Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our sixth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present an essay selected for Honorable Mention from Steven Nolan, a recent graduate of the U.S. Joint Advanced Warfighting School.

Russia is engaged in an undeclared state of war that the U.S. does not recognize and refuses to accept. The war’s battlespace is everywhere and, until recently, not isolatable to any particular point on a map. Unlike the Cold War, however, today’s Russo-American rivalry has less to do with the ideological incompatibility of Communism and Liberal-Capitalism and more to do with diverging strategic cultures and the logic of realpolitik. Russia believes that Western nations’ desire to maintain hegemony weakens international and domestic institutions, destroys the Russian economy, and increases geopolitical instability.[1] From the American point of view, Russia serves as a globally destabilizing and disruptive force working to enhance its own global influence.[2] Russia, according to the 2017 United States National Security Strategy, “wants to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests…[and] seeks to restore its great-power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders.”[3] The problem is not that the two nations view each other as rivals or competitors. Instead, just as it was at the onset of the Cold War, the U.S. does not appreciate Russia’s perceived permanent state of war with America.[4]

Strategic Culture’s Allegory

In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” prisoners grow up, bound to a cave in almost total darkness. Behind them is a raised ledge adorned with statues and a fire. Based on the angle of the statues and the placement of the fire, the prisoners watch, mesmerized by the shadows dancing across the cavern wall. As the shadows move and contort, the prisoners devise elaborate stories to help them understand what they see. The prisoners also play games guessing how the shadows may move next, earning praise from others when they guess correctly. Since the shadows are the only thing the prisoners see, they believe the shadows and the stories they create are real and true. Then, one day, a prisoner escapes from their bonds and ascends to the surface. Initially, the prisoner does not accept what they see as real. However, as the prisoner begins acclimating to their new world and reflecting on their experience in the cave, they understand how their previous surroundings shaped their perception of reality. The prisoner returns to the cave, attempting to share this knowledge with the others. Unfortunately, the other prisoners do not believe the story and threaten to kill the escapee if he tries setting them free. The U.S. and Russia share a similar story.

The U.S. and Russia view each other as bound prisoners within a cave. Neither nation understands or believes the other’s interpretation of the shadows is authentic. The U.S. and Russian approaches to strategic realities diverge because of their equally divergent strategic cultures. From a U.S. perspective, the culture mismatch leads to an incomplete understanding of how Russia views war, conflict, and the use of force as a tool for achieving its national interests in today’s strategic environment. Ultimately, the misunderstanding leads to misperception and uncertainty regarding Russian measures throughout the competition continuum.[5] In their dimly lit cave, it appears, the shadows of their respective strategic cultures influence U.S. and Russian policies, strategy, and action within the competition continuum.

The Flickering Shadows of Strategic Culture

Strategic culture is the evolution of national character studies and a derivative of political culture theory.[6] Both political and strategic culture advocates purport to offer alternative explanations for a state’s behavior or to elucidate shortcomings of neoclassical realist theory.[7] The two concepts differ, however, in their respective focus. While political culture broadly concerns itself with politics and policy, strategic culture homes in on war and strategy.[8]

Strategic culture critics claim the theory is too broadly defined, difficult to measure, and risks explaining too much.[9] While strategic culture proponents concede the concept is flawed and can be elusive, researchers and practitioners alike continue to explore the phenomena because, as Colin Gray observed, ignorance and contempt for culture leads to dire consequences.[10] In this regard, critics agree. Strategic planners cannot afford to become complacent and must continually assess an adversary’s strategic culture.[11] However, strategic planners must also ask for what purpose and to what end does strategic culture help?

Snyder described strategic culture as an amalgamation of ideals reinforced within a strategic community, resulting in habitual and cognitive behaviors.[12] In a similar vein, Stephen Rosen observes that strategic culture frames a nation’s rationale for waging war through its shared beliefs and assumptions.[13] Adding precision to Rosen’s definition, Andrew Scobell concludes that strategic culture concerns war’s role in resolving political affairs.[14] Both Rosen and Scobell parallel Colin Gray’s conception of strategic culture. To Gray, strategic culture is analogous to a national style, deriving from historical experience, geographic orientation, and ideological environment.[15]

Not all strategic culture supporters agree that there is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between culture and behavior. Gray, Booth, and Herring concur that strategic culture influences or shapes preferences and tendencies, but culture is not rigidly deterministic.[16] In short, strategic culture is contextual. Gray maintains that strategic culture is both an input and an output; thus, linking specific behaviors to culture is almost impossible.[17] Despite these shortcomings, what matters, Gray concludes, is the centrality and importance of strategic culture in determining the nature and character of war.[18]

The thematic commonality among the disparate strategic culture definitions is that strategic culture is the confluence of a nation’s history, geography, and political culture. These three factors constantly interact to create an ecosystem, serving as a cognitive framework, influencing the preferences of a nation, state, or group with respect to security affairs. Ideas modify and modulate a nation’s political culture while events update, revise, or reinforce a state’s historical experience. Geography is the steadiest of the three strategic culture elements but is also influenced (by climate change, for example). The output of a nation’s strategic culture is its narrative and behavior. Narratives take form in official documents, speeches, and policies, while behavior materializes in a whole host of actions that reside along the competition continuum.[19]

Now Playing on the Cavern Walls: War, Peace, and the Realm In-Between

War and peace share a dyadic relationship bookending the competition continuum.[20] On one side of the pole, in its most destructive form, war materializes as an epic scrabble leading to the annihilation of humanity. On the other side, in the grandest sense, peace is humanity realizing the utopian ideal of its full potential. History demonstrates, however, war and peace emerge in various forms, abstractions, and somewhere between these two extremes.

Hobbes viewed war as a condition or state of humankind; the potential and inclination, rather than actual fighting one another, were sufficient for states to be at war. Clausewitz regarded war in slightly more specific terms. War, for Clausewitz, was violent and served a political purpose;[21] war was fraught with danger, chance, and uncertainty;[22] and war required an element of friction that distinguished a real war from a “war on paper.”[23] Nevertheless, history reveals that empires, civilizations, and nation-states maintained a supple understanding of both notions.

