In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Shaping of Strategic Cultures 1© 2000 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 1 Reflections on the Shaping of Strategic Cultures in Southeast Asia Chin Kin Wah Amorphous as the concept may be, “strategic culture” has made its way into academic discussions on Asia-Pacific security — deserving an observation made in 1996 by one reviewer that, “ Culture is the newest fad sweeping the literature on international relations, security studies, and international economics.”1 Initially coined by Jack Snyder in a 1977 Rand Corporation study which sought to explain a uniquely Soviet mode of strategic thinking on the use of nuclear weapons,2 it was subsequently taken up by others like Colin Gray whose focus had been on American nuclear strategy, and Ken Booth whose primary intellectual concern was focused on the Soviet Union. The latter, in particular, found in the concept a useful warning against being trapped in an (essentially American) ethnocentric mode of thinking (i.e., seeing others in one’s own cultural prism) on strategic issues.3 In the ensuing years, the intellectual interest in strategic culture has been sustained and extended beyond the traditional focus on the superpower strategic relationship, to the study of China’s deterrence strategy, its approach towards nuclear weapons and styles of warfare.4 Jack Snyder himself has noted that some of the studies — with specific reference to the United States and the former Soviet Union — either exaggerated the differences in national styles and approaches or underestimated the potential for strategic convergence. Yet others, according to Snyder, have underrated the prospects for fundamental change in Soviet strategy. In affixing a “caveat emptor” to a concept developed by himself 13 years previously, Snyder pointedly warned in a 1990 publication, “As a rule, culture is an explanation of last resort. Cultural explanations tend to be vague in their ISEAS DOCUMENT DELIVERY SERVICE. No reproduction without permission of the publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, SINGAPORE 119614. FAX: (65)7756259; TEL: (65) 8702447; E-MAIL: publish@iseas.edu.sg 2 Chin Kin Wah© 2000 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore logic, with causes that are quite distant in time and sequence from their purported consequences. Often, culture is a residual label that is affixed to ‘explain’ outcomes that cannot be explained in any more concrete way. Thus, culture, including strategic culture, is an explanation to be used only when all else fails.”5 That qualification notwithstanding, it should be noted that the strategic culture approach (rooted in the ideational, philosophical and cognitive influences) was essentially a reaction to what was perceived as the dominant structural-realist paradigm which seeks to explain a state’s security/strategic behaviour in terms of system structure or the distribution of state capabilities and resources. The security culture paradigm is focused on the “system of symbols (i.e., argumentation, structures, languages, analogies, metaphors, etc.) that acts to establish pervasive and long lasting... strategic preferences...”6 While the conceptual terrain of “strategic culture” is by no means settled, the term has been introduced in the 1990s with varying degrees of rigour, into reflections on Asia-Pacific security. There are several reasons for this development which go beyond the search for esoteric explanations or “residual labels”. To begin with, the cultural model of explanation has been resorted to in a wide range of studies on Southeast Asia. It has been traditionally applied (in a political culture framework) in comparative analysis of domestic politics within the region. The resurgence and dynamism during the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the region’s newly industrialising economies led to several attempts to provide explanations, including cultural explanations (focusing on the relevance or otherwise of Confucian values and work ethics), for that success story.7 In the postCold War period, the so-called East-West debate on human rights and democracy hinged on the dichotomy between the claim of universal values and the plea on behalf of cultural relativism, while the search for the middle-ground has led others to speculate more hopefully on the possible convergence of “Eastern” and “Western” approaches to the management of domestic societies. Samuel Huntington’s work on The Clash of Civilisations has, if anything, triggered an even more intense debate on the cultural dimension of international conflict. The intrusion of cultural analysis into the strategic literature in and on Southeast Asia can be accounted for in several ways. Firstly, the region has since the end of the Cold War, engaged in widening strategic dialogues. The ASEAN...

Share