The Evolution of Strategic Cultural Thought and Its Application to an Understanding of Chinese Strategic Culture

By Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Johnson, U.S. Air Force

Editor’s Note:  Lieutenant Colonel Johnson’s thesis won the FAO Association writing award at the Joint Advanced Warfighting School, Joint Forces Staff College. This condensed version was approved by the author. The much longer full thesis is available at www.faoa.org. The Journal is pleased to bring you this outstanding scholarship.

Disclaimer:  A paper submitted to the Faculty of the Joint Advanced Warfighting School in partial satisfaction of the requirements of a Master of Science Degree in Joint Campaign Planning Strategy. The contents of this paper reflect my own personal views and are not necessarily endorsed by the Joint Forces Staff College or the Department of Defense.  This paper is entirely my own work except as documented in footnotes (or appropriate statement per the Academic Integrity Policy.

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Introduction

The 2021 U.S. Interim National Security Strategic Guidance states China is the “only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.” In this era of accelerating great power competition with China, for the U.S. to build effective policies, the U.S. must first understand the motivations and potentials of Chinese security decisions. Strategic culture provides a useful lens through which to analyze Chinese security decisions. As a concept, strategic culture has evolved since the late 1970s through four generations of understanding. However, no academic consensus exists on its definition nor explanatory power. Current research provides an account of the evolution, but a holistic framework has not been presented that synthesizes this evolution. Alastair Johnston’s work in the 1990s represents the most recent rigorous model of strategic culture that attempted to outline clear features and interactions in a well-defined analytic framework. While definitions of strategic culture and an interpretation of its explanatory value have evolved since Johnston’s analytical framework, none have put forth a model that clearly characterizes elements and interactions. Several theories exist in the current literature for Chinese strategic culture well informed from a myriad of primary Chinese sources and secondary source analysis. 

However, there exists a gap in the literature that applies prevailing theories of Chinese strategic culture to a modern strategic cultural framework that incorporates the evolution of thought on strategic culture as a concept. By providing a rigorous foundation of strategic culture theory to create a new analytical model, this thesis will better synthesize the prevailing scholarly analysis of Chinese strategic culture. The strategic culture framework characterizes features and their interactions to characterize Chinese cultural tensions and security decision potentials illuminating roots of bias and opportunities for exploitation.

This paper argues that strategic culture consists fundamentally of three frames that interact to influence national leadership security decisions. An identity frame includes how a state views itself and other states as informed by its history, geography, and philosophical traditions. A strategy frame incorporates the preferred strategies from which to preserve and/or expand national security as influenced by the identity frame as well as the non-cultural, structural aspects of the environment. The environment denotes a third frame which consists of perceived interstate relative balances of power as understood from a structural realist perspective. Thus, this understanding of strategic culture complements realism versus attempting to supplant realism within international relations theory. Key to this hypothesized view of strategic culture is the interactions of the features within and between the identity and strategy frames that define how a state’s leaders perceive the structure of the environment. For China, this paper argues that contradictions (i.e., strategic cultural features in tension through interaction) define Chinese strategic culture, evidenced by a duality of a defensive rhetorical identity but frequent operative offensive strategy preferences. Some tensions create positive feedback loops that define highly reactive elements of Chinese strategic culture. A framework that illuminates such complex interactions can better characterize the reasons for such contradictions and reactive elements to provide useful avenues for exploitation by U.S. policymakers and national/military strategists.

This research will first conduct a literature review of the definitions and interpretations of strategic culture to develop a strategic cultural framework. This framework will include both features (as derived from clustered factors of Chinese culture) and insights to identify and characterize complex interactions. Overall, the framework will serve as the structure within which a survey of Chinese strategic culture theorists’ conclusions will be analyzed and synthesized to derive a holistic theory of Chinese strategic culture. A model will be constructed utilizing the definitional framework and conclusions from a survey of theorists to extract the most dominant features and interactions that drive China’s security decision preferences and cognitive biases. Chinese preferences and biases will then be used to inform U.S. policy options.

Survey of Chinese Strategic Cultural Theorists

The established definition and interpretation of strategic culture and the review of China’s formative philosophical, historical, and geographical influences now permit an informed survey and analysis of Chinese strategic culture theories. This thesis’s definition provides the outlines of a framework to characterize a nation’s strategic culture. Repeated here, this thesis’s synthesized strategic culture definition is the beliefs, assumptions, and perceptions of state’s (or subgroup’s) own identity as well as perception of other states’ (or subgroups’) identities derived from its geography, history, and philosophical traditions that influence a state’s (or subgroup’s) choice of acceptable ends, ways, and means for national security.

 Thus, from the definition, the perceptions of one’s own identity and other states’ identities constitute the Identity Frame of the framework. The second half of the definition, the preferred strategies to achieve national security, provides the Strategy Frame of the framework. Within each of these frames, strategic cultural factors will be clustered to define broad features. These strategic cultural features are not independent but interact with one another. Therefore, the framework will define these interactions. Given strategic culture cannot be considered independent of the environment but is assumed to be the lens through which the non-cultural, structural realities of the environment are interpreted, an Environmental Frame provides the final element of the framework. This thesis’s unique strategic cultural framework will be used to synthesize, compare, and cluster the conclusions of strategic cultural theorists surveyed to derive a theory of Chinese strategic culture. The subsequent sections provide the initial survey from modern Chinese strategic cultural theorists before this cluster analysis will be accomplished in Chapter 4.

