Strategic Culture of United States

Authors: Junaid R. Soomro and Nadia Shaheen

Strategic culture provides the analytical lens through which to understand of view the communities fundamental the international predicaments and the inspirations of the state activities. Strategic culture is an elementary attempt to assimilate cultural considerations, cumulative historic remembrances and their influences in the analysis of state security policies and national interest.  Strategic culture of the nations flows from its geography and resources, history and experience and society and political structure. It represents the approach that a given state has found successful in the past.

Although not unable to change, it tends to evolve slowly. It is no coincidence for example: Britain has historically favored  sea  power  and  indirect  strategies and  eschewed  traditional maintenance of large country. Israel, despite lacking geographic depth has small but educated population and technological skills which have produced a strategic culture that emphasizes the strategic preemption, offensive operations increasing and initiated advanced technology. Australia’s minimal geographical status, its continental rather than maritime identity, its formative military experiences have shaped its way to war. These case studies examine the US’s strategic culture.

United state is the world’s powerful nation so, it is essential for friends, enemies and neutrals to understand its strategic culture. American strategic culture emphasizes liberalism, idealism and views war as a discontinuation of policy. The way of war of USA is through direct strategies which include an industrial approach to war, fire power and technology intense approaches to combat. If we determine who is the transmitter of strategic culture either state or military. In USA, Army is the institution of strategic culture.

Geography and history has shaped the American National strategic culture. USA did not have to exhaust itself by preparing for and waging war against its neighbors separated it from other countries particularly, the European great powers. American strategic culture was shaped by long periods of peace during conflicts around the world, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II – defined as struggle of good versus evil.

United States has always enjoyed free security because of its insular position and weak neighbors. It is shielded by the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. “Anxieties about security have kept the growth of optimism within bounds among other peoples…the relative absence of such anxieties in the past has helped, along with other factors, to make optimism a national philosophy in America.” American strategic culture explicitly rejects the European tradition of power politics. Rather, from the founding Americans have seen themselves as exceptional.  This exceptionalism has influenced the way the United States deals with others. Thus, these are the basis on which they have formed their national strategic culture.

America has full military strategic structure. Military culture is only constant in USA’s policy makings. Fire power has been the most unique approach for combating which USA followed since American Civil war. Most common characteristics of the American way of war include extreme aggressiveness, quest of decisive battle and deployment of maximum efforts to defeat the enemy. It had throughout the history has perused much wider range strategies U.S. military, led by Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, sought to concentrate forces for a cross-channel invasion at the earliest possible time.

Lippmann observed, American strategic culture “does not recognize that America is one nation among many other nations with whom it must deal as rivals, as allies, as partners.” Rather, “an aggression is an armed rebellion against the universal and eternal principles of the world society. No war can end rightly, therefore, except by the unconditional surrender of the aggressor nation and by the overthrow and transformation of its political regime.”

The impulse to transform the international system in the service of liberal democratic ideals forms a thread that runs throughout American history.  The Clinton administration’s national security strategy of engagement and enlargement  and the George W.  Bush administration’s commitment to spreading democracy, expressed most powerfully in his second speech have been common in their strategic planning.

Europeans were more of Realistic views and found individualism as danger during Cold war era. George Kennan on American diplomacy in 1950 explained that American approach international relations is depicted in its legalism and moralism.

In 1936, America believed that, strategy and policy both are different. Strategy takes place where policy ends. Hence, American’s have always thought astrategically.  The combination of the rejection of power politics and discontinuity between policy and strategy has strengthened the American strategic culture. The United States has thus displayed a strong and long-standing predilection for waging war for unlimited political aims. If there was no intervention of civilians during Vietnam War America would not have defeated. The United States is thus fortunate to have in its war on terror an adversary such as Osama bin Laden, an individual who viscerally hates the United States and all it stands for.

