United States Strategic Culture and Asia-Pacific Security

Abstract

This article adopts an historical socio-cultural lens to analyse the United States' strategic cultural tendencies. It traces the roots of the mutually constitutive relationship between technology and political structures in the United States to explain the dominant tendency of the United States to substitute technology for strategy in war as a predisposition of national strategic culture. This predisposition was seen particularly in network-centric warfare and effects-based operations. I conclude that the United States risks strategic failure due to the limitations of its ethnocentric security paradigm. Over-reliance on technology obscures strategic understanding of the people and cultures of the world, including those of the Asia-Pacific region. The development of the AirSea Battle is a case in point, a direct application of technology to strategic concerns in the Asia-Pacific region. The strategic pivot towards the Asia-Pacific may be characterized as reflecting more historical continuity than change in America's strategic calculus. The emerging Asia-Pacific security dynamic is no different a challenge for American policy-makers in that regard than challenges presented elsewhere in the world. Perhaps the biggest challenge for American leaders is to overcome institutional intransigence or the lure of ideological conformity when addressing military requirements and budgetary commitments.