Confucian: Virtuous and Defensive

The image of a virtuous and defensive culture reflects prominently in Confucian philosophical traditions and Chinese leadership discourse, constituting a baseline view of Chinese strategic culture. Huiyun Feng’s and Tiewa Liu’s research of classical Chinese writings, which include The Analects (Confucianism), The Seven Military Classics, historical, philosophical analyses from these ancient texts, and modern scholarship, led them to conclude China possesses an inherently virtue-based and defensive-biased strategic culture. Mencius, an influential philosopher who followed and furthered Confucian teachings, emphasized righteousness and harmony in interstate relations, and this virtue bestowed international legitimacy and domestic support. Ford’s analysis echoed this ‘virtue’ self-image perception. Ford described an elite narrative against expansion via military force but rather espoused interstate relations defined by “civilization attraction” due to the inherent moral superiority of Chinese culture. Feng puts forth the following Confucian preference ranking toward conflict settlement: “emphasis on non-violence (feigong), defensiveness (fangyu),” and, as a last resort, “righteous war (yizhan).” 

Tiewa Liu expands on the concept of righteous war within Chinese strategic culture, and modern Chinese elite rhetoric echoes a peaceful, defensive posture. Liu synthesizes just war views from Confucius, Mencius, Guan-Tse, and Motzi when stating that “moral principles rather than national interests should be the primary concern when launching a war.” Confucius stressed caution, and Motzi defined unjust war as “aggression of great powers” (Gong) and just war as defeating aggressors or “rebellion to overthrow bad rulers” (Zhu). 

The Chinese Communist leader under Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, expressed modern rhetoric on China’s preference for peaceful solutions and a defensive posture in the ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.’ These five principles include “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, nonaggression, noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” China’s 2019 national defense publication describes China as “never seeking hegemony, expansion, or spheres of influence” as “bellicosity will lead to its ruin.” The document further describes a defensive and peaceful stance when stating:

Since its founding 70 years ago, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never started any war or conflict. Since the introduction of reform and opening-up, China has been committed to promoting world peace…China has grown from a poor and weak country to be the world’s second largest economy neither by receiving handouts from others nor by engaging in military expansion or colonial plunder…China is opposed to interference in the internal affairs of others, abuse of the weak by the strong, and any attempt to impose one’s will on others. China advocates partnerships rather than alliances and does not join any military bloc. It stands against aggression and expansion, and opposes arbitrary use or threat of arms.

Notwithstanding the historical records of China’s actual use of force, the deep historical and philosophical traditions of virtue and China’s modern rhetorical discourse form the arc of a defensive culture narrative that serves as a fundamental aspect of the identity frame (virtue) and strategy frame (Confucian-Defensive) of China’s strategic culture.

Subsequent theorists of China’s strategic culture provide alternative conclusions that disagree or provide a nuanced combination of tendencies.

Cultural Realpolitik

Alastair Johnston’s book, Cultural Realism, reveals a dualistic Chinese strategic culture where Confucian-Mencian defensive concepts represent only a subordinate, symbolic rhetorical narrative cloaking a dominant realpolitik offensive strategic culture prone to military force. Johnston employed a two-fold research methodology. He first conducted primary source analysis of China’s Seven Military Classics to determine any congruence of strategic preference rankings for conflict resolution amongst the strategies of accommodation, static defense (passive), punitive defense (active: defeat of aggressor military forces preemptively), and offensive/expansionistic (destruction of adversary military and political institutions with the annexation of territory). He then conducted a primary source empirical study of Ming Dynasty security decisions (1368-1644) to test the conclusions from his analysis of the Seven Military Classics. Johnston justifies this methodology by stating, “it makes sense to look at a period of history in which decision- makers are self-conscious heirs of the philosophical and textual traditions and experiential legacies out of which strategic culture may come.” Johnston further explains this period in history represents a time period when elites were insulated from Western strategic cultures to prevent pollution of this influence in formative Chinese strategic culture. Johnston takes his conclusions from this two-fold analysis to also look for persistence of this strategic culture in the modern era of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Johnston’s conclusions from the analysis of the Seven Military Classics and empirical analysis of Ming dynasty conflict decisions against the Mongols yielded a congruence of ranking accommodation strategies last in favor of invasive offensive or active defensive (punitive) strategies. Utilizing his definition of strategic culture described by his three-dimensional Central Paradigm (discussed on pages 10-12 of this thesis), Johnston concluded China (1) viewed conflict as frequent and inevitable, (2) interstate actions are zero-sum, but there existed variability in views on the (3) efficacy of force mediated by a Chinese concept quan bian or maximum flexibility based on the nature of the environmental opportunities and contingencies. Specifically, the flexibility revealed a sensitivity to the relative military force capabilities presented by the adversary. This variability in the third dimension of Johnston’s Central Paradigm accounted for the variability between active defensive and expansionistic offensive strategies. Only in instances of extreme weakness were static defense and accommodation seen as acceptable conflict solutions. Johnston labeled this dominant strategic culture as parabellum (Latin for ‘prepare for war’) moderated by quan bian to power differentials in the environment. 

