Culture Influences Partnerships

This picture comes from an album on the US Pacific Command's Facebook page.

Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words. This exchange is important, because it represents a cultural issue the US Navy will have as it builds a relationship with Vietnam. It also represents one potential reason why a US aircraft carrier could not be welcome to visit Vietnam.

There is a gift exchange culture in Vietnam that would make life very difficult for the relatively poor country when 5000 sailors come ashore. Gift giving is important to Vietnamese because of the significance of interpersonal relationships in Vietnamese culture, and the symbolism it has within the context of special occasions (like a US Navy destroyer partnership exchange and port call).

This picture represents one of things on my mind when I wrote the last paragraph in this article yesterday. I am not suggesting we make force structure decisions based on these issues, but I think everyone would agree that cultural issues are important when developing our partnership strategies. The USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) has a crew of around 270. I wonder how the US Navy handled the gift exchange culture with so many sailors.

I know it is a small thing, but small things matter a lot with soft power.