Emily Spencer undertakes a daunting task in writing Solving the People Puzzle: Cultural Intelligence and Special Operations Forces. In one short book she tries to introduce and explain the concept of cultural intelligence as applied to contemporary military operations while tying it to special forces operations in what she calls the “contemporary operating environment.” The contemporary operating environment, she explains, is war in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq—or any of the many insurgencies raging around the globe today.
The strength of this book is that Spencer succeeds admirably in spelling out what cultural intelligence is and why it is so important for military forces today. She also gives a somewhat abridged but equally valuable account of what special forces are (including Canada’s own Joint Task Force Two) and why they are so suited to some of the needs of counter-insurgency war. She does less well in tying cultural...
David J. Bercuson is a professor of history and the director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. He is also a senior research fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.
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