The story so far

The concept of strategic culture originated in a brief paper on Soviet nuclear strategy written by Jack Snyder for the RAND Corporation.Footnote ¹⁹ Though Snyder ultimately concluded that culture should be an explanation of last resort,Footnote ²⁰ during the past three decades a significant body of literature has emerged relating to the concept. Early examples of this literature, produced predominantly during the 1980s, focused on illustrating and explaining variation between Soviet and American ‘styles’ of strategy.Footnote ²¹ During the 1990s, an additional wave of strategic culture literature appeared that sought to challenge Realist accounts of the strategic behaviour of states.Footnote ²² More recently, the concept of strategic culture has emerged as a key element within the debate over the future of European security policy.Footnote ²³

In general, this body of literature advances two common arguments. Firstly, much of the strategic culture literature suggests that, due to cultural differences across security communities, different communities will make different strategic choices when faced with the same security environment. Secondly, existing strategic culture theory also suggests that particular communities are likely to exhibit consistent and persistent strategic preferences over time. Thus, strategic culture theory is used to highlight and distinguish the persistent trends in the strategic behaviour of particular security communities. Despite these similarities, some important differences have emerged between scholars working with the concept of strategic culture. Though these differences are evident across the works of many of the scholars cited above, they are most clearly visible within the works of Iain Johnston and Colin Gray who, over the past decade, have engaged in a debate regarding the nature and analysis of strategic culture. It is due to both the clarity of the positions staked out by Johnston and Gray and the fact that many other strategic culture scholars have situated their own works in relation to these positions that in the present and following sections attention is focused upon this debate.

Johnston's contribution to the strategic culture debate remains of great relevance due to the rigor with which he assesses the existing literature and the clarity with which he advances his own conception of strategic culture.Footnote ²⁴ He argues that:

Thus, for Johnston, strategic culture affects behaviour by presenting policy makers with a ‘limited, ranked set of grand strategic preferences’ and by affecting how members of these cultures learn from interaction with the security environment.Footnote ²⁶ Central to this theory is the distinction between strategic culture and state behaviour. Johnston adopts this approach in order to isolate strategic culture as an independent variable and then measure its causal power with respect to state behaviour.Footnote ²⁷ Johnston contends that this approach is superior to those of scholars such as Colin Gray because it constitutes a falsifiable theory of strategic culture. Johnston applies this theory to an analysis of Chinese strategy during the Ming period.Footnote ²⁸ He examines a set of classic Chinese military texts in order to identify the characteristics of Chinese strategic culture, and then tests for the influence of this culture through an analysis of the strategic practices of Chinese military leaders during the Ming dynasty. Thus, strategic culture and strategic behaviour remain at a ‘healthy’ distance, and the influence of the former on the latter can be scientifically tested.

Johnston's work on strategic culture has been strongly criticised, particularly in terms of the distinction between strategic culture and strategic behaviour. Gray, who represents perhaps the most prominent critic of Johnston's work, argues that, in their search for a falsifiable theory of strategic culture, scholars such as Johnston have committed errors that ‘are apt to send followers into an intellectual wasteland’ and argues, instead, in favour of an understanding of strategic culture as context, the ‘the total warp and woof of matters strategic that are thoroughly woven together’.Footnote ²⁹ Gray's key argument is that strategic behaviour cannot be separated from notions of strategic culture because such behaviour is inevitably carried out by people who are ‘encultured’.Footnote ³⁰ For Gray, the inability to separate culture from behaviour precludes the possibility of separating cause from effect, thus precluding the application of positivist methods of social science to the analysis of strategic culture. The implications of this approach to the study of strategic culture are twofold. Firstly, drawing upon arguments presented by Martin Hollis and Steve Smith,Footnote ³¹ he argues that the recognition that culture and behaviour cannot be separated necessitates the adoption of methods that enable one to understand rather than explain strategic behaviour.Footnote ³² Therefore, strategic culture analysis ought to be driven by the need to interpret the meaning of strategic behaviour rather than by the desire to explain the cause of that behaviour. Secondly, Gray suggests that strategic culture theory cannot be amenable to the type of comparative theory testing that is frequently undertaken by positivist scholars. This challenges the work of scholars who, building on Johnston's argument, seek to test strategic culture theory against other theories such as neo-realism.Footnote ³³

