Strategic Culture and Threat Assessment

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• Strategic Culture and Threat Assessment
• Jeffrey S. Lantis
• Second Annual Joint Threat Anticipation Center
  Workshop
• The University of Chicago
• April 4, 2006

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Cultural Approaches to Strategic Studies

• Thucydides and Sun Tzu
• Clausewitz War and war-fighting strategy as a
  test of moral and physical forces, with the
  goal to eliminate the enemys morale.
• National character studies in World War II
• Russell Weigley, The American Way of Warfare
  (1973)
• Jack Snyders work on Soviet nuclear strategy
  (1977)

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Recent Events Have Renewed Scholarly Interest

• September 11 terrorist attacks
• U.S.-China trade disputes
• Nuclear tensions with Iran
• Deterioration of transatlantic relations
  (Europeans Venutians?)
• North Koreas drive for nuclear weapons
• Struggle to consolidate Iraqi democracy
• Muslim protests over Danish cartoons
• New arenas in the war on terror

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New Attention Prompts New Questions

• What are the ideational foundations of national
  security policy?
• Do cultural theories, newly inspired by
  constructivism, provide us with better
  explanations of national security policy?
• What are the origins of strategic culture?
• Who are the keepers of strategic culture?
• Is strategic culture semi-permanent, as most
  supporters suggest, or can it evolve over time?
• How universal is strategic culture?

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Early Studies of Culture and Politics

• National character studies of 1940s and 1950s
  Ruth Benedicts The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
  (Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1946)
• Early work defined the roots of a nations
  character, or culture, in language, religion,
  customs, socialization, and the interpretation of
  common memories.
• During the 1950s, popular studies in sociology
  and anthropology Mead, Douglas, Geertz, and
  Levi-Strauss.

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Political Culture

• In the 1960s, political scientists Gabriel Almond
  and Sidney Verba launched a high profile study of
  the concept of political culture.
• Defined it as that subset of beliefs and values
  of a society that relate to the political
  system.
• Beliefs and values including
• a commitment to democratic principles and
  institutions
• ideas about morality and the use of force
• predispositions toward role of country in
  global politics.
• Political culture manifests itself on at least
  three levels cognitive, evaluative, and
  expressive.

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Strategic Culture and Cold War Nuclear Policy

• In 1977, Jack Snyder develops theory of strategic
  culture to interpret Soviet nuclear strategy.
• Clear alternative to realist interpretations.
• Elites articulate a unique strategic culture
  related to security-military affairs that is a
  wider manifestation of public opinion, socialized
  into a distinctive mode of strategic thinking.
• His prediction the Soviet military exhibited a
  preference for the preemptive, offensive use of
  force and the origins for this could be found
  rooted in a Russian history of insecurity and
  authoritarian control.

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Strategic Culture Rediscovered The Rise of
Constructivism

• In the 1990s, a third generation of scholarly
  work reasserted the utility of cultural
  interpretations.
• Theoretical work on strategic culture, domestic
  structures, and organizational culture advanced
  significantly in this period, influenced, in
  part, by the rise of constructivism.
• In his path-defining works of the early 1990s,
  Wendt argued that state identities and interests
  can be seen as socially constructed by
  knowledgeable practice (1992).

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Constructivism and Cultural Studies

• The constructivist research program focuses on
  identity formation, with connections to
  organizational process, history, tradition, and
  culture.
• Special attention to the role of norms in
  international security. For more detailed studies
  of norms in world politics.
• Tannenwalds studies of the nuclear taboo and the
  norm of non-proliferation (Spring 2005).
• Legros work on military restraint during World
  War II.

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Third Generation Studies

• Alastair Iain Johnstons Cultural Realism
  Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese
  History (1995).
• Defines strategic culture as the ideational
  milieu that limits behavioral choices, from
  which one could derive specific predictions
  about strategic choice.
• Focus on the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) for
  contemporary theoretical test.
• Two Chinese strategic cultures in action one a
  symbolic or idealized set of assumptions and
  ranked preferences, and one an operational set
  that had a nontrivial effect on strategic choices
  in the Ming period.

