Familism and War: The Radius of Trust as an Element of National Power

Abstract

The field of strategic studies has evolved considerably, and the subfield of the study of power even more so. Most measures of military power, including the highly respected Correlates of War model, have focused on tangible assets such as the number of divisions, gross domestic product (GDP), access to natural resources, and population size. More recently, some analysts have begun to focus less on static data regarding personnel and equipment and more on state performance, that is, whether states are capable of converting these resources into the ability to project power. However, despite the large number of studies linking cultural factors to organizational performance, there is very little discussion of how culture affects this conversion process. One reason for this has been the lack of well-specified, empirically meaningful measures of culture. However, new research in a number of fields, particularly in cross-cultural psychology, has made a more empirically oriented cultural analysis of power possible. This paper examines the role of one of the most widely discussed phenomena in the cross-cultural psychology literature, the effects of familistic collectivism on organizational performance. Highly familistic cultures emphasize tightly knit family bonds over non-kin associations, an emphasis that tends to raise the marginal costs of carrying out large-scale operations. While previous military research has relied upon this construct, there has been almost no analysis of the effects of familism on relative combat effectiveness. Integrating an assessment of the effects of familism into an analysis of potential threats can reduce the probability of overestimating or underestimating the capabilities of competitors.