Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Chinese Strategic Cultures

Introduction

In recent years, the growing possibility of U.S.–China confrontation has received new prominence in international relations research, after a succession of U.S. presidential administrations unveiled their own China policies that emphasize different aspects of the bilateral relationship.¹ In this regard, a comprehensive understanding of the two great powers’ strategic mindset and threat perceptions has practical and political significant.²

This analysis goes beyond the framework of rational theory while applying a cultural approach, particularly the notion of “strategic culture.” As a Cold War-era concept, strategic culture was first formulated by the American political scientist Jack Snayder to explain the different perceptions of the United States and the USSR regarding nuclear war.³ Snyder argues that strategic culture shapes a nation’s approach to security and military strategy by embedding particular values, beliefs, and historical experiences into its decision-making processes. His analysis reveals how these factors contributed to the Soviet Union’s strategic decisions, including its emphasis on military preparedness, centralized control over military policy, and a focus on both conventional and nuclear deterrence.⁴

Nowadays, strategic culture includes not only the approaches of states in nuclear matters, but also the entire dimension of the use of military force in general. Passing through four generations of conceptualization, the notion of strategic culture has undergone an evolution in pursuit of direct linkage between a state’s operational behavior and its strategic culture (value-system, historical precedents, and traditions).⁵

Given the scarcity of research on strategic culture, this paper intends to fill the gap in academic literature while comparing the U.S. and Chinese strategic cultures in terms of the use of military force. When doing so, this paper tries to answer the following research question: How do the strategic cultures of the United States and China affect their preferences for the use of military force? In terms of time frame, the 21st century has been assigned to this paper, when China’s rise became an unambiguous reality which prompted the further application of the strategic culture in the IR’s scholarship.

The analysis of Chinese and U.S. strategic cultures relies on a qualitative study of primary (including reports and strategy documents issued by the U.S. and Chinese governments and media outlets) and secondary sources (books, Internet resources, academic papers).

The paper starts with explaining the strategic culture concept, then deals with the comparison of the main features of American and Chinese strategic cultures at the level of the use of military force. It concludes that strategic culture has a tremendous effect on Chinese and U.S. strategic thought as a set of precedents rooted in state identity, customs, and historical memory. Therefore, the two great powers hold extremely distinct views on the use of military forces which stem from China’s defensive and U.S. offensive strategic cultures.⁶

Theoretical Framework of Strategic Culture

The Cold War introduced several new concepts into the scholarship of International Relations, one of them is “strategic culture.” In his study of Soviet Russia’s strategic behavior and nuclear options, Jack Snyder, a theorist of neoclassical realism, introduced the concept of strategic culture to warn that the Soviets would not always adhere to American expectations of rationality in nuclear policy.⁷ Snyder’s analysis underscores the importance of understanding these cultural and historical factors to grasp why states adopt specific security policies and strategies. By focusing on the interplay between culture and strategy, Snyder provides valuable insights into the complexities of international relations and the diverse ways in which states approach issues of war and peace.

Nowadays, the concept of strategic culture plays a pivotal role in understanding the behavior of states in the international arena. This concept goes into the deeply ingrained beliefs, values, and norms that shape a nation’s approach to strategy and decision-making. Strategic culture has evolved over time to encompass the whole spectrum of the use of military force, not only the nuclear one. In this regard, the approaches that the state has toward the use of military force largely depend on the security environment in which the state exists and functions.

In the literature on strategic culture, national identity appears as a prominent matter. Scholars such as Peter Katzenstein have investigated the complicated links between a country’s cultural norms and its security institutions. Katzenstein analyzes how Japan’s postwar security apparatus was shaped by its historical context, emphasizing the symbiotic link between national identity and strategic culture.⁸ This cultural framework has led to a unique strategic posture where military force is avoided in favor of diplomatic and economic tools. Katzenstein’s work underscores how cultural factors, including historical experiences and societal values, play a crucial role in shaping a nation’s security policies and strategic culture.

