Strategic Culture and National Security Policy

Strategic Culture and National
Security Policy
Jeffrey S. Lantis
C
ulture has become fashionable in mainstream international relations schol-
arship in the post–Cold War era. One of the most surprising aspects of
the renaissance of scholarly interest in culture has been the emerging
consensus in national security policy studies that culture can affect signifi-
cantly grand strategy and state behavior. Scholars and practitioners have begun
to interpret events like the U.S.-China standoff over a downed spy plane in
2001 or escalating tensions between Palestinians and Israelis through the lens
of national identity and culture. While these concepts found their way into
classic works on international conflict, including Carl von Clausewitz’s On
War in 1831 and Quincy Wright’s A Study of War in 1942, descriptions of actual
causal linkages remained vague.1 During the Cold War, scholars attempted to
develop a theory of political culture, and Jack Snyder drew these ideas into
security policy studies by coining the term “strategic culture” in the late 1970s.
Nevertheless, critics charged that there was little progress toward the develop-
ment of a unified theory of culture that might rival neorealism, and at the end of
the Cold War, even supporters were concerned that culture remained “the expla-
nation of last resort” for puzzling state behavior.2
Today, scholars have rediscovered the theory of strategic culture to explain
national security policy.3 Alastair Johnston’s exploration in 1995 of “cultural
1
Carl von Clausewitz, On War [1831], ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter
Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976); Quincy Wright, A Study of
War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942).
2
Lucian W. Pye, as quoted in Valerie M. Hudson, ed., Culture and Foreign Policy
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997), p. 2.
3
Some of the most influential works in this area for security studies include: Peter
J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World
Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Alastair Iain Johnston, “Think-
ing about Strategic Culture,” International Security 19, No. 4 (1995), pp. 32– 64; Stephen
Peter Rosen, “Military Effectiveness: Why Society Matters,” International Security
19, No. 4 (1995), pp. 5–31; Elizabeth Kier, “Culture and Military Doctrine: France
© 2002 International Studies Association

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.
88 Jeffrey S. Lantis
realism” in Chinese security policy during the Ming dynasty, for example, sug-
gests that societal characteristics have influenced state behavior throughout
much of the history of human civilization. Others have devoted attention to
studying the surprising German and Japanese security policy reticence in the
post–Cold War era and have suggested that their unique, “antimilitarist” stra-
tegic cultures account for most of the continuity in their behavior from 1990 to
the present. In an intriguing branch of cultural theory, Samuel Huntington pos-
ited that civilizational (or “metacultural”) differences would increase the like-
lihood of international conflict, and some practitioners have used this idea to
interpret the events of September 11, 2001, and the war on terrorism.4
This essay charts the evolution of the theory of strategic culture through
several generations of scholarly work inside and outside the discipline. Key
questions that guide this investigation include: What are the ideational founda-
tions of national security policy? Do cultural theories, newly inspired by con-
structivism, provide the most accurate explanations of security policy in the
post–Cold War era? Is strategic culture really “semipermanent,” as its support-
ers suggest, or can strategic culture evolve? Who are the “keepers” of strategic
culture? Under what conditions are policy decisions culturally bound? Although
scholars disagree about the implications of ideational models, even skeptics
now describe the “third wave” of cultural theories as a potential supplement to
neorealism.5 I conclude that contemporary works on strategic culture offer some
compelling arguments, but several avenues remain to develop more reflexive
models of strategic culture.
Theoretical Interpretations of Continuity

and Change
Many international relations scholars interpreted the end of the Cold War as a
grand strategic opportunity for countries to reflect on their past, present, and
between the Wars,” International Security 19, No. 4 (1995), pp. 65–93. See also Rob-
ert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993); Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds.,
Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1993); Richard J. Ellis and Michael Thompson, eds., Culture
Matters: Essays in Honor of Aaron Wildavsky (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997);
Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and
Political Change in Forty-Three Societies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1997).
4
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 289–290.
5
See Michael C. Desch, “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Secu-
rity Studies,” International Security 23, No. 1 (1999), pp. 156–180.
Strategic Culture and National Security Policy 89
future. Neorealists predicted that the United States could define the new world
order as the sole surviving superpower; Russia and the former Soviet republics
would be disabled by a fragmentation of their power; and the People’s Republic
of China might eventually rise to become a true rival to American hegemony.
Scholars also predicted that countries that once had been sidelined and con-
strained by the Cold War, such as the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan,
would normalize their foreign policy by taking on a more assertive profile that
focused on strategic interests backed by the threat of force.6 For example, Michael
Stürmer argued that developments in Europe after the Cold War placed Ger-
many at the Bruchzone (geostrategic crux) of the continent, leading to an “obli-
gation to embrace realism, clarity of goals, and predictability of means.” 7
With more than a decade of post–Cold War experience behind us, critics
charge that neorealism has fallen short in predicting major events (such as
systemic change) and does not describe adequately national security policy
patterns in a dynamic, new international system. While I do not intend to detail
the scholarly debate over the utility of realism, it is important to note that
systemic change has prompted a reexamination of the dominant paradigm in
the discipline. By the mid-1990s, criticism of systemic approaches even emerged
in national security studies, once the bastion of support for parsimonious, ratio-
nal models of state behavior. Works by Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman,
Jack Snyder, Richard Rosecrance and Arthur Stein, and others contended that
neorealist frameworks could not fully explain major security policy changes
such as the end of the Cold War or shifting balances of power.8 Ethan Kapstein
6
See select chapters from Karl Kaiser and Hanns W. Maull, eds., Deutschlands
neue Außenpolitik, Band 1: Grundlagen, (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995), includ-
ing Christian Tomuschat, “Die Internationale Staatenwelt an der Schwelle des Dritten
Jahrtausends,” pp. 15–37; Michael Stürmer, “Deutsche Interessen,” pp. 39– 61; Hans-
Peter Schwarz, “Das Deutsche Dilemma,” pp. 81–97; Helga Haftendorn, “Gulliver in
der Mitte Europas: Internationale Verflechtung und Nationale Handlungsmöglich-
keiten,” pp. 129–152. See also Michael Brenner, Wolfgang F. Schlör, and Phil Wil-
liams, German and American Foreign and Security Policies: Strategic Convergence
or Divergence? (St. Augustin, Germany: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 1994); Interne
Studie, No. 98.
7
Michael Stürmer, Die Grenzen der Macht: Begegnung der Deutschen mit der
Geschichte (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1992), p. 247; see also Michael Stürmer, “Deut-
sche Interessen,” in Kaiser and Maull, eds., Deutschlands neue Aussenpolitik,
pp. 39– 61. For a similar argument, see Hans-Peter Schwarz, Die Zentralmacht
Europas: Deutschlands Rückkehr auf die Weltbühne (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1994).
8
See Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and Inter-
national Imperatives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); Richard Rose-
crance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1993); and Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics
and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). See also
argued in 1995 that structural realism “qua theory, must be viewed as deeply
and perhaps fatally flawed. Yet at the same time, qua paradigm or worldview, it
continues to inform the community of international relations scholars.” 9 This
argument expressed an emerging scholarly opinion that these and related works
had led us into a period of theoretical crisis in which the discipline found itself
dissatisfied with existing theories but not yet able to construct adequate
alternatives.
Political Culture
Political culture has become one of the most enduring—and controversial—
alternative theoretical explanations of state behavior. Gabriel Almond and Sid-
ney Verba first developed the concept of political culture in the 1960s as “that
subset of beliefs and values of a society that relate to the political system,” and
their studies set the tone for consideration of the theme for four decades.10
Political culture may include a commitment to values like democratic princi-
ples and institutions, ideas about morality and the use of force, the rights of
individuals or collectivities, or predispositions toward the role of a country in
global politics. According to proponents of the theory, political culture becomes
manifest on at least three levels: “the cognitive, which includes empirical and
causal beliefs; the evaluative, which consists of values, norms and moral judg-
ments, and the expressive or affective, which encompasses emotional attach-
ments, patterns of identity and loyalty, and feelings of affinity, aversion, or
indifference.” 11 Talcott Parsons has referred to culture as being comprised of
Richard Rosecrance and Zara Steiner, “British Grand Strategy and the Origins of World
War II,” and Matthew Evangelista, “Internal and External Constraints on Grand Strat-
egy: The Soviet Case,” both in Rosecrance and Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of
Grand Strategy, pp. 124–153 and 154–178.
9
Ethan B. Kapstein, “Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Sources of International
Politics,” International Organization 49, No. 4 (1995), p. 751.
10
See Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes
and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963),
pp. 11–14.
11
John S. Duffield, World Power Forsaken: Political Culture, International Insti-
tutions, and German Security Policy after Unification (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1998), p. 23; see also Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture; Gabriel A.
Almond and Sidney Verba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown,
1980); Robert D. Putnam: The Beliefs of Politicians: Ideology, Conflict, and Democ-
racy in Britain and Italy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973), and “Study-
ing Elite Political Culture: The Case of ‘Ideology,’ ” American Political Science Review
65, No. 3 (1971), pp. 651– 681; Bert A. Rockman, Studying Elite Political Culture:
Problems in Design and Interpretation (Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1976).
“interpretive codes,” including language, values, and even substantive beliefs