Ideas of war and peace ranged from non-existent to the eternal human condition. In Ancient Egypt, war was a prominent and necessary royal action taken on behalf of the gods, intended to maintain order and world stability.[24] In Ancient India, war was entirely the endemic reality; peace did not exist.[25] For the Ancient Chinese, war was considered a waste of resources, entirely destructive, and had no benefit to the people.[26] However, war was also part of a universal cosmic rhythm.[27] Therefore, war was vitally important to the state, demanding thorough study and understanding.[28] Unlike Ancient India, Ancient Greeks did not accept war’s endemic nature and sought to control it.[29] In practice, though, the Greeks found war intermittent but permanent, ubiquitous, and at the discretion of the hegemonic power’s interests.[30] War, for the Greeks, was a never-ending hegemonic power struggle. The Romans realized that their military force was costly, brittle, and a limited instrument of power, albeit capable and potent, the Romans preferred monetary measures, manipulative diplomacy, and force-presence to deter would-be attackers.[31] Similarly, the Byzantines peace merely as an interruption of war, whereby once one enemy was defeated, another would emerge.[32] Unlike the Romans, though, the Byzantines considered a decisive victory illusory;[33] therefore, war’s purpose was to contain immediate threats through expedients and ruses of war, relying upon large-scale combat as a last resort.[34] In both the Roman and Byzantine empires, large-scale combat was only one of many forms that war could manifest. Not unlike Sun Tzu’s dictum of subduing one’s enemy without fighting or Liddell Hart’s indirect approach, the Byzantines ensured victory while sparing themselves from the high costs of direct, large-scale combat through adroit grand-strategic maneuvering.[35]

Sun Tzu, Liddell Hart, and the Byzantines’ approach may have referred to an ideal grand strategy rather than war’s nature. Liddell Hart affirms this notion when he postulates that war bounds strategy, but grand strategy “looks beyond war to the subsequent peace.”[36] Further, one of grand-strategy’s goals is to regulate national instruments of power to “avoid damage to the future state of peace for its security and prosperity.”[37] Equally, Sun Tzu maintains that the best war policy involves taking a state intact.[38] If one presumes that Sun Tzu, Liddell Hart, and Clausewitz are all correct in positing that 1) victory is war’s main object, 2) military victory is not the equivalent of the political object, and 3) “objectives can often be attained without any fighting,” then war can take the form of something other than a reciprocating violent struggle.[39] Therefore, war is not about violence, combat, or fighting, per se. Instead, war, as Liddell Hart articulated, is about compelling an enemy to one’s will by seeking a “strategic situation so advantageous that if it does not of itself produce the decision, its continuation by a battle is sure to achieve this end.”[40]

In the Soviet era, leaders accepted a modified Clausewitzian conception of war as a continuation of politics and as a political instrument.[41] In a sense, war and politics were considered conjoined twins. Each was separate, but their connection formed a coherent whole. In the Soviet mind, if war was a continuation of politics, it was logical that politics was a continuation of war.[42] Lenin did not believe that, in politics, an “absolutely inextricable position” existed.[43] For Lenin, there must always be freedom to choose the political means necessary to achieve the desired end, violent or otherwise. In essence, conciliation in politics was impossible.[44] Contemporarily, it appears that Russian strategic thought and understanding of war integrates concepts from antiquity and borrows from its Soviet predecessor. Evgeny Messner provides the link between the two.

The essence of Messner’s ideas centers on the notion that the psychological domain is war’s fourth dimension.[45] Writing several decades before Max Boot identified information as the fourth world revolution and prior to World War II, Messner contended that the perpetual influencing of the enemy’s mind and weakening their political will was integral in future warfare.[46] Messner’s importance within today’s context is two-fold. First, Messner’s assertion that there is not a clear distinction between the “state of war” and the “state of peace” is found in modern-day Russia’s speeches, writings, and security documents.[47] Secondly, if war and peace are distinguishable from one another, what, then, is peace?

The phenomenon of war, it seems, is not unlike the shadows dancing across the cave walls in Plato’s Allegory. The form and meaning of war are more indicative of the prisoner’s imagination than of reality.

Sir Henry Maine quipped: while war is as “old as humankind,” peace seems to be a “modern invention.”[48] Sir Michael Howard agreed, finding that the thinkers of the Enlightenment, specifically Immanuel Kant, invented peace and that peace consists of “an international order in which war played no part.”[49] Paul Diehl and other peace theorists extrapolated further on that notion, providing a peace continuum, describing the varying degrees of international relationships.[50] In short, war and peace cannot merely be envisioned in black and white terms; they are an amalgamation of conditions, relationships, and circumstances leading to a myriad of possible outcomes in a world colored in varying shades of gray. The phenomenon of war, it seems, is not unlike the shadows dancing across the cave walls in Plato’s Allegory. The form and meaning of war are more indicative of the prisoner’s imagination than of reality.

Illuminating the Shadows: American and Russian Strategic Cultures Contrasted

Russian and American views of the world, their ambitions, and conceptions of one another are figuratively worlds apart. The U.S. has always believed that democracy, the rule of law, and human rights were universally understood and accepted values. Democracy, in the words of President Harry Truman, is “based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.”[51] Conversely, Russia perceives democracy, the rule of law, and human rights as the modern-day trappings of Western power. At best, Moscow views democracy as a “dysfunctional and dying form of government” that no longer suits today’s world.[52] At worst, as the Chairman of the Russian Investigation Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, noted: “Democracy or rule by the people is nothing other than the power of the people themselves enacted in their interests. These interests can be attained only by means of the greater good, not absolute freedom and the tyranny of individual representatives of society.”[53] Moreover, whereas the U.S. strives but does not always act in a non-zero-sum manner in world affairs, Moscow believes and acts as though its national prosperity and security are relative and finite to that of other nations. The implication of these differing world views portends a perpetual, contentious relationship where both nations view each other’s intentions and actions with suspicion or outright contempt.