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Germany, Japan, and Organizational Culture

• Thomas Berger focuses on antimilitarist
  political-military cultures to explain patterns
  in these countries foreign policy behaviors.
• Banchoffs path-dependent model of German
  foreign policy.
• To John Duffield, the overall effect of
  national security culture is to predispose
  societies in general and political elites in
  particular toward certain actions and policies
  over others. Some options will simply not be
  imagined?some are more likely to be rejected as
  inappropriate or ineffective than others.
• Military organizational culture studies (France,
  Kier India, Rosen Latin American countries,
  Ebel, Taras, and Cochrane).

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Nuclear Norms and Taboos

• The study of security norms lies at the
  intersection of culturalist and constructivist
  research.
• The non-nuclear norm or the nuclear taboo
• The puzzle why nuclear weapons were never
  employed by the superpowers during the Cold War?
• Thomas Schelling first raised the concept of a
  nuclear taboo in the 1960s.
• Schelling described an emerging tradition of
  nonuse of nuclear weapons a jointly recognized
  expectation that nuclear weapons may not be
  used in spite of declarations of readiness to use
  them, even in spite of tactical advantages in
  their use.
• Theme taken up in recent works by T.V. Paul and
  Nina Tannenwald.

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A Research Agenda for Strategic Culture

• Greater understanding of ties between culture and
  state behavior.
• Strategic cultural studies have provided rich
  descriptions of particularistic cultures and
  identities.
• Acknowledgement of important links between
  external and internal determinants of national
  security policy.
• Cultural studies have been informed by
  cross-disciplinary linkages to anthropology,
  historical research, sociology, and psychology.
• Inspired by constructivism, scholars have begun
  to explore ways in which strategic culture is
  shaped and may evolve over time.
• Much more than an explanation of last resort.

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Areas for Further Attention

• Seeking a common definition
• Delineation of the ways that strategic culture is
  created, maintained, and passed on to new
  generations
• The question of the universality of strategic
  culture
• Exploring the applicability of western and
  traditional models to non-western countries?
• Many cultural scholars recognize the need for a
  defined ontology as well as falsifiable,
  middle-range theory.

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A To-Do List for Strategic Culture

1. Develop Common Definitions
2. Explore the Origins of Strategic Culture
3. Identify the Keepers of Strategic Culture
4. Delineate Scope Conditions
5. Develop Models of Strategic Cultural Change

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Develop Common Definitions

• Snyders definition of strategic culture as a
  set of semi-permanent elite beliefs, attitudes,
  and behavior patterns socialized into a
  distinctive mode of thought set the tone for
  decades of investigations.
• Today, definitions still blur the line between
  preference formation, values, and state
  behaviors.
• Strategic culture interpreted as a generator of
  preferences, a vehicle for the perpetuation of
  values and preferences,and a force of action in
  revitalization and renewal of these values.
• Constructivism has not advanced the search for a
  common definition.
• Ontological agnosticism may not provide a
  sufficient base for theory-building in strategic
  cultural studies.

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2. Explore the Origins of Strategic Culture

• Potential Sources of Strategic Culture
• Physical Political Social/Cultural
• Geography Historical Experience Myths and
  Symbols
• Climate Political System Defining Texts
• Natural Resources Elite Beliefs Generatl
  Change Military Organizations Technology
• lt-------------------Transnational Normative
  Pressures--------------------gt

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3. Identify the Keepers of Strategic Culture

• Culture is a set of shared assumptions and
  decision rules.
• But how are they maintained, and by whom?
• Properties of collectives versus individuals?
• Studies of policy discourse mean that culture is
  best characterized as a negotiated reality
  among elites.
• Leaders respect deeply held convictions, but may
  choose when and where to stake claims of
  strategic cultural traditions.
• Leaders decide when and where to consciously move
  beyond previous boundaries of acceptability in
  foreign policy behavior.
• Perhaps leaders are strategic users of culture
  who redefine the limits of the possible in key
  foreign and security policy discourses.

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A Hierarchy of Strategic Culture?