like support for democracy or the futility of war.12
Broadly speaking, scholars contend that political culture has both anthro-
pological origins—in language, religion, customs, and socialization—and his-
torical origins in shared experiences (and the interpretation of common
memories). Political cultural dynamics shape not only prevailing public senti-
ments, but also the development of political institutions. According to Elkins
and Simeon:
Political culture consists of assumptions about the political world . . . that
focus attention on certain features of events, institutions, and behavior, define
the realm of the possible, identify the problems deemed pertinent, and set the
range of alternatives among which members of the population make decisions.
Political culture, then, is a short hand expression for a “mind set” which has
the effect of limiting attention to less than the full range of alternative behav-
iors, problems, and solutions which are logically possible. Since it represents
a “disposition” in favor of a range of alternatives, by corollary another range
of alternatives receives little or no attention within a particular culture. Most
people in any culture, therefore, will take for granted a particular course of
action or consider only a few alternatives. That they choose from a restricted
set will, for most of them, remain below the threshold of consciousness, because
they seldom encounter individuals who take for granted quite different
assumptions.13
Most twentieth-century scholarship on the significance of culture was actu-
ally developed across several other disciplines, including anthropology, sociol-
ogy, and psychology. The “national character studies” of the 1940s and 1950s
defined early efforts to draw connections between culture and state behavior
based largely on anthropological models.14 While these works became contro-
versial, prominent sociologists and anthropologists (including Margaret Mead,
Mary Douglas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and others) continued similar lines of inves-
tigation of culture. In one of the most influential anthropological works on the
subject, The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz defined culture as “an
historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of
12
See Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951).
13
David J. Elkins and Richard E. B. Simeon, “A Cause in Search of Its Effect, or
What Does Political Culture Explain?” Comparative Politics 11, No. 2 (1979),
pp. 127–128.
14
Two of the most prominent scholars of national character were Ruth Benedict,
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946), and Geoffrey
Gorer, The American People (New York: W. W. Norton, 1948); Criticism included
Alex Inkeles and D. J. Levinson, “National Character: The Study of Model Personality
and Sociocultural Systems,” in G. Lindzey, ed., The Handbook of Social Psychology,
vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1968).
inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men com-

municate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards
life.” 15 He provided an ideal model of how culture shapes interpretation of the
world around cultural groups and may lead to distinct behaviors.
By the 1980s, a select group of political scientists, primarily comparativ-
ists, had begun to further investigate linkages between culture and politics.
Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky’s Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selec-
tion of Technical and Environmental Dangers represented a truly interdisciplin-
ary approach to the study of how specific cultural type groups responded to
environmental challenges.16 Sociologist Ann Swidler further defined cultural
interpretations by proposing a more complex model of connections between
culture and state behavior, mediated by cultural “strategies of action.” Swidler
broadly defined culture as consisting of “symbolic vehicles of meaning, includ-
ing beliefs, ritual practices, art forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal
cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories, and rituals of daily life.” 17
Building on the arguments of Max Weber and Parsons, she contended that interest-
driven strategies are important mediating conditions on state behavior.18
While sociological models of culture became increasingly complex, sub-
sequent studies of political culture yielded little theoretical refinement beyond
the ideas first raised by Almond and Verba. Critics argued that the approach
was epiphenomenal and subjective, and they argued that proponents of po-
litical culture often made exaggerated claims about its explanatory power.19
15
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973),
p. 89.
16
Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection
of Technical and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California
Press, 1982).
17
Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociologi-
cal Review 51, No. 2 (1986), p. 273.
18
Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1946 [1922–23]),
p. 220; see also Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York:
Charles Scribner, 1958 [1904]); Parsons, The Social System, p. 11. Related works
describing the growing interest in connections between culture and political develop-
ments include: Ronald Inglehart, “The Renaissance of Political Culture,” American
Political Science Review 82, No. 4 (1988), pp. 1203–1230; Harry C. Triandis, Culture
and Social Behavior (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994); Aaron Wildavsky, “Choosing
Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation,”
American Political Science Review 81, No. 1 (1987), pp. 3–21.
19
Elkins and Simeon, “A Cause in Search of Its Effect,” p. 127. On criticisms of
political culture, see Charles Lockhart, “Cultural Contributions to Explaining Institu-
tional Form, Political Change, and Rational Decisions,” Comparative Political Studies
32, No. 7 (1999), pp. 862–893; Lowell Dittmer, “ Political Culture and Political Sym-
bolism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis,” World Politics 29, No. 4 (1977), pp. 552–
Cultural interpretive arguments fell out of favor with the behavioral revolu-
tion in the social sciences.20 The concept remained alive in area studies in the
1970s, but it garnered less attention in mainstream international relations
scholarship.
Strategic Culture and National Style

