What Good is Strategic Culture

A Modest Defence of an Immodest Concept

Bibliographic Data

ID5882822
AuthorsDavid G Haglund (corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume59
Issue3
Pages479-502
Publication date2004-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Canada s Journal of Global Policy Analysis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7020 • E-ISSN: 2052-465X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/002070200405900302
OpenAlexW1982066477
LanguageEN
Citations received4

INTRODUCTIONOscar Wilde famously referred to fox-hunting as the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible. With apologies to Wilde, those of us bounding off over conceptual hedges in quest of strategic culture might be called the unintelligible in pursuit of the incomprehensible. For no matter how achingly compelling is the need to render our concepts sharp tools for analysis, we unfailingly get entangled in constant wrangling over their very definition, with the result being that the passage of time often results in spreading confusion instead of enlightenment. This is so, notwithstanding the expressed hope of many that the same passage of time might reasonably be expected to generate a capable of penetrating and dispelling the conceptual fog, by speaking definitional truth to us.But if the literature on strategic culture is to resemble that on every other political concept, it will be apparent that not only is the body of writing on our topic often bereft of literary merit, but it will inevitably produce noteworthy, unavoidable, and ongoing dissension in the analytical ranks: truths perhaps, when taken singly and contemplatively, but no overarching truth. Still, our failure to come to agreement over the term's meaning and applicability should be neither surprising nor particularly discouraging; it simply illustrates we are dealing with an interesting concept that, as with all such concepts, can be used to advantage if used carefully.Strategic culture might not be a metaconcept in the way, say, that is, but there is utility in the comparison. Consider that power is supposed to be one of the key notions at our disposal when we wax theoretical about international relations and foreign policy, and yet what strikes the student of power analysis is how much basic disagreement there can be over this word's meaning. If power is nothing other than aggregate as many structural realists insist it is,(1) then certain claims about the structure of the international system (and mutatis mutandis, as we shall see below, strategic culture) become possible to make. Among the most important such claims is the one that enables us to discern a systemic pecking order predicated upon capability, so that we are enabled to develop such other important concepts as unipolarity, bipolarity, or multipolarity in a bid to describe and comprehend that system. But if you follow the injunction of others, and regard power as simply another way of saying influence, then all descriptive bets are off, and theories about how and why states act become increasingly complicated, because dependent upon a myriad of situationally specific contexts.(2)The point is not that there is something abnormal about the way the debate rages over the mega-concept, power; to the contrary, the debate is completely normal, and indeed, necessary, for unless there is healthy and substantial scholarly divisiveness about concepts, there can be no advance of theoretical knowledge in social science.(3) And while it is perhaps possible to imagine consensual understanding enveloping some political concepts, the cases when such occurs must be rare, and a concept about which we can say there exists basal agreement is probably not a very important tool for anyone's use.Thus, if strategic culture is to follow the normal trajectory of political concepts (and here we should note it is still in its relative infancy, having been apparently first employed under that name only in the late 1970s),(4) then we can expect not only that debates about its meaning will be ceaseless, but that it will be prone, as are all concepts, to expansion. Churchill's quip about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the rest serves as a useful reminder about how unexceptional conceptual discord really is. And no less exceptional, even though one might wish it to be otherwise, is conceptual expansion.(5) This is so not only because of the very ambiguity of the concepts we deploy (no mean consideration in itself), but also because of the impact of changing conditions on the words we use to describe and understand the conditions

Aesthetics · Confusion · Economics · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Law and economics · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Power (physics · Sociology · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Philosophy · Psychology