills,” uttered to an advisor by a soldier when that soldier is scolded for not wearing body armor, illustrates how the soldier considers that wearing the body armor might actually be an act of rebellion against the will of God.

When compared to Iraqis, Americans are always striving, struggling, and resisting as opposed to relaxing, resting, and accepting. Each feels superior to the other in the way that they are responding to outward circumstances according to their hierarchy of values.

Repentance vs. Retribution

The American heritage offers forgiveness for repentance, while the Iraqi heritage provides forgiveness after payment.

The American ideal of forgiveness is bonded to the condition of an offender being truly sorry. The American justice system still punishes people for their crimes, no matter how penitent they may be, but Americans in their personal relationships value forgiving offenders based upon a sincere apology and the promise to change. In the American concept of personal reconciliation, a promise of change is completely sufficient for extending forgiveness. When Americans say they are sorry their ancestors went on Crusades against the Middle East, then they expect to be forgiven based upon the fact that they are different than their ancestors and they certainly aren’t going to do the Crusades again.

From the Iraqi hierarchy of values, the American ideal seems like a miscarriage of justice. An apology, especially a sincere one, is an admission of guilt. A condition of true apology is willingness to make reparations. Without the payment of an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth, justice is not done, and forgiveness is not possible. Iraqis will not admit guilt unless they are ready and able to make reparations, so you won’t find many making apologies. From the Iraqi perspective, apologizing for the Crusades admits guilt and creates an expectation that retribution will be accepted. When those apologizing do not submit and when they offer no reparations, the apology is taken to be insincere and just another example of duplicity.

Individualism vs. Dependency

American society prizes rugged individualism. Americans raise children to leave the proverbial “nest” and establish their own nuclear families that serve as the building blocks for American society. In America, children who live with their parents as adults endure ridicule and scorn.

Most of the world, however, socializes children into dependence upon extended families. Most Middle Eastern children wouldn’t dream of choosing careers or marriage partners independent of extended family approval or even selection. In Iraq, children who assert personal independence in everything from marriage and politics to religion are the ones who endure ridicule, scorn, and even threats on their lives.

In Iraq, extended families use connections and influence to obtain jobs and careers for relatives. Assisted relatives are then expected to channel material benefit back to their extended families. Family obligations trump obligations to employers. What we call nepotism becomes expected etiquette (like standing on a crowded bus so a pregnant woman can be seated) affecting both the survival and dignity of the entire extended family. As a result, supplies like blankets and winter clothes, if issued to soldiers for enhancing their quality-of-life and performance, often end up back in the hometown instead of at the combat outpost. As a result, the supply system resists issuing life support necessities to soldiers. Supervisors stockpile supplies and skim portions to benefit their extended relations. Even local hire interpreters on U.S. military outposts hoard what they perceive to be excessive and expendable life support items to take home to their families.

Public vs. Private Space

Filth in Iraq’s public places frustrates American soldiers and depresses embedded advisors. Americans highly value the cleanliness and appearance of public spaces. They manicure suburban lawns, sweep city streets, and clean public restrooms more frequently than they clean their private ones. Relatively speaking, Americans place lower value on the cleanliness and appearance of private spaces. They wear shoes in their houses, pile dirty dishes in kitchen sinks, and often avoid entertaining guests because the house is not clean. Avoiding hospitality because the house is unkempt would be anathema to most Iraqi families.

People in Iraq highly value and protect their private spaces, which only gain by contrast in aesthetic appeal as filth mounts in public spaces where restrooms may get relocated before they get cleaned. Iraqis take shoes off indoors and wall off their private compounds, just as they wall off their women in public with head coverings and veils. Clear boundaries separate public and private worlds in the Middle East by contrast to America, where such boundaries barely exist and many women dress to appear on televisions the way they dress to appear in the bedroom. Much disrespect and misunderstanding results from differing American and Iraqi values priorities with respect to appearances in public and private spaces.