The concept of linkage between culture and national security policy exists in
classic works, including the writings of Thucydides and Sun Tzu. Carl von
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. Writing of the Westphalian system, Clausewitz argued that three impor-
tant elements come into play in any war: the government, which sets the objec-
tives for the war; the armies, which fight it; and the peoples who support it.
Clausewitz stressed that leaders should not forget the real potential of a mobi-
lized mass society, as he had witnessed firsthand in defeats by Napoleonic
armies marching for the glory of the empire.21
In 1977, Jack Snyder brought the political culture argument into modern
security studies by developing a theory of strategic culture to interpret Soviet
military strategy. In some ways, this was an attempt to challenge the unitary
rational actor assumption in security policy studies, based on the conviction
that domestic political conditions could shape even nuclear strategy. Snyder
suggested that 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. He contended that “as a result of this
socialization process, a set of general beliefs, attitudes, and behavior patterns
with regard to nuclear strategy has achieved a state of semipermanence that
583; Ruth Lane, “Political Culture: Residual Category or General Theory?” Comparative
Political Studies 25 (1992), pp. 362–387; Marc Howard Ross, “Culture and Identity in
Comparative Political Analysis,” in Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman,
eds., Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997), pp. 42–80.
20
Elkins and Simeon, “A Cause in Search of Its Effect,” pp. 127–145; some criti-
cism of this work was directed back at what Michael Desch called the “first wave” of
cultural theories—national character studies—developed during World War II. For a
recent summary of the limits of political culture, see Richard W. Wilson, “The Many
Voices of Political Culture: Assessing Different Approaches,” World Politics 52, No. 2
(2000), pp. 246–273.
21
Michael Howard, “Clausewitz, Man of the Year,” New York Times, January 28,
1991, p. A17.
places them on the level of ‘cultural’ rather than mere policy.” 22 Other impor-
tant elements of strategic culture, according to Snyder, include the context asso-
ciated with perceived security threats and technological development; strong
cognitive content associated with attitudes and beliefs; historical legacies; and
beliefs about the role of the military and concerned institutions in the policy-
making process.
Snyder applied his strategic cultural framework to interpret the develop-
ment of Soviet and American nuclear doctrines as products of different orga-
nizational, historical, and political contexts and technological constraints.
He claimed that these different cultural contexts led U.S. and Soviet decision-
makers to ask different questions about the use of nuclear weapons and de-
velop unique answers. The result was his prediction that the Soviet military
would exhibit 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. Ultimately, Snyder argued that strategic culture was
“semipermanent” and that new problems and developments would not be as-
sessed objectively but rather through the perceptual lenses provided by stra-
tegic culture.
Snyder’s contributions had resonance for other security policy analysts, and
subsequent work on strategic culture such as Ken Booth’s Strategy and Ethno-
centrism was directed toward the ideational foundations of nuclear strategy and
superpower relations. Colin Gray’s Nuclear Strategy and National Style also
suggested that distinctive national styles, with “deep roots within a particular
stream of historical experience,” characterize strategy making in countries like
the United States and the Soviet Union. While arguing that characteristics of
national style are based on historical and anthropological roots, Gray focused
more on the tenuous connections between a national style and its effects on
policy choices. He defined strategic culture as “referring to modes of thought
and action with respect to force, which derives from perception of the national
historical experience, from aspirations for responsible behavior in national terms”
and even from “the civic culture and way of life.” 23 Thus, strategic culture
“provides the milieu within which strategy is debated,” and it serves as an
independent determinant of strategic policy patterns. Like Snyder, Gray main-
tained that strategic culture would be a semipermanent influence on security
policy. He claimed that “short of a new historical experience that undeniably
22
Jack Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Nuclear Options (Santa
Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1977), R-2154-AF, p. 8; see also Ken Booth,
Strategy and Ethnocentrism (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981).
23
Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, Md.: Hamilton
Press, 1986), pp. 36–37.
warrants a historically discontinuous response,” national style would be an endur-

ing explanation of state behavior.24
Although these arguments drew attention to the role of domestic conditions
in shaping national security policy behavior, critics asserted that the operation-
alization of strategic culture also was problematic and subjective. They sug-
gested that strategic cultural models were tautological, as it would be nearly
impossible to separate independent and dependent variables in a reliable way.
Critics also charged that strategic cultural interpretations were by definition
unique, drawing upon narrow and contextual historiography as much as anthro-
pology. Furthermore, both supporters and detractors believed that the concept
of strategic culture was fairly static, focusing on enduring historical orienta-
tions with strong predictive capability. This left little room for development of
a cross-national study of the phenomenon.
Even supporters of strategic culture called for more careful study. Gray
wrote in 1988, “Social science has developed no exact methodology for iden-
tifying distinctive national cultures and styles.” Literature on the “academical-
ly unfashionable subject of national character” was anecdotal at best, yet he
believed that learning about the “cultural thoughtways” of a nation was cru-
cial to understanding a country’s behavior and its role in world politics.25
Booth called the formation of military strategy “a peculiarly ethnocentric busi-
ness,” and Yitzhak Klein argued that only a “comparative, in-depth study of
the formation, influence, and process of change in the strategic cultures of the
major powers in the modern era” could make a useful contribution to war and
peace studies.26 There were few attempts at comparative study on the subject
in the 1980s.27 With the abrupt end of the Cold War, strategic culture once
again fell into disfavor.28
24
Colin S. Gray, “National Style in Strategy: The American Example,” Inter-
national Security 6, No. 2 (1981), p. 35.
25
Gray, The Geopolitics of Superpower (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1988), pp. 42– 43.
26
Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979),
p. 20; Yitzhak Klein, “A Theory of Strategic Culture,” Comparative Strategy 10, No. 1
(1991), p. 3. See also Richard W. Wilson, Compliance Ideologies: Rethinking Political
Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Charles A. Kupchan, The
Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
27
See Roland H. Ebel, Raymond Taras, and James D. Cochrane, Political Culture
and Foreign Policy in Latin America: Case Studies from the Circum-Caribbean (Alba-
ny: State University of New York Press, 1991).
28
This challenge to cultural theories is well articulated in Richard Ned Lebow and
Thomas Risse-Kappen, eds., International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold
War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); see also Desch, “Culture Clash.”
Strategic Culture Rediscovered

In the 1990s, a new generation of scholarly works reasserted the utility of
cultural interpretations. In the aptly titled book, The Return of Culture and
Identity in IR Theory, Lapid set the tone for this revival of interest:
Culture and identity are staging a dramatic comeback in social theory and
practice at the end of the twentieth century. . . . Political realists—who, under
the impact of their Waltzian move to neorealism have harshly marginalized
culture and identity—are cautiously partaking in this trend. Similarly, follow-
ing a period of hostile indifference to “ideational explanations” the time for
ideas seems to have come around once again in International Political
Economy.29
Inspired by the rise of constructivism and what Desch called “a renaissance of

interest in culture in security studies,” researchers plunged into the gap between
structural expectations and security policy realities, with models of culturally
bound state behavior.30
The rise of constructivism in the post–Cold War era influenced theoretical
work on strategic culture, domestic structures, and organizational culture. Ted
Hopf argued that constructivism promised “to return culture and domestic pol-
itics to international relations theory.” Given its proclaimed ontological agnos-
ticism, the paradigm
envisions no disciplinary divides between international relations and compar-
ative subfields (or any fields for that matter). Constructivism has no inherent
focus on “second image” accounts of world politics. . . . Constructivism pro-
vides a promising approach for uncovering those features of domestic society,
culture, and politics that should matter to state identity and state action in
global politics . . . . Any state identity in world politics is partly the product of
the social practices that constitute that identity at home.31
The constructivist research program devotes particular attention to identity