The U.S. and Russia both maintain global interests and ambitions; however, each nation seeks to realize its goals in opposing ways because of their differing world views and capabilities. According to multiple U.S. presidents, the U.S. maintains its leadership within international institutions because American global leadership has been an indispensable contributor to ushering in an era of “unparalleled global prosperity.”[54] This exceptional self-perception, principally its commitment to the democratic ideal, drives a perceived high moral obligation in foreign policy formulation. As Dexter Perkins asserted, “high-sounding declarations and general appeals to international morality” often frame and characterize American international action.[55] James McCormick similarly found this assertion evident from the 19th century and beyond.[56]

The Kremlin interprets U.S. “moral leadership” as the catalyst for what it contends is a “crisis of the Western liberal model.”[57] To Russia, morals and morality are conditional, not universal, similar to conceptions of the truth or right and wrong.[58] The pliability of the truth serves as a demonstration and source of power. Giles explains that, in the Russian mind, when two entities know that what has been said or done is deceitful, but a weaker side is powerless to challenge, it serves as a mechanism for power politics.[59] For example, when Putin told world leaders to their face that Russian troops were not in eastern Ukraine in 2014, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he intended to reveal the powerlessness the world to influence Russian actions.[60] When Moscow continues to claim that current operations in Ukraine constitute a “special mission” rather than the waging of a war, the Kremlin intends to establish that its “might equals right” while also demonstrating that it makes its own rules.[61] The West views this conduct as a violation of what it believes is a de facto, universal set of cultural values that undergird international, multilateral behavior. Russia deems this “universal standard” as a form of American unilateralism.[62]

Moscow does not believe that universal norms govern behavior, let alone uphold an international order. As Ofer Fridman noted, the Russian mindset gravitates toward an Eastern holistic tradition, seeking contextualized solutions rather than accepting universally applicable rules or formulas.[63] Unfortunately, the only apparent universal agreement between the U.S. and Russia is their disagreement on how world affairs should be settled. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Russian actions over the past two decades, considered natural from their perspective, were deemed morally unacceptable to the West. Conversely, U.S. actions, considered innocent from the Western viewpoint, were depicted as threatening to Russia.

The U.S. views NATO enlargement as a peace and stability promotion activity involving mutual agreement among sovereign nations. Moscow considers NATO expansion and its activities as “a matter of paramount significance” for Russian security.[64] Color revolutions, to the U.S., were “democratic movements,” exemplifying a people’s right to self-determination and deserving recognition as a remarkable American achievement.[65] Russian authorities regarded Color revolutions as socially engineered, soft-power tools intending to effectively achieve a “post-modern coup d’état.”[66] While the U.S. claims that its Russian-targeted sanctions aim to stem the Kremlin’s maleficence, Moscow argues those sanctions are “unlawful, politically motivated” and part of a “crude attempt” to “enforce its will on others.”[67] In all of these instances, what the U.S. deems a measure short of armed conflict and short of war, Russia conceives the same measure as an act of war.[68] In short, the shadows of American and Russian strategic cultures form coherent strategic interests, goals, and objectives; however, as shown in the table below, Moscow and the U.S. retain drastically divergent, impossibly incompatible, and woefully irreconcilable interpretations of them. 

Interpreting the Shadows

Russian strategic culture biases the nation toward proactive engagement throughout the competition continuum. Unlike the U.S., Russia does not view war and peace as separate states; instead, Russia sees life as a struggle, and peace is merely a “place to stop and rest for a while.”[69] Like their Soviet predecessor, the Moscow elite views peace as a political instrument or “breathing space” to secure future strategic advances.[70] Lenin emphasized this mental construction in his writing and speeches. For Lenin, there must always be freedom to choose the political means necessary to achieve the desired end, violent or otherwise. Today, as Galeotti and Kofman note, Russia shares the Soviet “technique of uncertainty” whereby articulated objectives are intentionally broad and ambiguous so it can avoid confined, non-adjustable policy positions.[71] Consequently, the Russian position is akin to the Byzantines, seeing decisive victory as illusory and peace merely as an interruption of war.[72]

As Diehl found, however, peace is much more than a temporary state.[73] This assertion forces us to infer and induce Moscow’s conception of peace. Negative peace provides the closest analog in the Russian mind. While positive peace connotes a pattern of institutionalized cooperative interaction between states, negative peace simply denotes relationships that retain the unlikelihood of high-level militarized conflict.[74] Unlikely, however, does not imply impossibility or improbability. Similar to Hedley Bull’s description of guardian powers, Moscow’s eternal belief that it is a great power means it has the right to help determine the international system’s peace and security issues.[75] In essence, peace consists of Moscow maintaining a sphere of influence whereby weaker nations submit themselves as tributary states to the Russian Federation.

The Hobbesian worldview of Russian strategic culture parallels Marxist-Leninist dogma, albeit implicitly, and is reinforced by its historical experiences.[76] Political, historical, and geographical contexts have shaped Russian strategic culture and characterized the Russian strategic realities for a millennia.[77] Borrowing from their lineage, today’s Russia stokes a statist patriotism relying on the nation’s thousand-year history.[78] One may therefore conclude Russia views both war and peace in a way that is similar to the Soviet Union, as a means to a political end instead of something to be avoided or achieved.

This strategic logic creates a significant cognitive barrier in conceptualizing limited war campaigns.

American strategic culture, conversely, is firmly grounded in the nation’s founding principles, cultivated by its geography, and propagated by its perceived exceptional history. John Locke’s concepts of liberty, freedom, and inalienable rights serve as the presuppositions for U.S. strategic action.[79] However, the perceived universalism of these beliefs causes U.S. policymakers problems when dealing with an adversary that does not share similar values.

