Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 68

diplomatic skills; the significance of relevant military
expertise; the importance of role modeling (from apropriate moral boundaries to proper military procedures); and, the need for adaptability and flexibility (to
adjust to unique, ambiguous, and shifting conditions).
Among the first obstacles U.S. advisors had to overcome during the Korean and Vietnam War eras was
the low opinion conventional military units commonly
held with regard to the advisory mission. Mainstream
U.S. military organizations commonly misunderstood
and tended to marginalize the unconventional advising
mission due to the belief that the advisory mission was
a soft activity of questionable utility as compared to
traditional, conventional combat operations.
In addition to the challenge of overcoming skepticism and a lack of support from U.S. units, advisors also
had to perform a highly stressful cross-cultural juggling
act with their foreign counterparts. Advisors had to
simultaneously understand counterpart military units’
disparate cultures and objectives—and try to align
their counterparts’ objectives with those of the U.S.
military.
Successful advisors effectively balanced these diverse
interests by adopting a patient, tolerant, and diplomatic
approach with their counterparts. In contrast, unsuccessful U.S. advisors included those who inadequately
muzzled the commanding, take-charge styles they
typically used with U.S. troop formations. Additionally,
some advisors suffered from expecting their South
Korean or South Vietnamese counterparts to mirror
U.S. military procedures or meet U.S. performance
standards, which proved to be an unreasonable and
ineffectual advisory approach for the circumstances.
And, at other times, advisors inappropriately tried to
give orders to their counterparts, even though advisors
did not possess the command authority to do so.
Some U.S. advisors’ inability or unwillingness to
change these approaches toward their South Korean or
South Vietnamese counterparts reduced their effectiveness, or worse, aroused hostility. In some extreme
cases, South Korean counterparts intentionally stranded their most-hated U.S. advisors on battlefields during
the Korean War, which illustrated how some advisors’
lack of cross-cultural skills reduced their chances of
survival in combat situations.7
In addition, it is useful to compare the impact of
new technologies in previous eras of advisors with
66

contemporary times. The introduction of new technologies appears to have had similar effects on the
U.S. advising missions over time. For example, during
the Vietnam War, for the first time in history, U.S.
citizens watched reports (though sanitized) about the
war on television, while an extremely small number
of Vietnamese citizens shared the same tec