In this initial special topics issue, Robert Greene Sands and Pieter DeVisser suggest, in their detailed look at the DoD’s language, regional expertise and culture (LREC) program, that there lacks any kind of sufficient assessment mechanism to provide organizations critical understanding of their LREC capability, while failing to also provide the individual learner with a measure of performance useful to professional career development.

The US Army’s diverse strategic interests around the globe require its Soldiers and leaders to be comfortable and effective working in a variety of cultural contexts.

The purpose of this report is to identify best practices in operational-level advising from the special operations advisory mission in Afghanistan. The report also identifies key recommendations that are intended to help address key challenges in operational-level partnering.

Increasingly, the United States Army operates in multinational, and therefore, multicultural, environments. Teamwork within such settings requires the ability to see events as members of other cultures see them. The goal of the research was to define a set of multicultural perspective taking skills that will enable Army leaders to function effectively in multinational alliances.