War, for Americans, is not war unless it is a crusade. War is a “lamentable aberration, a detour in the historical process, and, indeed, a moral evil.”[80] The moral crusading quality of American intervention means the U.S. tends to frame its conflicts within a good versus evil context.[81] America’s generational struggles—the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II—inform this crusading logic.[82] Although U.S. leaders quote Clausewitz’s oft-cited “war is a continuation of policy with other means,” in reality, Americans diagnose war as a symptom of failed policy, which means once war begins, all pre-war policy is invalidated.[83] Thus, the U.S. wages war to alter and reform the political circumstances that caused the war, not seek an adjustment to the balance-of-power or any precise political goal.[84] This strategic logic creates a significant cognitive barrier in conceptualizing limited war campaigns.

According to Boyle and Lang, this cognitive barrier leads toward two types of intervention. First, the U.S. takes a limited approach with states or local actors when those entities promise open markets and good governance.[85] Alternatively, when entities threaten core assumptions of liberal ideology, U.S. policymakers become vindicationists, punishing those that depart from the natural order.[86] This finding is consistent with Farrell’s assertion that liberal democracies’ distrust of non-democracies leads to an increased probability of war because each lacks the cognitive capacity for conceiving peaceful relations.[87] Further, Farrell’s findings match those of Goertz et al. and Bayer. According to Goertz et al., the presence of a single-democracy dyad in an international relationship decreases the likelihood of a positive peace situation by 26 percent.[88] As Bayer explains, the relations between states must reach a tipping point before democratic governance is a factor in improving a relationship.[89] In short, the presence of a democratic government within a relationship does not automatically lead toward peaceful relations and can, in some instances, increase the likelihood of the formation of a rivalry and possibly war.

It seems that the source of U.S. and Russian friction stems from the variance and divergence of their respective strategic cultures. Unlike the Russian continual struggle mentality, the U.S. maintains a Kantian notion of an achievable perpetual peace. Consequently, the U.S. sees peace as an achievement and war as an avoidable condition, while Russia does not make a similar distinction.

Although Russian strategic culture enables the nation to move fluidly across the competition continuum, the strategic environment helps reinforce their predilections toward Messner’s idea of subversion-war. To be clear, this does not mean that Russia cannot and will not employ overt military force to achieve political objectives; the current Russo-Ukrainian war and contemporary historical record prove that assertion otherwise. However, this does mean that understanding Russian action and inaction through a theoretical lens of strategic culture ought to compel the U.S. and its Allies toward reorienting their strategies and reorganizing their military structures to compete with Russia effectively. More importantly, the U.S. and its Allies must decide the lengths they are willing to confront, deter, or accommodate Russian behavior beyond the binary notion of war and peace.

Plotting the Escape

It may be cliché to borrow from Clausewitz to reinforce the argument of this essay. However, to paraphrase Colin Gray, “if Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, and Clausewitz said it, it is probably worth repeating.”[90] Clausewitz identified war as the continuation of policy with other means, and his advice on approaching war remains apt today.[91] War, Clausewitz explains, must be approached “judiciously, according to the characteristics and development” of its nature.[92] Thus, the U.S. cannot and should not approach Russia as it did the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Equally, strategic leaders should not solely continue conceptualizing war through the flickering shadows of their strategic cultural lens. If the U.S. does not heed this advice, as David Kilcullen warns:

[The U.S. will] confront an adversary with a vastly broader cultural understanding of conflict, [leading toward] two equally dangerous things. First, [the U.S.] can be engaged in conflict with an adversary who considers himself to be at war with us, and yet not realize that fact…Second, an equal and opposite danger is that we can be engaged in activities that seem innocuous or peaceful to us…and our adversaries can perceive these as acts of war and respond accordingly.”[93]

In this author’s view, the U.S. is an unstoppable force when the government and its people unify in a singular, shared purpose or consider themselves in a state of war—a case in point is how the nation responded after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Unfortunately, without acknowledging and accepting the divergent strategic culture of Russia, the U.S. will continue struggling to develop coherent and integrated policies toward Russia.

The U.S. must find ways of integrating and mobilizing all its instruments of power, as it would in a declared state of war. Doing so will enable the U.S. to effectively compete with Russia throughout the entire competition continuum, especially in the realm of measures short of armed conflict. For too long, the U.S. has underestimated Russia’s willingness to use whatever means necessary to accomplish political aims or react to international political slights. As Frank Hoffman stated in testimony given during a 2017 House Armed Services Committee, Russia conducts diplomacy and engages other nations throughout the entire competition continuum. The U.S., according to Hoffman, must understand, conceptualize, and integrate a similar full-spectrum mentality that is “consistent with our values and democratic principles.”[94] The implied morality of Hoffman’s shares a Clausewitzian logic. If war is an “act of force to compel our enemy to do our will” and will is “itself a moral quality,” then war is more than physically destroying an adversary.[95] Instead, it is about subordinating an adversary’s will to our own. Therefore, as Gray asserted: “it is not much of an intellectual stretch to argue that war, coercion, and deterrence are all intercultural struggles.”[96]

Out of the Shadows and Into the Light: Escaping the Cave

In analyzing American and Russian strategic cultures, it is tempting to believe that once one determines how strategic culture shapes each nations’ preferences for decisions, one may also suppose that their strategic culture is somehow fixable. This sentiment is an intellectual dead end and entirely misses the point. Strategic culture is a package of robust variables and traits “not easily amended, let alone overturned, by acts of will.”[97] As Gray points out, “even if you recognize some significant dysfunctionality in your strategic [culture], you may not be able to take effective corrective action.”[98] Strategic culture’s persistence, however, does not mean it cannot or does not evolve.

Strategic culture evolution occurs in three ways: crisis events (e.g., war), dissonance, or political elites negotiating a new strategic reality.[99] Crisis events serve as an external shock, forcing a nation to revise its way of mitigating similar future crises. [100] Culture changes also transpire when ideas internal to the paradigm conflict with one another. An example of this tension is found in U.S. support for democracy and human rights and the extent it is willing to defend the ideal abroad. When a nation faces a strategic culture dilemma, it must reconstruct its historical narrative to support foreign policy changes.[101] The final path to strategic culture change is when a nation’s strategic leaders devise, normalize, and legitimize new conceptions of reality. In this instance, political elites craft strategies, reorient political structures, and implement new policies to frame political discourse. So long as the “negotiated reality” does not encounter dissonance or an external shock, a nation’s leaders can slowly shift strategic culture. In all cases, though, strategic culture bounds and encodes the nation’s rationality.[102]

Putin is not the exception to Russian strategic culture; he personifies it. While it is imprudent to completely dismiss the scale and magnitude of Putin’s influence on Russian foreign policy, this thesis shows that Russia’s narrative, rationale, and action follow similar historical patterns that go beyond stereotypical conceptions of authoritarian regimes.

