I regularly have the privilege to assist organizations in their preparations to deploy or interact with other cultures. What I include below is material that I recommend to such organizations to support this training. I have divided most of it into reading and viewing and then into the three main categories of training that I provide: cross-cultural influence or Bees and Spiders, Middle East history, and narrative war.
I have purposely limited the material to stuff that I hope people will actually read or watch.
I have purposely limited the material to stuff that I hope people will actually read or watch.
Reading
Bees and Spiders: Applied Cultural Awareness and the Art of Cross-Cultural InfluenceBees and Spiders provides answers on how to develop real influence that does not come through massive military presence or big budgets. These answers promote the idea of influence through developing relationships. Such relationships can provide influence that lasts even when there are few military forces and little money. This influence is lasting because it is empathy-based. Bees and Spiders explains the critical nature of developing empathy, and provides usable and useful recommendations for turning simple understanding into the possibility of seeing the world from another perspective.
Click on the book cover to go to the Amazon.com page. Click on the .pdf to get a three page article published years before the book came out. 
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"The Middle East - America's Hotel California"On 7 October 2023 Hamas attacked Israel with thousands of fighters who broke through the barriers separating the Gaza Strip from Israel and ravaged numerous communities. For weeks following that fateful day news reporters, analysts, and pundits gave opinions, explanations, and projected possible events while most viewers wanted to know why it happened or why the demonstrations were happening. What is included in the linked article is an attempt to provide an answer to those questions.
In short, this is an attempt to describe the creation and change of the narrative space landscape associated with the Israel-Palestine conflict as well as that of the greater Middle East. Click on the Narrative Strategies Journal to see the article in publication. Click on the .pdf to get the article separately. 
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"Narrative Leads Kinetic Warfare"The chapter below is the single best expression of narrative space and how actors maneuver within the narrative space to achieve success in war today.
It is chapter one in the book Dangerous Narratives: Warfare, Strategy, Statecraft. Both the book and the chapter are linked below. Narrative war includes everything that is said, done, and shown. It is words, deeds, and images. Narrative war is larger than the common conceptualization of war. It is more holistic and almost all encompassing. This chapter identifies the big ideas associated with narrative war to understand the concepts of the primary philosophy of war operant in the twenty-first century. The big ideas include an understanding of what narrative war is, how it operates or functions, and how one can successfully engage in it. Click on the book cover to go to the Amazon.com page. Click on the .pdf to get the chapter exclusive from the book. 
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Watching
I have not recorded nor had posted Bees and Spiders presentations so the watch videos are divided only into two categories: Middle East History and Narrative War. They are posted here with the most important on top and then lesser ones beneath.
Other presentations are linked on the presentations page on this website.
Other presentations are linked on the presentations page on this website.
WWI Changed Us: WWI to 9/11 - Brian SteedTime: 1:15:28
17 September 2021 National WWI Museum and Memorial The web presentation was done as a commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. Many of the conflicts and issues of our world have their beginnings in the Great War. Colonialism and imperialism left their mark as the Ottoman Empire collapsed following its defeat in 1918. The creation of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the dissolution of the Caliphate after the war served as catalysts for state and non-state conflicts. The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Middle East without regard to nationalities, religion, ethnicity, or history. These events planted the seeds for future struggles. Ft. Leavenworth - ISIS, Abu Bakr Naji, and the Management of SavageryTime: 1:08:00
4 February 2021 The Dole Institute of Politics The web presentation was done as part of an interaction between the US Army Command and General Staff School Department of Military History and the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas that was focused on military theorists over time and I opted to present on the Management of Savagery. This is the most important military theory for military and national security professionals in the twenty-first century. |
Psychological Operations - NarrativeTime: 1:03:03
29 January 2021 1st Special Forces Command This is a discussion between COL Jeremy Mushtare of the 8th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), Dr. Ajit Maan of the U.S. based think-tank Narrative Strategies, and Brian L. Steed. The discussion lays out the basics of narrative. |