Suchergebnisse

The аrticle аddresses the essentiаl meаning of the strаtegic culture аs а phenomenon аnd its importаnce for nаtionаl security policy-mаking. Аcаdemic literаture аnаlysis hаs аllowed to offer аuthor's definition of multidimensionаl "strаtegic culture" term аnd to give аn outline of key factors to influence the nаtionаl strаtegic culture development. Strategic culture thus is viewed as a nucleus of strategic thinking underlying the state strategic planning which enables integral national security policy-making.
The аrticle provides with аn аttempt to elucidаte the key chаrаcteristics of Ukrаine's strаtegic culture, considering phylogenetic development of the Ukrаiniаn mindset in view of the key territorial and geographic, historical, civilizational factors that influenced the evolution of the Ukrainian national identity and statehood. Apart from that, the article also highlights the chаllenges аnd hindrаnces for further development of Ukrаiniаn strаtegic culture.
The emphasis is placed on the fact that the lack of monolithic strategic culture is one of the main reasons for unbalanced foreign policy of Ukraine, which in its turn poses a serious threat for state's national security.
Special attention is paid to the analysis of the political elite's role, as a national strategic culture carrier, in the processes of strategic culture forming and developing. The key features of the Ukrainian elite and their influence on political and strategic culture of Ukraine are defined.
Revolution of Dignity and Russian Federation's armed aggression against Ukraine are identified as catalysts of the integral strategic culture of Ukraine formation inasmuch as these events enhanced the processes of reformatting the national identity and renewing the system of values.
The outcomes of the research focuses attention on the need of developing by the Ukrainian political elite the strategy of Ukraine's strategic culture development in order to form a balanced and consistent national security policy.

The article analyzes the transformation of Russian strategic culture over the past 100 years. During this period, Russia veered away from the strategic goal-setting practices that its elite had implemented previously. Since the end of the 18th century, Russia was an integral part of the Concert of Europe, and its ruling circles absorbed the European ideas of peace, language of diplomacy, and approaches to military planning. Soviet power essentially "reinvented" the strategic culture of the Russian state, adopting The Second World War imbued Soviet strategic culture with a great-power attitude. The crisis of Soviet ideology seriously affected the strategic thinking of the elites, provoking its decline. The article concludes that some key categories of Soviet strategic culture still affect the strategic culture of modern Russian elites.

This Handbook offers a collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of strategic culture by a mix of international scholars, consultants, military officers, and policymakers. The volume explicitly addresses the analytical conundrums faced by scholars who wish to employ or generate strategic cultural insights, with substantive commentary on defining and scoping strategic culture, analytic frameworks and approaches, levels of analysis, sources of strategic culture, and modalities of change in strategic culture. The chapters engage strategic culture at the civilizational, regional, supra-national, national, non-state actor, and organizational levels. Divided into five thematic parts, the volume will appeal both to students new to the subject and to scholars who wish to incorporate strategic culture into their toolbox of analytical techniques. Part I assesses the evolving theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the field. Part II lays out elements of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, including sources and components of strategic culture. Part III presents a number of national strategic cultural profiles representing the state of contemporary strategic culture scholarship. Part IV addresses the utility of strategic culture for practitioners and scholars. Part V summarizes the key theoretical and practical insights offered by the volume's contributors. This handbook will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defense studies, security studies and International Relations in general, as well as to professional practitioners.

The conceptualization of strategic culture, as a relatively new field of
study, is a challenge for contemporary scientific thought. The complexity of
strategic culture factors and their complex interdependence make the process
of its understanding and definition extremely hard and almost elusive.
However, the fact that the concept of strategic culture is accepted and used
in practice indicates the necessity of its study, regardless of
methodological problems and shortcomings connected with the accessibility to
relevant data related to the national security issues. This is precisely the
aim of this paper ? to analyze the main aspects of strategic culture which
affect the national security system. On the one hand, strategic culture has
a long-term impact on the organization and functioning of the national
security system. On the other, it is also an analytical instrument that
anticipates the behavior of international policy actors. It is certain that
state-level decision makers, top management of the security system,
intelligence and security intelligence analysts, and senior military leaders
deal with the strategic culture, consciously or not. These are more than
enough arguments to draw attention of the scientific and professional
audience to strategic culture studies.

"Over the past three decades, the concept of strategic culture has gradually gained support within the ranks of political scientists studying international relations, but it remains controversial and has attracted few followers outside of political science. During the same period the related but much older concept of national ways of warfare has gained general acceptance among military historians and analysts, but in a literature developed in isolation from the discourse on strategic culture. As an integrating survey and synopsis of these two bodies of literature, this book sets out to overcome the barriers between them and to open the debate by drawing on relevant studies from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and geography.

