Commentary on Pakistani Major (and Army Command and General Staff College student) Mehar Omar Khan's excellent SWJ article attacking the fallacious concept of an "Islamic Way of War" has got me thinking about the use and limitations of the concept of Strategic Culture.
As Patrick Porter noted in his book, the idea of culture-based analysis of supposed "Eastern" martial traditions is a very old conceit. It's explanatory value, however, is quite limited. The military culture of the Imperial Japanese Army from the late 19th century to 1945 has little in common with Pakistani guerrillas today. Moreover, many aspects of "Eastern" warfare are not so unique. Infiltration tactics, for example, have been widely practiced by Western infantry forces of all stripes for the past hundred years. We either use the Orientalist concept of the exotic Easterner either as a kind of projection of ideas we have about foreign cultures or a forcing mechanism for our militaries to adopt certain "Eastern" practices.
Additionally, some figures who wish for their own reasons to adopt a monolithic view of their own culture are very happy to echo such essentialism. The idea of a genuinely Islamic way of war was first coined by Pakistani Brigadier General S.K Malik. Bin Laden and co. are also very comfortable with such concepts, as it allows them to favorably present themselves in the propaganda war. We should strive to avoid playing into the trap of legitimizing their ideas.
The concept of Strategic Culture is much more refined than the kind of crude essentialist concept of a primordial cultural "way of war" ascribed to certain ethnic groups or regions, as it encompasses a combination of essentially sociological factors that interact with each other in a complex and dynamic manner. Moreover, Strategic Culture isn't unitary. Brian McAllister Linn's work on the respective intellectual traditions of the Army show that even a single institution has multiple contrasting perspectives. The COIN era, in particular, proved to be a boom time for analysis of military institutions as COINdinistas and COINtras debated over the idea of adaptation (or lack thereof) under fire.
Strategic Culture is a useful analytical concept for avoiding mirror-imaging. It's also a useful tool for historical analysis and policy analysis. But its predictive power is rather limited. As we can see from our own debates, there is usually no unitary opinion within a nation or institution about strategy. As our understanding of jihadist ideology deepens, for example, we learn through analysts such as Thomas Hedgehammer about the often rich debate within terrorist circles over strategy and tactics. Ideas we had about al-Qaeda and the global jihadist network in the past now seem simplistic and even misleading---something policymakers should consider when formulating courses of action for counterterrorism.
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