formation, with connections to organizational process, history, tradition, and
29
Yosef Lapid, “Culture’s Ship: Returns and Departures in International Relations
Theory,” in Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil, eds., The Return of Culture and
Identity in IR Theory (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996), p. 3.
30
Desch, “Culture Clash,” p. 145. For constructivist foundations of ideational
models, see Alexander Wendt, “Identity and Structural Change in International Poli-
tics,” in Lapid and Kratochwil, eds., The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory,
pp. 47– 64. See also Ellis and Thompson, eds., Culture Matters.
31
Ted Hopf, “The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations,” Inter-
national Security 23, No. 1 (1998), p. 914; see also Jeffrey W. Legro, “Culture and
Preferences in the International Cooperation Two-Step,” American Political Science
Review 90, No. 1 (1996), pp. 118–137.
culture. Alexander Wendt articulated the constructivist stance that state identi-
ties and interests are “socially constructed by knowledgeable practice” and
addressed the thorny issue of how identity and interests are formed.32 Accord-
ing to Valerie Hudson, constructivism “views culture as an evolving system of
shared meaning that governs perceptions, communications, and actions . . . .
Culture shapes practice in both the short and long term. At the moment of
action, culture provides the elements of grammar that define the situation, that
reveal motives, and that set forth a strategy for success.” 33 The rise of con-
structivism clearly allowed a new wave of strategic cultural research with some
promising avenues for further development.34
Related studies of national security policy highlight the importance of cul-
ture. Alastair Johnston’s Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strat-
egy in Chinese History sets out to investigate Chinese strategic culture and
causal linkages to China’s use of military force against external threats. But
Johnston chose several unconventional research approaches to explore the theme.
For example, he selected the intriguing period of the Ming dynasty (1368–
1644) as the focus for his contemporary theoretical test, and he openly acknowl-
edged his skepticism regarding the assumptions of area studies work that China
has a unique or special unexplained quality in state character and behavior. He
wrote that strategic cultural arguments assert “China has exhibited a tendency
for the controlled, politically driven defensive and minimalist use of force that
is deeply rooted in the statecraft of ancient strategists and a worldview of rel-
atively complacent superiority.” 35 Based on careful historical analysis, Johnston
concluded that there were two Chinese strategic cultures in action: “one a sym-
bolic or idealized set of assumptions and ranked preferences, and one an oper-
ational set that had a nontrivial effect on strategic choices in the Ming period.” 36
Ironically, he found that while China does have characteristics of unique stra-
tegic cultures, these cultures actually exhibit some classic elements of realpolitik.
32
Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction
of Power Politics,” International Organization 46, No. 2 (1992), pp. 391– 426.
33
Hudson, ed., Culture and Foreign Policy, pp. 28–29.
34
Arguably the most important book to define this new wave of scholarship on
strategic culture was Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security. This collec-
tion of works linked theory and national security policy through essays that focused on
how norms, institutions, and other cultural features affect state interests and policies.
From the beginning, Katzenstein acknowledged the interdisciplinary nature of the inquiry,
calling this “a book written by scholars of international relations rummaging in the
‘graveyard’ of sociological studies” (p. 1).
35
Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy
in Chinese History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 1.
36
Ibid., p. x.
Scholars also have conducted research on links between culture and national
security policy behavior in other areas of the world. For example, Elizabeth
Kier described the significance of organizational culture in the development of
French military doctrine.37 Stephen Rosen provided a compelling account of
the ways that the military and organizational cultures in India have shaped
strategy over time.38 In another fascinating work, Roland Ebel, Raymond Taras,
and James Cochrane argued that the cultures of Latin American countries are
distinctive, identifiable, and highly influential in the development of domestic
and foreign policies.39
The Strategic Cultures of Germany and Japan

Another significant research program in this new wave of literature can be
found in specialized studies of German and Japanese strategic culture. Neo-
realists predicted that these countries would soon rise to the challenge of
the post–Cold War era and pursue a natural path toward military dominance.
For example, Kenneth Waltz coyly suggested at the beginning of the 1990s
that “Germany may ultimately find that reunification and the renewed life
of a great power are more invigorating than the struggles, complications, and
compromises” of European integration.40 These predictions seemed to fall short
in their interpretations of the behaviors of these countries in the early post–
Cold War era, and some scholars turned their attention to alternative
explanations.
Thomas Berger’s Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany
and Japan explored the continuity and restraint of these countries’ security
policies in the post–Cold War era by focusing on their “antimilitarist political-
military cultures.” 41 Berger noted that while Japan’s economic and technolog-
ical power placed it in a position to become an economic and perhaps even
military superpower at the end of the Cold War, the persistent postwar culture
37
Kier, “Culture and Military Doctrine.”
38
See Stephen Peter Rosen, Societies and Military Power: India and Its Armies
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996).
39
Ebel, Taras, and Cochrane, Political Culture and Foreign Policy in Latin Amer-
ica, p. 5.
40
Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” Inter-
national Security 18, No. 2 (1993), p. 71; see also Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar
Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security 17, No. 2 (1993),
pp. 5–51.
41
Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and
Japan (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 1.
of antimilitarism truly defines Japanese security policy today.42 To Berger, Japan’s

experience in the Gulf War proved that the country was following a unique
path:
Just when the world was expecting Japan, together with the newly united Ger-
many, to begin to take over from the United States the mantle of leadership in
their respective regions, both countries were plunged into virtual policy paral-
ysis by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Instead of revealing a new
assertiveness, Japan had great difficulty responding to the crisis, dispatching a
token mine-sweeping flotilla only after hostilities had ceased, and only grudg-
ingly offering financial support after much internal bickering. The Japanese
public appeared totally unimpressed with arguments stressing the importance
of meeting aggression or defending the principle of national sovereignty . . . .
Instead of raising international ethical or political issues, the domestic debate
focused almost entirely on the need to appease the Americans versus adher-
ence to Japan’s position as a peace nation, as embodied in Article 9 of the
constitution, and guarding against a rekindling of militarism.43
According to Berger, cultural beliefs and values act as a distinct national lens
to shape perceptions of events and even channel possible societal responses. In
this sense, “cultures enjoy a certain degree of autonomy and are not merely sub-
jective reflections of concrete ‘objective’reality.” 44 Berger argued that these sub-
jective interpretations allow special historical interpretations to develop over time:
What then accounts for German and Japanese antimilitarism? The answer to
this question can be found neither in any feature peculiar to either country, nor
in commonalities in their positions in the international system. In the final
analysis, German and Japanese antimilitarism can best be explained by each
nation’s struggle to draw lessons from its troubled past. In both cases, these
lessons were shaped by the fierce political debates of the early postwar years,
which took different routes in each country and provided the resulting anti-
military sentiments of each with decidedly distinct flavors . . . . In Japan, by
contrast, the dominant perspective was one of dual victimization. On the one
hand, the Japanese felt they had been victimized by the blind ambition of
Japan’s wartime military leadership. On the other hand, they also felt victim-
ized by the United States and other foreign nations, which in the Japanese
view had conducted a ruthless campaign of conquest in order to increase their
own power.45
42
These ideas are also developed in an earlier work: Thomas U. Berger, “From
Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan’s Culture of Antimilitarism,” International Security
17, No. 4 (1993), pp. 119–150.
43
Ibid., p. 129.
44
Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism, p. 9.
45
Ibid., pp. 6–7.
Berger assumed that political-military cultural interpretations are relatively

static and resistant to change for at least three reasons. First, existing political
cultural content is widely shared, so “alternative sets of ideas are relatively few
and enjoy little support within the society, thus limiting the possibility that a
given political culture might be readily supplanted.” This argument was echoed
by Jeffrey Legro, who noted that political culture is a collective property “gen-
erally not reducible to individuals.” 46 Second, Berger argued that some stan-
dard elements of strategic culture, “especially the evaluative and affective
components,” are very difficult to disconfirm. Third, he argued, “even the poten-
tially disconfirmable cognitive elements are buffered by the psychological phe-
nomenon of consistency seeking. Information that reinforces existing images
and beliefs is readily assimilated, while inconsistent data tend to be ignored,
rejected, or distorted in order to make them compatible with prevailing cogni-
tive structures.” 47 Thus, antimilitarist sentiments had become deeply institu-
tionalized in Germany and Japan through a process of legitimated compromises.
Japanese public opinion, despite the end of the Cold War and growing trade
frictions with the United States, continues to favor a gradualist approach to
defense policy and opposes any large increase in the Japanese defense budget.
Thomas Banchoff ’s The German Problem Transformed explored the evo-
lution of German foreign policy as a product of both historical memory and
geopolitical circumstances. Banchoff developed a constructivist “path-dependent”
model of foreign policy, whereby he argues that decisions taken at critical his-
torical junctures have shaped the development of foreign policy over time.
These foreign policy paths form traditions and routines then adopted by polit-
ical institutions. “Together,” he concluded, “interlocking institutions and polit-
ical consensus sustained German foreign policy continuity across the 1990s
divide.” 48
In related works, John Duffield contended that political culture has signif-
icantly influenced contemporary German foreign policy within a broader inter-
national environmental context.49 Duffield emphasized the special nature of
the new German security policy, marked by a high degree of continuity and
46
Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during World
War II (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 20.
47
Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism, p. 24. See also Deborah Welch Larson, “The
Role of Belief Systems and Schemas in Foreign Policy Decision Making,” Political
Psychology 15, No. 1 (1994), p. 25.
48
Thomas Banchoff, The German Problem Transformed: Institutions, Politics, and
Foreign Policy, 1945–1995 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 2.
49
Duffield, World Power Forsaken, p. 2; see also Duffield, “ Political Culture and
State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Neorealism,” International Organization
53, No. 4 (1999), pp. 765–803.
moderation. He stated that far from setting off in adventurous new directions,
“Germany has exercised considerable restraint and circumspection in its ex-
ternal relations since 1990. . . . In short, notwithstanding initial fears to the
contrary, Germany has acted with little more assertiveness and independent-
mindedness in the area of national security than it did during the Cold War.” 50
This restraint is clearly the product of Germany’s national security culture,
a subcomponent of political culture, Duffield contended. Germany’s culture is
characterized by beliefs and values, including “deep skepticism about the appro-
priateness and utility of military force,” a preference for multilateral action, a
drive to be viewed as a reliable partner, and “a strong aversion to assuming a
leadership role in international security affairs.” 51 Duffield writes, “The over-
all 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.” He argued that information
inconsistent with “prevailing cognitive structures” tends to be discounted and
is, after all, very “rare in international relations.” 52 To Duffield and other pro-
ponents of strategic culture, German and Japanese security policies have exem-
plified the culturally bound model.53
The Clash of Civilizations

