The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

32 Chapter 1
of the indigenous noncombatants with whom Marines interacted in counterinsurgency
tasks and the insurgents they pursued colored the approach
to these two populations.
Hone Data to Critical Cultural Factors
The gathering of data in each of the four aforementioned categories is pursued
within the spirit of interpretivist research and Grounded Theory: seeking
an “insider” understanding of a particular group through the collection
of “rich data.” Data collection and analysis occur simultaneously in order
to code cultural traits and assemble them into consistent patterns. Categories
become “saturated” when newly gathered data from multiple sources
no longer offer surprises or fresh insights. 72 Once saturation is achieved to
satisfaction, cultural data is evaluated for relevance (for the issue selected),
robustness—an evaluation of the level to which a particular trait has been
internalized by a critical component of the population—and, perhaps most
important, the likelihood of a cultural factor or trait to provoke a response
(cooperative or conflictual) when the strategist engages this group on this
issue. Those cultural traits that consistently surfaced across multiple data
sets and passed relevance, robustness, and likelihood to provoke a response
tests are deemed “critical cultural factors” and are assessed as key components
of a group’s operational cultural narrative.
Map the Scope of Critical Cultural Factors across
Cultural Influences and Assess Results
Critical cultural factors that surfaced across research and are assessed as
key components of the group’s operational cultural narrative on this issue
in this era are tracked back to their source—the cultural domain from which
they are primarily derived (ethnic, organizational, national, religious)—in
order to determine scope (which portion of the larger population is likely
to espouse the same cultural narrative) and to aid strategists in crafting
tailored operations engaging this group on this issue. If the strategist is
looking internally at his own security forces, this portion of the exercise
allows him to assess which of the cultural factors deemed “advantageous”
to the security policy in question stem from peculiarities within a service
organization and which are simply products of being reared within a particular
nation, ethnic group, region, or other cultural setting. If the advantageous
cultural factors are absent from organizational or service culture
but do not run counter to it and can be emphasized during training in
ways genuinely internalized by new recruits (the principal purpose of boot
camp), then leadership has the opportunity to change training in order to