In the meantime, the academic literature argues that strategic culture is not static; it evolves over time in response to changing domestic and external circumstances. This aspect has been explored by scholars like Alastair Iain Johnston, who emphasized the need to consider how states adapt their strategic cultures to new geopolitical realities. Johnston’s analysis underscores that strategic cultures are shaped by historical experiences, ideological shifts, and evolving security needs. As international environments and domestic conditions change, states may reassess and modify their strategic priorities and approaches. For example, a nation (such as China) that traditionally emphasized territorial defense, might shift toward a more offensive strategic posture (China’s growing assertiveness in world politics since 2008) in response to recently emerged threats. This adaptability reflects the ability of strategic culture to accommodate and integrate new realities without abandoning its core principles.⁹

In addition to this, Colin Gray finds that while strategic culture provides a stable framework for strategic thinking, it remains adaptable to new geopolitical or technological circumstances.¹⁰ States can adjust their strategies without fully abandoning long-standing cultural norms, allowing them to respond to external shocks while maintaining coherence in their behavior. His perspective highlights that cultural factors guide the interpretation of material realities, but strategic culture itself evolves through interaction with these conditions.¹¹ In other words, the analysis of strategic culture presupposes that states can harbor varied objectives rooted in a normative comprehension of their identity and the roles they believe they should undertake but regardless of the objectives, the state behavior is culturally dependent.

Defensive vs. Offensive

The approaches that the state has toward the use of military force largely depend on the security environment in which the state exists and functions. Thus, it becomes clear why the two great powers, namely China and the United States, hold highly distinct perspectives regarding the use of military force since they exist in extremely varied security environments and are bearers of different strategic cultures.¹²

There is a consensus among scholars that Chinese strategic culture is defensive and non-expansionist. This feature of China’s strategic culture comes from Confucian value-system and its key notion that “peace is precious.”¹³ Historically, being subject to conquest and humiliation at the hands of great powers, China embraced the principle of “anti-hegemonism” as one of the main characteristics of its strategic culture. Under Mao Zedong, anti-hegemonism became a central part of China’s ideological framework. Mao saw the global order, especially during the Cold War, as dominated by two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — both of which he believed sought global hegemony. In the Maoist worldview, China had to resist such powers to preserve its revolutionary autonomy and independence.

China’s official policy of “never pursuing hegemony” has been consistent, at least on a declaratory level.¹⁴ Being formulated during the era of Deng Xiaoping, PRC’s incumbent leader Xi Jinping continues to uphold that “China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansionism” as noted during the opening session of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on October 16, 2022. China promotes the idea of a multipolar world order, where no single country dominates the global system. The concept of multipolarity aligns with China’s anti-hegemonic principles, as it envisions a world where power is more equally distributed among various countries, especially emerging powers like China, India, and Russia.

Along with the above elements, the concept of sovereignty has received special attention in the Chinese strategic culture. The Chinese political mindset perceives the sovereignty of the state as absolute and perpetual, which is not conditioned by any internal or external factor. China is a principled defender of a strong norm of sovereignty and includes state sovereignty as one of its nonnegotiable “national core interests.”¹⁵

In contrast to China’s defensive strategic culture, the American strategic culture is commonly believed to be offensive. This seems to be where the largest gap between the American and Chinese views of the use of military force comes, as the United States prefers to take advantage of the “First Strike,” using the so-called “preemptive” military intervention tactic, even if the threat is not yet manifest.¹⁶ This approach is particularly bold in the case of Iraq when the United States carried out a unilateral military intervention predicated on the assumption that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons, thousands of miles away from U.S. sovereign territory.

The second significant distinction between American and Chinese beliefs on the use of force is rooted in their geography and historical precedents. Being an island state, surrounded by oceans on the East and West, and two relatively weak neighbors to the North and South (Canada and Mexico), the United States has been spared from security concerns. It’s widely believed among strategic thinkers that the topography of the United States has provided the country with “free security,” the luxury of which China has been deprived.¹⁷ In contrast to the United States’ advantageous geographical location, China, as a half-landlocked state, has been surrounded by formidable adversaries such as Japan, Korea, the Mongol Empire, India, and so on. Due to its strategic location at the crossroads of civilizations, China has faced myriad invasions and conquests by foreign invaders which have posed serious security challenges. American strategic culture was shaped by long periods of peace while the Chinese one by the periodic wars and invasions. The absence or presence of aforementioned security challenges conditions the voluntary-based army of the United States and the mandatory army of China. The perception of being constantly threatened makes it vital for Beijing to have an army on a permanent and compulsory basis. While American strategic culture reflects components of Manifest Destiny and attempts to spread its own democratic values abroad, Chinese strategic thoughts have been always focused on ensuring security and stability of their country.¹⁸