The presence of competing but subordinate Confucian-Mencian strategic culture emerged in both The 7 Military Classics and Chinese Ming memorialists (Ming contemporary historians) who espoused virtuous language, benevolence, enticement, and/or righteous war as mere preambles before accounts of effective offensive force to deal with interstate conflict. Hence Confucian-Mencian rhetoric reflected a “cloak in the language of righteous war” to justify what might otherwise be viewed as immoral use of force to ensure a domestic discourse reflected continual legitimacy.

In extending his theory to the modern PRC era, Johnston conducted secondary source analysis to conclude a persistence of the parabellum or realpolitik strategic culture. Reviewing analysis conducted by Wilkenfeld, Brecher, and Moser on PRC foreign policy crises through 1985, the PRC “resorted to violence 72% of the time” while the “comparable figures for the U.S., U.K., and USSR from 1927-1985 are 18%, 27%, and 12%, respectively.” Looking closer, territorial disputes or issues related to territorial security accounted for 80% of the cases where violence occurred “due in part to a historical sensitivity to threats to the territorial integrity of the state.” During the same time period, PRC used violence 67% of the time for foreign policy crises involving political/diplomatic issues leading Johnston to state that Chinese leaders were “more apt to view a wide range of disputes in zero-sum terms.” Further, “when in a crisis, China tended to act in a more conflictual manner as it grew relatively stronger,” consistent with quan bian. While Johnston presents a strong case for a realpolitik tendency for security decisions, the fundamental issue in his research conclusions lies in being confounded as to the true cause of China’s security behavior. Specifically, Johnston’s conclusions of a parabellum strategic culture yield conclusions on behavioral choice indistinguishable from non-cultural, structural (realist) explanations for security behavior. Therefore, was Chinese strategic culture or the environmental structure (e.g., realism) the cause of security behavior? The causal variable is unknowable due to this confounding.

Furthermore, the notion of quan bian appears quite realist in nature, given it reflects decision making based on environmental conditions. Johnston concedes these limitations but leaves open the possibility that China’s realpolitik nature derives from culture vice just a rational actor model of power balancing or maximizing as realism would suggest, hence the name of his book, Cultural Realism.

Christopher Ford’s 2017 analysis validates a cultural vice solely non-cultural, structural roots of China’s realpolitik behavior. Ford argues that China’s culture results in overly aggressive strategic behavior beyond what would be expected from a purely realist rational actor model. Ford’s analysis utilizes secondary modern historical and cultural analysis sources and focuses on assessing modern PRC strategic culture vice Johnston’s deeper historical look. Ford argues that “the degree to which the actual realism of Chinese behavior has for a long time been compelled to exist within a justificatory framework of moralistic virtuocracy…has helped create some of the more distinctive aspects of Chinese international behavior.” Much like the dynasties, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must defend its rule as legitimate where legitimacy flows from Confucian notions of harmony and virtue (vice democratic legitimacy) vehemently opposed to the delegitimizing elements of chaos and immorality. Sensitivities to legitimacy challenges become compounded when coupled with the previously discussed narratives of the ‘Century of Humiliation.’ These factors create a detrimental feedback loop resulting in a realpolitik with Chinese characteristics more problematic than classical realpolitik because of its [China’s] soaring ambition for global status [reaction to humiliation], prickly and insecure moralism, inflexibility of admitting error, and tendency to rationalize and valorize the use of force in self-defense.

Ford’s assessment of an aggressive China beyond the expectation of just classical realpolitik due to cultural influences complements analysis by Andrew Scobell.

Mixed: Cult of Defense

Andrew Scobell’s 2003 book, China’s Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March, alludes to a Chinese strategic culture that transcends these formative Chinese symbols. Scobell introduces the perception that the Great Wall “epitomizes…Chinese preference for defense over offense…and maintenance over expansion” consistent with the Confucian Defensive strategic culture theory presented in section 3.1 of this thesis. However, as a portion of the title eludes, Beyond the Great Wall, Scobell contrasts what he describes as opposing scholars, each of which advances a presumption of a “monist” (i.e., singular) Chinese strategic culture versus his complex view that accepts multiple operative strands of strategic culture. 

On one side, Scobell relays the scholarship that characterizes a “Confucian-Mencian” Chinese strategic culture reluctant to use force, favors harmony, is defensive-minded, and prone to “stratagem rather than brute force,” consistent with the Great Wall symbol. As previously described by Johnston, the opposing view asserts that only a “parabellum (Realpolitik)” strategic culture favoring offensive military force exerts any real influence on the use of force. However, contrary to Johnston, Scobell contends both strands, the Confucian defensive/pacifist and Realpolitik offensive/militaristic, are operative and combine to create a “cult of defense” strategic culture. Scobell’s primary thesis argues that an additional dimension of an evolving twentieth-century civil-military culture explains Chinese use of force variations. Specifically, the “cult of defense” strategic culture has remained consistent, but an intervening variable, civil-military culture, explains modern behavior changes. Scobell's sources include the content of modern Chinese military doctrines and leadership statements, psycho-cultural traditions, and the actual modern record of military deployments from the Korean War through the Taiwan Straits Crisis of the mid-1990s.

