Maximizing The Reciprocal Benefits of International Military Education
An extensive network of alliances and partnerships has provided the United States (US) with a strategic advantage over competitors for decades. Amid the growth of China’s influence in the economic sphere, US military alliances remain a strength. Although the current administration approaches these relationships differently, emphasizing burden sharing to a greater degree than past administrations, reliance on allies and partners has been one area of continuity in US defense strategy. One way that the United States has maintained and expanded partnerships is through the education and training of international military personnel alongside their American counterparts. Educating allies and partners is not simply a military aid and assistance program; it advances US security interests globally and directly benefits US military personnel through their sustained exposure to international colleagues.
Since 1976, the Department of State and the Department of Defense have collaborated to implement the formal program for these efforts, known as the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. The aims of IMET largely focus on influencing service members of ally and partner nations: increasing partner capabilities, supporting security sector reforms, and advancing both democratic norms and human rights. IMET also exposes participants to the range of US instruments of national power. These outcomes provide immediate benefits to partner nations and delayed benefits for the US, by increasing interoperability after international students return home and enhancing the appeal of the United States as a strategic partner.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is similarly investing in professional military education (PME) for international partners. Advancing its economic and military partnerships, the PRC now offers both intermediate- and senior-level officer education and master’s degree programs to international officers from nations in Africa and the South Pacific. These efforts expand strategic competition to the arena of PME, as the PRC’s international education includes ideological aims and rejects democratic norms of civil-military relations.
Consequently, in strategic competition, IMET makes important contributions to US strategic alliances and partnerships. Interoperability yields critical advantages in an era marked by multipolarity. Investments in IMET can yield outsized payoffs through more effective multinational collaboration at the interpersonal level, which can sustain the traditional US position as the partner of choice.
Benefits of IMET to US Military Personnel
IMET offers additional benefits that are both near and long-term. The program not only professionalizes and helps forge alignment among multinational partners, but it also professionally develops US forces, particularly through sustained interactions in PME. Lasting reciprocal benefits are most likely to emerge from resident officer PME programs with extended curricula—the intermediate-level staff colleges and senior-level war colleges—where students are immersed in an educational setting for ten months.
First, the duration of resident PME programs allows for deepening and broadening professional networks through meaningful relationships built on trust. PME alumni in senior leader roles who return to the institutions they attended often report that the relationships they formed were instrumental in facilitating collaboration later. The relatively low-pressure and immersive PME environment lends itself to cementing foundational relationships before graduates are confronted with the fast-paced demands of high-stakes command and staff positions.
Second, the relatively large student populations in resident PME programs present opportunities to connect with many nations, personnel, and professional experiences. This functional mix helps build the profession’s shared expertise and expands officers’ perspectives. A profession consists of jurisdiction over specific functions, legitimacy, and expertise. Whereas jurisdiction and legitimacy are mutually constituted between the military profession and the society and government it serves, expertise is largely defined by the members of the profession. International military education ensures the domains of military expertise include multinational dimensions.
International officers selected to attend resident PME courses in the United States are often among the top-performing officers in their nations.
Third, interactions with international students build US students’ interpersonal and cognitive skills. In particular, strategic empathy and creativity benefit from multinational experiences, skills that become increasingly important at more senior ranks. Collaboration with international partners replaces simplistic stereotypes with more accurate understanding and appreciation of common professional identity. Research has also shown increases in creativity following multicultural experiences, from experiences as varied as having foreign friends to living in a foreign culture. These experiences challenge assumptions and established problem-solving approaches, expanding students’ use of alternative and more flexible approaches.
International officers selected to attend resident PME courses in the United States are often among the top-performing officers in their nations. At the US Army War College, 60% of international fellows are subsequently promoted to General Officer, and many go on to serve as Chiefs of Defense or in civilian senior leadership roles after their military service. As a result, US students not only have the opportunity to build relationships with the very personnel they will encounter in operational settings later, but also to interact with the sharpest military minds from other nations.
High levels of international participation in PME can therefore provide US students a more challenging environment for their own development. The adult learning model of senior service college centers on dialogue and experiential learning events, which provide the kind of contact conducive to collaboration with multinational peers. Research on the contact hypothesis indicates that the conditions necessary to benefit from multinational contact include common goals, cooperation, and equal status. Resident PME is well-positioned to set these conditions, thereby ensuring that multinational collaboration contributes to intellectual overmatch, as the JCS Vision for PME and Talent Management has directed.
Recommendations
The following recommendations will help maximize the benefits of international military education for both the US and our international partners. Within IMET, security vetting and education in democratic values have rightly received increased attention. The recommendations outlined here will further improve IMET’s contributions to US strategic goals.
