Strategic Culture: In Defiance of a Structural World Order

Patrick Hinton
RUSI Journal, 6 October 2020
Global Security Issues, International Institutions

Strategic culture theory provides much-needed nuance to contemporary fears over the decline of the rules-based international system.

Patrick Hinton pits the concept of an international rules-based order against a more nuanced reality. Employing a framework based on strategic culture theory, this article argues that states behave in ways predicated on their history and lived experience. This must first be acknowledged before states’ actions can be understood.