Scobell contends the Chinese cult of defense strategic culture stems from “three core [Confucian defensive] philosophical principles and six guiding strategic principles” in tension. The three principles are “that the Chinese are a peace-loving people, are not aggressive or expansionistic, and only use force in self-defense.” While these principles are not necessarily unique to Chinese society, what is unique is the fervor with which elites stress this benevolent view in public documents, as presented by Scobell’s research of primary sources. 

Scobell then presents six guiding strategic principles (or beliefs/values) that counterbalance the Confucian principles, two each under the three areas of general security, external security, and domestic security. Within general security, China maintains national unification as a core, uncompromising value and a “siege mentality” within its geopolitical position. This siege mentality conclusion coincides with this thesis’s earlier analysis of Chinese geography and the historical tensions between inner China and its nomadic periphery. Under external security, China believes it engages only in “just wars” defined as wars of oppressed versus oppressors, indicative of its view of itself as a victim of a “century of humiliation.” This just war culture coincides with Tiewa Liu’s analysis presented in section 3.1. Further, China employs “active defense” measures which can include offensive-defensive operations such as preventative strikes, as was China’s justification of the Korean War. China has labeled all its uses of military force since 1949 as “self-defense counter-attack.” “These include the Korean War (1950-1953), the brief Himalayan border war with India (1962), the clashes with the Soviet Union (1969), and the land attack against Vietnam (1979).” Finally, within domestic security, China holds a deep fear of “internal chaos” and holds that the interests of the community surpass those of the individual, indicative of its domestic actions during the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square. 

Therefore, while China may hold deep values grounded in Confucian philosophies, when confronted with challenges to these strategic guiding principles, the use of force will be seen as highly efficacious. While Scobell argues this strategic culture has persisted, he argues China’s civil-military culture has evolved over the twentieth century to explain behavior variations.

Scobell’s characterization of the civilian-military culture from 1949 to the 1990s can be synthesized as shifting from an inextricably linked Chinese Communist Party (CCP) people’s total war focused on domestic and border conflicts to a more differentiated professional military elite externally focused on high-tech limited war. The “People’s War” of the Mao era required a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that also shouldered “extra-military roles” in domestic security and internal policy execution, which crucially required “a soldier’s loyalty to the party.” In transition during the Deng era with modernization and solidified in the late 1990s with Jiang’s presidency, the PLA’s doctrine shifted from “People’s War” to “Limited War under High-Tech Conditions,” requiring “elite forces that could wage war beyond China’s borders.” The PLA became more defined within this changing environment by “expertise and application of advanced technologies” vice “devotion to communism.” 

Scobell explains while soldiers tend to be more cautious than statesmen, “this is less true on issues of emotional nationalism” like Taiwan. Further, as “China establishes substantial air and naval forces, they will tend to be more willing to use force vice a military dominated by army officers.” This evolving civil-military culture shows a PLA more professional and increasingly distinct from the CCP as opposed to the era of entwined dual civil-military leadership characterized by the Long March generation of Mao Tse Tung and Deng Xiaoping, hence the Beyond the…Long March portion of Scobell’s book title. The implications of a growing divergence between the PLA and CCP were not lost on China’s new president, Xi Jinping, in December 2012 in his new southern tour speech. Xi stated, “Why must we stand firm on the Party’s leadership over the military? Because that’s the lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union…where the military was depoliticized, separated from the Party and nationalized, the party was disarmed.” Before this thesis's synthesis, the final strategic cultural survey describes a Chinese strategic culture termed by Robert Mahnken as secrecy and stratagem.

Stratagem and Shi

Robert Mahnken acknowledges the dualistic strategic culture presented by Alastair Johnston and Andrew Scobell that contrasts China’s ideational Confucian pacifist tradition with its operative realpolitik offensive actions. Stipulating the validity of this tension, Mahnken focuses on a description of Chinese strategic culture from the national and military levels. In doing so, he describes the interplay between China’s ethnocentric culture (superiority belief) manifest in its national strategic culture with its military strategic culture grounded in a belief that its superior strategy can overcome adversary advantages. Mahnken utilizes three types of evidence to support his conclusions:  (1) ancient Chinese texts on strategy such as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, modern Chinese official documents to include Chinese defense white papers and their Science of Military Strategy; (2) analysis of Chinese strategic culture by American, French, and Chinese scholars; and (3) accounts of Chinese crisis decision-making and patterns of military deployments.

Mahnken’s work also aligns with the analysis presented in a study commissioned by Andrew Marshall, former director of the Office of Net Assessment within the U.S. Department of Defense. Marshall’s report reviewed Chinese military conflicts from the Warring States period through the 1990s as well as contemporary scholars’ analysis, particularly Francois Jullien. Marshall’s report concludes that China favors an indirect approach and deception encapsulated in the concept of shi (as discussed earlier in this thesis) and a rejection of Clausewitz's conception of the ‘Fog of War.’ Further, Marshall’s report describes a Chinese tendency for pre-crisis preventative strikes for pedagogical value (i.e., teach the adversary a lesson), citing the 1962 Indian border conflict and the 1979 war with Vietnam as examples of pedagogical strikes. With India, “Chinese strategic objectives were framed…to impart the message to them concerning the costs of changing the border unilaterally.” Likewise with Vietnam, “China announced that its intention was to punish Vietnam for its border incursions and…its invasion of Cambodia.”

