This textbook is designed to help Marines link concepts of culture to the realities of planning and executing military operations around the world. The book has three primary goals:

• To provide a theoretically sound framework of five basic cultural dimensions, based on clear, academically accurate definitions, which are relevant to military missions.
• To apply these basic cultural principles to actual environments to which Marines and other members of the U.S. military have deployed, or may deploy in the future, showing how the principles of Operational Culture can be applied across the geographic and kinetic spectrum of operations.
• To develop a capacity among Marines at all levels to think systematically about culture, and to apply that thinking to learning about culture in both professional military education and pre-deployment training.

This book is of equal utility to company-grade and field-grade officers, as well as for staff non-commissioned officers (SNCOs). It is to be used in the classrooms of the Marine Corps, and will also serve as a reference tool in the fleet. Finally, it can help commanders and planners to incorporate culture in every step of the road prior to and during deployment, from unit training, to planning, to the ongoing commander’s evaluation of the battlespace. These capabilities are particularly germane in current and future operating environments.