Strategic culture is political culture at the level of high politics and may thus be defined as the firmly anchored security policy of any actor. The theoretical argument behind it is one of path dependency implying resistance, but not immunity to change.70 The latter observation is important and urges analysts to be sensitive to actual reformulations of strategic cultures, whether in words, deeds or both.71 Following Johnston, the purpose of strategic culture analysis is to identify state preferences on the role of force derived from the state’s approach to conflict and war. Whereas neorealists perceive only one ideal type – hard realpolitik – Johnston sees strategic culture as a continuum with soft idealpolitik at the opposite end of the spectrum. His distinction various in-betweens of mostly raison de systéme cultures as a most important outcome when it comes to world order and actual governance. On this ac-count I should like to invoke Watson’s deliberations on so-called concerts as the approach to governance that has historically been preferred by great powers.72 As for the BRICS, one logical hypothesis about their strategic cul-ture is that they try to act as a concert in world affairs – a spontaneous great-power club that seeks to cultivate shared interests in order to increase their clout collectively, as well as to modify mutual clashes of interest. The down-side of concerts is their exclusiveness, of which the five veto powers in the UN Security Council is the textbook example.73 Yet, Watson warns us not to let this fact obscure the upside: this invention was shrewd statemanship on the part of the Soviet Union, a safety valve for an institution under in-built strain.74 I shall return to the logics of concert and Denmark’s somewhat myopic approach to them later.
As for China, several analysts agree with Buzan about China’s highly am-biguous strategic culture while also stressing profound changes for the bet-ter.75 This applies to the sinologist Johnston cited above, otherwise known for his exposition of the harsh classical strategic culture of China: “China has not engaged in counter-hegemon alliance construction or territorial ex-pansion. It also generally acts in support of the existing international order rather than sponsoring competing rules and institutions”.76 But then he goes on to conclude that China “cannot yet” be said to be a challenger, as if ac-cepting the determinism of neorealism. Moreover, there is fresh evidence of China’s self-defeating anti-Japanese impulses: the flare-up of the dispute over the Sinkakus is causing alarm worldwide.77 This episode confirms the
valid-ity of the paramount concern advanced by the same source regarding the
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heavy Chinese military build-up, namely the risk of miscalculation by Chi-na’s neighbors, the USA or China itself.78 Some experts view China’s hyper-sensitivity regarding Taiwan as the strategic impulse, but China’s evacuation of its 35,000 citizens trapped in Libya in 2011 suggests an emerging global orientation whenever faraway violent conflict affects Chinese interests.
As for the benign, truly constructive elements in contemporary Chinese strategic culture, one must mention that China has become the biggest pro-vider of peacekeepers to UN missions among the BRICS and other second-wave actors. Another is the way that China, like Brazil, is engaging itself in the liberal reinterpretation of sovereignty around the R2P principle, however self-serving the concepts offered by these two BRICS are.79 This means that China may be more open to dialogue and less of a sovereignty hawk – Strobe Talbott’s apt phrase about India – than it is often perceived. Beneath the surface Chinas is less stubborn than Russia in its UN Security Council di-plomacy, a case in point being its Sudan policy. Likewise, China’s interest in Arctic affairs may, on the one hand, reflect China’s hunt for minerals and rare earth materials, but may, on the other hand, signal an EU/NATO-like interest in safeguarding the uninhibited flow of goods worldwide. In any event, China’s strategic culture must now be articulated in a context of in-terdependence and globalization, a scenario which Chinese decision-makers themselves originally opted for.80 What is more, this choice was confirmed when China entered the WTO in 2001, an event which is now seen as the real 9/11.81 The recent slowdown in China’s growth, coupled with multiple flashes of unrest throughout the country due to corruption, administrative heavy-handedness etc., reflect the downside of combining one-party rule with state capitalism. China’s problems with, as it were, too much Keynesi-anism thus ought to inspire an honest dialogue with the crisis-ridden neolib-eral Western economies, who also need economic policy innovation.
Russia’s entry into the WTO in 2012 marks less of an institutional earth-quake than China’s, but is significant in itself as a potential modifier of Rus-sia’s strategic culture. Although the above analysis identified Russia as the sole BRICS that appears to be alienated from the liberal logic of globalization, Ries believes that Russian strategic culture is under pressure to change.82 Among other things, Russia must adapt to China gaining the upper hand in their mutual relationship both when settling prices for Russian energy deliveries and when exporting arms around the world, as SIPRI analysts have also pointed out. Russian and Chinese interests may also ultimately clash in the Arctic. Still, Ries worries about Russia’s modernization of its
conven-the brics anD DenMark – econoMics & high Politics
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tional and nuclear Eurostrategic capacity at a time when Europe, including NATO, is disarming.83 This leaves small states along Russia’s rim vulner-able to blackmail. Moreover, it is disturbing to watch Putin sponsoring an anachronistic zero sum outlook (kto kogo in Russian) that has distinct Soviet roots going back to hawks like Mikhail Suslov and his selective tolerance of conservative and radical Russian nationalists who identified themselves with the Cold War against the liberal Western world.84 It is small comfort that the Kremlin itself is not sincerely revisionist, but mainly opportunistic in its anti-Westernism as a way of diverting attention from the ethnic hatred and abuses of power inside the country.At the same time, one should not underestimate a peculiar benign dy-namic inherent in the BRICS concert. Putin is the BRICS leader who most enthusiastically embraced their rise, as if failing to see that his new-found friends may not really identify with his pretty hard balancing against the U.S. This was vividly demonstrated by their failure to extend diplomatic rec-ognition to the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia follow-ing Russia’s brief proxy war against Georgia in 2008.85 Also, NATO–Russia friction has not prevented the Kremlin from perceiving a keen security inter-est in the ISAF operation, including directly supporting NATO logistics.
Accordingly, 2014 will be a moment of truth for Russia, and for China and India, too, testing their capacity to come to terms over South Asian security on their own. In so far as Russia’s harsh measures against its CIS neighbors have been explained by Russian hawks as just mirroring the US Monroe doc-trine regarding the Americas, the US may have some leverage when it comes to modifying Russian strategic culture by officially abandoning the notorious doctrine as irrelevant in an era of globalization and R2P sovereignty think-ing. Many seem to forget that Russia is a full member of the highly liberal Council of Europe as something that perhaps might be used more creatively in the West’s Russia diplomacy.86 Russians generally see themselves as Eu-ropeans, not as Asians. On the other hand, Russia’s economy continues to grow, which inevitably bolsters the hawkish elite.