Strategic Culture Research Articles

Analysing the European Defence Fund’s financing distribution across EU countries: what drives national participation in defence-industrial integration projects?

The establishment of the European Defence Fund (EDF) marks a significant shift in how EU Member States approach the integration of the defence industry as it aims to systematically promote inter-European defence-industrial cooperation across national defence sectors. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence of the actual dynamics regarding EDF implementation. While there are accounts of EU countries’ varying political positions on defence integration, including its industrial aspect, it remains unclear whether Member States’ actual participation in integration projects aligns with these positions. Are national motives consistent once effective defenceindustrial integration is underway? The findings, based on Masson’s (2024) data on by-country distribution of EDF project financing (2021–2022), present a more nuanced picture of EU countries’ effective engagement with defence-industrial integration than anticipated by the political perspective. While there is a positive relationship between participation in the EDF and defence market size, strategic culture does not influence EU members’ involvement in the Fund. Furthermore, while liberal economicindustrial governance is negatively associated with national participation in EDF projects, a country’s institutional quality has a significant positive relationship with it. This article reveals more complex dynamics of EDF implementation than suggested by the political perspective on defence-industrial integration pre-EDF.

RUSSIAN STRATEGIC CULTURE: INSIGHTS FROM THE FULL-SCALE WAR AGAINST UKRAINE

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022 marks a security policy paradigm shift akin to ‘9/11’ for Europe. For the international community of security experts, the invasion represents an anomaly for their rational choice analysis. Their ‘logic of consequence’ must be replaced by the alternative ‘logic of appropriateness’. Hence, the author of this paper employs a broad approach to strategic culture stressing Kremlin regime security as Putin’s operational code. Under this approach, interventionism characterizes the Russian ‘way of war’ as does sheer brutality. The decision to invade Ukraine resulted from Putin’s personal hubris and idiosyncrasies as much as groupthink within the Russian security elite. Putin’s calculus behind invading Ukraine is reconstructed as geopolitical and geo-economic imperialism, along with domestic concerns for pacifying Russia. The first year of war exposed a dysfunctional Russian strategic culture - a collapsing Blitzkrieg effort and a failure to prevail in the subsequent battle for Donbas. The Russian conduct of war reiterated the signature Russian strategic culture of massive destruction and unpunished war crimes. Putin often doubles down and escalates, as seen in the partial mobilization on 21st September 2022. The winter of 2022–2023 brought both systematic Russian attacks on critical Ukrainian energy infrastructure and fierce battles in Vuhledar, Soledar and Bakhmut in which Russia used meatgrinder tactics. The Russian military performance improved during the second year of the war due to the construction of massive fortifications along the frontline. Putin’s strategy has thus turned in favour of a long war of attrition seeking to outlast the combined effect of successive Western upgrading of the weapons supplied to Ukraine and the stamina of the Ukrainians themselves. The Ukrainian counteroffensive shows Ukraine to have the initiative, but progress is painfully slow. This reflects the fact that the war is a war of attrition between two different militaries supported by two dissimilar coalitions of productive power and high-tech innovative capacity.

The Beowulf Group: Taking the lead to defend Europe

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has exposed divisions in European strategic culture and threat perception. The search for a lowest-common-denominator response to the threat has hampered the European reply to the Russian aggression, often forcing the EU to move at the speed of its slowest member, whether in supplying ammunition and equipment to Ukraine or setting up the defence industry needed to accelerate such a supply in the future. Notwithstanding the importance of keeping a broad coalition together, this article argues that it is now time to create a vanguard of like-minded European nations, led by France, Poland and, though not an EU member, the UK, but open to other states, which can force the creation of a new strategic culture able to meet the Russian threat. This ‘Beowulf Group’, named after the Danish hero from the Anglo-Saxon epic who stood up to the marauding monster Grendel, could establish a Strategic College for Europe, a joint Elite European Reserve Legion and a strategic communications centre, to move European policy in a more active direction.

Traditional Worldviews, Strategic Culture and Revolutionary Mentality: The Case of People’s Republic of China

This article explores China’s ambitions to become a global hegemon in the 21st century. The research traces the origins of these ambitions in China’s strategic culture and system of ideas and representations. Forming a geopolitical study in this way, this article zooms in the concepts of ‘middle’, ‘Middle Kingdom’ and Tianxia. ‘Middle’ symbolises China’s centrality and moral authority; ‘Middle Kingdom’ embodies the idea of a state where political power is concentrated; and Tianxia represents China’s historical visions of the global order. The research results show that China’s traditional worldviews suggest ambitions for a leading status in the international chessboard, which is confirmed by China’s aspects of revolutionary mentality and development of the military power. While the extent to which China will ascend to a leading role remains uncertain, understanding China’s identity—via its strategic culture—is crucial for grasping both China’s ambitious policy and its impact on the world.