Russia, and by extension Russians, have always believed that they are a great power. Consequently, a great power dictates when, where, and how rules apply in the Russian mind. Unlike the Soviet Union, however, Russia does not seek to dominate the world, it merely wants to influence it to achieve political aims. Moscow wins when the Liberal World Order falters. Ever since the Cold War ended, Russia has felt disrespected by the West and especially the U.S. As a result, the Kremlin has used all means available to gain the prestige and recognition it feels the nation deserves.

Like its Soviet and Imperialist predecessors, the Kremlin does not share the West’s trepidation for using force. Instead, Moscow justifies its use of force when it serves its interests and, unlike the U.S., is unencumbered by universal moralistic notions. In short, what Russia does today is not new. It would be naively short sighted to believe that the heated competition between the Kremlin and the West would cease under new leadership in Moscow.

From an American perspective, the agitated U.S.-Russo relationship is a long-term issue, requiring grand strategic formulation akin to NSC-68 and Project Solarium. Further, any strategy must account for identified rivals, competitors, and allies’ strategic cultures. In doing so, an American strategy can move beyond rudimentary yet essential structural realist and optimistic neo-liberalist arguments for international behavior. As it articulates in its recent NDS, if the U.S. is serious about deterrence, then the nation must not treat nations as aggregated, monolithic entities, informed by a universal rationality.[103] Instead, rationality must be understood within a cultural context.[104] Deterrence is about estimating and influencing enemy intentions by communicating a threat of pain.[105] Deterrence is about conditioning someone else’s behavior to one’s own. In short, deterrence is about communication. Therefore, a nation must not communicate deterrence in its own rationality; it must communicate deterrence in the rationality an adversary understands. Failing to heed this advice risks remaining captive to our respective strategic cultural cave, shackled to misinformed interpretations of the shadows, and unable to escape.

Steven Nolan is a U.S. Air Force officer, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Weapons Instructor Course, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, and National Defense University’s Joint Advanced Warfighting School. The views expressed ithe author’s alone, and do not reflect official policies or positions of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: Fire Cave (ChrisNazgul/Deviant Art)

Notes:

[1] President Vladmir Putin, National Security of the Russian Federation (Russian Federation, 2021), 3, 17.

[2] President Joseph R Biden Jr, Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (The White House, 2021), 6, 8 , 14.

[3] President Donald J. Trump, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (The White House, 2017), 25.

[4] Colin S. Gray, War, Peace and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History, 2nd edition (Abingdon, UK : New York: Routledge, 2011), 191.

[5] The JP 3-0 uses the conflict continuum to describe the range of military operations from peacetime to wartime activities. The JDN 1-19 reorients the conflict continuum war and peace scale into a world neither at peace nor at war, “the competition continuum describes a world of enduring competition conducted through a mixture of cooperation, competition below armed conflict, and armed conflict.” The Atlantic Council report expands the JDN 1-19 competition continuum concept further by adding specified enemy actions while proposing a U.S. strategy to counter adversary advantages throughout the continuum. DoD, Joint Publication 3-0: Joint Operations (Washington, DC: US GPO, 2018), V–4; DoD, Joint Doctrine Note 1-19: Competition Continuum (Washington, DC: US GPO, 2019); Clementine G. Starling, Tyson Wetzel, and Christian Trottie, “Seizing the Advantage: A Vision for the next US National Defense Strategy” (Atlantic Council, December 22, 2021), 31–46, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/atlantic-council-strategy-paper-series/seizing-the-advantage-a-vision-for-the-next-us-national-defense-strategy/.

[6] Colin S. Gray, “Comparative Strategic Culture,” Parameters 14, no. 4 (1984): 27; Ken Booth, “The Concept of Strategic Culture Affirmed,” in Strategic Power: United States of America and the USSR, ed. Carl G Jacobsen (Springer, 1990), 121; John Street, “Political Culture - From Civic Culture to Mass Culture,” British Journal of Political Science 24, no. 1 (1994): 96; Frederick C. Turner, “Reassessing Political Culture,” in Latin America In Comparative Perspective: New Approaches To Methods And Analysis, ed. Peter H. Smith (Boulder: Routledge, 1995), 195; Jeffrey S Lantis, “Strategic Culture: From Clausewitz to Constructivism,” in Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction (Springer, 2009), 34.

[7] John S. Duffield et al., “Isms and Schisms: Culturalism versus Realism in Security Studies,” International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 156–80; John S. Duffield, “Political Culture and State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Neorealism,” International Organization 53, no. 4 (ed 1999): 768–69; John Glenn, “Realism versus Strategic Culture: Competition and Collaboration?,” International Studies Review 11, no. 3 (2009): 523, 530, 545.

[8] For additional information on the evolution of political and strategic culture, respectively, see Camelia Florela Voinea, “Political Culture Research: Dilemmas and Trends. Prologue to the Special Issue,” Quality & Quantity 54, no. 2 (April 1, 2020): 361–82; Anand V., “Revisiting the Discourse on Strategic Culture: An Assessment of the Conceptual Debates,” Strategic Analysis 44, no. 3 (May 3, 2020): 193–207.

[9] Michael C Desch, “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies,” International Security 23, no. 1 (1998): 150–52; Duffield, “Political Culture and State Behavior,” 773–74; Colin S. Gray, “Out of the Wilderness: Prime-Time for Strategic Culture” (Washington, D.C: U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, July 2006), ii, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA521640; Antulio J. Echevarria, “Strategic Culture: More Problems Than Prospects,” Infinity Journal 3, no. 2 (2013): 41; V., “Revisiting the Discourse on Strategic Culture,” 193; Antulio J. Echevarria, “Colin Gray and The Paradox of Strategic Culture: Critical but Unknowable,” Comparative Strategy 40, no. 2 (March 4, 2021): 174.