Competence vs. Loyalty

Assignment of personnel and task organization of units in the American Army is “plug-and-play” based upon capabilities. For assignment and organization purposes, the loyalty of American soldiers is never in doubt. Advancement depends upon performance. When commanders promote based upon personal or family relationships, we call them corrupt.

“Plug-and-play” for Iraqi security forces depends upon relationships. Competency must be secondary. Kurds, Sunnis, Shias, minorities, and tribes all distrust each other. Successful leaders never take loyalty for granted. Building, maintaining, using, and rewarding relationships takes priority over building, maintaining, using, and rewarding proficiency. Advisors who undermine these priorities constrain their ability to influence leaders.

American politicians operate like Iraqi military leaders. They nearly always value personal, party, and constituent connections over proficiency.

Identity and Resolution

These are only seven examples out of many differences between the ways Americans and Iraqis set priorities on their values. Identifying a culture from elements like language, body language, clothing, food, holidays, rituals, and traditions is easy. Understanding a society’s character and behavior from the underlying hierarchy of values is much harder. Experiencing a culture’s identity is easy. Experiencing its beliefs and values is difficult. The elements of identity are quaint, entertaining, and morally neutral. The elements of values-based character and behavior are provoking, ambiguous, and laden with moral implications.

Disillusionment or “culture shock” sets in when we move beyond enjoying the different identities and become frustrated by different values. From here we can go into withdrawal, go native, or begin constructive engagement.

Withdrawal results from rejecting both the identity and values system of the target society. “Going native” results from uncritically embracing the target people’s beliefs and values. Constructive engagement comes from embracing the new cultural identity and accommodating the target society’s beliefs and values without compromising one’s own values system.

Withdrawal

Withdrawn advisors stop engaging counterparts in the target society. Other Americans in non-embedded maneuver and supporting units consider them to be the loyal ones. They isolate themselves from their Iraqi counterparts but can appear productive and busy. Typically they find quantifiable work of which their raters will approve and become too busy to “waste time” in pursuits that they perceive will never yield results. They become critical of team members who have not withdrawn, and form a clique with others who have joined them. Withdrawn team leaders stop valuing counterpart engagement for team members as well. They perceive target culture beliefs and values will never change, and they are right. Also, trying to change the values and beliefs of Iraqi culture is very un-American and against General Order Number One. What withdrawn advisors don’t realize is that beliefs and values don’t need to change, because behaviors can change within the existing Iraqi values system.

Going Native

Advisors who have gone native also stop engaging the target group because they’ve abandoned their own beliefs that are essential in order to engage it effectively. To the other Americans in non-embedded maneuver and supporting units, they are disloyal. To their Iraqi counterparts, they are weird even though they may be welcomed enthusiastically. They become more than liaisons to American forces. They become advocates for the way Iraqis see and do things and may become an excuse to the Iraqis for them to continue doing it that way. They may or may not still look American, but they act Iraqi. Ironically, they’re not likely to become any closer to the Iraqis, and they’re likely to lose their Iraqi counterparts’ respect. Advisory team chiefs who have gone native typically polarize team members both for and against themselves.

Constructive Engagement (healthy adjustment)

Advisors constructively engaging their counterparts within Iraqi society have embraced elements of Iraqi identity. They endure aspects that are uncomfortable for them. They appreciate the food as best they can. They value the language and give great respect to their interpreters. They honor Iraqi customs, rituals, holidays, and courtesies. They use Iraqi greetings. They make Iraqi friends and vow to keep in touch. They adhere vigorously to their own system of values, but they do not expect or try to change the values system of Iraq. They try to understand things from the Iraqi perspective. They try to work within the Iraqi values system. They look for ways to alter Iraqi behaviors from within the Iraqi system of values. For those who are withdrawn, people who are constructively engaging may appear to be going native, and may be resented.

