Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies

Culture Clash Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies I Cultural theories have long enjoyed a prominent place in the field of international security. Indeed, two waves have come and gone since the start of World War 11, and we are now at the high watermark of a third.' Today's culturalists in national security studies are a heterogeneous lot, who bring a variety of theories to the table. However, virtually all new culturalists in security studies are united in their belief that realism, the dominant research program in international relations that emphasizes factors such as the material balance of power, is an overrated, if not bankrupt, body of theory, and that cultural theories, which look to ideational factors, do a much better job of explaining how the world works. This article assesses this latest wave of cultural theories in security studies by focusing on some of its most prominent examples.There is no question that virtually all cultural theories tell us something about how states behave. The crucial question, however, is whether these new theories merely supplement realist theories or actually threaten to supplant them. I argue that when cultural theories are assessed using evidence from the real world, there is no reason to think that they will relegate realist theories to the dustbin of social Michael C. Desch is Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the John M . Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard Universityand author of Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore,Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming). I wish to thank Robert Art, Dale Copeland, Colin Elman, Eugene Gholz, Joseph Grieco, Samuel Huntington, Iain Johnston, Christopher Layne,JeffreyLegro,John Mearsheimer,JohnOdell, Robert rape, Daniel Philpott, Kenneth Pollack,Barry Posen, Dan Reiter, Gideon Rose, ScottSagan,Randall Schweller,Rudra Sill, Jack Snyder, Bradley Thayer, Ivan Toft, Monica Toft, and Stephen Walt; the members of the Defense and Arms Control Seminar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security at the University of Chicago; the Christopher Browne Center for International Politics; and my fellow 1997 American Political ScienceAssociationConvention panelists for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. 1. In addition to Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Securify:Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), the main pieces in this literature are Peter J, Katzenstein and Noburo Okawara, "Japan's National Security: Structures, Norms, and Policies," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993),pp. 84-118; Thomas U. Berger, "From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan's Culture of Anti-militarism," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 119-150; Jeffrey W. Legro, "Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War 11," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 108-142; Alastair Iain Johnston, "Thinking about Strategic Culture," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Spring 1995), pp. 32-64; Elizabeth Kier, "Culture and Military Doctrine:France between the Wars," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Spring 1995),pp. 65-93; Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation under Fire: AngloInternnfiorial Security, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Summer 19981, pp. 141-170 0 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 242 International Security 23:l I 142 science history. The best case that can be made for these new cultural theories is that they are sometimes useful as a supplement to realist theories. The post-Cold War wave of culturalism in security studies is a broad research program with a wide range of research focuses (such as military doctrine , escalation, weapons acquisition, grand strategy, and foreign policy decision making), embracing a diverse range of epistemologies (from the avowedly positivistic to the explicitly antipositivistic) and utilizing a broad array of explanatory variables. Four strands of cultural theorizing dominate the current wave: organizational, political, strategic, and global. For example, Jeffrey Legro holds that militaries have different organizational cultures that will lead them to fight differently.’ Elizabeth Kier argues that different domestic political cultures will adopt divergent means of controlling their militaries based on domestic political considerations, not external strategic concern^.^ Similarly, Peter Katzenstein and Noburo Okawara, and Thomas Berger, maintain that domestic political...