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Refining strategic culture: return of the second generation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2010

EDWARD LOCK
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Abstract

This article seeks to refine the concept of ‘strategic culture’ and to highlight some appropriate methods of analysis through which this concept might be applied in empirical studies. In doing so, I seek to synthesise a much ignored element of strategic culture literature – Bradley Klein's ‘second generation’ approach – with insights drawn from contemporary critical constructivist theory. The resulting conception of strategic culture presents a less deterministic account of culture than that found in much existing literature regarding. It also provides far greater critical potential with regard to the analysis of the strategic practices of states and other actors. More generally, this conception of strategic culture leads us to ask how strategic culture serves to constitute certain strategic behaviour as meaningful but also how strategic behaviour serves to constitute the identity of those actors that engage in such behaviour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 685 - 708
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

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References

1 Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘Strategic Cultures Revisited: Reply to Colin Gray’, Review of International Studies, 25:3 (1999), pp. 519–23; Colin Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back’, Review of International Studies, 25:1 (1999), pp. 49–69; Stuart Poore, ‘What is the Context? A Reply to the Gray-Johnston Debate on Strategic Culture’, Review of International Studies, 29:2 (2003), pp. 279–84.

2 See, for example, Paul Cornish and Geoffrey Edwards, ‘Beyond the EU/NATO Dichotomy: The Beginnings of a European Strategic Culture’, International Affairs, 77:3 (2001), pp. 587–603; Stine Heiselberg, ‘Pacifism or Activism: Towards a Common Strategic Culture within the European Security and Defence Policy’, IIS Working Paper, No. 4 (2003); Per M. Martinsen, ‘Forging a Strategic Culture: Putting Policy into ESDP’, Oxford Journal on Good Governance, 1:1 (2004), pp. 61–6.

3 Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

4 Colin Gray, ‘National Styles in Strategy: The American Example’, International Security, 6:2 (1981), pp. 21–47; Colin Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Styles (Lanham, Md.: Hamilton Press, 1986); David R. Jones, ‘Soviet Strategic Culture’, in Carl G. Jacobsen (ed.), Strategic Power USA/USSR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990); Carnes Lord, ‘American Strategic Culture’, Comparative Strategy, 5:3 (1985), pp. 269–93.

5 Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Alastair Iain Johnston, ‘Cultural Realism and Strategy in Maoist China’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); Jeffrey W. Legro, ‘Whence American Internationalism’, International Organization, 54:2 (2000), pp. 253–89.

6 Colin Gray, ‘In Praise of Strategy’, Review of International Studies, 29:2 (2003), pp. 285–95, p. 291.

7 See also the account of second generation strategic culture literature presented in Stuart Poore, ‘Strategic Culture’, in John Glenn, Darryl Howlett and Stuart Poore (eds), Neorealism Versus Strategic Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 55–7.

8 Reginald C. Stuart, War and American Thought: From the Revolution to the Monroe Doctrine (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1982).

9 Robin Luckham, ‘Armament Culture’, Alternatives, 10:1 (1984), pp. 1–44.

10 Bradley S. Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture: American Power Projection and Alliance Defence Politics’, Review of International Studies, 14 (1988), pp. 133–48.

11 See, especially, Bradley S. Klein, Strategic Studies and World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

12 See, for example, Karin M. Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies: Critical Investigations in Security (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Jennifer Milliken, ‘Discourse Study: Bringing Rigor to Critical Theory’, in Karin M. Fierke and Knud Erik Jorgensen (eds), Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001); Jutta Weldes, ‘The Cultural Production of Crises: US Identity and Missiles in Cuba’, in Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall (eds), Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

13 Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture’, p. 133. The term ‘security communities’ is used here to acknowledge the constitutive function of strategic behaviour and the point that the communities that are constituted need not be states.

14 Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies, p. 13.

15 With regard to the former, see Johnston, Cultural Realism; Johnston, ‘Cultural Realism and Strategy’, and Johnston, ‘Strategic Cultures Revisited’. With regard to the latter, see Colin Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context’, and Colin Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

16 Christoph O. Meyer, ‘Convergence Towards a European Strategic Culture? A Constructivist Framework for Explaining Changing Norms’, European Journal of International Relations, 11:4 (2005), pp. 523–49, p. 524.

17 Here, I draw upon Ted Hopf's distinction between conventional and critical variants of constructivism. (See Ted Hopf, ‘The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory’, International Security, 23:1 (1998), pp. 171–200). Hopf argues that, ‘to the degree that constructivism creates theoretical and epistemological distance between itself and its origins in critical theory, it becomes “conventional” constructivism’, p. 181.

18 See, for example, Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies; Roxanne Lynn Doty, ‘Aporia: A Critical Exploration of the Agent-Structure Problematique in International Relations Theory’, European Journal of International Relations, 3:3 (1997), pp. 365–92, and Milliken, ‘Discourse Study’.

19 Jack Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations (Santa Monica: RAND, 1977).

20 Jack Snyder, ‘The Concept of Strategic Culture: Caveat Emptor’, in Carl G. Jacobsen (ed.), Strategic Power USA/USSR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), p. 4.