As it stands, the literature on strategic culture remains organised around the debate discussed above. More recently, and particularly in the context of the debate regarding the future development of a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), various scholars have advocated the adoption of the understandings of strategic culture advanced, respectively, by Johnston and Gray. Sten Rynning and Stine Heiselberg, each of whom argues that Europe lacks a strong strategic culture, follow Johnston in stressing the importance of conceptually distinguishing between culture and behaviour.Footnote ³⁴ Alternatively, Christoph Meyer, who presents a more positive view regarding the potential emergence of a coherent European strategic culture, supports an understanding of the concept that builds on the arguments of Gray.Footnote ³⁵ Thus, despite the fact that some scholars have continued to apply strategic culture theory, the works of both Johnston and Gray remain foundational within the relevant literature. The following section of this article seeks to clarify the weaknesses that are evident within both Johnston's and Gray's approaches to strategic culture.

Holes in the plot

According to both Johnston and Gray, the key area of disagreement that separates them relates to the question of whether or not strategic culture should be conceptually distinguished from strategic behaviour. This then, would appear to be the key ‘gap’ in the literature and the issue that requires most scholarly attention if strategic culture theory is to be improved.Footnote ³⁶ On closer inspection, however, it becomes evident that there are a number of issues within this body of literature that, so far, have not been dealt with satisfactorily. These relate to the constitution, operation and analysis of strategic culture.

Reconstructing the second generation

What has been odd about much of the debate regarding strategic culture theory has been that, on the one hand, those involved have repeatedly made reference to Johnston's three-generational characterisation of the strategic culture literature and yet, on the other, no serious or sustained attempt has been made by such scholars to engage with the work of second generation scholars such as Klein. This section seeks to build upon Klein's conception of strategic culture in order to respond to some of the weaknesses in alternative accounts identified above. On closer inspection, however, the reluctance on the part of many strategic studies scholars to take seriously the arguments of Klein is anything but surprising. Klein's work is critical in orientation, drawing as it does on the scholarship of post-structuralists such as Michel Foucault, R. B. J. Walker and Richard Ashley and post-Marxists such as Antonio Gramsci and Robert Cox.Footnote ⁵⁵ Despite the gradual acceptance of post-positivist theory within the fields of International Relations and Security Studies, the sub-discipline of strategic studies has remained largely isolated from these changes, as is clearly evidenced by the theoretical paucity evident within the debate regarding strategic culture. While the absence of any serious engagement with his position regarding strategic culture may be predictable, it remains a significant failing of those scholars engaged in the strategic culture debate because Klein's work promises to add much to our understanding of this concept.

Klein's understanding of strategic culture contains three key elements that distinguish it from those held by conventional strategic culture scholars. Briefly, these relate to the constructed nature of social reality, the scope of both strategic culture and the politics of strategy, and the relationship between strategic culture and strategic practice. Klein's position regarding the constructed nature of reality differs sharply to that held by many Strategic Studies scholars in that, unlike them, he refuses to accept the distinction that is typically made between an external reality and our knowledge of that reality.Footnote ⁵⁶ This distinction is central to the work of Johnston who seeks to measure the accuracy of his theory of strategic culture by comparing it to strategic practices in the ‘real’ world. Alternatively, Klein argues that the reality that Strategic Studies scholars refer to, including for example, the states system and the very notion of security, is socially constructed.Footnote ⁵⁷ This position is also held by constructivists who have generally been concerned with the analysis of the social construction of reality.Footnote ⁵⁸ For scholars such as Klein, our knowledge of the world and, therefore, our practices within it are shaped by the social structures that enable and constrain social, discursive interaction.

The similarities between this understanding of the role of social structures and Gray's conception of strategic culture are immediately clear. Gray conceives of strategic culture as providing the context within which policy makers must necessarily act and without this context, he argues, events lack meaning. Klein and many constructivists would go further, and suggest that the very possibility of meaning is predicated upon the existence of social structures. Intersubjective conceptions of meaning are central to all political and social action because they make communication, and therefore collective organisation possible.Footnote ⁵⁹ It is after all, groups and not individuals that engage in strategic behaviour and it is strategic culture that enables the undertaking of the social and political practices that necessarily precede such behaviour.Footnote ⁶⁰ To this extent, strategic culture can be thought of as an intersubjective system of symbols that makes possible political action related to strategic affairs. Furthermore, strategic culture constrains and enables the communicative practices that are central to the politics of strategy.