A pact of iron? China’s deepening of the Sino-Russian partnership

To characterize the bilateral partnership, this paper applies the neoclassical geopolitics approach. We first measure China’s potential, and the perception of Chinese geopolitical agents, and placed within the international distribution of capabilities. This is followed by our analytical results on Sino-Russian relations in the spheres of potential, strategic culture, and geopolitical design. The paper concludes that while there is a strategic necessity for China to strengthen the partnership, the Sino-Russian relations are unlikely transforming into a traditional military alliance, due to Beijing’s self-interest to maintain trade relations with Western countries, to avoid being tainted by Russia’s deteriorating reputation, to grasp its goal of multipolar world order, and to spread positive narratives of China as a new global leader. The Sino-Russo relations has been shifting its nature from “marriage of convenience” to “marriage who pretend to be a good couple.”

Rethinking the low profile: The evolving stance of China’s strategic culture

In recent decades, the concept of strategic culture has emerged as the core focus of cultural approach theories to explain a state’s strategic behavior, given that existing theories have failed to convey deviations from the universal principles of rational state behavior. Relying on the conceptual framework of strategic culture, complemented by Barry Buzan’s “revisionist” approach, this article strives to fill the existing gap in the literature by presenting motives and evidence of revisionism in China’s culture-based conduct. By investigating China’s revisionist behavior vis-à-vis its strategic culture, we conclude that both are correlated. China’s territorial claims, its rapid military modernization, the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, and its ambiguous alignment with Russia, emphasize the evolution of China’s strategic culture from a defensive to a more resolute stance.

Meet Me in the Middle: Evaluating Middle Power Cyber Doctrine and Strategic Culture Through the Cases of Canada and Australia

The global expansion in reliance on information and communication technologies has thrust the digital world of cyberspace into the forefront of strategic security discourse. Meanwhile, the responsibilities, capabilities, and strategic interests of middle powers have been fraught with ambiguity and debate in international relations literature. While existing studies examine how the cyberspace domain has become an increasingly competitive arena for geopolitics and strategic competition between and among great powers, there remains a dearth of literature evaluating cyberspace objectives and behaviour for middle powers. This paper aims to fill this gap, drawing on prior frameworks of analysis used for great power cyber studies, alongside extant middle power literature, to employ the theoretical lens of strategic culture toward evaluating the unique behaviour of middle powers in cyberspace. This paper thus suggests that cyberspace presents scholars with an outlet to further examine and define middle powers in the international realm, as well as middle powers with opportunities to assert and potentially expand their position in the global order, while protecting and promoting their distinct interests. This paper also incorporates a synthesis of quantitative and qualitative cyber data, and the deployment of a Most Similar Systems Design to assess two middle power case studies: Canada and Australia. The findings help to challenge and refine our understanding of what roles, capabilities and objectives define middle power behaviour in cyberspace, as well as provide insight into the implications that the rise of cyber operations and security considerations might have for Canadian and Australian grand strategy, and middle power strategic culture more generally. Ultimately, this study serves to refine past theoretical assumptions in the context of a novel and expanding domain for statecraft and competition, and identify a foundation from which the principles of a more coherent and effective cyber doctrine for middle powers might be pursued.

Houthi Motivations Driving the Red Sea Crisis: Understanding How Ansar Allah's Strategic Culture Goes beyond Gaza and Iran

Houthi Motivations Driving the Red Sea Crisis: Understanding How Ansar Allah's Strategic Culture Goes beyond Gaza and Iran

Born Out of Crisis, Revels in Turmoil: Iran’s Islamic Republic at Home and Abroad

ABSTRACT Iran’s Islamic Republic regime is adept at functioning amidst turmoil. In Triumph and Despair, Mehran Kamrava shows how structural bifurcation, parallel institutions, and fluid political factions are enduring sources of tension within an already hybrid political system. Far from being a handicap, the regime uses internal friction to deflect blame from its shortcomings and to sow confusion among opponents. Nor does it recoil from domestic turmoil, with crisis management increasingly a strategy of choice to compensate for its diminishing legitimacy and failures in governance. Abroad, too, the Islamic Republic seems to revel in geopolitical upheaval in pursuit of overturning the Middle Eastern security architecture. Relying on non-state affiliates as deterrents and power multipliers, it is opportunistic in ensnaring adversaries in proxy conflicts, or exploiting their entanglements, while minimizing the risk of direct confrontation with itself. In Reading Revolutionary Iran, Ze’ev Maghen explains the strategic culture behind the regime’s ambitions.