Solutions through Constructive Engagement

Influencing behaviors cross-culturally is like assembling a puzzle. Withdrawn advisors have a clear picture of the desired end state, but they throw up their hands in despair after trying to use their own pieces rather than the pieces present in the host society. Advisors who have gone native embrace the host society puzzle pieces, but they have lost sight of the picture that is to be made from them. Constructive engagement entails duplicating the picture that is on our box from the pieces that are present in the Iraqi box. There’s not much that a person can do in the whole world that is more slow and frustrating. Few have sufficient creativity and patience for the task, but for those who like this kind of puzzle, there’s not much else more fulfilling.

The way that I got my Indonesian students to stop cheating on exams is an example of a way to change behaviors without changing beliefs and values. I got the puzzle picture I wanted with Indonesian social pieces, and I trust that I affected the way that those aspiring English teachers will proctor their exams. The principles are universal, but the application will be unique in every situation. I can’t tell you how it will work for you, but I can give you some ideas for how to apply the principles based upon my experience in Indonesia.

Beating Lying

Working in a society where people lie to preserve honor presents a challenge for outsiders who have never experienced that kind of system before. One important principle is to watch what people do rather than listen to what they say. Americans are socialized to trust people’s words more than appearances, so if a man and woman share an apartment and say that they are not having a physical relationship, then Americans are expected to take them at their word. I expect that Iraqis will nearly always judge by appearances. Appearances can be deceptive, but in Indonesia, they were less deceptive than language. In Indonesia appearances frequently mattered more for life and death than the actual reality, and we had to pay very close attention to them.

Another way to get at the truth is to use accountability triangles. In America, it is in poor taste to involve third parties in negotiations and relationships. In Indonesia, where nothing is as people say it is, relationship triangles are everything. It is easier to deceive one than two. As a result, almost no one is ever alone. Every story has another observer through whom it can be checked and double-checked. Every relationship connects to a network of other relationships through which leverage can be brought to bear.

In Indonesia, we always hired two rather than one helper for household chores. For one thing, it gave our helpers someone else with the same beliefs and values, so that they did not feel isolated. Lying and stealing becomes more difficult when someone else is around. Having two helpers worked to keep them honest with us, and it also helped encourage them that they would not be exploited or lied to by us. We also tried not to hire a helper outside of a third party relationship through which pressure could be brought to bear. The helper’s performance then reflected on the honor of the third party. If performance started deteriorating, a hint to our mutual friend would affect our helper’s performance.

Iraqis take a lot of time to hang out and drink chai. Maybe it’s where they work through all the triangles in their relationships.

Beating Corruption

Working in a society where patrons are expected to be above the law in order to benefit their family and tribe creates more challenge. Status positions aren’t associated with service but with honor, prestige, and privilege. The greater the status, the greater the benefit to clients. “Whistle blowing” hurts the group connected to the patron. A group not connected to the patron can blow the proverbial whistle on corruption, but only after they’ve taken steps to protect themselves from potential retribution by the group that is connected.

Even Americans follow rules out of self-interest more than a sense of duty to follow the rules. Without enforcement, speed-limit signs mean nothing and laws against pirated DVDs get ignored. Mitigating corruption in the patron client system involves showing the patron and clients how following the rules fits their self-interest.

The best weapon against corruption is to construct the rules so that following them results in status and honor. When it’s not possible to restructure the regulations, the advisor must demonstrate how remaining within the rules increases prestige and protects clients. If these results cannot be demonstrated, then don’t expect patrons to follow the rules.

Beating Fate

Adult elephants submit to a flimsy tether and tiny stake because they grow up fastened by chains. When people learn that resistance is futile they turn submission into a mark of spiritual maturity. When advisors demand struggle against a status quo, they aren’t just challenging learned behaviors, they are perceived to be challenging the will of God.

Getting Iraqis to take personal responsibility for their own fate and corporate responsibility for their destiny may require getting them to see the tools and means (like body armor and TTPs) as gifts from God, not just for survival but for status and honor. Iraqis will struggle for honor. Getting them to use maintenance and supply systems in ways that alter rather than maintain the status quo will probably take giving them a fresh perspective on honor and God’s will that embraces a new definition of what is normal.

