Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 93

SOCIAL FACTORS

(Photo by Suhaib Salem, Reuters)

A protester holds a cross and Koran during a protest demanding that Islamist Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi resign 1 July 2013 at
Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. Morsi had taken steps to rewrite the Egyptian constitution to impose sharia law on the secular government
and limit non-Muslim rights in the country. Backed by massive numbers of protestors in the street, Egypt’s powerful armed forces later
forced Morsi from power and organized a new election that greatly reduced the power of Morsi supporters.

analytical tool during planning to focus on specific elements of the human domain within the operational environment, these specific factors, in a manner of expression,
are a subset of the social element of PMESII-PT.

Social Factors
Akin to other mission analysis tools, social factors are
used to build situational understanding. Commanders
and staff can analyze and describe an operational environment in terms of a mnemonic that employs six interrelated social factors: moral, religious-spiritual, social,
political, economic, and aesthetical (MRsSPEA). Figure 2
(page 93) provides a brief description of each factor.
While developers at the proponent level have yet to
codify the social factors as a doctrinal framework, the
Army has been working with these social factors under
different auspices and through a variety of means.
Country briefs, cultural studies, and comprehensive
language classes all contribute to a leader’s understanding of social factors. Not actually having the MRsSPEA
MILITARY REVIEW  May-June 2016

framework available, much of the understanding
gained from these briefs, studies, and classes has heretofore not been applied in systematic and structured way
in the MDMP.
These factors employed systematically to organize
key considerations with regard to dealing with a society,
culture, group, or tribe within the human domain provide
information that can be used to develop situational
understanding and frame a problem during the initial
planning phases, MDMP steps one and two.9 What does
this look like in action? Consider its application to a modern-day deployment to the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

A Framework Application Example
The MRsSPEA framework serves as analytical tool
for commanders and staff to get ahead of a threat’s decision making cycle by focusing on those elements of the
human domain that contribute to its ability to act. As
we increase our understanding of the social factors for a
particular society, we also increase our understanding of
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