STRATEGIC CULTURE OF SAUDI ARABIA

The publication analyses the impact of Saudi Arabia’s strategic culture on the formation of its foreign policy. The relevance of the topic is connected to the growing challenges in the field of international security associated with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, which has demonstrated fundamental changes in the modern system of international relations with a tendency towards multipolarity with mega-centres of power. Within the Middle East international political space, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may become such a centre of power, one of the national interests of which is the desire to gain regional leadership. The article analyses the theoretical foundations of the concept of strategic culture and extrapolates these conclusions to the study of the attitude of the Saudi political elite to the use of force, as well as the tools for preventing and combating potential risks and threats to national security. Thus, through the prism of constructivism theory, the article outlines each of the main components of Saudi Arabia’s strategic culture, namely: the role of the country’’s strategically important geographical location, historical retrospective of the state’s formation, analysis of the perception of threats and tools for overcoming them, the state’s attitude to its enemies and allies in the international arena, and the factor of «soft power”.It is determined that the strategic culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is based on a high level of sensitivity to internal and external threats, which is the reason for the active militaristic policy of the state, rivalry for regional dominance with Iran and development of strategic relations with a strong ally, which historically has been the United States of America. At the same time, it should be noted that in order to achieve national interests in the turbulent international security environment, Saudi Arabia actively uses the soft power factor, which has a direct correlation with its national identity as an Islamic state.

Strategic culture and its (re)construction: What role for narratives and othering?

Strategic culture has been studied to explain patterns of behavior focusing thereby almost exclusively on the impact of culture held by decision makers on strategic choices. This preoccupation with the culture-behavior nexus has resulted in overlooking the questions about the (re)construction of strategic culture and presuming it as historically given, out there, and self-evident. This article shifts the focus to the (re)construction of strategic culture and brings in narratives and othering as discursive practices that (re)construct strategic culture. By bridging strategic culture, narration, and othering, it demonstrates that strategic culture is not out there and self-evident but a set of narratives with elements of othering that constitutes and transmits distinct meanings about the self and others, and their interactions through particular storylines which frame strategic thinking as well as appropriate policy means and ends.

The Implications of Strengthening ‘European Strategic Autonomy’ and Its Defence Capabilities for the Growth of France’s Global Importance and Power

France occupies a key position in Europe’s defence and security structures and the promotion of a ‘Europe of defence’ has been one of the political priorities of French leaders since the late 1990s. One of the key initiatives strengthening multilateral military cooperation in the EU is the European Intervention Initiative (EI2), which aims to instil a French strategic culture among Europeans. The aim of the study is to show that France is ‘shifting’ its power ambitions to Europe, which is to become a significant actor in international relations, equipped with mechanisms of political representation and credible military forces, enabling it to conduct a global-scale independent policy. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the strengthening of ‘European strategic autonomy’ serves to preserve a multipolar world, in which France will play the role of Europe’s ‘leader,’ and is expected to be conductive to the development of defence industry cooperation.

Influence of Strategic Culture on National Security: The Kenya Experience from 1963 to 2023

Influence of Strategic Culture on National Security: The Kenya Experience from 1963 to 2023

‘Crawling dissatisfaction’: understanding China’s bilateral approach towards South China Sea disputes

ABSTRACT China’s foreign policy behaviour has been highly scrutinized in the last decade. Its foreign policy approach towards neighbouring countries is no exception. Scholars have mostly focused on China’s hard, soft, or ‘dual’ approach to explaining Beijing’s current foreign behaviours corresponding to the South China Sea dispute. However, specific studies on China’s bilateral approach remain understudied, while understanding regarding this matter might result in a better perspective towards regional peace and stability. This paper, thus, has two aims: firstly, it goes beyond rationalist perspectives in understanding China’s bilateral approach; secondly, it provides an explanation of why China chose this approach. It is, therefore, argued that China’s bilateral approach is vastly influenced by Chinese strategic culture as an effort to seek stability. It, moreover, also argues that China’s bilateral approach is not a mere an image of its soft diplomatic approach but more deeply it is a practice of its dissatisfaction towards the liberal order embraced by ASEAN. By choosing a bilateral approach, while formally maintaining multilateralism, China ‘crawlingly’ promotes a non-liberal approach towards ASEAN.