[10] Colin S. Gray, “Strategy and Culture,” in Strategy in Asia: The Past, Present, and Future of Regional Security, ed. Thomas G. Mahnken and Dan Blumenthal, 1st edition (Stanford, California: Stanford Security Studies, 2014), 92–93.

[11] Echevarria, “Colin Gray and the Paradox of Strategic Culture,” 175.

[12] Snyder’s strategic culture definition was tailored toward nuclear strategy. However, removing that portion of Snyder’s description does not detract from his assessment of strategic culture’s consistency. Jack L. Snyder, “The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations” (RAND Corporation, January 1, 1977), 8.

[13] Stephen Peter Rosen, Societies and Military Power: India and Its Armies (Cornell University Press, 1996), 17.

[14] Andrew Scobell, China’s Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2.

[15] Gray, 22.

[16] Colin Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1986), 35–39; Booth, “The Concept of Strategic Culture Affirmed,” 126; Eric Herring, “Nuclear Totem and Taboo: Or How We Learned to Stop Loving the Bomb and Start Worrying,” 1997, 11.

[17] Colin S. Gray, “Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for Strategic Culture,” in Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Culturally Based Insights into Comparative National Security Policymaking, ed. Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson, and Jeffrey A. Larsen (Springer, 2009), 223–27.

[18] Gray, 227, 231.

[19] Strategic culture is a non-linear ecosystem that typically evolves slowly. However, since each antecedent is modulated by some variable, the significance or impact of that variable could dramatically revise the output of a nation’s strategic culture.

[20] The JP 3-0 uses the conflict continuum to describe the range of military operations from peacetime to wartime activities. The JDN 1-19 reorients the conflict continuum war and peace scale into a world neither at peace nor at war, “the competition continuum describes a world of enduring competition conducted through a mixture of cooperation, competition below armed conflict, and armed conflict.” The Atlantic Council report expands the JDN 1-19 competition continuum concept further by adding specified enemy actions while proposing a U.S. strategy to counter adversary advantages throughout the continuum. DoD, JP 3-0: Joint Operations, V–4; DoD, JDN 1-19: Competition Continuum; Starling, Wetzel, and Trottie, “Seizing the Advantage,” 31–46.

[21] Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton University Press, 1976), 89.

[22] Clausewitz, 104.

[23] Clausewitz, 119.

[24] The Egyptians did not have a word for “war” or “peace.” Instead, they referred to “war” as “campaign, battle, or army, while “peace” equated to “quietness, satisfaction, or mercy.” Susanne Bickel, “Concepts of Peace in Ancient Egypt,” in Peace in the Ancient World: Concepts and Theories, ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 48–49, 54–55.

[25] Johannes Bronkhorst, “Thinking about Peace in Ancient India,” in Peace in the Ancient World: Concepts and Theories, ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 87–88.

[26] Robin D. S. Yates, “Searching for Peace in the Warring States: Philosophical Debates and the Management of Violence in Early China,” in Peace in the Ancient World: Concepts and Theories, ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 108.

[27] Yates, 112.

[28] Sun Tzu, The Illustrated Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith, The Definitive English Translation by Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 91.

[29] Kurt A. Raaflaub, “Greek Concepts and Theories of Peace,” in Peace in the Ancient World: Concepts and Theories, ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 126.

[30] Raaflaub, 130, 142–44.

[31] Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century CE to the Third (JHU Press, 2016), 2.

[32] Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Harvard University Press, 2011), 58.

[33] Clausewitz conceded this point as well, stating “the ultimate outcome of a war is not always to be regarded as final. The defeated state often considers the outcome merely as a transitory evil, for which a remedy may still be found in political conditions at some later date.” Clausewitz, On War, 80.

[34] Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, 257.

[35] Tzu, The Illustrated Art of War, 115; Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd rev. ed (New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Meridian, 1991), 5, 324–27.

[36] Liddell Hart, Strategy, 322.

[37] Liddell Hart, 322.

[38] Tzu, The Illustrated Art of War, 115.

[39] Tzu, 106; Liddell Hart, Strategy, 338; Clausewitz, On War, 96.

[40] Liddell Hart, Strategy, 352.

[41] Stephen Possony, “A Century of Conflict: Communist Techniques of World Revolution,” in The Communist Conspiracy: Strategy and Tactics of World Communism, by United States Congress. House Committee on Un-American Activities, vol. 1 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956), 19; Jacob W. Kipp, “The Other Side of the Hill: Soviet Military Foresight and Forecasting,” in Soviet Strategy and The New Military Thinking, ed. Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 250–51.

[42] Possony, “A Century of Conflict: Communist Techniques of World Revolution,” 20.

[43] Nathan Leites, The Operational Code of the Politburo (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1951), 31.

[44] Leites, 76.

[45] Ofer Fridman, Russian Hybrid Warfare Resurgence & Policisation, eBook (London, 2018), chap. 2.

[46] Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (Penguin, 2006), 13–15.

[47] Fridman, Russian Hybrid Warfare Resurgence & Policisation, 64.

[48] Maine, Sir H. J. S. 1888. International Law: A Series of Lectures Delivered before the University of Cambridge. Cambridge, 8; Quoted in: Hans Van Wees, “Broadening the Scope: Thinking about Peace in the Pre-Modern World,” in Peace in the Ancient World: Concepts and Theories, ed. Kurt A. Raaflaub (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 158.

[49] Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order (Yale University Press, 2000), 29–31.

