The Balance Of The Dual Characteristics Of American Strategic Culture

As a superpower in the world, America's strategy has s great influence on the international society. Facing the same or similar problems, the nations socialized by the different strategic culture system will choose different strategic orientation which accord with the requirement of their own strategic culture system. So strategic culture is the important factors that influence the national strategic behavior, and is a theoretical tool for understanding American behavior.Influenced by its own unique history, American strategic culture has two essential features—expansionism and evasionism. These two features interweave each other, and spread out four kinds of strategic orientation—hegemonism, internationalism, nationalism and realism.Influenced by the following factors—value orientation of policy makers, the development of domestic politics and the changes of international environment, the four strategic orientations make different impacts in the level of real strategic preference. The final strategic decision is the equilibrium point produced in the interaction of the four strategic orientations. On the equilibrium point, the four strategic orientations collectively but differently influence the American strategic behavior.This paper studies the equilibrium of duality of American strategic culture from the two essential features of American strategic culture and factors that influence their impacts on the strategic preference. Then identify the core idea in the American strategy, the uniformity and nonuniformity between ideas and preference any further in order to better understand American strategic behavior.