and Interstate Disputes
Huntington’s “civilizational thesis” emerged in the post–Cold War era as one of
the most controversial branches of cultural theory.54 Like works on strategic
culture, the origins of the thesis can be traced back to national character studies
of the 1940s, as well as to Cold War anthropological studies. Huntington con-
tended that states are part of broader civilizations that share strong bonds of
culture, societal values, religion, and ideologies. The most important of these
bonds, he argued, is religion, and “the major civilizations in human history
50
Duffield, World Power Forsaken, p. 4.
51
Ibid., p. 6.
52
Duffield, “ Political Culture and State Behavior,” p. 771.
53
54
Samuel P. Huntington: “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, No. 3
(1993), pp. 22– 49; “If Not Civilizations, What? Paradigms of the Post–Cold War
World, Foreign Affairs 72, No. 5 (1993), pp. 186–194; The Clash of Civilizations; and
“The Many Faces of the Future: Why We’ll Never Have a Universal Civilization,” in
Robert Jackson, ed., Annual Editions: Global Issues 99/00 (Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin/
McGraw-Hill), pp. 15–18.
have been closely identified with the world’s great religions.” 55 Metacultural
ties, taken to the broadest level of categorization, are civilizational identities
that shape modern world politics. According to Huntington, these civilizations
include Islam, Hinduism, Western Christianity, Confucianism, Eastern Ortho-
doxy, Buddhism, the Latin American, Japanese, and “possibly African.” 56 When
dealing with states from different regions of the world, Huntington argued that
leaders would employ a cultural realist strategy (or “civilizational realpolitik”).57
The crux of the civilizational thesis is Huntington’s argument that conflict
is more likely to occur between states of different civilizations in the post–Cold
War era. Specifically, he claimed that civilizations would clash for such rea-
sons as increased interaction among peoples of different civilizations; the
de-Westernization and indigenization of elites in non-Western states; increased
economic regionalization, which heightens civilization consciousness; and a
global resurgence of religious identity that is replacing diminishing local and
state-based identities. In addition, demographic and economic changes shifted
the balance of power among civilizations as the capabilities of non-Western
states, especially Asian and Islamic states, were rising to challenge Western
hegemony.58 Ultimately, Huntington insisted, decisionmakers would be “much
more likely to see threats coming from states whose societies have different
cultures and hence which they do not understand and feel they cannot trust.” 59
Huntington offered up a series of anecdotal examples to support his thesis,
including the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia along civilizational “fault
lines,” the breakdown of political unity in Eastern Europe, and increased ten-
sions between the Western and Islamic worlds. Recently, scholars and practi-
tioners have linked Huntington’s thesis to the events of September 11, 2001,
and the subsequent war on terrorism. Even though his work stops far short of
systematic, empirical investigation, Huntington boldly concluded that there is
an increased salience of civilization membership in contemporary global poli-
tics and that these basic differences would generate conflict.
Although these arguments encouraged some investigation of metacultural
ties, area studies experts have been particularly critical of Huntington’s will-
ingness to propose the sweeping generalizations that were necessary to under-
gird the civilizational thesis. Proponents of cultural interpretations take issue
with Huntington’s reduction of civilizational identity to a focus on religion.
They claim that this represents an oversimplification of more complex anthro-
pological and sociopsychological chords that define a cultural (or perhaps meta-
55
Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, p. 47.
56
Ibid., p. 20.
57
Ibid., pp. 289–290.
58
Ibid., p. 318.
59
Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” p. 34.
cultural) group. Others have challenged Huntington’s work on the obvious

limitations of empirical foundation. Taken to the extreme, some proponents of
cultural interpretive arguments have suggested that Huntington’s work under-
mined the careful, social scientific progress that had been achieved in the cul-
tural research program.
Recent scholarly investigations of Huntington’s claims have challenged fun-
damentally the civilizational thesis. Empirical analyses of the relationship
between civilization membership and interstate war between 1816 and 1992
have concluded that there is no statistically significant linkage before, during,
or after the Cold War. In fact, some periods of study revealed an increased
likelihood of conflict between states in the same civilizational grouping as
opposed to the predicted intercivilizational conflict thesis.60
A Research Agenda for Strategic Culture

Generations of scholarship have produced greater understanding of ties between
culture and state behavior. Strategic cultural studies have provided rich descrip-
tions of particularistic cultures and identities, and researchers have acknowl-
edged important links between external and internal determinants of national
security policy. Cross-disciplinary linkages to anthropology, historical research,
sociology, and psychology have informed cultural studies. Inspired by construc-
tivism, scholars have begun to explore how strategic culture is shaped and may
evolve through research programs such as discursive analyses. As a result, even
skeptics have acknowledged that contemporary works on culture offer much
more than an “explanation of last resort.”
This survey of the literature also points to substantial room for refining the
research program. Areas for further attention include developing a common
definition of strategic culture to build theoretically progressive models; delin-
eating the ways that strategic culture is created, maintained, and passed on to
new generations; and refining linkage models between external and internal
determinants of security policy. While some scholars suggest that adopting
cultural models represents a fundamental rejection of structure, research in the
post–Cold War era suggests that more comprehensive models of state behavior
can be constructed short of falsification of the realist program. Contrary to
60
Errol A. Henderson and Richard Tucker, “Clear and Present Strangers: The Clash
of Civilizations and International Conflict,” International Studies Quarterly 45 (2001),
pp. 317–338; see also Errol A. Henderson: “The Democratic Peace through the Lens of
Culture, 1820–1989,” International Studies Quarterly 42 (1998), pp. 461– 484; “Cul-
ture or Contigiuity: Ethnic Conflict, the Similarity of States, and the Onset of Interstate
War, 1820–1989,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41, pp. 649– 668; and “Is the Dem-
ocratic Peace an Imperialist Peace?,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 2000.
neorealist critiques of ideational frameworks, few cultural scholars believe that

this really is an “either-or” theoretical debate. Some have moved on to a new,
progressive stage for the development of generalizable, cross-national compar-
ative frameworks.61
Developing Common Definitions and Progressive Models