The liberal idealism that prevails in American strategic thought runs against the Communist and Confucian moral ideologies that cultivate the Chinese — what Andrew Scobell labeled the “Cult of Defense.”¹⁹ While China considers only self-defense a legitimate justification for the use of military force, the mission of spreading democracy and serving as the guardian of the free world has become a critical element of U.S. military doctrine., legitimizing the use of military force.

It is worth mentioning that the noninterference principle has long served as China’s main diplomatic principle and guiding rhetorical device. In general, it does not support the imposition of coercive measures on sovereign governments.²⁰ We often witness Sino-American contradictions at the UN Security Council when the use of military force against a sovereign state is discussed. China frequently abstains from voting or exercises its veto power in opposition to specific UNSC resolutions that call for military action.²¹ China has seldom used its veto power to block interventionist resolutions in the UNSC, but it has threatened to do so in attempts to prevent obstinate interventions or persuade states backing military intervention to yield via negotiations. The striking illustration of this fact is that China has not initiated or carried out a single military intervention on the territory of another sovereign state since 1990, in contrast to the United States, which has averaged 251 military interventions since 1991 — more than carried out from the time of its founding in 1776 to the end of the Cold War in 1990.²² Moreover, China has never even cast a vote in support of military interventions at the UN Security Council that go against the principle of state sovereignty.

The notion of “sovereignty” is the most fundamental source of contrast between the strategic mindsets of the United States and China. Since China continues to insist on and uphold the Westphalian principle of “absolute sovereignty,” in contrast to the United States and other Western nations, which believe that the era of absolute state sovereignty has come to an end. China shows resolute opposition to Western attempts that seek to condition the state’s sovereignty by any criteria. A vivid example is the “Responsibility to Protect” concept²³ as an emerging norm, parallel to which China has put forward its “Responsible Protection” concept which excludes the authorization of any humanitarian intervention outside the UN Security Council, even by the UN General Assembly and focuses, in particular, on ensuring that humanitarian interventions do not evolve into a military campaign to bring about regime change.²⁴ In comparison to the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” proposed by the West, the Chinese concept of “Responsible Protection” is more precisely stated and does not lend itself to misunderstanding. This specifies the intervention’s purpose, limits, object, and legal authority. The new interpretation of R2P elaborated by Chinese scholar Ruan Zongze in 2012, then vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, is composed of six crucial elements: (1) The object of intervention is the people and the peace of the target country; (2) interventions should be authorized merely by UNSC which is the only rightful authority; (3) the intervention should be the last resort with strictly limited resources; (4) the purpose of the intervention should be clearly defined. Protection should be used to prevent humanitarian catastrophes rather than adding fuel to the fire; (5) the rebuilding of the affected state following intervention and protection should be under the purview of the protectors and (6) to guarantee the methods, procedure, scope, and outcomes of protection, the United Nations should set up mechanisms of control, outcome evaluation, and post-factum accountability.

The observations made by the Chinese side were meant to exclude any possible ambiguity and biased interpretation of the norms regulating the interventions under Responsibility to Protect.

China and the United States hold distinct approaches to mutual defense and alignments as well. In this regard, while the United States has over four dozen formal allies, both NATO and non-NATO, China, as one of the world’s oldest states, has had almost no traditional, that is, a mutual defense-based ally in its entire history.²⁵ In the American strategic culture, allies are of pivotal importance. Via the networks of allies the United States builds its extraregional foreign policy. In the European region, the United States leverages its NATO allies to deter threats until they cross the Atlantic Ocean, while in the Asia-Pacific region, the United States operates through the “hub and spokes” alliance system, where individual allies are not bound together by mutual obligations but are linked to the hub, the United States, individually.²⁶

