Standard narratives of the American war in Vietnam contend that the US Army squandered its chances of victory because of misguided strategy. Such works claim that once President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed American ground combat troops to South Vietnam, General William C. Westmoreland, the US military commander in Vietnam, pursued an ill-advised strategy of attrition. Worse, these narratives continue, the general implemented this strategy despite being presented with a clearly better alternative from US Marine Corps commanders operating in the northern provinces of South Vietnam. Such conventional wisdom, however, presents a flawed understanding of American strategy under Westmoreland, who never subscribed to an “either–or” approach to confronting the political-military threat inside South Vietnam. At no point did Westmoreland concentrate solely on conventional battle at the expense of counterinsurgency. Likewise, the general never believed local civic action or pacification programs to be a panacea. In reality, American strategy from 1964 to 1968 rested on a belief that South Vietnam was facing a dual threat – both conventional and unconventional – that required a similarly comprehensive response. By reexamining American strategy under Westmoreland, one finds no “missed opportunity,” a conclusion that raises important questions about the limits of American military power abroad in the mid-1960s.

The present chapter presents a recent historical description of the implementation of cross-cultural competence (3C) training programs throughout the United States (US) military. Training for 3C in the military aims at increasing foreign cultural understanding and providing behavioral strategies necessary to improve interactions in a foreign operational environment or with people of different national backgrounds. The importance of 3C was highlighted through a DoD Strategic Plan and an active body of basic and applied research throughout the DoD from 2007 to 2014. However, by 2018, its strategic value waned, except for a few activities within the Marines and US Air Force. Some of the challenges 3C training programs experienced were: (1) limited funding to conduct training evaluations, (2) balancing a need for culture-specific training for immediate deployment vs. culture-general training for having a military force at the ready for "any-time" deployment, and (3) inconsistent language to operationalize “culture” across the forces. After a review of US military 3C training programs from mid 2000s, this chapter concludes with propositions for stimulating a demand signal and furthering valid evaluation research on the effectiveness of 3C training.