War and the Cultural Turn

Jeremy Black

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745648347, 9780745648330
• eBook ISBN: 9780745656380
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In this stimulating new text, renowned military historian Jeremy Black unpacks the concept of culture as a descriptive and analytical approach to the history of warfare. Black takes the reader through the limits and prospects of culture as a tool for analyzing war, while also demonstrating the necessity of maintaining the context of alternative analytical matrices, such as technology.

Black sets out his unique approach to culture and warfare without making his paradigm into a straightjacket. He goes on to demonstrate the flexibility of his argument through a series of case studies which include the contexts of rationale (Gloire), strategy (early modern Britaisn), organizations (the modern West), and ideologies (the Cold War). These case studies drive home the point at the core of the book: culture is not a bumper sticker; it is a survival mechanism. Culture is not immutable; it is adaptable.

Wide-ranging, international and always provocative, War and the Cultural Turn will be required reading for all students of military history and security studies.

1

Introduction

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) would have been delighted, for the discussion of military history has revealed a classic case of the thesis and antithesis that he saw as important to the quest for truth via the dialectic. More particularly, if the emphasis on technology that reached an apogee in the 1990s and early 2000s, with interest in a supposed Revolution in Military Affairs and a related ‘transformation’ of the military, represented the thesis; so a stress on cultural factors was the antithesis, or was used in this fashion. Moreover, this thesis and antithesis also had a clear chronology and a pronounced geographical emphasis. The clear chronology was an emphasis on technology in assumptions from the Vietnam War, up to and including the invasion of Iraq in 2003; and, in contrast, although there were already valuable discussions of the cultural theme prior to 2003,¹ a stress on culture thereafter. The variety of issues and concepts summarized as the cultural aspects of war is a subject that has attracted considerable attention over the last decade, offering a different way of assessing capability to that focused on weaponry.² In part, this attention reflects the more general extent to which cultural influences have notably emerged clearly in the writing of history, including military history.

The geographical emphasis related to this changing chronology and, in particular, the presentism it offered. For example, whereas the stress during the Vietnam War of the 1960s and early 1970s was on elements of Vietnamese and/or Communist culture and ideology that sustained opposition to the American intervention, the emphasis, from 2003, was on aspects of Islamic culture and fundamentalist ideology. In each case, there was an attempt to understand why the output of the world’s most technologically advanced and resource-rich military, that of the USA, a military with a high standard of professionalism, was unable to achieve the outcome of a settlement on its own terms. The key issue appeared to be that of the failure to make America’s opponents internalize a set of values in which they accepted the American understanding of relative capability. Thus, the cultural factor apparently became a way of understanding both the role and success of will-power and the wider political context.

Defining Terms

The danger, however, is that culture becomes, like technology, an over-used term as well as one that is difficult to define, a danger that the multiple uses of it outlined in this book makes clear, notably the sprawling character of this chapter, which seeks to introduce many themes. Constructing a workable concept of culture poses many problems, and anthropologists and archaeologists in practice use the term culture in such an all-embracing sense that it has become almost meaningless and could simply be read as society.

One difficulty with concepts of culture is that they also change across time, and, consequently there is no permanent concept of culture, let alone one that works across all languages and, of course, cultures. Hence, a poor choice is offered: either to superimpose one particular concept upon any aspect of the past which happens to come under review, or to retain the changing concepts of culture that are to be found in the sources. The first offers analytical clarity, but fails to note differences in concepts of culture; while the second approach reduces the communicability of what is being described.

Moreover, taking note of changing concepts of culture also entails noting the degree to which some cultural norms and consequences contradict others. For example, individual states, such as the contemporary USA and Britain, have strategic cultures that contain contradictory elements as battles over doctrine and resources make clear. Drawing attention to the complexity of usage is a valuable contribution that historians can offer, not least as their grasp of the past is different to that of anthropologists and political scientists who have provided much of the work in the field. Nevertheless, the perspective of these other subjects is of great value. In particular, anthropologists have emphasized the degree to which culture is a contested sphere, one that lacks coherence and, instead, is characterized by struggle. By challenging the concept of culture as an overarching, one-dimensional and fixed set of objective ideas, we approach closer to reality, but also underline the problems of analysis and exposition.