Most societies have a way to express the concept of God helping those who help themselves, if you can find it. One of the Hadiths on the life of Muhammad has this story: “‘Should I tether my camel or trust in God alone?’ a man asked the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). ‘First tether your camel, then trust in God,’ the Prophet replied.’”

Apologizing

Watch and learn how Iraqis reconcile with each other when one has offended another. In Indonesia it was rarely done with an apology and then forgiveness. News of a breach in relationship was not communicated directly, but usually through a third party or mediator. Reconciliation occurred after a price (usually a gift) had been paid, and usually no mention of the offense was ever made. Pay close attention to interpreters as mediators when they tell you that someone has been offended. You can probably relay your understanding of the offense through a mediator and then do something nice for the person whom you have offended in order to reconcile.

Roles

The discussion presented in this essay is not exhaustive and is not a template to be imitated thoughtlessly. It merely demonstrates principles of constructive engagement. It shows how advisors can influence behavior in a different values system by accommodating that system without compromising their own beliefs and values.

To have influence, however, the advisor must establish a valid presence within the target society. People in the target audience are like actors on a stage. Advisors are complete outsiders. They have no status and start off without any honor. They are like people in the auditorium audience. They can clap, cry, and boo, but they have no access to influence play production. To influence actor movement, lines, or props, one must have a role in the production. Some roles are more influential than others. When you volunteer to help out in producing a play, you will be assigned a role. Everyone who shows up on a Transition Team gets assigned a role. It is not the role given by the Americans. The Iraqis run the stage and they make the role assignments according to what is familiar to them. Here are some of the roles that Iraqis understand from within their culture, and into which you may be cast.

Patron – Client

Iraqis are intimately familiar with patron and client roles, but Americans are not. Unless you work consciously against it, you will likely find yourself in one of these roles and not have the slightest clue about what is going on.

Iraqis of stature will want to treat you as a client – especially in public or in front of their peers. They will humor you and take care of you. They will treat you as someone inferior and of lower status. They may even show you off to their friends as a kind of curiosity. They will enjoy opportunities to “put you in your place,” so to speak, and “show you who’s boss.” Resisting these little put downs will look worse for you than for them. They will expect you to treat them not just respectfully, but also deferentially. They will expect you to treat them with honor. If you meet their expectations, then you may be able to approach them more as an equal in private. If you don’t accommodate their expectations, then as people of stature in the society, they can make life difficult for you.

Iraqis without social stature will treat you as a patron – especially in private. There will be no end to the things they will want from you. They will give you honor, but not likely service. In exchange they will expect you to take care of them. Part of honoring you is showing you how they cannot do things for themselves. Only patrons (people of status and honor) can get things done. Initiative in a client dishonors the patron.

The patron-client relationship is one of the most natural for Iraqis to put you in – especially if you come in as the arrogant American expert who is not accountable to the Iraqis. Then, the Iraqis of status will want to put you in your place and the Iraqis without status will be happy to depend upon you. The closest thing to the patron-client relationship in America is probably the parent-child relationship. Clients are like adults who never stop depending upon their parents, and patrons are like parents who never want their children to grow up and become independent.

Inspector

Desiring some insight into the impact he was having, a Military Transition Team Chief asked his counterpart, “How do Iraqi soldiers and commanders see me when I visit and circulate with them?” The answer surprised and disappointed him. “You are like an inspector,” his counterpart told him.

The inspector role is one with which we are all familiar and one to which Iraqi counterparts also relate. Inspectors around the world usually achieve great respect for their position without much appreciation for their purpose. Iraqi leaders may meet expectations when checked, but what will happen when the American advisors acting as inspectors are gone? The inspector role can produce quick, but often only fleeting results. Fitting into it is easy. Breaking out of it is hard. It is not a good role for facilitating lasting systemic changes.