It is with regard to the scope of the politics of strategy that Klein's work also differs significantly from that of conventional strategic culture scholars. For first and third-generation scholars, strategic culture shapes only one aspect of the politics of strategy; it aids in our attempts to explain or understand why unitary and culturally distinct nation-states use military force in different ways. In other words, strategic culture shapes the political process through which a given state's political and/or military leaders decide upon how to use military force in a given situation. Klein's work does incorporate this aspect of conventional strategic culture scholarship; he argues that the concept of strategic culture ‘embodies [a] state's war-making style, understood in terms of its military institutions and its accumulated strategic traditions of air, land and naval power’.Footnote ⁶¹ Klein also contends that strategic culture incorporates the manner in which a state prepares for the use of force – through economic, technological and institutional development – and the manner in which the use of force is justified within the context of political debate. As such, strategic culture represents a political web of interpretation in which strategic practices gain meaning. This web shapes the military practices of states by rendering certain strategic practices as possible and legitimate while others remain either impossible or illegitimate. Thus far, Klein's position seems relatively similar to that advanced by conventional strategic culture scholars such as Gray.

However, conventional strategic culture theorists go no further than this. Instead, they take for granted much that, according to Klein, remains to be explained. Specifically, while conventional strategic culture scholars do examine the politics of strategy as it refers to the use of force they ignore entirely the political processes through which communities capable of using military force are constituted.Footnote ⁶² This is typical of much of the literature within the field of Strategic Studies, where the existence of sovereign nation-states and their situation within an anarchic international system are taken for granted. For Klein however, the fundamental purpose of utilising the concept of strategic culture is to problematise the taken-for-granted status that is typically granted to states and the states-system.Footnote ⁶³ Thus, while Klein's analyses have tended to focus on one aspect of the politics of strategy – how strategic practices render possible particular forms of community – his approach encapsulates a much broader conceptualisation of the scope of strategic culture. Specifically, Klein explicitly draws a connection between the politics of identity and the politics of strategy.

This aspect of Klein's work is also consistent with that of many critical constructivists. Constructivists have long been concerned with the issue of how social structures serve to constitute the identities of particular agents. For example, Weldes, building on the work of Stuart Hall, has argued that, as well as regulating the behaviour of agents, norms also play an interpellative role in ‘calling into being’ certain identities or sites of agency.Footnote ⁶⁴ This is a particularly important aspect of constructivist theory in terms of the advancement of our understanding of strategic culture. Symbols related to a security community's identity form a central part of its strategic culture because they inform collective understandings of the boundaries and relationships between that community and others. Furthermore, how we understand such relationships is likely to influence our assumptions about the appropriate role of military force within international politics.Footnote ⁶⁵ To engage in strategic culture scholarship therefore, is (or ought to be) to investigate the means by which strategic culture constitutes certain behaviour and certain collective identities as possible.

As has been noted in the previous section, conventional accounts of strategic culture have failed to address the issue of how strategic culture, let alone the identity of strategic actors, is constituted. Johnston posits a theory of strategic culture and remains unable to account for the existence of such culture. Gray challenges Johnston's theory but remains unwilling to acknowledge the implications of his acceptance that practice constitutes culture. Alternatively, Klein argues that the very starting point of any strategic culture analysis must be to treat military strategy as a cultural practice.Footnote ⁶⁶ While the field of Strategic Studies has tended to emphasise the regulative role of strategic force, Klein remains intent upon examining the generative nature of such practices – ‘generative of states, of state systems, of world orders, and to some extent, of modern identity as well’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Thus, Klein argues that strategic violence is not merely used to patrol the frontiers of the state; it serves to constitute them as well. Klein effectively reverses the line of argument typically advanced by conventional strategic culture theorists. While scholars such as Johnston and Gray remain focused on the question of how the cultural attributes of a state shape its strategic practices, Klein focuses on how strategic practices constitute the identity of a particular state.