Service strategic Culture

Service cultures are hard to change because they are the product of the acculturation of   millions of service members over decades and are supported by a network of social and professional incentives.  Service training and education strengthens the identity of nation. People join the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, not “the military” in the abstract. After the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the view has got lot fame as it promoted jointness and officer’s service affiliation more than rank, age or combat experience.

An example taken of the way in which service culture manifests itself is in attitudes toward technology. Not all elements of the U.S. military are equally reliant on technology. Because war at sea and in the air is by definition technologically intensive, the Navy and Air Force have tended to emphasize the role of technology in war.  The Army and Marine Corps, by contrast, have tended to emphasize the human element.

The services also vary in terms of their structure and dominant groups. The Marine Corps and Air  Force  are  “monarchical,”  with  powerful  service  chiefs  drawn  from  a  single  dominant subgroup, whereas the Army and Navy are “feudal,” with less powerful chiefs drawn from a variety of subgroups.

The USA’s marine corps is unitary but a monarchial organization. All of its services are cohesive. The 20th century witnessed the Navy’s evolution from a monarchical to a feudal organization. At the dawn of the 20th century, navies were synonymous with surface fleets. During the 20th century, however, the development of naval aviation and submarine forces changed the structure of the Navy fundamentally. Whereas, the Army has tended to assimilate new ways of war into existing branches, the Navy responded to the advent of aircraft and submarines by adding new branches and career paths. As a result, the dominant communities  in the Navy are surface, submarine, and aviation. These three branches collectively control the Navy: Of the last ten Chiefs of Naval Operations, four have been aviators, three surface warfare officers, and three submariners. The Air Force had its origins in, and continues to be defined by, the technology of manned flight.

The  Air  Force  is  divided  into  pilots  and  non-pilots  and  between  different  communities  of pilots. Even though combat pilots make up less than one-fifth of the Air Force, they are the ones who have dominated the service since its inception.59 From 1947 to 1982, the Air Force Chief of Staff was always a bomber pilot; since 1982, the Air Force Chief of Staff has always been a fighter pilot.

Strategic culture indicates that how nations see and identifies their priorities, interest and most pressing threats and how countries give chooses to use its elements of national power, whether state would use “soft power” such as diplomacy and economic influences or it would use “hard power” likewise military power. Strategic culture mostly represents the national border culture. American strategic culture in Syria and Afghanistan is inextricably led to quagmires and jabbing US towards a simply Military centric goals. It is American strategic culture to give prefer military solution to complex problems because US know that it has a military superiority to any adversary and military power seems to offer the potential for beneficial outcomes. US always adopted intricated challenges as a war not because that is a better tactic, but they are good at war. So, we can say that military- centralism is a fundament element of US strategic culture.

But in Afghanistan and Syrian complicated crisis demonstrated that conflicts are not always resolvable by the limited armed forces or may be not resolvable under the current scenario. Therefore, US anticipate believing that if they use instrument of military centric strategy that would work. US strategic culture is also infused with the comprehensive dose of maximalism. US always give prefer to do best efforts to gain biggest outcome or big-win.

In Afghanistan US was goal to top the Taliban government that has been hideout for the Al- Qaida and avert the country to become the hub of international terrorism and the strategic objective was to establish US-backed democratic government, and that is remain today goal. In Syrian issue US aim was to prevent to Islamic State to establish self-proclaim Caliphate that might  be  become  sanctuary of  international  terrorism.  From  the  years,  US  military-centric strategy went virtually unchallenged.

Conclusion: The  enduring  features  of American  strategic  culture,  military culture,  and  the organizational culture of the U.S. armed services have thus influenced how the United States has approached nuclear weapons. As a result, American strategic culture has been dominated by continuity rather than change. Six decades after the advent of the nuclear age, what is notable is the limited enduring impact of nuclear weapons on the way the U.S. military conceives of war.

Junaid R. Soomro
Junaid R. Soomro
Teaching Assistant Institute of Gender Studies University of Sindhi Jamshoro