21 See, for example, Carl G. Jacobsen (ed.), Strategic Power USA/USSR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990).

22 See especially, Ken Booth and Russell Trood (eds), Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999) and John Glenn, Darryl Howlett and Stewert Poore (eds), Neorealism versus Strategic Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).

23 For a summary of this particular debate, see, Meyer, ‘Convergence’, pp. 524–26, and, more recently, Christoph O. Meyer, The Quest for a European Strategic Culture: Changing Norms on Security and Defence in the European Union (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

24 His most sustained exploration of this concept and its uses remains, Johnston, Cultural Realism.

25 Johnston, Cultural Realism, p. 36.

26 Ibid., p. 38.

27 Meyer, ‘Convergence’, p. 527.

28 Johnston, Cultural Realism; and Johnston, ‘Cultural Realism and Strategy’.

29 Colin Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context’, p. 51.

30 Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, p. 135.

31 Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

32 A similar distinction is drawn in Meyer, The Quest for a European Strategic Culture, p. 16.

33 Glenn et al. (eds), Neorealism versus Strategic Culture.

34 Sten Rynning, ‘The European Union: Towards a Strategic Culture?’, Security Dialogue, 34:4 (2003), 479–96; and Heiselberg, ‘Pacifism or Activism’.

35 Meyer, ‘Convergence’ and The Quest for a European Strategic Culture, pp. 19–20.

36 Kerry Longhurst, Germany and the Use of Force: The Evolution of German Security Policy, 1990–2003 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 9–11.

37 A similar approach is taken by Elizabeth Kier in Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Like Johnston, Kier seeks to isolate military culture as an independent variable and analyse its impact upon a dependent variable, military doctrine. In doing so, she states explicitly that her work can make no attempt to ‘address the sources of the military's culture itself’, p. 9.

38 Johnston, Cultural Realism, p. 40.

39 Ibid., p. 29.

40 Ken Booth, ‘The Concept of Strategic Culture Affirmed’, in Carl G. Jacobsen (ed.), Strategic Power USA/USSR (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), p. 121.

41 Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, p. 130.

42 Colin Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context’, p. 50.

43 Johnston, Cultural Realism, p. 36.

44 Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, pp. 131–2 and p. 148.

45 Ibid., p. 132 and p. 136.

46 Johnston, ‘Strategic Cultures Revisited’.

47 Colin Gray, Modern Strategy, pp. 132–3.

48 Ibid., p. 130.

49 Colin Gray, ‘Strategic Culture as Context’, p. 51.

50 Hollis and Smith, Explaining and Understanding.

51 Ibid., ch. 4.

52 Interestingly, Kier makes exactly this choice – to explicitly discount instances where cultural norms are used ‘instrumentally’ by political actors (see Kier, Imagining War, p. 37). Again, this results in an overly deterministic account of the influence of strategic culture as well as a lack of conceptual space in which to account for the possibility of change in strategic culture.

53 Hollis and Smith, Explaining and Understanding, p. 69.

54 See, for example, Poore, ‘What is the Context?’.

55 Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture’; Bradley S. Klein, ‘The Textual Strategies of the Military: Or, Have You Read Any Good Defense Manuals Lately?’, in James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro (eds), International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989) and Klein, Strategic Studies.

56 See, especially, Klein, ‘Textual Strategies’.

57 Klein, Strategic Studies, p. 3.

58 Stefano Guzzini, ‘A Reconstruction of Constructivism in International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 6:2 (2000), pp. 147–82, p. 149.

59 Friedrich V. Kratochwil, ‘Constructivism as an Approach to Interdisciplinary Study’, in Karin M. Fierke and Knud Erik Jorgensen (eds), Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), p. 19.

60 Klein, Strategic Studies, p. 37.

61 Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture’, p. 136.

62 See, for example, the essays in Booth and Trood (eds), Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific.

63 Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture’, p. 133.

64 Jutta Weldes, ‘Constructing National Interests’, European Journal of International Relations, 2:3 (1996), pp. 275–318. See also, Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall, ‘Introduction: Constructing Insecurity’, in Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall (eds), Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 14.

65 Karin M. Fierke, ‘Logics of Force and Dialogue: The Iraq/UNSCOM Crisis as Social Interaction’, European Journal of International Relations, 6:3 (2000), pp. 335–71.

66 Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture’, p. 135.

67 Klein, Strategic Studies, p. 5.

68 See, for example, Alex Bellamy, Security Communities and Their Neighbours: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (London: Palgrave, 2004) and Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Constructivism’, in Scott Burchill et al., Theories of International Relations, 3rd edition (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2005).

69 Thomas Risse, ‘“Let's Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics’, International Organisation, 54:1 (2000), pp. 1–39, p. 5.

70 David Dessler, ‘What's at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?’, International Organisation, 43:3 (1989), pp. 441–73, p. 443.

