Defense Threat Reduction Agency

This paper charts the evolution of the theory of strategic culture through several generations of scholarship and explores contemporary arguments about the role of culture in shaping national security policy. The paper devotes special attention to policies related to weapons of mass destruction and threat assessment. Key questions include: Do cultural theories provide useful explanations of national security policy? Is strategic culture “semi-permanent,” as most of its supporters suggest, or can it evolve over time? And how universal is strategic culture? The essay concludes that while constructivism has generated new attention to ideational foundations of national security policy behavior, there remains substantial room for refinement of the research program. INTRODUCTION Cultural approaches to strategic studies have existed in various forms for hundreds of years. The argument that culture influences national security policy is grounded in classic works, including the writings of Thucydides and Sun Tzu. Clausewitz advanced these ideas by recognizing war and war-fighting strategy as “a test of moral and physical forces.” The goal of strategy was much more than defeat of the enemy on the battlefield—it was the elimination of the enemy’s morale. In the 20 century, national character studies linked Japanese and German strategic choices in World War II to deeply rooted cultural factors. Russell Weigley’s 1973 classic, The American Way of Warfare, further underlined the importance of cultural roots of strategic dispositions. Jack Snyder’s work on Soviet nuclear strategy during the Cold War directed scholarly attention to the key link between political and military culture and strategic choice. Recent events have renewed scholarly interest in the role of culture in international security. Scholars and practitioners have begun to interpret challenges like democratization in Iraq, U.S.-China trade disputes, nuclear tensions with Iran, and the war on terror through the lens of national identity and culture. Contemporary scholarship claims that a focus on 1 Karl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993): 26.