Mahnken presents historical, geographical, and Confucian philosophical arguments to derive the first three of the four tenants of China’s national strategic culture. The first three tenants follow the arc of ethnocentrism and internal unity previously presented in this thesis from alternate sources. The fourth tenant, war is costly, destructive, and leads to internal dissension hints at a high sensitivity to risk as an element of Chinese strategic culture. In synthesizing Sun Tzu and contemporary texts, Mahnken states, “Chinese military texts stress that victory should be achieved at the lowest possible cost, with the highest ideal being to conquer without actually engaging in bloodshed.” Whereas Western culture embraces risk and acknowledges its unavoidability in war as described by Clausewitz’s notion of fog, friction, and chance, the “concept of risk has a negative connotation in Chinese culture. Andrew Marshall’s report echoes this conclusion of a clear break from Western tradition along the lines of friction in war.

Pulling from Jullien’s research, Marshall contends the Chinese do not identify Clausewitzian “friction” as a salient concept, and therefore [it] does not occupy the central place that it does in Western military thought...The minimization of friction in plans and warfare is one of the major differences between Chinese and Western strategic thought.

This insight of an abhorrence toward chance and friction reveals the interaction between China’s ethnocentrism, stratagem, and other previously covered elements of Chinese strategic culture. The abhorrence for chance and friction clearly correlates to Scobell’s fear of chaos element which in turn correlates to the tradition of the Confucian concept of harmony. Further, the hubris from the ethnocentric view of a superior culture creates a positive feedback loop with a desire for harmony to yield an abhorrence toward friction. This positive feedback loop interaction produces a belief that China can achieve objectives in war through superior strategy to overcome chance and friction. This superior strategy is defined via the successful application of shi, which will be discussed in their military strategic culture below.

China's Military Strategic Culture

Shi can be understood not as a focus on deliberate planning but a careful and intense study of the environmental situation to “discern a particular potential” favorable for exploitation. The need to discern the potential of a situation leads to a keen focus on intelligence and scientific study in order to become predictive. The intense focus to become predictive outputs the belief of war as a scientific process where outcomes can be controlled. The influence of these tendencies shows in China’s 2001 edition of the Science of Military Strategy, where the laws of war “provide a scientifically theoretical basis for making correct strategic decisions.” The intent to control war’s outcome has intensified, as evidenced in later publications of PLA strategic thought. RAND’s study of Chinese military strategy includes analysis from the 2013 edition of the Science of Military Strategy, Central Military Commission (CMC) publications, PRC Ministry of Defense, China Strategic Studies Institute, and other elements within Chinese military

academia. “Informatized War” holds a central place within PLA strategy where the information domain is listed as the domain “foremost in importance.” Sun Tzu’s concept of winning without fighting presents in PLA strategy from the objective to gather intelligence to understand an adversary’s decision-making system to “paralyze the functions of an enemy’s operational system.” Aside from accomplishing such an objective from a military-technical aspect via an attack on command, control, communications, and computer (C4) systems, PLA strategists also achieve such paralysis by employing “the Three Warfares in the cognitive space.”

Engaging the cognitive space requires employment of what the Chinese call the ‘Three Warfares’: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare. The objective of the Three Warfares is to control public opinion, organize psychological offense and defense, engage in legal struggle, and fight for popular will and public opinion. This requires efforts to unify military and civilian thinking, divide the enemy into factions, weaken the enemy’s combat power, and organize legal offensives…Success in the cognitive space requires taking advantage of prior peacetime preparation to establish favorable conditions.

‘Establishing favorable conditions’ as mentioned above via the ‘Three Warefares’ in modern PLA strategic correlates to the concept of shi, discerning an environmental potential assisted with deception and manipulation to realize a desired potential. Further, paralyzing the enemy’s operating system via military-technical means or the ‘Three Warfares,’ correlates to the belief that stratagem can control war’s outcomes, lending credibility to Mahnken’s conclusion of Chinese military strategic culture. Having provided a thorough survey and critical analysis of the current tenants of Chinese strategic culture, a synthesized model of Chinese strategic culture can be constructed adhering to this thesis’s definition and interpretation of strategic culture.

Analysis and Discussion

A New Framework and Model of Chinese Strategic Culture 

Using this thesis’s definition and interpretation of strategic culture, factors extracted from China’s foundational history, geography, and philosophical traditions (Section 2.2) and factors derived from the survey of theorists of Chinese strategic culture (Chapter 3) will be applied within this definitional framework. As previously discussed, the first half of this thesis’s definition, a state’s perceptions of its own identity and other states’ identities, define the Identity Frame. The second half of the definition, acceptable ends, ways, and means for achieving national security, define the interdependent Strategy Frame. Factors from the strategic culture survey will be clustered into each of these two frames to extract/define broad features within each frame. Further, interactions between features, to include within-frame and between-frame feature interactions, will be derived to better characterize Chinese strategic culture. The final piece of the framework comes from this thesis’s interpretation of strategic culture’s predictive value. Specifically, rather than strategic culture being the sole determinant of security behavior, strategic culture shapes the lens from which to interpret the non-cultural, structural aspects of the environment. Thus, strategic culture complements realism in imparting value judgments to these noncultural, structural aspects of the environment denoted by the Environmental Frame. Strategic culture suggests tendencies and potentials of behavior that interact with the perceived conditions of the environment. Such a framework should be used with caution as the model does not apply a deterministic outcome of behavior given the complexity of environmental interaction and a myriad of other factors (cultural or non- cultural) likely not identified. Further, strategic culture should not be considered a caricature or stereotype of a society but a broad description of tendencies and potentials. Strategic culture represents a simplified model of the complex security decision milieu of a particular state.