Align IMET with strategic defense priorities. IMET seat allocation at resident PME programs currently seems to favor the broad dispersal of stagnant funding across many different countries. This approach may reflect hedging against strategic uncertainty by signaling some small commitment to many military partners, but the trade-off of this approach is an inability to align scarce IMET resources with strategic priorities. For example, the clear designation of the PRC as the strategic pacing challenge should result in corresponding shifts in IMET seat allocations, e.g., prioritizing countries whose capabilities and locations are most important to the United States in the INDOPACOM Area of Responsibility. Combatant Command input should still play a role in IMET resourcing decisions, but ultimately, the alignment of training seats to national strategy should take precedence. Officers from those nations ranked lower for strategic IMET prioritization in 10-month courses could be afforded shorter-duration educational opportunities through IMET.
Sustain resources for IMET. While the scale and complexity of multinational military exercises like Talisman Sabre and Cobra Gold have grown in response to the strategic environment, IMET spending has remained largely unchanged. Funding for IMET has remained flat since at least 2000, adjusted for inflation. Although a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from 2012 indicated that IMET funding had increased 70% from 2000 to 2010, it does not account for inflation.
IMET’s reach has even retracted. Though the number of nations participating in IMET remained stable from FY2000 to FY2022 (125 to 121, respectively), the number of individual participating students has significantly declined from about 9,000 to 5,000, according to Foreign Military Training reports compiled by the Department of State. Further reducing throughput in IMET may provide small cost savings but would degrade the educational experience for US personnel.
Sending high-potential US officers to university-based fellowships within the United States, in lieu of resident SSC, represents a missed opportunity for greater interoperability.
To expand or even simply maintain current numbers of international students, the Department of Defense must sustain the prioritization of 10-month resident PME curricula for IMET resources. Similarly, the Services should avoid making budget cuts that compromise the number and quality of faculty and the supporting academic infrastructure. The benefits outlined here depend on sustaining small class sizes. Smaller class sizes better lend themselves to active learning methods, including graduate-level dialogue and experiential learning, which are needed for proficiency in the art and science of warfare.
Evaluate both US and international outcomes of IMET. Program evaluation for IMET demands dramatic improvement in light of China’s extensive prioritization of similar programs for international military engagement, especially in the Global South. The current annual reports account for throughput but do not address measures of effectiveness. PME institutions that host IMET students are tracking some outcomes for their alumni, and those fragmented efforts should be compiled to help evaluate IMET more broadly. In a 2014 Joint Force Quarterly article, Thacker and Lambert noted the absence of clear responsibility for tracking IMET outcomes and international alumni. Ensuring a feedback pathway for evaluating outcomes against program aims will help inform funding decisions.
Ensure English language proficiency of IMET students. For resident PME courses, international students must be sufficiently proficient in English to integrate into graduate-level education and seminar dialogue with high-potential US military leaders. This may require expanding opportunities for more students to receive English instruction in advance of the 10-month curriculum. Teaching English language courses at PME institutions would allow IMET students to get a head start before US students arrive for a fall start and ease their acculturation to the United States. English courses within resident PME would also ensure that the vocabulary students learn is appropriate to the technical context and operational level of the academic program. US and IMET students do not get the full benefit of the educational experience if the international students cannot fully participate in the graduate classroom setting or meaningfully contribute in wargames and practical exercises.
Align talent management of US students. For resident senior-service college (SSC) slating, the Services should prioritize selecting officers with demonstrated promotion potential for General Officer/Flag Officer to maximize their opportunity to build meaningful multinational networks. Sending high-potential US officers to university-based fellowships within the United States, in lieu of resident SSC, represents a missed opportunity for greater interoperability. IMET partner nations are sending their high-potential officers to US SSCs; the Services should capitalize on this opportunity for their officers to build relationships with peers they will work with in future multinational operations. Of course, this consideration should be weighed against the potential benefits of US university-based fellowships, including access to unique civilian education opportunities, exposing US domestic academic audiences to high-quality officers, and the US officers’ own goals for family stability or other preferences.
Design US-international integration into PME curricula. Faculty and instructors should intentionally design opportunities for international participation in PME. For example, programs should use classified instruction for US students sparingly in their core curricula to keep the US and IMET cohorts learning together during the formative months of resident PME. US-only classified instruction is more appropriate later in the academic year when students select their individualized learning paths. Instructors may also benefit from faculty development to promote joint and multinational perspectives throughout the program.
This integration should extend to the social environment. Education and training programs can design social activities that require international learning by US students, not just provide US experiences for the international students. IMET intentionally exposes international students to the US way of life as part of inculcating democratic values. US students would likewise benefit from learning about other nations, especially their military personnel practices, professional development pathways, and civil-military relations. This US-international integration is a key point of contrast with the PRC’s international military education, which tends to separate much of the education of African officers from that provided to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Conclusion
In our own experiences in the classroom, international participation provides critical perspective on security strategy that cannot be replicated without the much greater expense of sending US officers abroad for extensive international travel. Though there is no substitute for immersion in another country to better understand the range of challenges and perspectives partner nations face, bringing international officers into the PME classroom is a critical asset to developing strategic leaders ready for strategic competition. Prioritizing IMET will help the United States preserve intellectual overmatch.
