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(D) Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction PDF
10.1057/9780230618305preview - Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L.
Johnson and Jeffrey A. Larsen
Strategic Culture and Weapons
of Mass Destruction
10.1057/9780230618305preview - Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson and
Jeffrey A. Larsen
Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies
James J. Wirtz
General Editor
Jeffrey A. Larsen
T.V. Paul
Brad Roberts
James M. Smith
Series Editors
I NITIATIVES IN STR ATEGIC STUDIES provides a bridge between the use of force or diplomacy
and the achievement of political objectives. This series focuses on the topical and timeless issues
relating to strategy, including the nexus of political, diplomatic, psychological, economic,
The Last Battle of the Cold War: The Deployment and Negotiated Elimination
of Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces in Europe
Maynard W. Glitman
Critical Issues Facing the Middle East: Security, Politics and Economics
Edited by James A. Russell
10.1057/9780230618305preview - Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson and
Jeffrey A. Larsen
Strategic Culture and Weapons
of Mass Destruction
Edited by
Jeannie L. Johnson, Kerry M. Kartchner,
and Jeffrey A. Larsen
10.1057/9780230618305preview - Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson and
Jeffrey A. Larsen
STRATEGIC CULTURE AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Copyright Jeannie L. Johnson, Kerry M. Kartchner, and
Jeffrey A. Larsen, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
in the United Statesa division of St. Martins Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
10.1057/9780230618305preview - Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson and
Jeffrey A. Larsen
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to npg - PalgraveConnect - 2016-03-27
Jeannie dedicates this book to Steve, who makes her contribution to
this and all other work possible.
Kerry dedicates this book with devotion to the incomparable women
at the center of his life: Michelle, Brittany, and Chelsea, and their
remarkable mother, Sophie; and to his new son-in-law, Trevor.
Jeff expresses his hopes for a world in which his children Heather,
Peter, Andrew, and Carolyn can safely pursue their love of foreign
cultures and appreciate the wonderful babble of strange tongues in
distant lands.
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
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C on t e n t s
List of Figures ix
Foreword by Beatrice Heuser xi
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
viii C on t e n t s
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
Figu r e s
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For e wor d
W hen in the late 1980s I put forward a research proposal on culture as a variable
in nuclear strategy (a subject that was going to occupy me for eight years), I met
10.1057/9780230618305preview - Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction, Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson and
Jeffrey A. Larsen
xii For e w or d
after power and oil and nothing else. I am still amazed that these theories ever
reigned supreme in the aftermath of World War II, when, in the eyes of the world,
a German regimewith the general support of its populationstaked its cards on
becoming world power or going under, when the latter could not possibly have
been in its interest, with a net effect of loss of life and treasure that could not have
been greater had somebody deliberately set out to harm Germany. But past and
contemporary times are replete with examples of behaviorincluding self-sacrificial
behavior, right down to suicide bombersthat cannot be explained merely in terms
of the quest for power or riches.
Let us stick, then, to strategic culture. But instead of reiterating or maladroitly
summarizing what the contributors are saying so competently and aptly in their
respective case studies, I shall add a few pointsideas, admonitions, perhaps
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
For e w or d xiii
thus have a strong tendency to project our own feelingsor what we imagine would
be our reactions to certain events we have not actually experienced ourselveson
to others. We try to deduce logically what anothers motives might be in doing
a certain thing by trying to put ourselves in their place. This basis of empathy,
however, in many respects a particularly precious part of humanity, may blind us
to cultural and individual differences. To give just one example, on his first visit
to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered to
discuss the European sharing of French nuclear weapons, a subject proposed by the
French repeatedly since the late 1950s. As the French assume everybody must surely
aspire to having them, as to the French they are the ultimate symbol of sovereignty,
Sarkozy assumed the Germans wanted them to, especially now that Germany is a
sovereign country once more. He was surprised to find that (East German) Merkel,
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
xiv For e w or d
the Atlantic). Diplomats also fall into quite distinct groups. While it is no longer
true that most British diplomats have all studied Greats (classics) at Oxbridge,
a particularly large proportion of British diplomats are language students, a vital
selection principle, as particularly the English are so abysmally bad at languages. In
Germany, by contrast most diplomats and senior civil servants in other ministries are
by training lawyers, with all the consequences one can safely deduce from this.
