This study will provide a badly-needed survey and synopsis of the scholarly literature on strategic culture and ways of war.

A much-needed survey and synopsis of literature on strategic culture and ways of war. It clearly shows how national strategies and approaches to warfare are, to a significant extent, culturally determined. The concept of national ‘ways of war’ dates from the 1930s, when Basil H. Liddell Hart theorized that there was a ‘British Way in Warfare’. The concept of "strategic culture" dates from the 1970s, when Jack Snyder introduced it to explain why leaders of the Soviet Union did not behave according to rational choice theory. These ideas have gained wide acceptance among historians of international politics and warfare, and remain controversial for political scientists seeking general or universal theoretical understanding of such subjects. Because political scientists have focused on strategic culture and historians on ways of war, this work will greatly benefit both audiences and provide each with valuable exposure to the ideas of the other.

A major contribution to our understanding of contemporary warfare and strategy by one of the world's leading military historians.

By tracing the origins and evolution of the competing views on the political utility of force, this book sets the currently popular image of a new American way of war in its broader historical, cultural and political context, and provides an assessment of its future prospects.

Challenging several longstanding notions about the American way of war, this book examines US strategic and operational practice from 1775 to 2014. It surveys all major US wars from the War of Independence to the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as most smaller US conflicts to determine what patterns, if any, existed in American uses of force. Contrary to many popular sentiments, Echevarria finds that the American way of war is not astrategic, apolitical, or defined by the use of overwhelming force. Instead, the American way of war was driven more by political considerations than military ones, and the amount of force employed was rarely overwhelming or decisive. Echevarria discovers that most conceptions of American strategic culture fail to hold up to scrutiny, and that US operational practice has been closer to military science than to military art. This book should be of interest to military practitioners and policymakers, students and scholars of military history and security studies, and general readers interested in military history and the future of military power.

This book analyses the categories of thought underpinning Russia's strategic decision-making and military operations, unpacking their nature, development, and interaction.

The author argues that traditional methods of international relations theory, such as realism and liberalism, are not good predictive tools in an effort to forecast the behaviors of state and non-state actors. The complex web of religious ideologies, globally connected information technologies, and the interdependence of a globalized economy are some examples of driving forces that confound traditional international relations theory. The author reviews the strategic cultures of the United States, China, Iran, North Korea, and al-Qaeda in order to develop actionable policy guidelines.