[50] In their landmark The Puzzle of Peace, Goertz et al. analyzed six indicators to construct a framework measuring positive-peace relationships. The number, prominence, and degree to which states handle disputed issues determine placement along the continuum, with “severe rivals” and “security cooperation relationships” serving as the poles. The four interrelated characteristics were: 1) absence of major territorial claims, 2) institutions for conflict management, 3) high levels of functional interdependence, and 4) satisfaction with the status quo. In severe rivalry relationships, each state views the other as an enemy or competitor, leading to an extent threat of war, and driving both to prepare for its occurrence. In contrast to rivalries, negative peace is somewhat of a no-man’s land. Within this category, relationships may take on the appearance of rivalries or friendships. The absence of major territorial claims, the establishment of institutions for conflict management, high levels of functional interdependence, and satisfaction with the status quo characterize the “positive peace zone.” In this relationship, war or the use of military force between members is unthinkable or has a zero probability of occurring. Gary Goertz, Paul F. Diehl, and Alexandru Balas, The Puzzle of Peace: The Evolution of Peace in the International System, 1st edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

[51] President Harry S Truman, Inaugural Address of Harry S. Truman (Washington, D.C.: Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, 1949), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/truman.asp.

[52] Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security (Simon and Schuster, 2018), 43.

[53] Mariya Zheleznova and Nikolay Epple. 2016. “Pens of the Motherland: Why High-Ranking Officials Are Fighting the United States in the Russian Media.” Vedemosti. April 18, 2016. Quoted in: Graeme P. Herd, Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior: Imperial Strategic Culture and Putin’s Operational Code (London: Routledge, 2022), 98.

[54] Biden Jr, Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, 6, 11, 13, 16–17, 20; Trump, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 17, 22, 31, 40–41, 46; President Barack H. Obama, National Security Strategy (The White House, 2015), i–ii, 15.

[55] Dexter Perkins, “The Moralistic Interpretation of American Foreign Policy,” in A Reader in American Foreign Policy, by James M. McCormick (Itasca, IL: Peacock, 1986), 21.

[56] James M. McCormick, “Diplomatic History,” in Routledge Handbook of American Foreign Policy, ed. Steven W. Hook and Christopher M. Jones, 1st edition (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 22.

[57] Putin, National Security of the Russian Federation, para. 19.

[58] Keir Giles, Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West (Washington, D.C.; London: Brookings Inst. Press/Chatham House, 2019), 109.

[59] Giles, 112.

[60] Ashish Kumar Sen, “Mr. Putin’s Lies Hiding in Plain Sight,” Atlantic Council (blog), May 28, 2015, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/mr-putin-s-lies-hiding-in-plain-sight/.

[61] Christopher Bort, “Why The Kremlin Lies: Understanding Its Loose Relationship With the Truth,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, accessed February 1, 2022, https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/01/06/why-kremlin-lies-understanding-its-loose-relationship-with-truth-pub-86132.

[62] Nicolai N. Petro, “Russia’s Moral Framework and Why It Matters,” The National Interest (The Center for the National Interest, September 24, 2015), https://nationalinterest.org/feature/russia%E2%80%99s-moral-framework-why-it-matters-13923.

[63] Ofer Fridman, “The Russian Mindset and War: Between Westernizing the East and Easternizing the West,” in Special Issue on Strategic Culture, ed. Jeannie Johnson (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2022), 31.

[64] “By Enlarging NATO, West ‘Spat Upon’ Russia’s Interests Despite Good Relations, Putin Says,” TASS, June 9, 2021.

[65] U.S. White House, “Fact Sheet: President Bush’s Accomplishments in 2005,” accessed November 2, 2021, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051222-2.html.

[66] Herd, Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior, 58; Miroław Minkina and Malina Kaszuba, “Color Revolutions as a Threat to Security of the Ressian Federation: The Analysis of Russian Perspective,” Torun International Studies 1, no. 14 (2021): 80.

[67] “Putin Warns of ‘quick and Tough’ Response to Any Provocation by the West,” France 24, April 21, 2021, https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210421-putin-warns-of-quick-and-tough-response-to-any-provocation-by-the-west.

[68] Oscar Jonsson, The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace, 2019, 2.

[69] Volodymyr Yermolenko, “The New Russian Attack on Ukraine: Is It Real?,” Explaining Ukraine, accessed December 15, 2021, https://soundcloud.com/user-579586558/ep-58.

[70] Stalin, Joseph, Sochineniya, Institut Marksa-Engelsa-Lenina pri TsK VKP(b), Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literaturi, Moscow, 1948, 167-168. Quoted in: Leites, The Operational Code of the Politburo, 85; Jonsson, The Russian Understanding of War, 41.

[71] Mark Galeotti, “Controlling Chaos: How Russia Manages Its Political War in Europe,” European Council of Foreign Relations (ECFR), September 1, 2017, 8–10; Michael Kofman, “A Comparative Guide to Russia’s Use of Force: Measure Twice, Invade Once,” War on the Rocks, February 16, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/02/a-comparative-guide-to-russias-use-of-force-measure-twice-invade-once/.

[72] Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, 58.

[73] Paul F. Diehl, “Exploring Peace: Looking Beyond War and Negative Peace,” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 1 (March 1, 2016): 1.

[74] Goertz, Diehl, and Balas, The Puzzle of Peace, 36; Herbert Kelman, “Transforming the Relationship Between Former Enemies: A Social-Psychological Analysis,” in After the Peace: Resistance and Reconciliation, ed. Robert L. Rothstein (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), 197; Benjamin Miller, “Hot Wars, Cold Peace,” in War in a Changing World, ed. Zeev Maoz and Azar Gat (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 100.

[75] According to the Hobbesian world view, great-power states are the “guardians” or “custodians” of the international order and maintain powerful militaries. Similar to the concept of “suzerainty,” guardian powers limit the external sovereignty of non-incorporated states in their empire or alliance while allowing “almost complete” autonomy in internal matters. In a Hobbesian world, all states are sovereign; some are just more sovereign than others. Additionally, Bull argues that great powers are recognized as such and have the right to help determine the international system’s peace and security issues. Moreover, great powers preserve the international order’s balance by preventing the emergence of a hegemon. In the Hobbesian tradition, states, especially great powers, are unencumbered by moral or legal restrictions while pursing goals and interests. Hedley Bull, Andrew Hurrell, and Stanley Hoffman, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 4th ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 17, 24, 97, 195–96, 201; E. Wayne Merry, “The Origins of Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Clash of Russian and European ‘Civilizational Choices’ for Ukraine,” in Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine, ed. Elizabeth Wood et al. (Washington, D.C; New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press / Columbia University Press, 2015), 28–31.