Klein's articulation of the relationship between strategic culture and strategic practice is largely consistent with constructivist notions regarding the mutual constitution of structures and agents. Indeed, while constructivists have focused attention on the importance of social structures they have also examined the constitutive function of human agency. Indeed, the notion that agents and structures are mutually constitutive is one of the central ontological propositions of constructivism.Footnote ⁶⁸ Alternatively, the constructivist position on this point is largely drawn from the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens. Following Giddens, constructivists claim ‘that human agents do not exist independently from their social environment and its collectively shared systems of meanings (‘culture’ in a broad sense). At the same time, social constructivists maintain that human agency creates, reproduces, and changes culture by way of daily practices’.Footnote ⁶⁹ The ‘agent-structure problem’ refers to the difficulties of developing theory that successfully meets the demands of both the need to acknowledge that human agency is the only moving force behind the actions, events, and outcomes of the social world, and also the need to recognise the causal relevance of structural factors.Footnote ⁷⁰ While constructivists may not have ‘solved’ this problem, the very recognition of its existence has tended to move constructivist scholars away from the type of deterministic claims that are still evident within much strategic culture literature.Footnote ⁷¹ Instead, constructivists such as Fierke have focused specifically on the transformative capacity held by human agents with respect to social structures.Footnote ⁷²

While constructivists have sought to avoid the weaknesses of structurally deterministic arguments, they have also refused to overemphasise the freedom of individuals to exercise agency independently of social structures. As Fierke notes, the goals of individuals must be pursued within a social realm and, therefore, they must be communicated and made meaningful to others.Footnote ⁷³ As a result, in addressing the agent-structure problem, many constructivist scholars have focused on the communicative practices of agents, for it is at the site of such practices that structures and agency meet.Footnote ⁷⁴ Social structures constrain and enable such practices, but it is only due to the repeated practices of agents that social structures come to exist. Therefore, constructivist scholarship has focused conceptually on social structures, such as norms and identities, and empirically on the social and communicative practices of particular actors. As such, second-generation strategic culture theory promises to shift the attention of scholars away from the discussion of broad generalisations about the national ‘character’ of particular security communities and towards the detailed analysis of the communicative practices of those involved in the politics of strategy.Footnote ⁷⁵

The amalgamation of Klein's work on strategic culture and some of the key insights of critical constructivist theory attempted above is brief, yet it provides significant leverage with regard to the first two weaknesses of conventional strategic culture theory identified in the previous section. Through recognising the roles played by human agents, second-generation strategic culture theory promises much in terms of our theorisation of the constitution of strategic culture. More specifically, such an approach moves us away from the search for the discrete origins of a community's strategic culture and identity and towards the analysis of the practices that serve to repeatedly constitute those social structures. Strategic culture does not magically emerge during the formative years of a particular security community and then perpetually operate upon the members of that community. Indeed, as David Campbell has noted, it is often the reproduction of narratives of a community's ‘origins’ or ‘formative years’ that serve to constitute that community's identity and its relationships with other such communities.Footnote ⁷⁶ Strategic culture and collective identity are (re)produced through the practices of those engaged in strategic affairs.Footnote ⁷⁷ Thus, rather than assuming that each community ‘naturally’ possesses a strategic culture, one must investigate how practices related to the use of military force serve to reconstitute particular collective identities and understandings about the meaning and uses of strategy. For some, no doubt, this approach to the theorisation of strategic culture threatens the dignity of the concept as it challenges the linkage of strategic culture to grand patterns in a security community's strategic practices. Instead, the theory of strategic culture promoted here recognises the constitutive power of practice, thus granting strategic culture analysis an urgency and relevance with regard to contemporary strategic behaviour.

Furthermore, our understanding of the operation of strategic culture must be significantly altered once we take seriously the ontological propositions of constructivism. Key here is the recognition that the strategic practices of security communities are carried out by groups of individuals and a process of group decision-making must be undertaken if those individuals are to act collectively. Central to this political process is communication, and communication is only possible when those involved can draw upon shared systems of symbols. I have argued above in favour of a definition of strategic culture as a system of symbols that constrain and enable communication and politics related to strategy. A particular strategic culture (to the extent that we are able to speak of a distinct culture) will be distinguished by the symbols incorporated within it and the ways in which those symbols are related to one another.Footnote ⁷⁸ More generally, we might expect a strategic culture to enable the articulation of particular understandings of the identity of a community, the nature of its relationship with other communities, and the appropriate role of force within the context of those relationships. Therefore, strategic culture constitutes a set of rules regarding what may be communicated and, implicitly, what may not. Strategic culture may therefore be thought of as defining a set of language games related to the politics of strategy.Footnote ⁷⁹