Such cultural differences within a profession are even more striking when you
look at armed forces. Anybody knows that there are particular cultures associ-
ated with army, navy, air force and marines. But even these differ from country to
country. For example, the brainwashing and mental conditioning the U.S. Marines
receive in their training is likely to be unparalleled in any other Western democracy.
For another difference, while in Britain the Army and Navy look down on the Royal
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
For e w or d xv
Instead, they tend to be cautious types, rarely inclined to risk their career over a
point of principle or ethics.9
Most people dislike both their predecessors in their posts and their successors,
as their performances are invariably measured against the successes and styles
of their predecessors/successors. Your predecessor would not have done this
or would not have proceeded in this way is a disabling argument used by the
(always considerable) forces of inertia within any bureaucracy, and it does not
engender tender feelings toward this predecessor in those confronted with this
argument.
The list could go on, and this book lends itself to many more such generaliza-
tions. All that remains for me is to encourage the reader to turn with excitement and
Notes
1. Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press,
1986).
2. For an overview, see Stuart Clark, The Annales School: A Critical Assessment (London:
Routledge, 1999).
3. Most famously Jack Snyder, Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear
Options (Santa Monica, CA: R AND, 1977); Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism
(London: Croom Helm, 1979); Yitzhak Klein, A Theory of Strategic Culture,
Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10 (1991), pp. 323. The exception is Carnes Lord, American
Strategic Culture, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1986), pp. 26993.
4. Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades? (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992).
5. Albert Camus, L Etranger (The Outsider), 1942, available from Penguin Classics; and
Heinrich Bll, Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (New York: Penguin Twentieth Century
Classics, 1974).
6 Ralf Beste and Stefan Simons, Thanks but No Thanks: Sarkos Nuke Offer Bombs with
Berlin, www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,506124,00.html of September 17,
2007. See Beatrice Heuser, Nuclear Mentalities? Strategies and Belief Systems in Britain,
France and the FRG (London: Macmillan, July 1998); and Heuser, NATO, Britain, France
and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 19492000 (London: Macmillan,
1997).
7. Irving L. Janis, Group Think: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes 2nd edn.
(Boston: Houghton Miflin, 1982).
8. Cyril Northcote Parkinson, Parkinsons Law (J. Murray, 1958); Morton H. Halperin,
with the assistance of Priscilla Clapp and Arnold Kanter, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign
Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1974); Graham Allison, Essence of Decision
(Boston: Little Brown, 1971).
9. For officers, see Norman Dixon, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence (1976, this
edition London: Pimplico, 1994); but I owe this idea primarily to Admiral Chris Parry.
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Ac k now l e dgm e n t s
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xviii A c k now l e d g m e n t s
Colin Gray hosted the final conference of the project, held at Reading University
in Great Britain in August 2006. The purpose of this conference was to present our
project findings to an international audience in order to minimize ethnocentrism.
Among the participants in this event, we thank Simon Anglim, Jeremy Black,
Stewart Brewer, J.H. Choi, Tony Coates, Christopher Coker, Theo Farrell, Babak
Ganji, Andrew Garner, Bastien Giegerich, Sebastian L.v. Gorka, Darryl Howlett,
Keith Payne, Glen Segell, Geoffrey Sloan, Mark Smith, Jeremy Stocker, and Rashed
Uz Zaman for their contributions.
The editors express special appreciation to the authors whose contributions to
the project were chosen for inclusion in this volume. They were selected from among
dozens of essays, reports, presentations, and papers prepared over the course of the
first and second phases of this project. Their perspectives have been vetted at the
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
C on t r i bu t or s
Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr. is a senior analyst for Janes Information Group based in
Longmont, Colorado.
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
xx C on t r i bu t or s
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
Pa r t I
St r at egic C u lt u r e Today
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1
I n t roduc t ion
Background
In early 2006 the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (ASCO) of the U.S. Defense
Threat Reduction Agency (DTR A) commissioned a study of comparative strategic
cultures with the goal of creating a college-level curriculum based on that
methodological approach. This was led by the editors of the current book, and
most of the chapters herein were commissioned for that study. The studys sponsor
at ASCO was Dr. Kerry Kartchner, and the project lead at Science Applications
International Corporation (SAIC) was Dr. Jeffrey Larsen. Three major workshops
were held over the course of six months in Washington, DC, Park City, Utah, and
Reading, UK. In early 2007 nine case studies and nine essays were posted on the
DTR A web page for use by academics seeking readings directly addressing the issue
of WMD decision making.3
Given the studysand this booksfocus on weapons of mass destruction, and
deriving some policy relevant insights from the study of strategic culture, the project
directors posed the following questions to our authors to address with respect to
each of the case studies:
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4 Joh ns on, K a r t c h n e r , a n d L a r s e n
Could strategic culture help determine a nations willingness to use WMD against
others?