[76] Hobbes saw humankind’s existence as “poor, nasty, [and] brutish,” people must divest their liberties to a sovereign authority to “prevent Discord and Civil War.” Hobbes viewed the world as being in a perpetual state of war, stating, “during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes: Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, 2nd Revised Student Edition (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 88-89, 125.

[77] David R. Jones, “Soviet Strategic Culture,” in Strategic Power: United States of America and the USSR, ed. Carl G Jacobsen (Springer, 1990), 35.

[78] Marlene Laruelle, Russian Nationalism, Foreign Policy and Identity Debates in Putin’s Russia: New Ideological Patterns after the Orange Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2014), 7–8.

[79] For a more thorough reading on Locke’s views on the social contract, see John Locke, Locke: Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, Student Edition (Cambridge England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 271, 287–88, 336, 344, 362, 384–85.

[80] William R. Emerson, “American Concepts of Peace and War,” Naval War College Review 10, no. 9 (1958): 3.

[81] Theo Farrell, “Strategic Culture and American Empire,” The SAIS Review of International Affairs 25, no. 2 (2005): 5, 12; Colin Dueck, “Hegemony on the Cheap: Liberal Internationalism from Wilson to Bush,” World Policy Journal 20, no. 4 (2003): 1–11; Thomas G. Mahnken, “United States Strategic Culture,” in Comparative Strategic Cultures Curriculum Project: Assessing Strategic Culture as a Methodological Approach to Understanding WMD Decision-Making by States and Non-State Actors, ed. Jeffrey A. Larsen (McLean, VA: Science Application International Corporation, 2006), 6–7, 9, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA521640.

[82] Mahnken, “United States Strategic Culture,” 6; Dominic Tierney, “How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War - Foreign Policy Research Institute,” November 6, 2010, chap. 1.

[83] Clausewitz, On War, 69, 87; Joseph Caldwell Wylie Jr, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Naval Institute Press, 2014), chap. 7; The Principles of Strategy for An Independent Corps or Army in a Theater of Operations (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: Command and General Staff School Press, 1936).

[84] Emerson, “American Concepts of Peace and War,” 5.

[85] Michael J Boyle and Anthony F Lang Jr, “Remaking the World in America’s Image: Surprise, Strategic Culture, and the American Ways of Intervention,” Foreign Policy Analysis 17, no. 2 (2021): 1.

[86] Boyle and Lang Jr, 1–7.

[87] Farrell, “Strategic Culture and American Empire,” 5.

[88] Reşat Bayer, “Peaceful Transitions and Democracy,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 5 (September 1, 2010): 542.

[89] Bayer, 542.

[90] Colin S. Gray, Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy (Washington, D.C: Potomac Books, 2009), 58.

[91] Depending on where a reader pulls Clausewitz’s “continuation of policy” quote from On War, a reader will see “policy by other means” or “policy with other means.” Clausewitz, On War, 69, 87; James R. Holmes, “Everything You Know About Clausewitz Is Wrong,” accessed November 4, 2021, https://thediplomat.com/2014/11/everything-you-know-about-clausewitz-is-wrong/.

[92] Clausewitz, On War, 153.

[93] David Kilcullen, “Strategic Culture,” in The Culture of Military Organizations, ed. Peter R. Mansoor and Williamson Murray (Cambridge University Press, 2019), 51–52.

[94] Hon. William M. Thornberry et al., “The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare and Key Challenges,” Statement before the House Armed Services Committee 22 (2017): 5.

[95] Clausewitz, On War, 75, 184.

[96] Gray, “Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for Strategic Culture,” 231.

[97] Colin S. Gray, “British and American Strategic Cultures” (Paper prepared for the symposium, Democracies in Partnership: 400 Years of Transatlantic Engagement, Williamsburg, VA, April 18, 2007), 7; Jeannie L. Johnson, The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture: Lessons Learned and Lost in America’s Wars (Georgetown University Press, 2018), 17.

[98] Gray, “Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for Strategic Culture,” 231.

[99] Lantis, “Strategic Culture: From Clausewitz to Constructivism,” 44–45; Heiko Biehl, Bastian Giegerich, and Alexandra Jonas, eds., Strategic Cultures in Europe: Security and Defence Policies Across the Continent, vol. 13 (Potsdam, Germany: Springer VS, 2013), 12–13; Gray, “Out of the Wilderness: Prime Time for Strategic Culture,” 232, 236.

[100] In the American case, examples include, but are not limited to: WWI, WW2, the Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Restore Hope, September 11th, 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the Russian case, examples include, but are not limited to: WW1, the Bolshevik Revolution, WW2, the Berlin blockade, Cuban Missile Crisis, Afghanistan, fall of the Soviet Union, Chechnyan Wars, Color Revolutions, Russo-Georgia conflict, supporting Assad regime in Syria, Annexation of Crimea, and current Russo-Ukrainian War. Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson, and Jeffrey A. Larsen, eds., “Introduction,” in Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Culturally Based Insights into Comparative National Security Policymaking (Springer, 2009), 6.

[101] Lantis, “Strategic Culture: From Clausewitz to Constructivism,” 45.

[102] Johnson, The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture, 16.

[103] Lloyd J. Austin III, Fact Sheet: 2022 National Defense Strategy (U.S. Department of Defense, 2022), https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/28/2002964702/-1/-1/1/NDS-FACT-SHEET.PDF.

[104] Jeannie L. Johnson, “Conclusion: Toward a Standard Methodolical Approach,” in Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Culturally Based Insights into Comparative National Security Policymaking, ed. Kerry M. Kartchner, Jeannie L. Johnson, and Jeffrey A. Larsen (Springer, 2009), 244.

[105] Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence: With a New Preface and Afterword, Revised edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 23, 35.