The identity and strategy frames constitute the lens from which to perceive the environmental frame. Five interactions, two within-frame and three between-frame interactions, present from this analysis as labeled in Figure 3. Within the identity frame, China’s desire to Recapture Preeminence as its ultimate strategic end results from the within-frame interaction between the Superior & Virtuous Civilization and Deep Insecurity features as labeled in Figure 3. Two factors, in particular, within these features interact to output this Recapture Preeminence end: the ‘Century of Humiliation’ factor within the insecurity feature and, within the superiority feature, China’s belief of the natural world order being that of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ with China rightfully at the center of world civilization (Tianxia). In 2012 Xi Jinping, before becoming China’s president, articulated his vision to rejuvenate China via the two centenary goals as evidence of this Recapture Preeminence end:

I firmly believe that the goal of finishing building a moderately prosperous society in all respects can be achieved by 2021 when the CPC [Communist Party of China] celebrates its centenary; the goal of building China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious can be achieved by 2049 when the People’s Republic of China marks its centenary; and the dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will be realized.

The interaction of these factors also presents when comparing this 2012 statement to Xi’s 2019 statement to the 19th National Congress (as quoted in Section 2.2 of this thesis), where Xi discusses China’s Century of Humiliation, its 5000-year superior civilization, and the centenary rejuvenation goals.

Moving to the strategy frame, Quan Bian (Absolute Flexibility) describes a characteristic of the within-frame interaction between the Realpolitik and Control & Shi features, as labeled in Figure 3. While China has demonstrated the features of a realist actor, as argued by Alastair Johnston, the factors that include the abhorrence of risk and seeking to divine the propensity of the environment coupled with a proclivity for deceptive asymmetric approaches interact to output maximum flexibility that moderates application of either expansionistic offensive or punitive active defensive realpolitik tendencies. This flexibility also reflects a response to the material realities of the environmental frame where China exhibits sensitivity to relative balances of power also labeled by the arrow coming from the environmental frame in Figure 3. Whereas the first two interactions resulted from within-frame feature interaction, the final three interactions result from between-frame feature interaction. These interactions are hypothesized to be much stronger as denoted by (‘+’) positive feedback loops. This hypothesis results from the argument that interactions with deeply held beliefs of identity likely do not accept as much outside moderating influences.

The Deep Insecurity feature within China’s identity frame provides a positive feedback loop with China’s Realpolitik feature in its strategy frame to output an Overly Reactive behavior as labeled in Figure 3. Specific factors within these features responsible for this complex feedback loop include perceptions of other states’ identities as generally malevolent, fear of internal chaos, and uncompromising national unification desire (identity frame) interacting with the paranoia of a “siege mentality” and a desire to safeguard territorial integrity (strategy frame) that in turn calls for pedagogical belligerence to correct perceived slights to regime legitimacy (back to the identity frame).

As previously discussed, any internal chaos or perception of a lack of harmony calls into question the ruling party’s legitimacy rooted in Confucian philosophy. The quintessential example of China’s Overly Reactive behavior resulting from this complex feedback loop includes the myriad of belligerent actions vis-à-vis Taiwan. From Andrew Scobell’s account of the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis:

The granting of a visa to President Lee of Taiwan in May 1995 to the US…enraged the PLA…China conducted a series of military exercises and missile tests in the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait…The military exercises…were meant to intimidate Taiwan in the lead-up to a presidential election and chasten the incumbent…The more general aim of the full show of force was to deter Taiwan from pursuing independence from China.

Here the factors of malevolent foreigners (U.S.), uncompromising national unification, pedagogical belligerence, and perceived slights to regime legitimacy all clearly present. Of course, additional examples could be provided from current events. Such examples include demands for celebrity apologies for implying Taiwan is a separate state to continued violations of the Taiwanese air defense identification zone from the PLAAF. This particular interaction likely negates the within-frame quan bian flexibility interaction when issues of legitimacy arise as between-frame interactions with identity likely result in unmoderated behavior to reinforce deeply held beliefs resident in identity.

The Superior & Virtuous Civilization feature within the identity frame also creates a positive feedback loop with the Control & Shi feature within the strategy frame to create the tendency for China to Reject Fog/Friction/Chance in military strategy as labeled in Figure 3. China’s belief of intellectual superiority within its identity frame interacts with China’s belief that war is a scientific process in the strategy frame to output their assertion that their superior acumen can control the chaos of war. RAND’s study of Chinese military strategy as previously presented supports this interaction characterization. Further, as technology continues to advance, so does China’s belief in technology’s ability to control war. “Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) presage a new era in warfare in which joint operations focused on data offense and data defense determine victory.” The key statement ‘determine victory’ coincides with a rejection of chance where chance is central to Western Clausewitzian thought.

