Center for a New American Security

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The budget deal, which would finance federal agencies until the end of September, would slash funds for these Department of Education programs by 40 percent, or $50-million, reducing their allocation to $76-million.

 

"A cut of that magnitude to such small programs really has a huge impact," says Miriam A. Kazanjian, a consultant with the Coalition for International Education. "It would be devastating."

 

In particular, she says the teaching of "critical" foreign languages, like Arabic and Farsi, and studies of various regions of the world would suffer, hurting America's national security and competitiveness in the global economy. ...

 

Ms. Kazanjian says she was surprised that the Title VI and Fulbright-Hays programs were the focus for such deep cuts. The programs, some of which began 50 years ago to counter research gains made by the Soviet Union, received increases in federal dollars after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when the government wanted more graduates with fluency in Afghan languages like Pashto.

 

The budget deal "rolls these programs back to 2001 levels," she says.

Much like the International Affairs budget, which includes funding for the Dept. of State and USAID, funds that support the study of critical languages should be understood as part of our national security expenditures. I myself was the recipient of a 2007 fellowship that allowed me to spend a summer in Morocco in an advanced Arabic program* that helped get my Arabic up to the level I needed to pore through newspaper archives in Beirut while researching a dissertation on Hizballah. And I would happily pay a little more in taxes to keep these programs going.

But hey, it's probably safe to cut funding for these languages. It's hard to see Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere in the Arabic-speaking world causing issues in terms of U.S. national security interests anytime soon.

*Some of my classmates in this program are not currently doing anything remotely related to U.S. national security, I should add. I should also add, though, that some of my classmates in this program are now doing really important work in the U.S. government in jobs related to the Arabic-speaking world.

Rachel Maddow just forced me to pronounce the name of this blog on live television, which is how I ended up giving approximately 1.2 million Americans a lesson in how to pronounce the ق in Arabic.

I'll post a video of the interview tomorrow. It is significant mainly because I have discovered in the past 24 hours that both retired three-star generals and Rachel Maddow read this blog on a daily basis.

Crazy. When you guys are going to get me an interview with O'Reilly is what I want to know.

Oh, and I am not wearing a tie for the interview, so I'll also have to share that tie you buy for Yochi and Nir.

Michael Slackman had a good article in the New York Times today about an English-language program the USG quietly started in 2004:

Ms. Yousef picked up her new language and thinking skills as part of Access, an after school English language program that is a small, almost invisible corner of the United States Department of State’s multibillion-dollar budget. It is a low profile, delayed-impact program that aims to promote change and understanding from the bottom up. Since its inception in 2004, it has taught 32,000 students in 50 countries. Access arrived in Egypt about two years ago and 182 teenagers from all over the country, Christians and Muslims, young men and young women, have graduated from the program. The only requirement is that they come from poor families.

First off, I am a huge fan of these kinds of programs. They strike me as more effective COIN than most of the capture/kill missions I have been on in Iraq and Afghanistan. As far as information operations go, I would argue they are invaluable to any kind of long-term strategy. But toward the end of the article, the students themselves ask a good question of a U.S. ambassador:

“Their first question to the ambassador was, ‘What’s next for us?’ ” said Robert Lindsey, the State Department’s Egypt coordinator for Access.

The students seemed disappointed by the answer. They were told there were no more steps to Access, that it could help them get into other programs, but that would be up to them.

“We don’t want it to be two years that just passed and then it’s over,” said Sandy Morris, 15, of Minya.

“We took the first step, so we want to take the next step,” said Bishoy Wanees, 15, also of Minya.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me, Bishoy. So allow me to give some free advice to the U.S. government based upon personal experience. As some of you know, I was a classics major in college. When I left the U.S. Army in 2004, that contributed to me being interesting to speak with at a cocktail party but pretty much tits on a bull when it came to international travel. I didn't speak a single living language other than English. I then lived in Lebanon and Egypt while studying Arabic for the next two years. But that wasn't the only language I learned -- I also learned French. I studied French for almost three years in the French cultural centers in Beirut and Cairo -- which offer good, cheap language instruction (subsidized by the French tax-payer) -- in addition to the Alliance Française here in Washington, DC. I also took advantage one summer of a great program -- originally set up for U.S. veterans of the First World War -- at the Sorbonne. The French -- like the British, with the British Council -- take the teaching of their language seriously. And if you go to a French cultural center, the odds are high that you can take classes in French from the novice to advanced levels. But what are you to do then? Well, the French push the application to French universities hard to students who achieve a high degree of proficiency in the language. It strikes me that we Americans should do the same for the Egyptians and Sudanese and Bulgarians and Vietnamese who learn English well enough to rock the TOEFL. Why not? Our university system is considered to be one of the best (if not the best) in the world, and international students who study in the U.S. tend to think highly of our country. (There are, ahem, notable exceptions.) So we should partner this language program with a program that rewards the very best students with a chance to study in the U.S. -- even if it's only for a year-long exchange.

In other and unrelated news, I just had a pint of beer with Charlie at the Hawk and Dove, and Michael Phelps was on the television. Charlie and I are in agreement that all this business over Phelps smoking a little weed is stupid and that all the sponsors should have spent their outrage a few years ago when Phelps got caught driving drunk. Now that is something to be punished for. Smoking weed at a private party, while stupid, is almost harmless. A**holes driving drunk, by contrast, are what kills single mothers on their way home from working the night shift.

Allegedly, this blog is meant to be a resource for folks wanting to learn more about counterinsurgency. So there's really no excuse or reason why we have not done a better job highlighting the new issue of Small Wars Journal's magazine -- available via the same Small Wars Journal website you check every day.

Abu Muqawama only recently got the time to actually read some of the articles in the magazine, and he started with Ben Connable's Culture Warriors: Marine Corps Organizational Culture and Adaptation to Cultural Terrain. For those of you out there who grew up in the Army and know next to nothing about the history of the Marine Corps, this article might be of some interest. For those of you who grew up in the Army, know next to nothing about the Marine Corps and have an interest in guerrilla warfare, this article is a must-read. Last week, T.X. Hammes was telling some story about Red Mike Edson and Chesty Puller, and Abu Muqawama was like, who the %$#@ is Red Mike Edson? I mean, we've all heard of Chesty Puller, but Abu Muqawama had no idea who Red Mike Edson was until T.X. told his story. (Our Marine readers are now horrified.) From the perspective of a COIN enthusiast, the entire history of the Marine Corps and small wars is fascinating. It also makes one wonder which histories of the Marine Corps Gen. Conway has been reading when he says the Marine Corps is getting away from its "historical mission" when it fights small wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Connable, by the way, has been one of the real leaders in the fight to make cultural and language education a part of every soldier and Marine's pre-deployment training. He is a true "COIN All-Star," to borrow afghanistanica's phrase, and we here at Abu Muqawama salute him.