Strategy and Ethnocentrism (Routledge Revivals)

Ken Booth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317670292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Nationale Sicherheit

Ken Booth's study, first published in 1979, investigates the way in which cultural distortions have affected the theory and execution of strategy. Its aim is to illustrate the importance of ethnocentrism in all areas of the subject, to follow through its implications and to suggest approaches to the different problems it poses.

Insights are offered into the character of a number of important issues in Cold War international politics, including the superpower arms race, détente, the Middle Eastern crisis, the Soviet arms build-up and the SALT talks. In light of the cost of modern warfare, it is all the more important to avoid strategic failures in the future. Strategy and Ethnocentrism aims to alert students of military and strategic studies to some ways of minimising the risks of failure in an age when war is increasingly characterised by racial, cultural and religious conflict.

1 CONCEPTS AND PROPOSITIONS

DOI: 10.4324/9781315769738-1

The socio-psychological map of the world may be thought of as largely reducible to a cultural map. Charles A. Manning

If triangles had a god, he would have three sides. Montesquieu

Whether or not God created the world in his own image, men certainly create the social universe in their own images. Ethnocentrism is one cultural variant of this universal socio-psychological phenomenon: societies look at the world with their own group as the centre, they perceive and interpret other societies within their own frames of reference, and they invariably judge them inferior. Ethnocentrism is a phenomenon which has ramifications in most if not all areas of intergroup relations. Not the least of its ramifications is in that area, military strategy, where those groups called states deal with each other in the most brutal way.

Strategists as a professional body have not concerned themselves with the problem of ethnocentrism. There is only a very occasional reference to the problem in strategic literature. Even the best analyses of the state of the discipline apparently do not think ethnocentrism sufficiently important to deserve consideration. ¹ Writers about ethnicity have not helped: their interest in violence has been restricted to the ethnic causes of intranational or international conflict. ² Even psychologists interested in international relations, or international theorists concerned with problems of perception and misperception, have generally skirted the problem and have certainly ignored its military manifestations. ³ Despite this lack of attention, it will be shown that ethnocentrism is indeed a pervasive problem in the theory and practice of strategy. The questions to be addressed are not simple, nor are the attempted answers: and neither the questions nor the answers can be confined to the narrow bounds of what conventionally constitutes strategic studies.

Concepts

At the outset, it is important to clarify the two concepts, ‘ethnocentrism’ and ‘culture’, which underpin the whole argument of the book, and to introduce two related concepts, ‘cultural relativism’ and ‘national character’.

Culture

Like Hermann Goering, strategists may be apt to reach for their revolvers at the sound of the word culture. However, if students are to be serious anthropologists of Homo Strategicus, a relevant concept has to be delineated.

Culture is a notoriously nebulous concept: why else would there be over two hundred definitions? For present purposes, however, the following is a useful beginning: ‘A culture is a set of patterns, of and for behaviour, prevalent among a group of human beings at a specified time period and which … presents … observable and sharp discontinuities.’ ⁴ Within the sense of this definition culture embraces different modes of thought, implicit and explicit behavioural patterns and social habits, identifiable symbols and signals for acquiring and transmitting knowledge, distinctive achievements, well-established ideas and values, particular ways of adapting to the environment and solving problems, and significant discontinuities in all these respects as between one group and another. Culture is one of the key factors determining who is whom in the social universe.

Cultural thoughtways – myths as well as reason – form the core of societies and play a central role in the affairs of men. Culture is a basic concept in politics and history, and therefore inevitably plays an important role in strategy, which is concerned with the military relations between groups. The map of the world across which strategists are wont to draw their arrows is more than a politico-military map made up of state boundaries, physical features, transportation systems and deployed forces. It is also a cultural map, for those fighting units called nation-states are identifiable socio-psychologically, as well as politically. If culture is a major factor in strategy, it therefore follows that cultural appraisals (and distortions) will also be of great significance. This is where ethnocentrism enters the discussion.

Ethnocentrism

Like other important terms in international politics, ethnocentrism is often defined more easily than it is recognised. Although some may object to the term as a piece of unnecessary jargon, it has been persevered with because it is a relatively unfamiliar word in strategic studies and therefore calls attention with greater force than would otherwise be the case to the precise thesis, or set of problems, with which this book is concerned. Until our consciousness is raised, there is some advantage in having a word which we use self-consciously. This would not be the case with such a familiar phrase as ‘national bias’. Ethnocentrism is used in the following closely related senses:

1. As a term to describe feelings of group centrality and superiority. This was the original meaning when the term was introduced by W. G. Sumner in 1906: ethnocentrism is the View of things in which one’s own group is the centre of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it’. ⁵ This original meaning has been retained. The characteristic features of ethnocentrism in this sense include: strong identification with one’s own group and its culture, the tendency to see one’s own group as the centre of the universe, the tendency to perceive events in terms of one’s own interests, the tendency to prefer one’s own way of life (culture) over all others (seeing it as involving the best and right ways of acting, with an associated bias against other groups and their ways of acting), and a general suspicion of foreigners, their modes of thought, action and motives. ⁶ In these senses, ethnocentrism has been a universal social phenomenon.
2. As a technical term to describe a faulty methodology in the social sciences. In attempting to understand other societies, social scientists, like all other social groups, tend to ‘privilege’ their own conceptual systems, and so distort their picture of what other groups may actually be doing. In this technical sense ethnocentrism involves the projection of one’s own frame of reference onto others. It is: ‘the tendency to assess aspects of other cultures in terms of one’s own culture, and thus in social science research to apply in a biased and improper fashion the standards and values of one’s own culture in the study and analysis of other cultures. Such bias is often caused by an implicit or explicit belief in the superiority of one’s own culture.’ ⁷ Such ethnocentric perceptions will clearly have considerable theoretical and practical significance in international relations. ‘Cultural relativism’ is the technical term used to describe the effort to overcome ethnocentric bias.
3. As a synonym for being ‘culture-bound’. Being culture-bound is a necessary condition for ethnocentric perception, and sometimes the terms are used synonymously. Being culture-bound refers to the inability of an individual or group to see the world through the eyes of a different national or ethnic group: it is the inability to put aside one’s own cultural attitudes and imaginatively recreate the world from the perspective of those belonging to a different group. This means that it is almost impossible to empathise with foreigners. In this sense, again, ethnocentrism is a virtually universal phenomenon.

