Untying the Knot? Assessing the compatibility of the American and European strategic culture under President Obama

Abstract

This article analyses the similarities and differences of the latest American and European security strategies under President Obama in order to make inferences about the degree of compatibility of their deep-seated and shared norms, beliefs and ideas regarding the means and ends of national security, and to better understand the normative continuity/discontinuity of those norms of the Obama vs. Bush administration. Building upon constructivist work on strategic cultures, the article concentrates on a qualitative analysis of elite security discourses and disaggregates them into their normative and ideational components. By studying strategic cultures empirically and comparatively, the study fills a known void in the literature on strategic cultures. It finds that American and European norms, beliefs and ideas about the means and ends of national security policy are compatible with regards to challenges and threats as well as preferred modes of international cooperation; they are incompatible with regards to commonly held beliefs about the international system and how to address threats, which is worry some politically. Moreover, the article finds that there is a continuity in the US security strategies from President Bush to Obama.