In order to develop successful selection procedures, training materials, and management policies for military assistance program (MAP) advisers, the conditions under which they work were analyzed, including identifying the culturally determined preferences counterparts have for the people with whom they wish to work, and the extent to which advisors and counterparts satisfy what each regards as critical role behaviors of the other. U.S. Army advisory personnel assigned to the U.S. Army Advisory Group, Korea (KMAG) and counterparts in the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) were surveyed in the summer and fall of 1966. Through rating scales and questionnaires, observations were made of the kinds of personalities with whom advisors and counterparts most preferred to work. In addition, advisors and counterparts judged one another in terms of a large number of role behaviors previously identified as important.

The Army has recently embarked on massive advisory missions with foreign militaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the globe. This historical study examines three cases in which the U.S. Army has performed this same mission in the last half of the 20th century, In Korea during the 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and in El Salvador in the 1980s. The Army thought it learned: The need for U.S. advisors to have extensive language and cultural training, the lesser importance for them of technical and tactical skills training, and the need to adapt U.S. organizational concepts, training techniques, and tactics to local conditions. These lessons are still important and relevant today. This is a print on demand report.