American National Style and Strategic Culture

Abstract

A nation’s strategy usually reflects its geo-strategic situation, resources, history and military experience and political beliefs.1 These factors influence how a country perceives, protects and promotes its interests and values and, in time, shape its strategic culture. Portrayal of a strategic culture as highly homogeneous or consistent, though, may neglect important influences and thus prove unsuitable for understanding action or policy. Even disparities between national ideals and actual behaviour can be distinctive traits.2 The study of US national style or strategic culture, in particular, is enriched by recognition of its political pluralism and of the various dualisms and dilemmas (and of the compromises by which they are at times resolved) that result from differing interpretations of American values, experience, and strategic challenges. The focus of this essay is thus the US process of strategy-making, its evolution, and inputs to it more than the output of the American approach to strategy.3