Finally, the Realpolitik feature within the strategy frame creates yet another positive feedback loop with the Superior & Virtuous Civilization feature within the identity frame to illicit an Active Defense strategy and Just War Pathology mentality to valorize all of China’s conflicts. Scobell’s ‘Cult of Defense’ characterization, as previously described in Chapter 3, Section 3.3, explains this output from his assessed Chinese strategic culture duality. The factors that interact to create this Active Defense Just War Pathology characteristic include the virtue aspects of China’s identify frame where it sees itself as peace-loving, non-aggressive, and defensive combined with righteous war mentality where all wars are wars of oppression. These factors within the virtue feature interact with the realpolitik features of a preference for preventative/preemptive strikes and deep/recent historical fears of being under siege coupled with the need to safeguard its territorial integrity. Primary source references add validity to Scobell’s ‘Cult of Defense’ conclusion, such as China’s military strategy published by the PRC Ministry of Defense. With respect to virtue signaling, the PRC document extols that China will “unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development…never seek hegemony or expansion.” Further, the document lists active defense as the foundational strategy and goes to extended lengths to describe a current environment where China remains under siege:

The US…enhances its military presence and…alliances in this region. Japan is sparing no effort to dodge the post-war mechanism, overhauling its military and security policies. Such developments have caused grave concerns among other countries in the region. On the issues concerning China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, some of its offshore neighbors take provocative actions and reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied. Some external countries are also busy meddling in South China Sea affairs…[and] maintain constant close-in air & sea surveillance against China.

Having presented a new model of Chinese strategic culture applied to a new framework for strategic culture, an informed discussion of the policy impacts of this understanding can proceed.

Policy Prescriptions and Further Research

Policy Prescriptions

Successful strategies to cooperate or coerce (i.e., coerce = deter or compel) require an understanding of a nation’s strategic culture as cooperation and/or coercion affect the cognitive domain within international relations. While this thesis’s primary intent seeks to develop a framework to describe Chinese strategic culture, some conclusions can be drawn from the results to suggest some policy and military strategy prescriptions. Some of the features and interactions revealed in this thesis’s model describe a China prone to decisions beyond what could be described as purely realist. As previously described, Ford uses “exacerbated realism” as a phrase to describe some of the pathologies that can present from an insecure but self-perceived superior identity that interacts with the realpolitik strategic culture feature. Further, the control & shi, realpolitik, and superiority features provide separate military strategy options to exploit the deceptive but risk and friction averse culture.

The combination of a ruling party’s lack of democratic legitimacy and deep cultural need for harmony and perceived benevolence to provide such legitimacy results in a CCP overly focused on discourse control to counter any question of incompetence with a tendency to deflect blame to others. Policy options that exploit this fragility could be expected to yield disproportionate success. Actions that force China into the dilemma of choosing defense of its legitimacy versus the desire to recapture preeminence could dampen and moderate China’s overly reactive tendencies. This prescription illustrates the utility of this thesis’s model, highlighting the tension of these two interactions, recapture preeminence and overly reactive. Ford describes pitting these tendencies against one another as such:

Indeed, in the right circumstances, it might be possible to leverage the fragility of quasi-Confucian political authority against the party, inasmuch as the CCP’s performance-based legitimacy narrative is a brittle one likely to have trouble handling undeniable setbacks or failures. If a situation were to confront the party…with a sufficiently high likelihood of failure in a major international undertaking--or even a sufficiently high likelihood that aggressive action would result in a diminishment of China’s…road to real civilizational return and global respect [e.g., this thesis’s recapture preeminence]--this might suffice to deter that undertaking.

Exposing CCP incompetency and corruption could delegitimize CCP elites more than human rights abuses against dissidents, as coercion against “those who threaten social” order has been practiced by China throughout its history and is arguably considered acceptable. However, situations that could expose regime incompetence to international and Chinese domestic audiences strike at the core of legitimacy via prosperity and counter the regime’s ability to recapture preeminence and realize China’s rightful place in the international order. Forcing China into such dilemmas could usher a return to more “Dengist forms of strategic caution” and prosperity attainment vice Xi Jinping’s provocative belligerency. Additional options to exploit Chinese strategic culture arise from the interactions caused by the feature of shi.

Exploiting China’s tendency to apply shi to discern environmental propensities calls for the United States to execute highly visible demonstrations of capability and resolve “early and often.” Such a prescription plays to the Quan Bian tendency where China can be opportunistic and sensitive to relative balances of power. Of course, this prescription could be counterproductive in those special cases where Chinese belligerency results from challenges to the regime’s virtuocratic legitimacy, as described on pages 55-56. Thus, the United States must determine the environmental nuance given the features and interactions in tension as depicted in this strategic culture model. From a military engagement standpoint, Chinese rejection of fog, friction, and chance suggests Chinese military planners and operators may be “unprepared to deal with the innate friction of warfare.” Given Chinese military strategists' belief in war as a scientific process, imposing initial confusion and shock during a military engagement could have disproportionately negative effects on Chinese resilience. Finally, hubris of superior strategy and a superior ability to discern the nature and potentials in the environment could make Chinese leadership disproportionately susceptible to deception themselves. However, overall, the environmental frame must be considered when considering the features and interactions presented in this model. Changes to the environmental frame, the non-cultural, structural realities, will likely influence which features and interactions in the model predominate.