71 Roxanne Lynn Doty, ‘Aporia: A Critical Exploration of the Agent-Structure Problematique in International Relations Theory’, European Journal of International Relations, 3:3 (1997), pp. 365–92.

72 Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies.

73 Fierke, ‘Logics of Force and Dialogue’, p. 338.

74 See, for example, Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies; Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Nicholas G. Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).

75 Klein, Strategic Studies, p. 6.

76 David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 84.

77 Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture’, p. 136.

78 Iver B. Neumann and Henrikki Heikka, ‘Grand Strategy, Strategic Culture, Practice: The Social Roots of Nordic Defence’, Cooperation and Conflict, 40:5 (2005), pp. 5–23, p. 10.

79 Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies, at p. 17; and Kratochwil, ‘Constructivism as an Approach’, p. 28.

80 Klein, Strategic Studies, p. 7.

81 Richard Ashley, ‘The Achievements of Poststructuralism’, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 250.

82 The work of Theo Farrell provides an interesting counterpoint to traditional strategic culture research regarding this issue. On the one hand, he illustrates the importance of multiple levels or forms of culture in the context of strategic affairs, including national (strategic) culture, organisational (military) culture, as well as transnational and international norms regarding warfare. On the other hand, however, Farrell's work (perhaps necessarily) takes largely for granted the existence of communities such as military organisations and states. See Theo Farrell, The Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2005).

83 Klein, ‘Hegemony and Strategic Culture’.

84 Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, ‘A New Kind of War: Strategic Culture and the War on Terrorism’, IIS Working Paper, No. 1, (2003), p. 4.

85 The notion of ‘discourse’ used here is consistent with that of Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

86 Neumann and Heikka, ‘Grand Strategy’, p. 11.

87 Cornish and Edwards, ‘Beyond the EU/NATO Dichotomy’; Heiselberg, ‘Pacifism or Activism’; Martinsen, ‘Forging a Strategic Culture’, and Meyer, ‘Convergence’.

88 Farrell examines the influence of transnational norms on military organisational culture, thus highlighting the relevance of cultural analysis within the context of transnational strategic affairs. See Farrell, The Norms of War, ch. 2.

89 Walter Russell Mead, Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk (New York: Vintage Press, 2004), pp. 14–8.

90 See, for example, Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics, and Counter Terrorism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).

91 See, for example, Stuart Croft, Culture, Crisis, and America's War on Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

92 See, for example, Joseph Masco, ‘States of Insecurity: Plutonium and Post-Cold War Anxiety in New Mexico, 1992–96’, in Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson and Raymond Duvall (eds), Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

93 Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), p. 222.

94 Klein, Strategic Studies, p. 10. See also, Neumann and Heikka, ‘Grand Strategy’, p. 10–11.

95 See, Jutta Weldes et al., ‘Introduction’, pp. 18–9.

96 Milliken, ‘Discourse Study’, p. 149.

97 Cynthia Enloe, ‘Margins, Silences and Bottom Rungs: How to Overcome the Underestimation of Power in the Study of International Relations, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 186.

98 Kratochwil, ‘Constructivism as an Approach’, p. 16.

99 Hopf, ‘The Promise of Constructivism’.

100 See, especially, Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Introduction’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

101 See, for example, Nicholas G. Onuf, ‘The Politics of Constructivism’, in Karin M. Fierke and Knud Erik Jorgensen (eds), Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001) and Maja Zehfuss, ‘Constructivism and Identity: A Dangerous Liaison’, in Stefano Guzzini and Anna Leander (eds), Constructivism and International Relations: Alexander Wendt and His Critics (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006).

102 Meyer, ‘Convergence’, p. 527.

103 Farrell's work demonstrates a perplexing mix of these approaches. On the one hand, following Alexander Wendt and Martha Finnemore, Farrell acknowledges that norms can play both regulative and constitutive functions. However, like these conventional constructivists, Farrell quickly reverts to an assumption that constitutive norms serve to constitute actors' practices as meaningful rather than their constituting the identity of actors themselves. (See Farrell, The Norms of War, pp. 8–12). In doing so, such scholars preclude the analysis of the deeper constitutive role of culture and practice. For further explanation of this problem, see Zehfuss, ‘Constructivism and Identity’.

104 Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies, p. 3.

105 Maja Zehfuss, ‘Constructivisms in International Relations’, in Karin M. Fierke and Knud Erik Jorgensen (eds), Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), p. 71.

106 Ashley, ‘The Achievements of Poststructuralism’; though see David Campbell, ‘Poststructuralism’, in Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

107 Milliken, ‘Discourse Study’.

108 Ibid., p. 141.

109 Ibid., p. 142. In addition, see, Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies, pp. 31–43.

110 Ibid., p. 145.

111 Campbell, cited in Milliken, ‘Discourse Study’, p. 145.

112 Klein, Strategic Studies, p. 6.

113 Milliken, ‘Discourse Study’, p. 152.

114 Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies, pp. 210–23.

115 Ibid., p. 13.

116 See, for example, Georg Sørensen, The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

117 Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 131.