Jihadi terrorism may be understood as a military tool used for political and military purposes of an actor in international relations. This article develops the concept of the Global insurgency, formulated by David Kilcullen. It is argued that Global Insurgency is a specific single actor with a distinctive strategic culture. The author examines the strategic culture of global insurgency from various angles through Gray's framework of seventeen dimensions of strategy. It is argued that the Global Insurgency operates on multiple levels of strategy with a high degree of coherence and with distinct strategic culture.

WHAT DISTINGUISHES LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT FROM OTHER FORMS OF CONFLICT IS NOT THE SCALE OF VIOLENCE AS SUCH BUT THE FACT THAT VIOLENCE IS EMBEDDED IN A POLITICAL CONTEXT THAT DIRECTLY SHAPES AND CONSTRAINS IT. THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES HOW STRATEGIC CULTURE AFFECTS AMERICAN PERFORMANCE IN LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT OR SMALL WARS. IT SUGGESTS THAT IN LOW INTENSITY WARFARE, NON-MILITARY INSTRUMENTATLITIES OF NATIONAL POWER MAY HAVE AN EQUAL OR EVEN GREATER ROLE TO PLAY THAN MILITARY FORCES. THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES THAT THE NEW WORLD SITUATION OFFERS A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO FREE MANKIND FROM SOME OF THE INTELLECTURAL AND INSTITUTIONAL SHACKELS THAT CULTURE HAS FORGED.

This article considers the ideational fabric of American empire. Section one discusses why liberal democratic empires are not particularly peaceful. Section two highlights the analytical value of a focus on U.S. strategic culture in explaining U.S. military practice. Section three looks more broadly at the role of identity in giving meaning to the U.S. imperial project & in giving reasons for the use of force in support of it. Throughout, comparisons are made with the British Empire & consideration is given to the meta-theoretical options & methodological challenges for the social science of strategic culture. Adapted from the source document.

The practice of neutral states represents an important expression of modern strategic culture, as a specific attitude towards military force and the use of military force, especially when it comes to Europe. Although the international politics seemed to be directed towards the circumstances in which such a collective understanding of reality was difficult to maintain, neutrality, with numerous challenges, continuously proves to be a very dynamic and adaptable concept. The emergence of internationalism after the First World War, especially the intensified integration trends after the end of the Cold War, strengthened the process of creating the basis for a new anti-war security vision of Europe. At the core of such efforts was the promotion of cooperation and dialogue and the suppression of the importance of military force in relations between European countries, which commenced the process of establishing the strategic culture of the European Union as an authentic post-national model. The new strategic culture with its specific view on the nature of relations between European countries, which is completely different from the traditionally understood contents of such concept, suppressed the importance of national security perceptions, as well as the effectiveness of military force in international politics, promoting the idea of security indivisibility. Undoubtedly, the strong integration momentum and the transnational type of threats have influenced the redefinition of neutrality practice, so the approach of neutral states to European and Euro-Atlantic integration was considered a natural course of events. Thus, today, neutrality has been radically modified in some aspects, and it is no longer significantly determined by, among the other things, isolation, but by emphasized international engagement. The abandonment or significant redefinition of the main postulates of neutrality has prompted serious challenges to the importance of neutrality, the authenticity and scope of the strategic culture of neutral states. That is why the value contents of neutrality have begun to be considered debatable, so that for some the concept is outdated, while others believe that it can still contribute to strengthening peace and stability in the world. However, although radically modified, neutrality has not disappeared, and it still represents a concept that is an important segment of international politics. The revival of realpolitik in international relations in recent years, as well as the challenges of the multipolar concept of international relations, represent important incentives for the legitimacy of the choice of neutrality and the affirmation of a strategic culture that favors the value postulates of neutrality.

"This Handbook offers a collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of strategic culture by a mix of international scholars, consultants, military officers, and policymakers. The volume explicitly addresses the analytical conundrums faced by scholars who wish to employ or generate strategic cultural insights, with substantive commentary on defining and scoping strategic culture, analytic frameworks and approaches, levels of analysis, sources of strategic culture, and modalities of change in strategic culture. The chapters engage strategic culture at the civilizational, regional, supra-national, national, non-state actor, and organizational levels. Divided into five thematic parts, the volume will appeal both to students new to the subject and to scholars who wish to incorporate strategic culture into their toolbox of analytical techniques. Part I assesses the evolving theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the field. Part II lays out elements of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field, including sources and components of strategic culture. Part III presents a number of national strategic cultural profiles representing the state of contemporary strategic culture scholarship. Part IV addresses the utility of strategic culture for practitioners and scholars. Part V summarizes the key theoretical and practical insights offered by the volume's contributors. This handbook will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, defense studies, security studies and International Relations in general, as well as to professional practitioners"--

