The Lethality of Relationships: Understanding Culture is a Necessary Skill

“The Lethality of Relationships: Understanding Culture is a Necessary Skill,” by Mark Koopman, CSM (ret.) and Dr. Emily Stranger, Special Warfare Journal, January 15, 2026.

This article argues that cultural competence and relationship-building are essential force multipliers for special operations forces. When “the population is the center of gravity,” understanding that population becomes imperative for mission success. Comprehensive interdisciplinary cultural education, not just hardware or superficial “Dos and Don’ts,” is a critical skill that special operations forces need to build partner resilience and prevail in irregular warfare against peer competitors.

The authors join many leaders across the special operations enterprise who have expressed concern that the trend toward SOF convergence with exquisite technology may signal higher leadership’s overemphasis on tech at the expense of human-centric competencies and core tasks.

Special Operations is about the People

Autonomous systems, dual-use technologies, and a cutting-edge arsenal may defeat the enemy kinetically, but they won’t win the hearts and minds on the ground or leave a lasting footprint. There is a reason that one of the SOF Truths is ‘Humans are more important than hardware’ and that ‘the best equipment in the world cannot compensate for a lack of the right people’…Drawing on Col. John Boyd’s assertion that ‘people, ideas, and hardware—in that order’ matter most, we can further refine our previous idea. Equipment is important, but not more important than ideas, and the ideas are not more important than the people.

The Need for Comprehensive Cultural Education

Forging partnerships requires more than showing up with shiny equipment and a rigorous training regimen. Knowing the regional culture and local dynamics in the operational environment is imperative…Simply providing our personnel with a list of cultural ‘Dos and Don’ts’ and a country study flipbook to pack in their rucksack is not sufficient…teaching and practicing universal cultural skillsets provides Soldiers with a cultural ‘toolbox’ that enables them to interface successfully with other cultures.

The 1st SFC(A) Regional Expertise and Culture Program

Our program provides pre-deployment support to 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) units prior to their departure for their areas of responsibility or to their assigned countries…Our holistic training provides ARSOF Soldiers with a better understanding of intrastate conflict where they may deploy and highlights the complexities they face in the operating environment.

Cultural Competencies are Essential Skills

With the current focus on technology, we worry these essential skills and knowledge will be seen as parochial pursuits during USASOC’s force modernization efforts…Our program has developed an assessment tool to evaluate Soldiers on their cultural competencies during scenario-based training. Called the adaptive readiness for culture (ARC), the rubric is designed to evaluate five specific cultural competencies identified as crucial for building relationships and working with partner forces.

Conclusion

In today’s security environment, irregular warfare will be necessary to thwart power competitors like Russia and China, whose ‘strategies do not fit into conventional paradigms of conflict.’ The ability for our Soldiers to engage with partner forces and foreign civilian populations is more important than ever to build intrastate resilience against insurgencies and prevail in great power conflict. For this reason, not only should there be more emphasis on Regional Expertise and Culture training for our forces, but it should be prioritized.

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