Strategic Cultures in Europe

Strategic Cultures in Europe

Author: Heiko Biehl

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-04-09

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 3658011688

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European countries work together in crisis management, conflict prevention and many other aspects of security and defence policy. Closer cooperation in this policy arena seems to be the only viable way forward to address contemporary security challenges. Yet, despite the repeated interaction, fundamental assumptions about security and defence remain remarkably distinct across European nations. This book offers a comparative analysis of the security and defence policies of all 27 EU member states and Turkey, drawing on the concept of ‘strategic culture’, in order to examine the chances and obstacles for closer security and defence cooperation across the continent. Along the lines of a consistent analytical framework, international experts provide case studies of the current security and defence policies in Europe as well as their historical and cultural roots. ​


The Quest for a European Strategic Culture

The Quest for a European Strategic Culture

Author: C. Meyer

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2006-11-08

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0230598218

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The Quest for a European Strategic Culture investigates whether strategic norms and beliefs held in different countries have become more similar since 1989 and explores the implications for the viability of a common European Security and Defence Policy. The empirical evidence emerging from various sources shows some significant changes.


The Responsibility to Defend

The Responsibility to Defend

Author: Bastian Giegerich

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 1000472507

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The rise or resurgence of revisionist, repressive and authoritarian powers threatens the Western, US-led international order upon which Germany’s post-war security and prosperity were founded. With Washington increasingly focused on China’s rise in Asia, Europe must be able to defend itself against Russia, and will depend upon German military capabilities to do so. Years of neglect and structural underfunding, however, have hollowed out Germany’s armed forces. Much of the political leadership in Berlin has not yet adjusted to new realities or appreciated the urgency with which it needs to do so. Bastian Giegerich and Maximilian Terhalle argue that Germany’s current strategic culture is inadequate. It informs a security policy that fails to meet contemporary strategic challenges, thereby endangering Berlin’s European allies, the Western order and Germany itself. They contend that: Germany should embrace its historic responsibility to defend Western liberal values and the Western order that upholds them. Rather than rejecting the use of military force, Germany should wed its commitment to liberal values to an understanding of the role of power – including military power – in international affairs. The authors show why Germany should seek to foster a strategic culture that would be compatible with those of other leading Western nations and allow Germans to perceive the world through a strategic lens. In doing so, they also outline possible elements of a new security policy.


Romania's Strategic Culture 1990-2014

Romania's Strategic Culture 1990-2014

Author: Iulia-Sabina Joja

Publisher: Ibidem Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9783838212869

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Romania's communist regime cultivated a thorny relationship with the Soviet Union, which facilitated the development of a national security narrative legitimizing a highly isolationist foreign policy. These factors have heavily weighed on Romanian postcommunist strategic thinking and complicated the transition process.


Strategic Culture and Ways of War

Strategic Culture and Ways of War

Author: Lawrence Sondhaus

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-08-21

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1135989753

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This study will provide a badly-needed survey and synopsis of the scholarly literature on strategic culture and ways of war.


Cultural Diplomacy in Europe

Cultural Diplomacy in Europe

Author: Caterina Carta

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-24

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 303021544X

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This edited volume explores European cultural diplomacy, a topic of growing interest across the scholarly and applied public policy communities in recent years. The contributions focus on Europe, culture and diplomacy and the way they are interlinked in the contemporary international context. The European Union increasingly resorts to cultural assets and activity for both internal and external purposes, to foster European cohesion and advancing integration, and to mitigate the demise of other foreign policy components, respectively. This calls for an analysis of the strategic role of culture, especially as it relates to the realm of EU external action. The chapters provide a conceptual discussion of culture in international relations and examine how this concept relates to cultural diplomacy and cultural strategy. The authors discuss roles and relationships with the EU’s 2016 Global Strategy and current EU attempts to foster the EU’s political and societal resilience.


Cultures of Counterterrorism

Cultures of Counterterrorism

Author: Silvia D'Amato

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0429878400

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This book investigates counterterrorism responses from a strategic-culturalist perspective, focusing on France and Italy in the post-9/11 era. Terrorism occupies a predominant space within contemporary political debate across all European countries. Recent attacks in Europe have raised many questions about the status of counterterrorism structures within European countries, revealing a wide range of practical as well as discursive security implications. This work provides an original contribution to the understanding of counterterrorism by asking how values, norms, and a shared sense of identity matter in policy dynamics. It explores and assesses which cultural elements are relevant for the fight against terrorism and investigates the impact which these elements can have on practical approaches to terrorism. Despite the current attention to terrorist attacks in Europe, the cases of France and Italy in counterterrorism affairs are particularly overlooked by the existing literature; this book analyses, questions, and examines the strategy of these two countries through the instruments offered by the culturalist approaches to strategy. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, discourse analysis, European politics, security studies, and international relations in general.


Cultural Realism

Cultural Realism

Author: Alastair Iain Johnston

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0691213143

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Cultural Realism is an in-depth study of premodern Chinese strategic thought that has important implications for contemporary international relations theory. In applying a Western theoretical debate to China, Iain Johnston advances rigorous procedures for testing for the existence and influence of "strategic culture." Johnston sets out to answer two empirical questions. Is there a substantively consistent and temporally persistent Chinese strategic culture? If so, to what extent has it influenced China's approaches to security? The focus of his study is the Ming dynasty's grand strategy against the Mongols (1368-1644). First Johnston examines ancient military texts as sources of Chinese strategic culture, using cognitive mapping, symbolic analysis and congruence tests to determine whether there is a consistent grand strategic preference ranking across texts that constitutes a single strategic culture. Then he applies similar techniques to determine the effect of the strategic culture on the strategic preferences of the Ming decision makers. Finally, he assesses the effect of these preferences on Ming policies towards the Mongol "threat." The findings of this book challenge dominant interpretations of traditional Chinese strategic thought. They suggest also that the roots of realpolitik are ideational and not predominantly structural. The results lead to the surprising conclusion that there may be, in fact, fewer cross-national differences in strategic culture than proponents of the "strategic culture" approach think.


Strategic Culture and Italy's Military Behavior

Strategic Culture and Italy's Military Behavior

Author: Paolo Rosa

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-04-21

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1498522823

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Italy, although it considers itself to be a middle-sized power on par with France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, has been incapable of playing an international role comparable to theirs, instead keeping a low-profile foreign policy. This has not been due to any material constraints—Italy’s profile has remained consistently low, through economic times both good and bad—but rather to the country’s strategic culture, a mixture of realpolitik and pacifist tendencies. This book sets out to analyze the influence of Italy’s strategic culture on its foreign policy. It conducts an exploratory case-study to show if hypotheses generated by the strategic culture approach can shed some light on the puzzling Italian behavior in the international arena (puzzling because Italy shows a less assertive foreign policy vis-à-vis other middle powers in the same rank). The first chapter considers the main interpretations of Italian foreign policy and their limitations. The second and third chapters review the literature on strategic culture, stressing its utility for the Italian case. The fourth chapter describes the country’s strategic culture through the Liberal, Fascist, and Republican periods, and the fifth chapter analyzes the influence of ideational factors on Italy’s behavior abroad. Conclusions sum up the various emerging evidences. Scholars of political science, international relations, strategic studies, and comparative politics will find this work to be of interest.


Strategic Culture in Russia's Neighborhood

Strategic Culture in Russia's Neighborhood

Author: Kristine Atmante

Publisher:

Published: 2019-07-24

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9781498571692

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This book revisits the concept of strategic culture by examining the relationships between Russia and its neighbors in the east and west. The book explains how the competing Russian and western influences create innovative strategies, that display common regional characteristics of the different countries' cultures.