Teacher – Learner

A better role than patron-client, to which Iraqis can also easily relate is the role of teacher – learner. The role can be reciprocal and it caries less baggage related to status. The best way to use this role is to enter it on the side of being a learner.

As an initial posture for the outsider, the learner role does three things. First, it diminishes the impact of ethnocentrism and arrogance, for which Americans are well known, whether fairly or unfairly. Secondly, it creates some time and space for adjusting to new surroundings, postponing mistakes that will inevitably come. Third, it establishes a relationship grounded in humility, so that when mistakes are made, they can be more easily corrected and forgiven.

The learner role can also become an advisory tool. Any of you experienced in teaching know that you always seem to learn more about a subject by teaching it. Becoming your counterpart’s student in the areas where he most needs to change can profoundly stimulate that growth. For junior officers and NCOs likely to be disrespected for their lower status, the role can be especially empowering.

Reciprocity will usually kick in. After spending time as a learner, the outsider will usually be asked to give some instruction. Advice is always better received when solicited than when unsolicited. By modeling the ability to solicit and receive advice, you establish a non-intimidating relationship, making it easier for your counterpart to solicit and receive advice from you.

Trader

The Middle East has always been at the center of international trade routes. These countries and people have centuries of experience in hosting outsiders for mutually profitable give and take. You bring something valuable to your counterpart, otherwise your presence would not be tolerated. In fact, your survival and force protection are directly related to your perceived value.

To the degree it protects and preserves your ability to be present in a position where you can have influence, being or feeling “used” is no shame. In cross-cultural church work in undeveloped parts of the world, local indigenous pastors often use white-skinned missionaries as a kind of “side show” to attract an audience for revival meetings. A crowd gathers to see and hear the white foreigner. The pastor gets to collect names for future direct evangelistic visitation. And the white foreigner gains influential access to an otherwise closed location.

In Iraq, you bring status and funds to your Iraqi counterpart. Through these you can establish yourself in a position of value and influence. There is no shame in allowing the funds and status you bring to be exploited as a kind of “side show.” If you make funds and status central to your mission, then you risk building dependency from which you cannot extract yourself. If you resist giving the Iraqis what they want, then you undercut your perceived value and risk your own security. Giving the Iraqis what they want allows you into a position for having influence elsewhere. You just have to be sure that what you give the Iraqis does not create dependency.

Mediators

In a society where people value honor and avoid confrontation, much conflict resolution occurs through mediators. Meetings are not for deliberations. They are rubber stamps for decisions that have already been made either autocratically or through mediation.

As an outsider, you have no status or honor to lose. Therefore, Iraqis may try to use you as a mediator in their conflicts.

As an outsider representing foreign interests, the closer you get to an important Iraqi leader the more vulnerable that person becomes to appearances of being a puppet. If an important Iraqi leader is avoiding your advice, it may not be to avoid your help, but to project an appearance of personal sovereignty. In this situation, you must either find ways to gain more subtle access or send your input through a mediator.

Finally, the most significant and lasting way for you to influence Iraqi systems is through a convert to your ideas from within the Iraqi system itself. Jesus altered history with eleven disciples (the twelfth was a traitor). If you are able to make a disciple at any level, then you have had tremendous success. Your most significant and lasting impact may your least visible or measurable.

Mentors

The final role I will discuss is not for you to enter. It is for you to put others into.

As an outsider wanting to be an advisor, you must develop relationships with people within the culture who will advise you. These should be people who are different than the ones whom you are trying to influence. These will be people with whom you can be humble and vulnerable. Your relationship with them must be such that they can step in and correct you.

Mentors will often be your interpreters, but your interpreters are not enough. Your interpreters are often outsiders themselves, both to the military sub-culture and to the particular ethnic group where you are working. Your interpreters are often so thoroughly westernized themselves that they can no longer accurately understand and represent the insider’s perspective.

You must aggressively search for and develop relationships with insiders who will advise you on how you can be a better and more influential advisor, how you can be respectful, and whether you are making a cultural mistake.