Meanwhile, China always gives preference to nonalignment which is described by a Chinese senior official Zhou Bo of the Ministry of National Defense as a “strategic choice which serves Chinese interests well.”²⁷ The continued aversion of China toward alliance formation has been a result of its perception of the dangers of superpower conflict during the Cold War. China committed in 1982 to pursue an independent and self-reliant foreign policy of peace and has persistently rejected alliance as a foreign-policy premise, disparaging it as a remnant of the Cold War repugnant to Chinese values.²⁸ Even when China has advocated for a new regional security architecture that would reduce the importance of America’s alliances in the Asia-Pacific, it does not appear to have changed its core position on alliances. China did not align with like-minded countries even after the formation of a new, China-focused security alliance in 2021 between the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia (AUKUS) in the Asia-Pacific region. This shows that the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement continues to shape China’s strategic mindset. Although Beijing chafes at the U.S. alliance system in the Asia-Pacific area, it does not intend to replace it with a new, Sinocentric alliance system, because self-reliance and nonalignment, has taken deep roots in China’s strategic mindset.

To symbolize the contrast between the strategic cultures of the United States and China, it’s valuable to draw parallels between the Chinese Great Wall and Trump Wall. These two walls symbolizes preferences of two superpowers. While the Chinese Great Wall persisted for more than two thousand years as a strategic mechanism for passive defense, the Trump Wall was short-lived, not even reaching the end of its construction articulates American inclination of active forward-defense or preventive offensive. The Chinese Great Wall is not only a symbol of Chinese glorious history, it also represents Chinese “$\dots$ preference for defense over offense, positional warfare over mobile warfare, and maintenance over expansion.”²⁹

Yet, over the last decade, China’s behavior has become more proactive, especially under President Xi Jinping. This shift in strategic behavior is often seen as an outcome of China’s growing national power and influence. Xi’s promotion of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation and a stronger military marks a transition toward a more expansive and proactive international strategy. In this regard, China’s White Paper 2015 is particularly significant as it was the first to adopt the explicit title “Military Strategy,” indicating a departure from previous documents that avoided such direct military terminology.³⁰ This strategy document emphasizes the necessity for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to enhance its capabilities in “military operations other than war,” including peacekeeping, counterpiracy, and evacuation operations. This shift suggests a recognition of the need for versatility in military capabilities, indicating that Beijing is preparing to engage in a broader range of military activities beyond conventional warfare. Another crucial aspect of the 2015 strategy is the reaffirmation of the long-held military policy of “active defense.” This policy traditionally limited the use of force to tactical and operational levels, focusing on maintaining peace and stability. However, the introduction of the concept of “preparation for military struggle” indicates a shift toward a more assertive stance, suggesting that Beijing is prepared to employ military force if necessary to achieve its strategic objectives. This ambition aligns with China’s broader goal of enhancing its role in international security issues, consistent with its status as a great power, and its expanding interests across multiple continents. The subsequent 2019 White Paper, entitled “China’s National Defense in the New Era,” further consolidates this shift toward an assertive military posture.³¹ The language employed in the White Paper is unambiguous, stating, “We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary measures.” This declaration is a stark indication of China’s willingness to use military force when deemed necessary, particularly in the context of Taiwan, where the PLA asserts its determination to thwart any attempts at secession.

Thus, as previously stated by Alastair Johnston, strategic culture may undergo evolution based on the changes in a country’s security needs or regime change.³²

Conclusion

While comparing Chinese and U.S. approaches to the use of military force, this research finds that strategic culture has a tremendous effect on states’ threat perceptions and patterns of the military force application. It concludes that the distinct identities, customs, and historical memories of each state significantly shape their security perceptions and operational preferences. Ideologically, the United States is driven by liberal idealism and a commitment to democratic expansion, whereas China draws upon Confucian principles and, more recently, Communist ideology to inform its strategic outlook.

On a practical level, these ideological foundations manifest in contrasting approaches to military engagement. China operates under a strong sense of absolute state sovereignty, prioritizing principles of noninterference, non-hegemonism, and nonalignment. This defensive strategic culture leads China to reject interventionist policies that undermine its sovereignty. Conversely, the United States exhibits a more proactive approach, characterized by interventionism rooted in the promotion of its values and the pursuit of hegemonism. Its strategies often involve building robust alliances and engaging in military actions to challenge regimes it finds unsavory or undesirable, even when its national interests are not at stake.

Notes