Importantly, the rules of these games are not, and cannot be, unchanging. Thus, though strategic culture constrains political practices, political agency and processes of political contestation always hold the potential to change the constituent elements of that culture.Footnote ⁸⁰ As post-structuralist scholars have repeatedly suggested, due, in part, to the reflexive capacities of human agents the meaning of particular symbols or signs and the relationships between them can never be finally fixed.Footnote ⁸¹ Humans are not cultural ‘dupes’ whose social practices are fully determined by the social structures in which they operate. Instead they are capable of reflecting upon their use of language and the structures that constrain it. However, this is not to say that human agents are free to change strategic culture as they please. Political processes of contestation regarding the meaning of and relationships between symbols will determine whether or not change in strategic culture takes place. Strategic culture therefore represents an inherently dynamic structure that is repeatedly reconstituted through the very practices that it enables and constrains. Thus, second-generation strategic culture theory suggests that the existence of long-term patterns in the strategic behaviour of states must be investigated rather than assumed.

Strategic culture analysis

Given the theorisation of strategic culture identified above, we must now turn to the question of how strategic culture scholarship ought to proceed. Clearly, the propositions of second-generation strategic culture theory hold important implications for the how we study strategic culture. These implications relate to the questions that are asked within strategic culture scholarship, the subject matter that is studied and the method by which it is studied. With regard to the first of these issues, the above discussion has demonstrated clearly that traditional strategic culture literature has ignored some challenging and interesting questions. In particular, strategic culture scholars have largely been guilty of assuming the existence of natural, stable and unitary security communities (states) that each possesses a unique strategic culture.Footnote ⁸² Such assumptions ignore the constructed nature of both collective identities and strategic culture and they also ignore the intimate relationship between the two.Footnote ⁸³ In short, second-generation strategic culture theory urges us to consider two general questions. Firstly, how is it that some understandings of a community's collective identity, its relationship with other communities, and its use of military force come to be articulated while others do not? Secondly, what are the consequences that follow from the articulation of particular understandings of these central issues? Thus, strategic culture scholarship ought to focus on analysing how a particular social structure (strategic culture) shapes the content and meaning of strategic discourse as well as what implications follow from the deployment of that particular discourse.

As the previous section has suggested, constructivist theory matches a conceptual focus on social structures to an empirical focus on communicative practices.Footnote ⁸⁴ Therefore, the investigation of the research questions outlined above demands the analysis of the discourse of the politics of strategy.Footnote ⁸⁵ This discourse is constituted by, but not merely reducible to communicative practices of those involved in the politics of strategy, practices that are amenable to textual analysis.Footnote ⁸⁶ Strategic culture scholarship must therefore be concerned with the analysis of texts, but which texts? The answer to this question will ultimately depend on whom one takes to be involved in the politics of strategy. Immediately, it is important to note that strategic cultural analysis need not be applied solely to states. Obviously, as is evident from much of the most contemporary literature regarding this concept, the strategic culture of institutions, such as the EU, is worthy of analysis.Footnote ⁸⁷ However, even this expanded conception of strategic culture might be too narrow for some. As Klein himself has demonstrated, it is worthwhile considering strategic culture on a global level. Strategic practices including nuclear deterrence, arms control, and collective security operations (such as humanitarian interventions) take place in a global political setting and, as such, may be amenable to strategic culture analysis. Finally, there is no need to apply strategic culture analysis solely to the strategic practices of states and international institutions such as the EU. Sub-state or transnational actors that engage in the use of force may also be amenable to such analysis.Footnote ⁸⁸ One of the benefits of such analysis would be the recognition of the multiple forms of identity that are relevant within the context of strategic practices.

Furthermore, even when strategic culture analysis is applied to the examination of states, there is no need to adopt a narrow view of who is involved in the politics of strategy. Within the US, for example, the list of individuals and institutions that may be said to have some role in the production of strategy is enormous.Footnote ⁸⁹ Ideally, one might seek to analyse the communicative practices of those most intimately involved in the making of strategic policy, yet transcripts of this level of discourse are notoriously difficult to gain access to. Alternatively, speeches, press releases and policy documents produced by officials from the various departments and government bodies that are involved in the policy making process represent highly relevant texts worthy of strategic culture analysis.Footnote ⁹⁰ In addition, however, we might choose to examine texts associated with the media, with academia or with the plethora of think-tanks, all of which are engaged in the security policy-making process.Footnote ⁹¹ Finally, one may choose to examine texts relating to the everyday practices of ‘normal’ people as those people are, in a number of different ways, implicated in the politics of strategy.Footnote ⁹² On first inspection, the sheer enormity of the list of potentially suitable texts for analysis outlined above might be seen to suggest that strategic culture analysis lacks a clear focus. On the contrary, however, the challenge of deciding which actors are involved in the politics of strategy is faced by anyone seeking to analyse the strategic practices of a security community, whether they choose to do so from a realist, institutional, or cultural perspective.Footnote ⁹³