of Strategic Culture
After decades of scholarship on cultural determinants, we might assume that
strategic culture has become an accepted independent variable in causal mod-
eling. It has not. Snyder’s definition of strategic culture as “a set of semiper-
manent elite beliefs, attitudes, and behavior patterns socialized into a distinctive
mode of thought” set the tone for further investigations.62 While contemporary
studies show some convergence of opinions about strategic culture, deeper dis-
agreements remain about its definition, content, and implications for security
policy.
Duffield argued that political culture can influence markedly state behavior,
but he correctly pointed out the need for further clarification of the research
program:
There is still a need for more basic evidence concerning the presence or absence
of distinct political cultures, their content, and their effects on the policies of
other states and during different historical periods. It makes little sense to
engage in cross-national comparisons of political culture until its existence
and impact have been established in specific instances. As case studies cumu-
late, however, scholars should increasingly seek to situate their work in an
explicitly comparative framework. Such an approach is necessary to identify
the range of values that different elements of political culture may hold.63
Scholars today seem to agree that distinct political cultures do exist, but
definitions still blur the line between preference formation, values, and state
behaviors. Lucian Pye’s definition of culture as “the dynamic vessel that holds
and revitalizes the collective memories of a people by giving emotional life to
traditions” is a case in point.64 Here, strategic culture becomes a generator of
preferences, a vehicle for the perpetuation of values and preferences, and a
force of action in the revitalization and renewal of these values. Rosen said that
61
See, for example, Albert S. Yee, “The Effects of Ideas on Policies,” International
Organization 50, No. 1 (1996), pp. 69–108.
62
Snyder, The Soviet Strategic Culture, p. 8; see also Booth, Strategy and
Ethnocentrism.
63
Duffield, “ Political Culture and State Behavior,” p. 792.
64
Lucian W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimension of Authority
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 20–22.
strategic culture includes the “beliefs and assumptions that frame . . . choices
about international military behavior, particularly those concerning decisions
to go to war, preferences for offensive, expansionist or defensive modes of
warfare, and levels of wartime casualties that would be acceptable.” 65 While
more focused on preference structures, this definition includes reference to the
rules that might govern conduct in war. In his own effort to develop a theory of
strategic culture, Klein offered two different definitions of strategic culture:
“the habits of thought and action” and “the set of attitudes and beliefs held
within a military establishment concerning the political objective of war and
the most effective strategy and operational method of achieving it.” 66
Delineating culture as an independent variable is challenging, and some
scholarly efforts have bordered on tautology, wherein domestic political struc-
tures are identified as both reflecting and shaping political culture.67 Defini-
tions of strategic culture are further complicated by constructivist arguments
that culture cannot be a permanent influence on state behavior. Rather, “con-
structivism views culture as an evolving system of shared meaning that governs
perceptions, communications, and actions . . . . At the moment of action, cul-
ture provides the elements of grammar that define the situation, that reveal
motives, and that set forth a strategy for success.” 68 Scholars must recognize
the difficulty of drawing linkages between political structure and state behavior
but seek consensus on explanatory boundaries.69
Huntington’s civilizational thesis suggested that cultural identity actually
transcends state boundaries and may be mostly a function of shared religious
convictions. This metacultural argument raises serious questions about con-
temporary efforts to develop comparative frameworks of national strategic
cultures. That being said, many cultural scholars have concluded that the
civilizational model has failed to contribute to the research program defining
the origins of culture in common national historical experience. It seems that
while Huntington offered one of the boldest “levels of analysis” on the subject—
and drew greater popular attention to the explanatory power of culture along
the way—some regard it as having undermined theoretical progress in the study
of political and strategic cultures.
Johnston offered one of the most promising avenues for a progressive research
program on strategic culture by characterizing culture as “an ideational milieu
which limits behavior choices.” This milieu consists of “shared assumptions
65
Rosen, Societies and Military Power, p. 12.
66
Klein, “A Theory of Strategic Culture,” pp. 3–23.
67
Pye, as quoted in Lowell Dittmer, “ Political Culture and Political Symbolism,
p. 555.
68
Hudson, ed., Culture and Foreign Policy, pp. 28–29.
69
See Wilson, “The Many Voices of Political Culture.”
and decision rules that impose a degree of order on individual and group con-
ceptions of their relationship to their social, organizational or political environ-
ment.” While he noted that strategic subcultures may exist, “there is a generally
dominant culture whose holders are interested in preserving the status quo.”
This approach to strategic culture as a set of shared assumptions and decision
rules allows us to separate the strands of culture from dependent variable out-
comes like strategic choice. Furthermore, Johnston’s conceptual approach to
strategic culture was designed to be “falsifiable, or at least distinguishable from
non-strategic culture variables . . . [that would] provide decisionmakers with a
uniquely ordered set of strategic choices from which we can derive predictions
about behavior.” 70 This work is certainly informed by progress in political
psychology, as well as contemporary sociological studies of the complex con-
nections between culture and state behavior. In sum, there is real potential in
the latest generation of work on strategic culture, which has tended to be more
focused in its conceptualization of independent variables such as strategic cul-
tural principles and dependent variables in specific security policy decisions.
Who Are the Keepers of Strategic Culture?

Identifying strategic culture as a set of shared assumptions and decision rules
prompts the question of how they are maintained—and by whom. Most schol-
ars prefer descriptions of political and strategic cultures as the “property of
collectivities rather than simply of the individuals that constitute them.” 71 For
example, Richard Wilson argued:
In the most general sense political cultures are socially constructed normative
systems that are the product of both social (for example, rules that coordinate
role relationships within the organizations) and psychological (for example,
the preferences of individuals) influences but are not reducible to either . . . . A
political culture is not simply the sum of individual preferences, nor do pref-
erences, especially those of any given individual, necessarily correspond with
normative prescriptions. Indeed, the mismatch is at times quite glaring. Yet it
is essential to understand the goals that are embodied in both individual pref-
erences and normative prescriptions, for it is the dynamic relationship between
the two that underwrites the stability or instability of political systems.72
Acknowledging strategic culture as an “important ideational source of
national predispositions, and thus of national security policy” suggests deep but
vague cultural foundations for state behavior. If political culture is truly man-
ifest in cognitive, evaluative, and expressive dimensions, it is conceivable that
70
Johnston, “Thinking about Strategic Culture,” p. 45.
71
72
Wilson, “The Many Voices of Political Culture,” p. 12.
actors who carry those values might be identified. In fact, various political
leaders and institutions are engaged in historical interpretation and develop-
ment of the foreign policy path, which prompts coalition- and consensus-
building efforts by specific political players. Duffield notes, “Institutional sources
of national predispositions are likely to reside in the central governmental organs
charged with the formulation and execution of policy.” They may shape policy
by “organizational processes, routines, and standard operating procedures” that
“constrain the types of information to which decision makers are exposed.” 73
Berger contends that political culture is best understood as a combination of
norms and political institutions that
exist in an interdependent relationship, each relying upon the other in an ongo-

ing way. Formal institutions play a role in anchoring broader society beliefs
and values and provide continuity and permanency to them. Culture forces, in
turn, influence the shapes institutions take and provide them with legitimacy
and meaning. The interaction between formal institutions and the beliefs and
values prevalent in a given society becomes particularly relevant in periods
where the political system is undergoing change.74
Elites are often the purveyors of the common historical narrative.75 Most
scholars agree that elites are instrumental in defining foreign policy goals and
the scope and direction of policy restructuring in the face of new challenges.
Furthermore, there is a general consensus in the literature that elites are cog-
nitively predisposed to maintain the status quo. But Berger’s work on policy
discourse recognized that strategic culture is best characterized as a “negoti-
ated reality” among elites. Leaders clearly pay respect to deeply held convic-
tions such as multilateralism and historical responsibility. Yet the record of
past behavior for many countries also shows that leaders choose when and
where to stake claims of strategic cultural traditions and when and where to
consciously move beyond previous boundaries of acceptability in foreign pol-
icy behavior. Contemporary scholarship contends that elite behavior may be
more consistent with the assertion that leaders are strategic “users of culture”
who “redefine the limits of the possible” in key foreign and security policy
discourses.76
73
74
Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism, pp. 11–12.
75
See, for example, Sanjoy Banerjee, “The Cultural Logic of National Identity
Formation,” in Hudson, ed., Culture and Foreign Policy.
76
Consuelo Cruz, “Identity and Persuasion: How Nations Remember Their Pasts
and Make Their Futures,” World Politics 52, No. 3 (April 2000), p. 278. For more on
the strategic “use of culture,” see Swidler, “Culture in Action.”
Authors have recognized that political institutions—including parties and

