Consistency Study Of Strategic Culture And The Dominant Culture

A careful review of the literature shows that both Western and Chinese scholars have touched the relationship between culture, strategic culture and state behavior. However, they focus on different aspects and make different propositions.The Western scholars emphasized on how strategic culture shapes state behavior, but they were disinterested in the relationship between culture and strategic culture. They hold that culture of a nation can neither necessarily determine the features of its strategic culture, nor explain the state behavior. Culture merely serves as a tool or a symbol of discourse.Unlike their Western counterparts, Chinese scholars maintained that strategic culture of a state is indubitably consistent with the culture of the nation and to a large extent determines the state behavior. Therefore, Chinese scholars mainly focus on the studies of the detailed contents and features of individual countries'strategic cultures, instead of explaining the relationship between the three variables.The review of Western and Chinese scholars'studies reflects the fact that they have made insufficient efforts to reveal the relationship between strategic culture and culture. This, however, is a question of academic significance. What this dissertation attempts to do is an examination of the relationship between strategic culture and culture, and to identify the conditions under which the two cultures are consistent or inconsistent.The dissertation assumes that the strategic culture of a nation-state is consistent fundamentally with its dominant culture. The hypothesis to be testified in this dissertation is that the consistency of strategic culture with the dominant culture of a state relies upon the decision-makers'internalization of the dominant culture, that is to say, whether the dominant culture has constituted the decision-makers'knowledge about social life.My method is primarily theorizing based upon textual analysis. I choose the classical and authoritative literature as my texts that reflect the essential thoughts of the political elite as well as the essence of a culture.In detail, I take three steps to testify my hypothesis.Step 1: To analyze the major literature written in the formative period of the dominant culture of a nation and identify its strategic culture preferences by exploring their proposition on how to achieve national security.Step 2: To analyze the major literature recording the decision-makers'thoughts in a certain period of the history, and examine whether the decision-makers have internalized the dominant culture.Step 3: To analyze the major literature reflecting the decision-makers'strategic thoughts in the same period of the history and identify their strategic culture preferences by exploring the decision-makers'knowledge about how to achieve national security.If the study finds that the decision-makers have internalized the dominant culture and their strategic culture preferences are indeed consistent with the dominant culture, then the hypothesis of my dissertation can be verified.Taking China's Ming Dynasty as the case to testify my theoretical design, I first assume that China's dominant culture is Confucianism. By analyzing the three classical literatures-Lunyu, Mengzi, Xunzi-written in the formative period of Confucian Culture, I find that its strategic culture preference is of a peaceful nature.As far as the Ming Dynasty is concerned, I assume that the key decision-makers in this period of China are the emperors. Then, I explore how the Ming Dynasty's emperors internalize Confucian Culture and what their strategic culture preferences are, mainly by analyzing the texts of Huang Ming Bao Xun, which is a historical series complied by the Ming government recording their emperors'thoughts, words and actions with regard to all areas of social life. The finding shows that the Confucian Culture has been deeply internalized by the emperors of the Ming Dynasty and their knowledge about how to achieve national security is highly consistent with the doctrines in the classical Confucian literatures.So, in the concluding chapter, I argue that there is a high degree of consistency of strategic culture with the dominant culture of a nation and this consistency relies very much upon the decision-makers'internalization of the dominant culture.