• ELITES
• POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
• MILITARY ORGS and/or FOREIGN POLICY BUREACURACIES
• PUBLIC ATTITUDES AND PREFERENCES

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Identify Scope Conditions for Strategic Culture

• What types of actors are most likely to have
  defined strategic cultures?
• Does the literature imply that authoritarian
  systems more likely to have defined strategic
  cultures than are democratic systems?
• Are authoritarian systems simply less likely to
  have definable strategic subcultures?
• Can non-state actors have strategic cultures?
• Can regional organizations or meta-cultural
  groups have some form of strategic culture?

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Authoritarian Strategic Cultures

• Most studies focus on authoritarian states,
  implying that there are more measurable strains
  of strategic culture manifest in rigorous
  political ideology, doctrine, and discourse.
• Studies of the North Korean ideology of
  self-reliance (Juche)
• Iranian strategic culture is also rooted in a
  nearly 3000-year history of Persian civilization
  which lends itself to a fascinating combination
  of cultural superiority, manifest destiny and
  Irans deep sense of insecurity.
• Greg Giles argues that specific attributes of
  Shiism, which was adopted by Persia in the
  sixteenth century, both reinforce and expand
  certain traits in Iranian strategic culture
  (2003).

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Scope Conditions for Strategic Culture

• Kartchner (2006) has hypothesized, for example,
  that there is a set of conditions that may enable
  strategic culture to play a more dominant role in
  state behavior, including
• When there is a strong sense of threat to a
  groups existence, identity or resources, or when
  the group believes that it is at a critical
  disadvantage to other groups.
• When there is a pre-existing strong cultural
  basis for group identity when the leadership
  frequently resorts to cultural symbols in
  support of its national group security
  aspirations and programs
• When there is a high degree of homogeneity within
  the groups strategic culture
• When historical experiences strongly predispose
  the group to perceive threats.

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Non-State Actors? Supranational Actors?
Transnational Terror Networks?

• Can the European Union (EU) establish a strategic
  culture?
• Can the concept of strategic culture apply to
  non-state actors operating across territorial
  boundaries where identities may be formed in the
  realm of cyberspace?
• Cha The most far-reaching security effect of
  globalization is its complication of the basic
  concept of threat in international relations
  (2000).
• Technology enhances the salience of substate
  extremist groups or fundamentalist groups because
  their ability to organize transnationally.

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5. Develop Models of Strategic Cultural Change

• The focus of most studies of strategic culture is
  on continuity.
• An intriguing characteristic of the latest
  generation of cultural studies, however, is
  recognition of the possibility of change over
  time.
• Informed by studies of foreign policy
  restructuring and constructivist ideas on foreign
  policy as discourse.
• Also a response to the criticism of prior
  generations of cultural models as static and
  unresponsive to systemic pressures.

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Conditions for Strategic Cultural Change

• Under what conditions can strategic culture
  change? When might foreign policy decisions
  transcend the traditional bounds of strategic
  culture?
• In my own work on the subject, I contend that at
  least two conditions can cause strategic
  cultural dilemmas and produce changes in
  security policy
• First, external shocks challenge existing
  beliefs and undermine past historical narratives
• Germany and the Balkans, 1990s
• September 11, 2001
• Aftermath of War in Iraq

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Strategic Cultural Dissonance

• Dissonance may occur when primary tenets of
  strategic thought come into direct conflict with
  one another.
• For example, a country with interpretive codes of
  support for human rights and an aversion to the
  use of military force.
• In a recent study, Cruz argues that in special
  circumstances, elites have incredible latitude to
  redefine the limits of the possible, both
  descriptively and prescriptively.

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The Way Forward?

• A modest goal bringing culture back in to the
  study of national security policy.
• Scholars must work to overcome barriers to
  integration of these contending approaches.
• One of these is a certain defensiveness on the
  part of neorealists, who contend that
  culturalists (and constructivists) simply seek to
  supplant neorealism.
• Constructivism also has limitations.
• How far can strategic cultural models can stretch
  while retaining any sort of legitimacy?
• Some recent studies consciously reject the need
  for rigor in their approach some deftly avoid
  the advancement of middle-range theory.
• But as Jeffrey Checkel warns us, culturalists and
  constructivists need to be very careful about the
  emergent empirical ad hocism.