On the variable of strategic culture: Modus operandi of military interventions in the Middle East
Journal Title: Security and Defence Quarterly - Year 2019, Vol 23, Issue 1
Abstract
The research subject of this article is the variable of strategic culture that has been subjected to some academic inertia since the Cold War period. The aim of this article is to define practical implications of the strategic culture through the prism of the neoclassical realist theory. It supports the argument that military interventional precedents in the Middle East since 2011 have been revealing adaptive considerations of the strategic culture as an intervening variable that implies interventional military decisions by the U.S. and its coalition partners. The first part of the article defines the precise role of this intervening variable as military interventional precedents are researched. This task is conducted by defining the general understanding of interventional initiatives, revealing structured assumptions of the neoclassical realist theory, and reconsidering the role of the strategic culture within that theoretical framework. The second part of the article shifts the attention to supportive empirical considerations regarding the strategic culture and perception of operational ideas – two specifi cally highlighted neoclassical realist assumptions. The article discloses that Western strategic culture is a changing intervening variable with a different level of permissiveness. A changing continuum of permissiveness is implied by interventional experiences that shape perception of the structural environment and dictate preferences for the power scale of interventional decisions. From this, the level of the structural environment’s permissiveness is defined. This permissiveness is associated with capabilities for implementing political objectives without further escalations of military power. Once the systemic environment becomes more permissive, the possibility of activating military intervention of various force-escalation becomes more conceivable.
Authors and Affiliations
Andrius Bivainis
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP705902
- DOI https://doi.org/10.35467/sdq/105431
- Views 91
- Downloads 0
Is the European goal for defence research and technology expenditure attainable for small countries?
EU Defence Ministers have adopted a joint Strategy on Defence Research & Technology (R&T) that includes a 2 % goal for defence R&T expenditure. Th is paper discusses the feasibility of such a goal for a small country, in...
Challenges and changes for the Polish Armed Forces in relation to Polish security policy.
----------
The Balkans and non-military security threats – quality comparative analyses of resilience capabilities regarding hybrid threats
The contemporary security environment indicates non-conventional, asymmetric and hybrid security threats as potentially the most accurate threats to global and regional security. Conflict risks in the regional frame stro...
Improved detection of chemical threats by sensor data fusion
This paper presents some aspects of sensor data fusion that were derived from the EU-SENSE project of the European Commission (Horizon 2020, Grant Agreement No 787031). The aim of EU-SENSE was to develop a novel network...
Logistics support of resolute support mission.
The Resolute Support Mission (RS) is the extension to the completion of ISAF operations. It is expected to start on 1 January 2015. NATO member states as well as troop contributing nations’ units are entering a complete...