Conclusion

This thesis derived a new analytical framework of strategic culture utilizing the evolution of strategic cultural thought from the past four decades. This framework parsed strategic culture into three frames to characterize the influences on a nation’s security decisions. The identity frame included a nation’s history, geography, and philosophical traditions to define the view of its own identity as well as other nations’ identities. The strategy frame described conclusions about a nations’ strategy preferences (ends/ways/means) to achieve national security. Within each frame, factors, as derived from history, geography, and philosophical traditions as well as from secondary scholarly work from Chinese cultural theorists, were clustered to define broad features within each frame to characterize Chinese strategic culture. The clustered factors were also analyzed to illuminate interactions between the features both within and between the identity and strategy frames to further describe Chinese strategic culture. The resultant characterization from the features and interactions constituted the lens from which to perceive an environmental frame of the non-cultural, structural aspects of relative power balances in the environment.

Four dominant features, two each within the identity and strategy frames, outline the shape of Chinese strategic culture. Deep insecurity coupled with the belief in the superiority and virtuousness of Chinese civilization define the two dominant features of the Chinese identity frame. A realpolitik tendency combined with a desire to read the propensity of the environment and manipulate / control outcomes describe the two prevailing features of the Chinese strategy frame. From these four features, five interactions, two within-frame and three between-frame, characterize the tensions and potentials that can be exploited to inform U.S. policy options. Of the Chinese identity features, leaderships’ deep insecurity and belief of a superior and virtuous civilization interact to output a desire to recapture its pre-eminence as manifest in its two centenary goals. China’s realpolitik and control and shi features interact to produce a quan bian (absolute flexibility) nature creating sensitivities to balances of power in the environment and opportunism. Between the identity and strategy frames, China’s deep insecurity and realpolitik features interact in a positive feedback loop to create an overly reactive regime to any perceived challenges to its legitimacy. Further, the superior and virtuous civilization and control and shi features also interact in a positive feedback loop to elicit a rejection of the fog/friction/chance of conflict due to China’s belief in its superior abilities to discern the potentials in the environment and control/manipulate enemies. Finally, China’s belief in its virtuousness interacts with its realpolitik tendencies to produce an active defense, just war pathology where it valorizes all of its conflicts as self-defense. Such pathology can create a pre-emptive regime prone to justifying offensive strikes as defensive when in reality, such strikes amount to aggression.

U.S. policymakers and national/military strategists should seek to exploit these interactions when formulating responses toward the CCP. At the national strategic level, the U.S. should seek to force China into dilemmas where it must choose between defending its legitimacy and recapturing its preeminence. These policies could dampen its overly reactive nature. Further, exposing more corruption and incompetence versus a primary emphasis on human rights abuses would strike at the core of the regime’s ability to guarantee increasing prosperity. The lack of an ability to increase prosperity speaks to the regime’s credibility to recapture preeminence which would degrade its legitimacy. The quan bian and rejection of fog/friction/chance interactions call for highly visible displays of U.S. hard power capability and resolve to exploit China’s sensitivity to relative balances of power and opportunistic tendencies. Further, China’s abhorrence of fog/friction/chance and its inexperience with large-scale conflict since 1979 suggest military planners and operators may be unable to cope with the innate friction of warfare. Thus, imposing dramatic initial shock and confusion during a military engagement could disproportionately affect Chinese resilience. Finally, Chinese leaderships’ hubris of superior strategy enabled by superior intelligence of the environment (shi) that imparts a belief in the ability to predict and control outcomes suggests an establishment disproportionately susceptible to deception themselves. As stated previously, all of this thesis’s conclusions should not be taken as deterministic in predicting Chinese security decisions nor as infallible in prescribing U.S. response options.

About the Author

Lt Col Robert J. Johnson (USAF) is an information warfare line officer now assigned to USCYBERCOM.  Prior assignments include Commander, Aircraft Analysis Squadron, National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base  Ohio. Prior to command, he was the Division Chief and Program Director, Strategic Space Systems, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), Joint Base Anacostia Bolling, Washington, D.C.. 

He has served at the group, air staff, field operating and support agency, national intelligence agency (NSA) & combatant command coalition levels. His assignments have been in the areas of operational and technical intelligence, test and evaluation for both technical intelligence collection and missile flight test, and classified strategic capabilities development. He also deployed to USCENTCOM as an intelligence liaison officer serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Qatar coordinating intelligence collection and analysis for OIF and OEF coalition counterterrorism operations. Lt Col Johnson’s academic credentials include a master of science in operations research (applied statistics / pattern recognition), master of military operational art and science, and bachelor of arts in mathematics. He is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College (distinguished), the Air Force Institute of Technology (distinguished and top graduate), Squadron Officer School, and the Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance Operations Course.