Culture and Morality: Intercultural Interactions during Military Deployments

In peacekeeping and training missions foreign soldiers come in close contact with the local population. How do they experience this intercultural contact? To what extend do they experience a conflict between their moral principles and the moral principles of the local population? To what extend are (some of) these principles culture specific or are universal moral principles violated? And what does this imply for military missions in different cultural contexts, such as the Kunduz Police Trainings Missions?

                We focus on the close relation between morality and culture in military deployments. The main issue in this paper is twofold, namely theoretical and practical. The first one considers the relation between morality and culture according to leading theories on these concepts.  The second one is about the extent to which military personnel experience the relationship between morality and culture (whether or not conflicting) during their deployments as described in literature.  We study these issues on the basis of research data collected during and after military deployments.