ABSTRACT
The study of strategic culture is initially developed by several writers in the late 1970s and early 1980s to address the apparent differences between the nuclear strategies of the United States and the Soviet Union. The chapter seeks to outline the contemporary developments and assess their implications for further research. For Jack Snyder, strategic culture refers to: the sum total of ideas, conditioned emotional responses and patterns of habitual behaviour that members of a national strategic community have achieved through instruction and imitation with each other with regard to nuclear strategy. Anglo-American strategic theory at this time was seen as having become obsessed with the preservation of international order according to Western perceptions. This led to the Soviet Union being viewed as a 'mirror image' of the United States in strategic terms. These developments served as a call to strategists to both embrace diversity and consider the cultural context in which strategy was made.