The Russian way of deterrence: strategic culture, coercion, and war

The Russian way of deterrence: strategic culture, coercion, and war

INFLUENCE OF NEO-OTTOMANISM TRADITIONS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF RUSSIAN-TURKISH RELATIONS: THEORY AND PRACTICE

The article examines the problems of the current state of Russian-Turkish relations through the analysis of the theoretical and methodological apparatus of neo-Ottomanism (new Ottomanism) as a foreign policy tradition, which, from the author’s point of view, today occupies one of the leading places in the foreign policy course of the current government of R.T. Erdogan. The complexity and uncertainty of this phenomenon require the use of specialized analysis methods: a system-structural analysis of the foreign policy of states (developed by the corresponding MGIMO school), a scientific approach within the framework of FPA (foreign policy analysis), separate tools for analyzing the strategic culture and foreign policy institutions of Ankara (according to the methodology of G. Almond and S. Verba). According to the author, for the current foreign policy of Ankara, the tradition of neo-Ottomanism is system-forming due to its ideological saturation of the initial ideological foundation. At the same time, the ambiguity of its interpretations lays down an expansive interpretation of Turkey’s foreign policy behavior in the international arena, which is fraught with problems and conflicts for Moscow’s foreign policy in realizing its interests in areas of international politics that cross Ankara.

The reaction of London newspapers to the proclamation of the Monroe doctrine

The presented article analyzes the reaction of the British press to the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine by the American president in 1823. The reaction of leading London periodicals such as The Examiner, The Monthly Magazine, The London Magazine and The Morning Post is considered. The author describes in detail the diversity of opinions: from support for Republican ideals and their contrast with the monarchical aspects of the policy of the Holy Alliance to expressing concerns about the negative impact of the doctrine on Britain's trade and economic interests in Latin America. The author concludes that the London newspapers have a balanced, albeit emotional assessment of the influence of the Monroe Doctrine on international relations and the specific interests of Great Britain. The article focuses on the period of the 1820s and the British reaction to American foreign policy activity, neglecting to consider the British position in the context of the War of Independence of the Spanish colonies of 1808-1819. In the study of newspaper materials by domestic and foreign scientists, general philosophical (deduction and induction, systematic approach, synergetic approach, etc.), general scientific (observation, comparative method, etc.) and private scientific methods specific to a particular field of knowledge. The Monroe Doctrine provides a rare example of a 200-year-old speech that remains the subject of regular references when discussing the current international political agenda to this day. The article examines the reaction to the Monroe Doctrine, which is one of the fundamental documents of American public policy, which became one of the first steps for the formation of American strategic culture in its current state. The relevance of the article is based on the need for a comprehensive study of the reports of the leading London press to identify their impact on international relations and the specific interests of the United Kingdom. Despite the fact that the Monroe Doctrine has been around for two hundred years, it does not lose its relevance in relation to Latin American states with the United States, and, more importantly, in relation to the United States, with other actors in world politics.

Creating the Joint Arctic Command: Cutting Cost or Preparing for the Future? Strategic Culture, Arctic Security and Strategic Reasoning within the Kingdom of Denmark

Creating the Joint Arctic Command: Cutting Cost or Preparing for the Future? Strategic Culture, Arctic Security and Strategic Reasoning within the Kingdom of Denmark

The Russian factor in the development of France's strategic culture

Due to the development of the Ukrainian crisis and, as a result, the change in the international situation, the French leadership has taken steps to change its foreign policy course, including with regard to Russia. Issues related to understanding the strategic culture of France are key in developing a foreign policy course towards our country, which requires a modern response. However, strategic culture as a concept has not been studied much and continues to be the subject of research by scientists. The strategic culture of France has been formed over a large number of years, and now the French strategic culture is embodied in the positioning of the state abroad, has its own style and specific features. The current situation in modern international relations regarding the deterioration of relations between Russia and France requires theoretical study aimed at identifying the foundations of France's strategic culture and its influence in order to form a foreign policy.

Back to the past: The roots of Indonesian middlepowermanship

This article challenges prevalent perspectives on Indonesian foreign policy by delving into the nuanced intricacies of the country's strategic culture, especially from its role as a middle power. The conventional understanding categorizes Indonesia as capable of embracing either a status quo or revisionist stance. However, this analysis proposes a comprehensive re-evaluation through the lens of strategic culture theory to decipher the distinctive approach of Indonesian middlepowermanship. The argument posits that Indonesian leaders draw inspiration from and strategically utilize the historical legacies of pre-modern kingdoms—specifically, the Majapahit and Mataram kingdoms. These ancient empires serve as pivotal references in shaping contemporary foreign policy orientations. The Majapahit kingdom becomes instrumental when Indonesia pursues revisionist-like foreign policies, seeking to assert its influence and challenge established norms. Conversely, the Mataram kingdom's legacy is invoked when the state aims to maintain a status quo, prioritizing stability and regional harmony. By scrutinizing these historical paradigms, this article unpacks the intricate interplay between Indonesia's strategic culture, its historical antecedents, and its foreign policy orientations. It seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of Indonesian middlepowermanship, elucidating the adaptive utilization of historical narratives in shaping the country's geopolitical behavior on the modern global stage.