Cultural Awareness In The Military

While there are numerous qualities a good leader must have, cultural awareness is one of the most important ones, especially in the Army. Cultural awareness creates the most cohesion and efficiency within a unit and with civilians. Within the Army, everyone has different backgrounds, to understand cultural awareness, the first step is to understand the four components that define culture. First, values are things that an individual or group deeply care about whether it is an idea or some representation. It is anything “important through a relative and subjective view”, (United

States Army, 2017); these are things like honor or tradition. Cultural awareness incorporates values because by understanding them, soldiers know how to approach

Normally, everything about culture happens for a reason. There are seven defining factors for culture, and they are: climate, land, water, religion, economics, geography, and social and political. In every society, the abundance or lack of these factors dictate those four aspects of culture. With the lack of water, a community’s values might include rain. Whatever those factors are, they can also be a part of property that the Army must protect. When planning a mission, it is important that leaders note the cultural property that a community has. The Army takes every precaution to avoid the destruction of this property. Of course, this promotes good will with the community, but it also demonstrates that the Army cares for the welfare of others and their belongings. Additionally, even if the mission does not state it, it is every soldiers’ duty to provide protection to any culturally valuable property. Cultural awareness helps bring together people from different backgrounds. Of all the aspects, the most important is values because all the others usually depend on that one. I