The examples listed above together form what might be described as the political documentary record. However, as Klein argues, we can extend our ‘textual’ analysis to social practices that are not themselves confined to the written word. ‘Because all social practices necessarily rely upon a documentary record as well as on repertoires of meaning and interpretation that are always made available through the medium of language, they are also susceptible to critical methods of inquiry that explore the construction of truths […] From this standpoint, all practices acquire a “curious literariness” that is not available to narrowly materialist or empiricist explanations’.Footnote ⁹⁴ Thus, our analysis of written texts ought to be coupled with the ‘textual’ analysis of social practices. Still, we must necessarily choose certain texts and practices to analyse. How is this to be done?

Perhaps the primary consideration that is likely to underpin our selection of particular texts and practices for analysis relates to the notion of power. No doubt, some scholars will choose to focus solely on texts produced by state officials and political leaders on the grounds that those individuals are likely to possess the greatest power in terms of the making of strategic policy.Footnote ⁹⁵ However, if we are to understand the constitutive and productive functions of strategic culture, I would argue that we must also take into consideration the manner in which the politics of strategy plays out in a variety of arenas. Given the suggestion made above that strategic practices play a key role in the production of the collective identities of security communities, the analysis of texts relating to popular culture and everyday life may hold the potential to highlight important elements of this constitutive process as it relates to the people of those communities.Footnote ⁹⁶ Furthermore, we must recognise that the power of political leaders is, in part, constituted by the productive capacity of strategic discourse. Thus, unless we define the scope of strategic culture analysis broadly we are likely to repeat the failings of much traditional IR literature in vastly underestimating the volume and variety of power that it takes to produce the states, military institutions and modes of conflict that we often take for granted.Footnote ⁹⁷

Finally, we must turn to the most challenging of the issues related to the analysis of strategic culture, that concerning the method through which the analysis of texts ought to be carried out. It is at this point that the epistemological division within constructivism, which itself echoes a much lengthier debate within the social sciences,Footnote ⁹⁸ becomes central. The key issue here is how we ought to approach the analysis of language. Ted Hopf's distinction between conventional and critical constructivists is useful here because it focuses upon the two general positions advanced within constructivist scholarship regarding the analysis of language.Footnote ⁹⁹ Conventional constructivists, such as Peter Katzenstein,Footnote ¹⁰⁰ adopt a correspondence theory of language, while critical constructivists, such as Jutta Weldes, adopt a constitutive theory of language. The former assume that language corresponds directly to, or mirrors, aspects of an objective world. In the context of constructivist scholarship this means that while language may be used to describe norms, identities or cultures, it does not serve to constitute them. Constructivists who adopt a correspondence theory of language, perhaps most famously Alexander Wendt, have been strongly criticised because doing so tends to lead to overly deterministic accounts of the role of social structures.Footnote ¹⁰¹ On closer inspection, this same weakness is evident in much contemporary strategic culture literature. Johnston's analysis of ancient Chinese military texts is symptomatic of an approach grounded in the correspondence theory of language; he assumes that these texts describe rather than constitute Chinese strategic culture. More recently, Meyer has constructed an account of strategic culture theory that builds on the work of constructivists such as Peter Katzenstein and Jeffrey Checkel who, like Wendt, adopt a correspondence theory of language.Footnote ¹⁰² Like Johnston, Meyer treats language as an unproblematic medium of communication rather than as a practice that constitutes the reality that he seeks to investigate. Again, what is missing within both Meyer and Johnston's works is an analysis of the constitutive role of language.Footnote ¹⁰³

Alternatively, those who adopt a constitutive theory of language contend that our use of language serves to construct the world in which we live. Constructivist scholars such as Karin Fierke, Jennifer Milliken and Jutta Weldes have been far more willing to place the analysis of language at the centre of constructivist research. Adopting this understanding of the role of language holds important implications for how scholarship is practiced. Firstly, it influences the standards that we use to judge the quality of scholarship. If language serves to constitute reality then we cannot get behind language to compare it to an unmediated reality.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Consequently, we cannot hope to construct and test falsifiable theories (as Johnston would have us do) by comparing them to reality. Secondly, if we recognise that language constitutes reality, we must necessarily acknowledge (and take responsibility for) the constitutive power of our own scholarship.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ These points raise two important and interrelated questions: how are we to judge the standards of discourse analysis, and how should we decide upon the objectives of our own scholarship? How we answer these questions will heavily influence how we undertake the analysis of strategic culture.