domestic coalitions—greatly affect foreign policy behavior.77 The organiza-
tional culture literature, for example, suggests that state behavior is a function
of specific institutional orientations. Yitzhak Klein said that the primary bear-
ers (and users) of strategic culture are
those in every country . . . who are charged with defining the military objec-
tive of war and devising the means of achieving it . . . . In modern times and
nations, however, our definition generally refers to professional military estab-
lishments . . . [in which] strategic cultures tend to change slowly. Through
long years of peace they ruminate upon their distinctive burdens of historical
and institutional experience, habits of thought and action. . . . The effect of
strategic culture is likely to be felt most prominently at the level of operational
thinking. . . . If strategic culture is partly a product of military experience,
combat is its greatest educator. A nation with frequent combat experience is
likely to fare better in choosing a strategy to fit its doctrine, and operations to
execute its strategy, than one whose officers must learn from journals.78
Legro concurred that the organizational culture of the military has dramatic
bearing on security policy behavior because it tends to be isolated, highly reg-
imented, and distinct.79 Kier’s work on the organizational culture of the French
military and Rosen’s examination of Indian military policies offer compelling
examples of this connection.80
Studies of Japanese and German foreign policy decisions in the 1990s cer-
tainly suggest that there are enduring institutional manifestations of strategic
culture. Questions remain about when institutions are more inclined to main-
tain and perpetuate common historical narratives than to legitimize “necessary”
foreign policy behaviors inconsistent with tradition. For example, recent stud-
ies suggest that the military bureaucracies in both Germany and Japan have
played interesting, if marginal, roles in the development of security policy.
Given that broad strategic cultural norms are characterized as “antimilitarist,”
Berger and others focus their descriptions on the restrictions of military activ-
ism in the system. In Japan, the Self-Defense Forces that were created in 1954
fall under a severe set of restrictions in mission and armaments. The Japanese
77
Klein posited that military organizations could be important purveyors of politi-
cal culture, but this study is focused upon elite discourse and not institutional cultural
orientations inside the Ministry of Defense. See Klein, “A Theory of Strategic Cul-
ture”; related works on organizational culture include Legro, Cooperation under Fire;
Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the
Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997).
78
Klein, “A Theory of Strategic Culture,” pp. 12–13.
79
See Legro, Cooperation under Fire.
80
See Kier, Imagining War.
legislature has passed a series of resolutions forbidding overseas troop deploy-

ments, and these restrictions have become a norm in Japanese political-military
culture. In Germany, restrictions on military activism were established in articles
of the Grundgesetz (Basic Constitutional Law), and political institutions have per-
petuated this culture of restraint. The German Foreign Ministry actually has had
dominant control over security policy development in the Federal Republic dur-
ing the past fifty years, while the Defense Ministry “plays only a relatively small
part in the security policy process.” 81 Finally, we should note that critics charge
that the influence of organizational culture on state behavior is mediated by
other institutions and by the policy-making process in democratic states.
Public opinion is an important part of the ideational milieu that defines
strategic culture, and it must help to shape the broad parameters of acceptable
state behavior. This is particularly the case in parliamentary democracies, where
government stability is founded directly upon popular support. Yet recent case
studies suggest that public opinion has only a limited effect on the actual scope
and timing of security policy behavior. In the case of Germany, for example,
the evidence shows that public attitudes were surprisingly dynamic and mal-
leable in response to international challenges like the Persian Gulf War and the
humanitarian tragedies that followed. Other interpretations from the literature
suggest that public attitudes toward security policy matters have been mostly
mixed.82
Continuity or Change? The Evolution of Strategic Culture

The focus of most strategic culture studies is on continuity of state behavior. In
his 1988 article, “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,” Harry Eckstein
suggested that the socialization of values and beliefs occurs over time. Past
learning becomes sedimented in the collective consciousness and relatively
resilient to change. Lessons of the past serve as a tight filter for later learning
that might occur.83 This description highlights the accepted mantra of continu-
ity in cultural determinants of state behavior (for both supporters and detractors
of cultural theories).
81
82
This conclusion is derived from a structured, focused comparison of case studies
of German foreign policy behavior in the 1990s. See Jeffrey S. Lantis, “The Moral
Imperative of Force: The Evolution of German Strategic Culture in the Kosovo
Crisis,” in Comparative Strategy 21, No. 1 (January–March 2002); see also Peter F.
Trumbore, “ Public Opinion as a Domestic Constraint in International Negotiations:
Two-Level Games in the Anglo-Irish Peace Process,” International Studies Quarterly
42, No. 3 (1998), pp. 545–565.
83
Harry Eckstein, “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,” American Political
Science Review 82 (1988), p. 796.
An intriguing characteristic of the latest generation of cultural studies is

