CDS Professional Reading List: Culture and Conflict

Regarded as one of the most influential management books of all time, this fourth edition of <i>Leadership and Organizational Culture</i> transforms the abstract concept of culture into a tool that can be used to better shape the dynamics of organization and change. This updated edition focuses on today′s business realities. Edgar Schein draws on a wide range of contemporary research to redefine culture and demonstrate the crucial role leaders play in successfully applying the principles of culture to achieve their organizational goals.

This is a much-needed survey and synopsis of literature on strategic culture and ways of war. It clearly shows how national strategies and approaches to warfare are, to a significant extent, culturally determined. The concept of national 'ways of war' dates from the 1930s, when Basil H. Liddell Hart theorized that there was a 'British Way in Warfare'. The concept of strategic culture dates from the 1970s, when Jack Snyder introduced it to explain why leaders of the Soviet Union did not behave according to rational choice theory. These ideas have gained wide acceptance among historians of international politics and warfare, and remain controversial for political scientists seeking general or universal theoretical understanding of such subjects. Because political scientists have focused on strategic culture and historians on ways of war, this work will greatly benefit both audiences and provide each other with valuable exposure of their ideas.

In 1899 an International Peace Conference convened in The Hague. The representatives of the world’s most militarized states, for whom the ability to wage war was absolutely central to their prestige, came together to debate the possibility of disarmament, the banning of certain weapons and the crafting of rules of war. History has not been kind to that conference: within twenty years, Europe and much of the rest of the world was drowned in blood by those same powers for whom ‘the monopoly of violence’ was so crucial. And less than twenty years after the First World War ended, an even more savage war without limits of any kind took the lives of fifty million people. Yet since 1945, the European states which had glamourized their military elites, and made going to war the highest expression of patriotism, have renounced violence as a way of settling their disputes. War is now unthinkable, from Dublin to the edge of the Balkans. Violence has been eclipsed as a tool of statesmen. This astonishing reversal is the subject of James Sheehan’s masterly book. It is nothing less than the story of war and peace in twentieth-century Europe, and how the first came to be dominated by the second. European states are now shaped by ‘civilian’ values and institutions. Politicians are measured on their ability to deliver well being and prosperity, not on their capacity to lead nations in war. To citizens of the major European countries in the first half of the century, this would have seemed an incredible, almost utopian prospect. But Sheehan’s book is also a timely reminder of the differences between Europe and America, at a time when the USA is asserting its right and duty to make war for ideological or self-interested ends. And how Europeans will live in this dangerous, violent world is a question that becomes ever more urgent as the chaos in the Middle East affects the stability of societies with open frontiers and liberal traditions. Will Europe as a whole learn to use some form of military power to defend its own interests, when necessary? Or will it remain in thrall to a USA whose armed might it both respects and fears? - Publisher

It has long been acknowledged that the study of war and warfare demands careful consideration of technology, institutions, social organization, and more. But, for some, the so-called "war and society" approach increasingly included everything but explained nothing, because it all too often seemed to ignore the events on the battlefield itself. The military historians in Warfare and Culture in World History return us to the battlefield, but they do so through a deep examination of the role of culture in shaping military institutions and military choices. Collected here are some of the most provocative recent efforts to analyze warfare through a cultural lens, drawing on and aggressively expanding traditional scholarship on war and society through sophisticated cultural analysis. With chapters ranging from an organizational analysis of American Civil War field armies to the soldiers' culture of late Republican Rome and debates within Ming Chinese officialdom over extermination versus pacification, this one volume provides a full range of case studies of how culture, whether societal, strategic, organizational, or military, could shape not only military institutions but also actual battlefield choices. 

This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet 'new theory of victory' represented a conceptualization which chronologically preceded technological procurement. Israel was the first to utilize the weaponry on the battlefield, but was the last to develop a conceptual framework that acknowledged its revolutionary implications. Utilizing primary sources that had previously been completely inaccessible, and borrowing methods of analysis from political science, history, anthropology, and cognitive psychology, this book suggests a cultural explanation for this puzzling transformation in warfare. The Culture of Military Innovation offers a systematic, thorough, and unique analytical approach that may well be applicable in other perplexing strategic situations. Though framed in the context of specific historical experience, the insights of this book reveal important implications related to conventional, subconventional, and nonconventional security issues. It is therefore an ideal reference work for practitioners, scholars, teachers, and students of security studies.

A key objective of this volume is to contribute to the professional development of CQ (cultural intelligence) capacity across the CF by laying a foundation upon which further discussion, exploration, discovery and development can take place. It will be particularly useful to those who have a responsibility for the development of effective military teams, as well as the application of effective tactics and strategies in domestic and international operational environments. It is also intended as a practical resource upon which to build further understanding and competency in the CQ domain. As such, the chapters are comprised of discussions of the theory and concepts necessary to frame one's understanding of the context within which CQ is relevant, what it is, why it is important, and how it can be developed and applied within the CF. - p. x