About strategic culture

Abstract

Strategists have been researching those variables that may have effects on strategic choices for a long time. In 1977 Jack Snyder, marking culture as one of those variables, created the
notion of strategic culture and gave impetus to research in this area. During the evolution of his theory several schools had developed that tried to identify the influence of culture on the strategic behaviour of a state. Involvements of the United States and NATO in Iraq and Afghanistan further strengthened the importance of culture as a factor on the different levels of military planning and in strategic thinking. The article reviews the development of strategic culture theories and based on the categorisation of Alastair Iain Johnston describes the characteristics of the different schools. It also reviews the conclusions, strengths and weaknesses of the scholars’ works in distinct generations thus giving a detailed analysis of Johnston’s findings. The author found that culture has become a defining element of strategic thinking, but there is still room for researchers to study and identify the concrete effects of culture to the strategic choices.