the gradual recognition of the possibility of strategic cultural change over
time. If historical memory, political institutions, and multilateral commit-
ments shape strategic culture, then, recent studies argue, it would seem logical
to accept that foreign policies around the globe are undergoing “enduring trans-
formations.” 84 This useful contribution to the strategic culture literature is
informed by both studies of foreign policy restructuring and constructivist ideas
of foreign policy as discourse. It also represents a response to the criticism of
prior generations of cultural models as static and unresponsive to systemic
pressures.85
Those scholars who have reluctantly acknowledged that strategic culture
can change believe that such a process would not be easy. Potential catalysts for
change, Duffield argued, might be “dramatic events or traumatic experiences
[such as revolutions, wars, and economic catastrophes]” that would “discredit
thoroughly core beliefs and values.” 86 Such change would be accompanied by
extreme psychological stress and would require a resocialization process, involv-
ing participation by various groups in crafting a compromise on a new political
cultural orientation. In this sense, political culture may be understood as a form
of consensus or historical narrative that then becomes stabilized and legiti-
mated by subsequent generations of political leaders.87 These ideas represent a
step toward the refinement of strategic cultural models.
Of particular note is Berger’s assertion that strategic culture is best under-
stood as a “negotiated reality” among foreign policy elites. While leaders clearly
pay respect to deeply held convictions associated with strategic culture, the
story of foreign policy development may be best understood as the pursuit of
legitimation for preferred policy courses that may, or may not, conform to tra-
ditional cultural boundaries. In a recent study, Cruz contended that elites have
much more latitude than scholars generally allow. They may “recast a particu-
lar agenda as most appropriate to a given collective reality or . . . recast reality
itself by establishing a (new) credible balance between the known and the
unknown.” In short, Cruz argued, they “redefine the limits of the possible, both
descriptively and prescriptively.” 88
Under what conditions can strategic culture evolve? When can foreign pol-
icy decisions transcend the traditional bounds of strategic culture? Some sur-
veys of German security policy decisions in the post–Cold War era, for example,
84
Banchoff, The German Problem Transformed, p. 2.
85
See, for example, Lockhart, “Cultural Contributions.”
86
87
Ibid., p. 14.
88
Cruz acknowledges that this raises a critical dichotomy between culture as a
system of meaning and culture as practice, in “Identity and Persuasion,” p. 278.
suggest that the evolution of strategic culture may be more abrupt, less diffi-
cult, and more prevalent than traditional scholarly orientations would allow.
German responses to the recent Kosovo crisis represent an interesting example.
In my own work on the subject, I contend that at least two conditions in this
crisis caused “strategic cultural dilemmas” and produced changes in German
national security policy. First, external shocks may have served to fundamen-
tally challenge existing beliefs and undermine past historical narratives. For
German leaders, the scale of the humanitarian tragedies in the Balkans in the
1990s served as a catalyst for consideration of policy options outside the tradi-
tional bounds of German strategic culture. The recognition that groups were
being systematically targeted for genocide and ethnic cleansing created a moral
imperative for German action. The intensity of external shocks prompted a
reexamination on all sides of the proper response. Neither economic power nor
diplomacy was sufficient to prevent these tragedies, and even pacifists were
forced to consider the use of military force as the final option to end the con-
flict. Some experts have even suggested that ethnic cleansing in Bosnia eroded
the moral legitimacy of pacifism on the German political left and led to an
atmosphere more permissive of the use of force to stop such violence. High-
ranking German officials have contended in interviews with me that ethnic
cleansing was the primary catalyst for restructuring German foreign policy and
changing domestic political alignments in the post–Cold War era.
Second, foreign policy behavior may break the traditional bounds of stra-
tegic cultural orientations when primary tenets of strategic thought directly
conflict with one another. In other words, a country with interpretive codes of
support for democracy and an aversion to using military force faces a strategic
cultural dilemma when confronted by a challenge to democracy that requires a
military response. The Japanese government confronted this question in rela-
tion to the struggle for self-determination in East Timor. The same type of
dilemma may arise from a conflict between commitments to multilateralism
and unilateral convictions that norms are being violated. Products of this stra-
tegic cultural dissonance include occasional state defections from multilateral
arrangements, the development of alternative diplomatic initiatives, or stipula-
tions for policy cooperation.
One of the best examples of dissonance as a product of a clash of strategic
cultural values played out through the evolution of thought in the Green Party
on the use of force by Germany in the 1990s. Debates about restructuring Ger-
man foreign policy led to a resurfacing of past divisions in the party between
moderate (Realos) delegates and pacifists/liberals (Fundis). Realos Green leader
Joschka Fischer wrote in 1994 of the change in thinking by the political left on
the normalization of German foreign policy. Fischer described the party’s sup-
port for German integration into the EU and for participation in the NATO
alliance. Furthermore, he called for a new degree of German foreign policy
realism while maintaining a profile as a “civilian power” and abstaining from
the use of military force abroad.89 In the summer of 1995, Fischer distributed a
position paper to colleagues inside the party that acknowledged the need for
German military action in response to pressing international imperatives like
the prevention of genocide.
In 1999, it was Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer who held the governing
coalition together to keep Germany involved in the air war over Kosovo. Defense
Minister Rudolf Sharping said that the Kosovo crisis taught Germany, Europe,
and the NATO alliance that they must “adapt to the challenges evolving from a
dynamic international security environment.” 90 The Kosovo crisis was one
instance where Green Party leaders realized that their defection from the gov-
ernment could ultimately shatter the NATO alliance and delay progress toward
European integration.
Thus, strategic cultural dilemmas define new directions for foreign policy
and demand the reconstruction of embedded historical narratives. In the spirit
of paradigmatic shifts, these changes take time and energy for common accep-
tance, but they are distinctly new paths. Perhaps Michael Thompson, Richard
Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky captured this cognitive dissonance argument best
when they said that cultures remain vital only if their core principles continue
to generate solutions that satisfy human needs and make sense of the world.
They contended, “When cultures cease to provide such solutions, when they
cease to make sense, their members begin to doubt them, and if plausible alter-
natives are available, members ultimately defect.” 91
Democratic states are founded upon embedded national security values that
can be tested in the face of strategic cultural dilemmas. Changes—including
abrupt and fairly dramatic reorientations of security policy behavior—appear
to be possible, and strategic cultural models must be more reflective of the
conditions that draw out such changes. This argument is consistent with Leg-
ro’s findings that “reality can be socially constructed . . . . However, when the
contradiction between external conditions and cultural tendencies becomes too
great, culture will likely adapt.” 92 But it is also important to add that citizens of
countries that experience strategic cultural change often view this as adaptation
to circumstances rather than overt aggression. As Gunther Hellmann points out
in a post–Cold War discursive analysis of German scholarship on the future of
89
See Joschka Fischer, Risiko Deutschland: Krise und Zukunft der deutschen Poli-
tik (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1994).
90
German Information Center, “German Minister of Defense, Rudolf Scharping, at
the Eisenhower Lecture NATO Defense College in Rome,” This Week in Germany,
January 11, 2000, p. 2.
91
Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boul-
der, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 69–70.
92
Legro, Cooperation under Fire, p. 231.
foreign policy, realist interpretations played a significant role in most non-

German views of German foreign policy, but they represented only “a minority
perspective in the German discourse” itself.93
Conclusion
While constructivism may represent a paradigmatic challenge to structural real-
ism in the discipline today, most supporters of strategic culture have adopted
the more modest goal of “bringing culture back in” to the study of national
security policy. In fact, these research traditions are more similar than some
would believe. Scholars must work to overcome barriers to integrating these
two approaches into a more comprehensive model of strategic culture forma-
tion, implementation, and change. Some scholars argue that one barrier is a
defensiveness by neorealists. For example, Desch sought to make a critical
distinction between the models:
There is no question that virtually all cultural theories tell us something about
how states behave. The crucial question, however, is whether these new theo-
ries merely supplement realist theories or actually threaten to supplant them. I
argue that when cultural theories are assessed using evidence from the real
world, there is no reason to think that they will relegate realist theories to the
dustbin of social science history. The best case that can be made for these new
cultural theories is that they are sometimes useful as a supplement to realist
theories.94
By framing the argument in this manner, neorealists knowingly set up cul-
tural theories for failure. They may mischaracterize contemporary studies of
strategic cultures as frequently emphasizing “the uniqueness within, rather than
the similarity across, cases.” Ultimately, even Desch allows that cultural theo-
ries might supplement neorealism by helping to explain time lags between struc-
tural change and alterations in state behavior, by accounting for seemingly
“irrational” state behavior, and in helping to explain state actions in “structur-
ally indeterminate situations.” 95 For example, the cases of the evolution of
German and Japanese security policies are better understood as a product of
domestic political adjustments (rooted in culture, traditions, and common his-
torical narratives) to changing international circumstances. Far from an exclu-
sive interpretation, progressive models that explore external-internal linkages
and their impact on discrete, strategic choices represent an important avenue
for theoretical advancement.
93
Gunther Hellmann, “Goodbye Bismarck? The Foreign Policy of Contemporary
Germany,” Mershon International Studies Review 40 (1996), p. 26.
94
Desch, “Culture Clash,” p. 141.
95
Ibid., p. 166.

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Strategic Culture and National

© 2002 International Studies Association

Theoretical Interpretations of Continuity

“interpretive codes,” including language, values, and even substantive beliefs

inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men com-

Strategic Culture and National Style

warrants a historically discontinuous response,” national style would be an endur-

Strategic Culture Rediscovered

Inspired by the rise of constructivism and what Desch called “a renaissance of

The constructivist research program devotes particular attention to identity

The Strategic Cultures of Germany and Japan

of antimilitarism truly defines Japanese security policy today.42 To Berger, Japan’s

Berger assumed that political-military cultural interpretations are relatively

The Clash of Civilizations

cultural) group. Others have challenged Huntington’s work on the obvious

A Research Agenda for Strategic Culture

neorealist critiques of ideational frameworks, few cultural scholars believe that

Developing Common Definitions and Progressive Models

Who Are the Keepers of Strategic Culture?

exist in an interdependent relationship, each relying upon the other in an ongo-

Authors have recognized that political institutions—including parties and

legislature has passed a series of resolutions forbidding overseas troop deploy-

Continuity or Change? The Evolution of Strategic Culture

An intriguing characteristic of the latest generation of cultural studies is

foreign policy, realist interpretations played a significant role in most non-

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