1. U.S. Strategic Culture

2. What is Political Culture? What is Strategic Culture?
Does culture exist, can we identify it, and can we measure its impact on behavior?

3. Can we define it?
Yitzhak Klein defines strategic culture as “the set of attitudes and beliefs held within a military establishment concerning the political objectives of war and the most effective strategy and operational method of achieving it”
Jack Snyder defines strategic culture as the “sum total of ideas, conditioned emotional responses and patterns of habitual behavior that members of a national strategic community have achieved through instruction and imitation with each other with regard to nuclear strategy”

4. Problems of Mirror Imaging
Strategic Culture can influence misperceptions of threat to other states or within a state.
Mirror imaging is how states tend to think that their opposing states have the same strategic culture, like size in military and their gains and losses.
leads to arms race: one thinks that another state is increasing their military coup for offensive purposes, when really it is for defensive purposes, and therefore increase their military capabilities as well.
The problem is that strategists spend more time assuming things about their enemies due to “mirror imaging” and less time learning about them. This leads to miscommunication and conflict.

5. The Positivist Relationship between Strategic Culture and Behavior
Independent Variable, “Causal Cloud” or context
Instrumental use
Armaments culture
Warrior culture