The over-use of culture as both a descriptive term and an interpretative method is another aspect of a more general poverty of historiography in the field of military history, one, moreover, that the ethnogenesis apparently offered by some cultural interpretations highlights. There has been a lack of attention to this poverty, but, in 2002, Dennis Showalter, a leading American military historian, pointed out that ‘Military history is arguably the last stronghold of what historiographers call the “Whig interpretation” … [it] sees the development of warfare as progressive.’³ This perceptive comment drew valuable attention to the culture of military history, a culture that, in turn, offers a useful angle on one of the leading concepts in military studies and history, the cultural turn in military history.

A theme in this book is that culture is dynamic, not static, as both a reality and as an analytical process. Culture needs to be tackled as a dynamic and problematic phenomenon, whereas the standard approach in military history is to employ less refined and less problematic concepts of culture as an apparently overarching, one-dimensional and fixed set of objective ideas, a practice long challenged within the social sciences.

A Range of Sub-Cultures

Some scholars have argued in favour of the need to consider particular cultural elements in warfare, especially the way in which understandings of appropriate military conduct, victory, defeat, and causality, are all culturally conditioned. Thus, the response in Egypt of the ruling Mamluks to firearms in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is seen in terms of a warrior culture that preferred an emphasis on individual prowess. For others, culture in military history focuses on perception and expectations, especially the perception of opportunities, of problems, of options, and of success. The determination of the Ottoman rulers of Turkey (and much else) to gain prestige as defenders of Islam against Christians and Sunni orthodoxy against the Safavids of Persia (Iran) can be presented in this light. Others have sought to employ cultural issues in warfare as explanatory factors in large-scale, overall or synoptic theories allegedly explaining military history.

The last approach includes (although it is not limited to) the eloquent, if somewhat simplistic and triumphalist, account of Western military success that, in part, reflects the misleading looseness of cultural definitions. This account is seen in particular in the work of Victor Davis Hanson, such as his The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (1989) and Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (2001). Hanson presented Western military advantage as resting on particular ideas and institutions that were rooted in Hellenic traditions. The most vulnerable aspect of Hanson’s argument was its meta-cultural approach, a sweeping view of a shared civilization across time and space. Nevertheless, within Hanson’s argument, there was a notion that repays serious consideration, namely that democracies have a particular military culture of their own, and that there is a relationship between regime type and military performance.

A similar argument was made for 1944–5 by Max Hastings, when he contrasted Anglo-American military culture with more brutal German and Soviet counterparts, arguing that being citizen soldiers meant that fighting quality was lower, a point with which Hanson would definitely have disagreed. Hastings suggested that the result of the Western allies’ measured approach to war, coupled with German determination, ensured that much of Eastern Europe was exposed to Soviet brutality and tyranny; yet, also, that the ability of Anglo-American forces to maintain their military culture rested in part on the Soviet willingness to take very heavy casualties.⁴

Hanson’s book was prompted by a particular political juncture, and can be seen as an expression of a culture of American discussion, but the book was also part of an ongoing debate over the linkages between wartime efficiency and political culture. Hanson’s work thus offered an interesting parallel to that of Samuel Huntington.⁵ Indeed, it can be seen as a consequence, or even rationalization, of the latter for military historians. At the same time, as a reminder of the need for care in locating scholarship, more recent work has also argued for a positive synergy between democracy and military effectiveness in the case of Athens, at once a democracy and an empire.⁶

Culture is a much employed term. There is the culture of society as a whole, including why people fought and how they responded to the issues of conflict, on which there has recently been excellent work for the American Civil War (1861–5). There is also the definition of military culture as a specific form of institutional culture⁷ and, linked to this, a focus on organizational culture of particular militaries, a topic that overlaps with sociology. This category, which includes issues such as hierarchy, discipline and the responsiveness of subordinates to responsibilities, illustrates the widespread applicability of the concept of culture and of related terms and vocabulary. For example, in assessing the effectiveness of the naval dockyards during the later Anglo-French wars, Roger Morriss considered administrative culture in the shape of ideas, structures, practices and mores, providing an important way of assessing control and organization.⁸ A particular aspect of administrative ethos and practice has been discussed in the shape of the ‘culture of secrecy’.⁹ In another direction, an important review article of 2007 referred to ‘the new emphasis on culture, especially the history of memory’, and discussed the significance of the subsequent presentation of war.¹⁰