Joy in the Puzzle Palace

The Army does a good job preparing you for what a specific foreign culture is like, but it doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why it is that way, or preparing you to negotiate the adjustment process and become a person of cross-cultural influence.

Embedding within a foreign society is like growing up. Both are processes with inevitable and irreversible stages. In growing up, we proceed from infancy through adolescence to either well- or poorly-adjusted adulthood. In embedding within a foreign society, we proceed through the orientation, tourist, and disillusionment stages to become either well-adjusted and constructively engaged or poorly-adjusted by either going native or becoming withdrawn.

Exerting influence from within a foreign society is like raising children. Like children, every society has a unique personality very different from our own. Wise parents steer their children into independence and maturity within the framework of their children’s personalities without either giving up or trying to alter them entirely. All societies have the same basic values, but they prioritize them differently. Influential embedded advisors have enough security in their own identity and values that they can facilitate behavioral changes within a system of values different from their own without compromising their own set of values.

Assembling a familiar looking puzzle with completely different pieces can be both frustrating and fulfilling. In Iraq, changing behaviors in order to enhance security is the puzzle. Different values priorities and insecure roles for outsiders are the pieces. Americans highly regard freedom. Iraqis more highly regard honor. Americans highly regard service. Iraqis more highly regard status. Americans readily extend forgiveness based on a promise of change. Iraqis readily extend forgiveness after justice has been served. American spirituality highlights struggling against the forces of nature and fate. Iraqi spirituality highlights submitting to nature and fate. These are just some of the many ways values priorities differ between Americans and Iraqis. Because Americans are not out to change anyone’s beliefs and values, our advising must accommodate rather than change the system we find in Iraq.

Americans in Iraq are outsiders. They don’t have access to roles of honor and influence that are open to native Iraqis, but they can assume roles to which Iraqis can relate and from which they can exert influence. They can easily become patrons, clients, traders, teachers, learners, or mediators.

Finally, for thoroughly learning the social context, Americans must develop relationships with Iraqis who will be their mentors – advisors to the advisors so to speak. And for leaving a lasting legacy, Americans must recruit insiders who will be mediators – disciples who will promote the desired behavioral changes in their own culture according to their own values system. With this approach, you have a chance of putting together the puzzle.

Bruce Sidebotham is the director of Operation Reveille. He also serves as a U.S. Army Reserve Chaplain. He can be reached at: bruce.sidebotham@us.army.mil, or through his website at: oprev.org


For Reference and Further Reading
Hesselgrave, David J. and Edward Rommen. Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models William Carey Library Publishers, Pasadena, CA, 2003.

Hiebert, Paul G. Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, Baker Book House, 1985.

Hiebert, Paul G. Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, Baker Academic, 1994.

Lingenfelter, Sherwood G. Agents of Transformation: A Guide for Effective Cross-Cultural Ministry, Baker Academic, 1996.

Lingenfelter, Sherwood G. and Marvin K. Mayers. Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships, 2nd ed., Baker Academic, 2003.

Muller, Rolland. The Messenger, The Message & The Community, self-published, 2006.

Musk, Bill. Touching the Soul of Islam, Monarch Books, 2005.

Musk, Bill. The Unseen Face of Islam, Kregel Publications, 2004.

Nanda, Serana. Cultural Anthropology, 9th ed., Wadsworth Publishing; 9 edition 2006.

O’Donnell, Kelly S., PsyD and Michelle Lewis O’Donnell, PsyD. Editors, Helping Missionaries Grow: Readings in Mental Health and Missions, William Carey Library Publishers, 1988.

Parshall, Phil. The Cross and the Crescent: Understanding the Muslim Heart and Mind, Gabriel Publishing, 2002.

Taylor, William D. ed. Too Valuable to Lose: Exploring the Causes and Cures of Missionary Attrition, William Carey Library Publishers, 1997.

Tino, James. “A Lesson from Jose: Understanding the Patron/Client Relationship,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly, July 2008.