Cultural Relativism

If ethnocentrism is ‘the natural condition of mankind’, ⁸ it is evident that ‘cultural relativism’, which is the opposite tendency, will be in rather short supply. Cultural relativism is the approach whereby social and cultural phenomena ‘are perceived and described in terms of scientific detachment as, ideally, from the perspective of participants in or adherents of a given culture’. ⁹ The observer attempts to be on guard against his own ethnocentric bias, and at least tries to transcend or eliminate it for the period of his observation. If the principle of cultural relativism is to be reasonably attained it requires a difficult exercise of imagination and empathy on the part of the observer ‘so that he can see others as they see themselves or as they wish to be seen’. In practice, however, an observer cannot completely eradicate his own cultural conditioning, and the structure of ideas and values which it passes on to him.

To ‘know the enemy’ has always been a cardinal tenet of strategy. If this goal is to be achieved in the future with more regularity than it has been achieved in the past, then cultural relativism should take its place in the strategist’s lexicon. Knowing the enemy is the bedrock of the business of strategy: strategic theories, in comparison, are second order problems. To concentrate on doctrines before enemies is to put the theoretical cart before the actual horse – a double error.

National Character

In discussing ethnocentrism in relation to groups as big as nations, as well as in relation to individuals, it is necessary to associate, albeit briefly, with the unpopular and contentious problem of ‘national character’. It is probably true that we still do not know enough about national character to know whether it really exists or not. ¹⁰ Nevertheless, it is assumed in this book that one can reasonably talk about probabilities and tendencies as long as one does not attempt to explain every individual in terms of national character, or use the concept as a mono-causal explanation of international events. Few are likely to deny that ‘certain qualities of intellect and character occur more frequently and are more highly valued in one nation than in another’. ¹¹ What is usually wrong is not the concept, but the use to which it is put.

As national character is associated in some minds with extreme stereotyping, some writers prefer to talk about ‘national styles’ as a useful if again simplifying intellectual tool to create some order in our thinking about the behaviour of those responsible for foreign policy. ¹² Other writers would object to this construct also. But even if one were entirely to reject both these approaches, the fact cannot be overlooked that many individuals and groups, including sophisticated analysts, do think in these terms. Such thinking may be misbegotten, but the illusions which emerge are politically and strategically significant, and require our close attention. Our mistaken beliefs form an integral part of our social universe (cynics and idealists might unite to say the largest part). Indeed, much more significant than any one nation’s illusion of omnipotence in international politics is the omnipotence of illusion which grips the society of states as a whole.

Propositions

Some of the propositions below may be familiar in a general sense: what this book is concerned with, however, is their cultural dimension, an aspect which so far has been largely ignored by the strategic community. The chief interrelated propositions to be discussed are as follows:

1. Ethnocentrism is one of the factors which can seriously interfere with rational strategic planning.
2. Together with other mechanisms (psychological, historical and bureaucratic) ethnocentrism can distort important aspects of strategic thinking, especially where problems of perception and prediction are involved.
3. Strategists as a body are remarkably incurious about the character of their enemies and allies. Ethnocentrism is one way in which individuals and groups consciously and subconsciously evade reality.
4. Ethnocentrism is an inadequate and dangerous basis for strategic studies, but it has been neglected as a source of misperception in strategy and has not been the cause of much methodological anguish.
5. Ethnocentrism in recent history has been a source of mistakes in strategic practice and misconceptions in theorising about strategy. This is disconcerting in a policy science such as strategy where the costs of mistakes are always high.
6. From a narrow military viewpoint, ethnocentrism is not always dysfunctional.
7. Ethnocentrism interacts with the irreducible predicaments of international security, and intensifies them.
8. Threat assessment is not concerned just with ‘capabilities’ and ‘intentions’, but also with the ways in which capabilities and intentions are perceived and misperceived. Images are the source of politico-military behaviour. Threat assessment is therefore seriously vulnerable to ethnocentric distortion.
9. Strategic studies have become very inbred. The subject needs a more interdisciplinary approach, to the extent of abolishing ‘academic strategists’ as they have developed in the last twenty years.
10. The construct of rational Strategic Man as a tool for thinking about the world is a dangerous distortion. It needs replacing by a move towards ‘strategy with a human face’.
11. Civilian strategists and policy planners need to ‘retool’ in order to take account of ethnocentric bias.
12. Strategists as a profession have not accommodated, in deed or word, to the problems of conflict and stability in a multicultural world.
13. The pursuit of cultural and strategic relativism is a liberating experience; it is a useful antidote to the grip of ethnocentrism, ignorance and megalogic.
14. Strategy is a vital but misunderstood activity: it is too significant to be left in the hands of any narrow professional group.
15. Better strategic studies are not necessarily synonymous with better strategic ...