Strategic Culture

There is also the concept of strategic culture, employed to discuss the context within which military tasks were ‘shaped’. This concept, which overlaps with that of strategic landscapes, and focuses on issues in international relations studies, owed much to a 1977 report on Soviet strategic culture for the Rand Corporation by Jack Snyder. As such, the concept provided a way to help explain a system for which sources were manipulated for propaganda reasons and accurate reports were few. This situation describes that of many states in the past. The idea of explaining a system in terms of a culture captured the notion that there were relevant general beliefs, attitudes and behaviour patterns, and that these were in some way integral to the politics of power rather than being dependent on the policy circumstances of a particular conjuncture.¹¹ Roger Barnett, a supporter of the concept, argues that strategic culture leavens ‘collective memory with cumulative experience’.¹²

Strategic culture continues to be the concept of choice when considering China; in part because its intentions are of key concern to the USA as it assesses how best to respond to China’s increasing power. For example, a recent pamphlet from the Strategic Studies Institute of the American Army War College focuses on the topic of China’s strategic culture, concluding that it provides a means to accurate assessment: ‘To craft any intelligent, effective policy towards China, the US national security community must have a clear contextual understanding of the historical and cultural factors that define China’s strategic thinking, and that can best provide an impassioned assessment of China’s goals and intentions.’¹³

However, strategic culture as an approach does not offer precise answers. For example, in what is principally an essentialist approach, it has been argued that China’s strategic culture was primarily defensive and focused on protecting its frontiers, but there has also been a critique of the notion of a defensive, Confucian, strategic culture, and, in its place, an argument that there have been long-standing expansionist strands in Chinese strategic culture, notably at the expense of steppe peoples.¹⁴ The room for different assessments emerges on this point, which, more generally, suggests that the very building blocks of larger theories have to be handled with care. For example, the standard interpretation of Ming China (1368–1644) is that the military establishment scarcely enjoyed a central place, not least because the military was nominally hereditary, whereas the norms of civilian society were merit-orientated. Moreover, the civil service bureaucrats who were powerful under the Ming had scant commitment to the goals of the military and, as a result, the prestige of military service was limited. This situation led to a lack of interest in war, let alone expansionism, and to only limited commitment to the state of the military.¹⁵ However, there is also room for a reinterpretation stressing the extent to which emperors had an important military role or sought such a role.¹⁶

The issue of Chinese bellicosity is seen to be of considerable pertinence at present, not least because of concerns over Taiwan,¹⁷ although it may also be asked how far a discussion of Chinese war-making in, say, the eighteenth century is of relevance today, in what is a very different political context, both domestic and international, as well as with regard to the nature of war. To turn back, the tension between early and late Ming war-making in the periods 1370–1450 and 1550–1644 is notable, the former being far more focused on power projection, as is that between late Ming and the attitudes of the Manchu, who seized power in the 1640s and 1650s. Given these variations, it may be asked whether there is any relevance in comparing Manchu and modern attitudes.

Islam as a strategic culture raises a host of similar points: notably, for the early twentieth century, the tension between pan-Arabism and pan-Turkish ideas. The variation in Islamic strategic cultures and the capacity for development of individual ones is also clear from the experience of the last two decades. To refer to Islamic war-making is to neglect differences between the militaries of particular states, both in the past and at present. Thus, strategic culture lacks meaning if it is pretended that there is some inherent, semi-timeless characteristic. Instead, like organizational culture, strategic culture takes on value by referring to a particular period. These concepts have to address historical context, specifically the issue of coherence and consistency in face of the contested character of national and service interests, the range of debate, and the roles of politics and contingency.

More generally, it is necessary to identify and probe the problem of plurality, diversity and contradictions within strategic cultures. For example, there is the question of the strategic culture of individual military services, which, in part, are shaped by their assessment of their domestic role. There is also the issue of the extent to which war and, more particularly, combat led to the development and/or bringing to fruition of particular characteristics, such as the victory disease seen with Allied generals in the autumn of 1944. That situation created a systemic problem for Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, as subordinate commanders eschewed good discipline in their grab for battle laurels,¹⁸ although he can also be faulted for patronage politics. In an instance more generally relevant for military history, subsequent perceptions of the campaign in 1944 owed much to aggressive memorizing.¹⁹ The same was true of the memoirs left by British commanders in North Africa in 1941–2; and would have been the case for many campaigns had the commanders put pen to paper.

National Exceptionalisms: The Cases of the USA and Canada

The use of culture as an argument for essen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Culture of Gloire: The Royal Military
• 3 Strategic Culture: The Case of Britain, 1688–1815
• 4 Organizational Cultures: Western Warfare, 1815–1950
• 5 Strategic Culture: The Cold War
• 6 From the Cold War into the Future
• 7 Culture and Military Analysis
• 8 Conclusions
• Selected Further Reading