The perceived threat posed to Russia from so-called colored revolutions–popular uprisings attributed by Moscow to malign sponsorship by external forces–has become a central theme in Russian security discourse. This article analyses how colored revolutions came to be characterized as a specific threat to national security and how they continue to shape Russian thinking about the changing character of conflict. It explores Russian perceptions of the threat from colored revolutions, using the concept of strategic culture as a framework to analyze these perceptions through an analysis of the Russian military theoretical literature and strategic documents. The article establishes that concerns about non-military means of destabilization reflect continuities in Russian strategic assumptions about adversaries and how they seek to achieve their national objectives. It also reveals the perpetuation of specific narratives about the country's vulnerability to foreign interference.

This article examines the evolution of Swedish strategic culture during the twentieth century and up to the present.Although Sweden is the only Scandinavian country that has stayed out of war since the age of Napoleon, it still has proud military traditions stemming from Sweden's age of empire (1561–1721) and from the Cold War period, when this nonaligned country became partly self-sufficient in modern military technology, producing its own fighter-jets, tanks and submarines, even planning to acquire nuclear weapons in the 1950s. On paper, Sweden maintained an impressive number of armed forces (850,000 men after mobilization), although at the end of the Cold War their equipment and training left much to be desired. Only around the year 2000 did this huge Cold War defence complex begin to be dismantled. In line with the Swedish administrative-political culture (which is often traced back to the seventeenth-century statesman Axel Oxenstierna), the military enjoyed a high degree of autonomy compared with most other Western countries. This made it possible for the Army, the most influential of the services, to preserve its size rather than modernize gradually. Also, like other sectors of Swedish society, national defence was adopted by wellorganized popular movements with corporatist traits, movements such as voluntary defence organizations with hundreds of thousands of members and by defence industry. Sweden was the first country in the world to abolish the system of professional NCOs in the 1980s, creating a unified corps of enlisted officers. The tension between the ideals of popular defence and broad democratic participation – hailed in Swedish society at large – and the demands of military professionalism, and Sweden's national self-image as an advanced industrial country, increased towards the end of the Cold War. Only after the end of the Cold War did academization of officers' training, the adoption of an official military doctrine and advanced thinking about network-centric warfare bring about much-needed modernization of the Swedish armed forces. Today, however, the mental gap is wide between the military elite on the one hand — which sees international operations as the primary mission in the future — and public opinion and large segments of the officers' corps, on the other, which still consider defence as defending national territory.

This article examines the evolution of Swedish strategic culture during the twentieth century & up to the present. Although Sweden is the only Scandinavian country that has stayed out of war since the age of Napoleon, it still has proud military traditions stemming from Sweden's age of empire (1561-1721) & from the Cold War period, when this nonaligned country became partly self-sufficient in modern military technology, producing its own fighter-jets, tanks & submarines, even planning to acquire nuclear weapons in the 1950s. On paper, Sweden maintained an impressive number of armed forces (850,000 men after mobilization), although at the end of the Cold War their equipment & training left much to be desired. Only around the year 2000 did this huge Cold War defence complex begin to be dismantled. In line with the Swedish administrative-political culture (which is often traced back to the seventeenth-century statesman Axel Oxenstierna), the military enjoyed a high degree of autonomy compared with most other Western countries. This made it possible for the Army, the most influential of the services, to preserve its size rather than modernize gradually. Also, like other sectors of Swedish society, national defence was adopted by well-organized popular movements with corporatist traits, movements such as voluntary defence organizations with hundreds of thousands of members & by defence industry. Sweden was the first country in the world to abolish the system of professional NCOs in the 1980s, creating a unified corps of enlisted officers. The tension between the ideals of popular defence & broad democratic participation -- hailed in Swedish society at large -- & the demands of military professionalism, & Sweden's national self-image as an advanced industrial country, increased towards the end of the Cold War. Only after the end of the Cold War did academization of officers' training, the adoption of an official military doctrine & advanced thinking about network-centric warfare bring about much-needed modernization of the Swedish armed forces. Today, however, the mental gap is wide between the military elite on the one hand -- which sees international operations as the primary mission in the future -- & public opinion & large segments of the officers' corps, on the other, which still consider defence as defending national territory. 57 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2005 NISA.]