There are no easy answers to these questions. With regard to the latter, critical constructivist scholars have generally concerned themselves with interrogating hegemonic discourses, which are themselves seen as constituting a reality that is fundamentally unjust. Thus, one of the things that the critical constructivist authors noted above share is a highly critical attitude regarding the practice and study of international politics. Furthermore, this critical outlook has influenced the methods adopted by such scholars. These methods are characterised by significant diversity due to the desire held by such scholars to resist attempts to impose a hegemonic discourse on the practice of scholarship itself.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ More recently, however, Milliken has gone to some effort to categorise the range of methods that have been adopted by scholars engaged in the analysis of language.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ There is space enough here to only briefly discuss these methods, but scholars interested in studying strategic culture would do well to consider in greater detail the methods of analysis outlined by Milliken.

Milliken outlines the initial objective of textual analysis as involving the identification of the symbols incorporated within a discourse and the mapping of the relationships between them. More specifically, she distinguishes between predicative analysis and metaphorical analysis as two means by which texts may be analysed. ‘Predicative analysis focuses on the language practices of predication: the verbs, adverbs, and adjectives that attach to nouns’ because these serve to construct the features and capacities of the thing(s) named.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Alternatively, metaphorical analysis involves the examination of ‘metaphors as structuring possibilities for human reason and action’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Each of these methods is intended to highlight relationships (or categories of relationships) between elements of a discourse. In general, these forms of textual analysis are particularly useful for examining patterns of variation and similarity within or across discourses. Within the context of strategic culture scholarship, textual analysis could be used to show consistency or variation across time and/or space in the discourse of strategy.

Taken alone, the method of textual analysis outlined above is not too dissimilar to the types of analysis undertaken by some strategic culture and conventional constructivist scholars. Indeed, as Milliken has acknowledged, these methods are particularly formal means of studying language and remain insufficient unless they are complemented with an analysis of how such discourses produce the world in which we live.Footnote ¹¹⁰ The analysis of discourse productivity involves the examination of the practices, power relations and identities that are constituted as possible, reasonable and legitimate within particular discourses. Thus, we must recognise that discourses do not merely constrain and enable the communicative practices of all people equally, they selectively constitute some and not others as ‘privileged storytellers […] to whom narrative authority […] is granted’.Footnote ¹¹¹ The production and occlusion of identities is a particularly important focus of this form of analysis. Turning once again to strategic culture theory, we might apply analysis of the productive capacity of discourses of strategy to examine the political structures and sites of authority that are produced by predominant discourses of strategy. Thus far, such questions have been largely ignored within strategic culture scholarship.

The methods discussed thus far involve the examination of the structure of strategic discourses and the analysis of their productive functions with particular respect to the constitution of collective identities. What remains is the question of what stance a strategic culture scholar ought to adopt relative to these discourses. Clearly, different scholars will answer this question in different ways. Some may satisfy themselves with the examination of the structure and productive capacity of a particular discourse. Many involved in the analysis of discourse advocate the adoption of a more critical stance, however, one that is directed towards the undermining of hegemonic discourses rather than the mere analysis of them. On the one hand, strategic culture scholars may pursue such an objective through the application of genealogical or deconstructive methods of analysis. The former seek to challenge the hegemony of particular discourses by showing their constructed nature and historical contingencyFootnote ¹¹² while the latter seek to displace and reverse the binary oppositions that are frequently employed within a discourse in order to privilege particular ‘truths’ by subjugating others.Footnote ¹¹³ On the other hand, as Fierke has argued, constructivist analyses may possess some inherent critical value to the extent that they show both how our knowledge of the world is constructed and the implications that follow from certain constitutive practices.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Such analyses encourage us to ‘look again, in a fresh way, at that which we assume about the world because it has become overly familiar’.Footnote ¹¹⁵ The critical potential that is enabled by the adoption of a constructivist account of strategic culture represents a particularly important addition to the literature, as many existing applications of strategic culture theory have taken for granted the stable existence of unitary nation states and the legitimacy of the use of force.