Jacob Blank
Culture is an indispensable element of strategic policymaking. From Sun Tzu to Carl von Clausewitz, renowned theorists of strategic studies have consistently noted the importance of cultural considerations in the conduct of warfare and the shaping of national security outputs. Such insights lacked a dedicated field of study until the latter half of the 20th century, when Jack Snyder coined the term “strategic culture” in 1977 as part of an effort to explain the differing nuclear behavior between the United States and Soviet Union. The roughly fifty years since Snyder’s work has seen continuous scholarship on the influence of strategic culture on the security outputs of a given state.
Despite widespread consensus on salient aspects of American strategic culture, there is one area of policy that fails to generate the expected result—missile defense. Strong emphases on technological innovation, an optimistic and problem-solving mentality, a positive approach to machines and engineering, and other elements of American strategic culture point to what should be a decisive path toward comprehensive missile defense; yet, the United States has consciously chosen to remain vulnerable to the overwhelming majority of adversary ballistic missiles since the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972.[1] The incongruity between U.S. strategic culture and mutual vulnerability required by the mutually assured destruction (MAD) approach has failed to eradicate the allure of mutual vulnerability from portions of the defense policymaking community. U.S. strategic culture is more consistent with deterrence by denial measures, such as robust homeland ballistic missile defense, than mutual vulnerability typical of an assured destruction approach; however, mutual vulnerability has played a disproportionate role in guiding U.S. security policy since the Cold War.
Social Manifestations of U.S. Strategic Culture
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