Are there cultural factors that promote or discourage a nations tendencies to
comply with or violate international norms regarding WMD?
Our authors were asked to think about the factors shaping the strategic culture
under study, and to profile its resultant characteristics. Areas of specific evaluation
included geography, shared narratives, relationships to other groups, threat
perception, ideology and religion, economics, and type of government and leadership
style. Authors were asked to probe further by asking:
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I n t r oduc t ion 5
One of the most difficult challenges in this project was assessing the importance
of strategic culture relative to other factors. Case study and essay authors were asked
to make a preliminary assessment of the explanatory power of strategic culture
versus other intervening variables or theories in several ways: shaping the groups
external and internal threat perceptions; the groups self-characterization, its role
and self-perceived relationship to the overall international system; its security
policies, including (but not limited to) decisions to acquire, use, proliferate, or
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
6 Joh ns on, K a r t c h n e r , a n d L a r s e n
ways, while at the same time providing preset responses to given situations. Thus
culture bounds our perceptions and the range of options we have for responding
to events. However, when a society experiences a severe shock or major disaster,
it forces that culture to become more open-minded, as it becomes momentarily
susceptible to new explanations, new paradigms, new ways of thinking, all in search
of understanding and mitigating the shock that has befallen them. The events of
9/11 did that to America. Americans found themselves looking outside their own
culture to better understand the cultures they must engage in the global commu-
nity, including those cultures that may have less than benign intentions toward the
United States or the West.
It became apparent in the aftermath of 9/11 that other cultures could produce
men who were capable of doing things Americans could not even imagine. What
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I n t r oduc t ion 7
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
8 Joh ns on, K a r t c h n e r , a n d L a r s e n
and radiological weapons, and their associated means of delivery, primarily but not
limited to ballistic missiles. 9
Methodology Issues
There are many methodological and epistemological challenges to using culture as an
analytical adjunct to policymaking. The primary problem faced by strategic culture
analysts is reducing the wide range of variables that may be termed cultural and
presenting strategic culture analysis as a usable model. Studies under the rubric of
strategic culture range the spectrum, from those focusing primarily on organiza-
tional culture within particular security bureaucracies, to others taking in the entire
spectrum of ideational and material influences on a country. Aspects of national and
a broad label that denotes collective models of nation-state authority or identity, carried
by custom or law. Culture refers to both a set of evaluative standards (such as norms
and values) and a set of cognitive standards (such as rules and models) that define what
social actors exist in a system, how they operate, and how they relate to one another.12
The concept of culture is often used heuristically in three different senses, and is
used in each sense to describe different ways in which culture relates to behavior.13
First, culture can be considered a shared system of meaning, with language and
terms that are understood and agreed within a given culture, and that are used
for identifying and defining what is considered rational. It is a way of interpreting
the world, a way of relating to the community and its members, and the relation-
ship of the community to other communities. It is based on evolving meanings
conditioned by historical precedent and contemporary experience.
Culture may be seen as a collection of value preferences, specifying what a
group, state, or society considers its appropriate security objectives and desires.
Strategic culture in this sense contributes to defining the appropriate ends of a
group or nations national security policy. Culture shapes what constitutes allowable
or optimal behavior; that is, it provides a template for human action, relating ends
and means in an appropriate and culturally sanctioned manner. In other words,
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I n t r oduc t ion 9
this aspect of culture relates the meaning of the first aspect of culture (a system
of shared meaning), with the objectives representing the collective value prefer-
ences, and helps determine appropriate means for achieving those ends. As Hudson
explains: What culture provides its members is a repertoire or palette of adaptive
responses from which members build off-the-shelf strategies of action . . . We may not
be able to predict choice and construction of a particular response by a particular
member of the culture, but we can know what is on the shelf ready and available to
be used or not.14 Taken together, these three definitions are roughly analogous to
the strategists typology of ends, means, and strategies. That is, culture defines the
ends, culture defines the means, and culture bounds the strategies for relating ends
to means.
Strategic is defined as relating to the military means of assuring the survival,
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Jeffrey A. Larsen
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