Some scholars argue that nations possess distinctive strategic cultures. Strategic culture is an inherited body of political-military concepts based on shared historical and social experience. Strategic culture may shape leaders’ interpretation of international events, thereby producing certain preference orders regarding how and under what circumstances military force should be used. Many policy makers also appear to hold a set of images or perceptions about the behavior patterns of other states. These images amount to an understanding of the strategic cultures that shape the choices of their counterparts in other countries. These images and perceptions are often unexamined, yet they appear to exert a powerful effect in shaping leadership expectations.

Strategic culture is often seen as a product of unique lessons that are internalized by successive generations of leaders. This occurs primarily through their education in classic texts that embody a national political-military literary tradition. In this view, having learned these consistent lessons, leaders then form a set of relatively stable ideas about “how the world works.” They also form stable preferences for strategic and military action. Despite important theoretical and methodological challenges, the strategic culture approach is a potentially valuable complement to realist perspectives. It helps build a better overall understanding of state behavior and foreign policy by drawing attention to cultural factors that may influence the logic of policy makers in other societies.