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The Cold War Arms Race: A Dilemma of Security or Clash of

Cultures?

Gregory D. Young Political Science Department UCB 333

University of Colorado, Boulder Boulder, Colorado 80309

gyoung@colorado.edu

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, 30 August, 2002

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Puzzle

During the Cold War, a consensus evolved within the international relations

community on how to look at the national security problem, the structural or neo-realist

paradigm. It was a parsimonious, comprehensive and enduring way of dealing

intellectually with an environment and an opponent whose way of looking at the world

was perceived to be very similar to our own. In neo-realist theories of international

relations, nation-states seek to increase their own power to balance against the power or

the perceived threats from adversarial states (Waltz 1979; Walt 1987). The nature of

states is insignificant to structural realists; they believe that all states will respond the

same to threats, thus creating security dilemmas and arms races. The conventional

wisdom within the discipline is that neo-realism has done well to explain the Cold War,

but power calculations alone fail to explain its demise and the subsequent period (Legro

1996, Booth 1997, Brooks & Wohlforth 2000, Snow 2000). During the course of the

Cold War there is little doubt about the existence of an arms race or that structural

realism explains a great deal of actions between the US and the USSR; however there are

responses from these adversaries that are much more nuanced and complex than can be

explained only by realist theory.

The neo-realist paradigm grew out of and was organized around the Cold War, so

it becomes a bit of a tautology to praise how wonderfully it explains the balance of terror

out of which it evolved. If structural realism cannot explain all of the significant

interactions in the post-Cold War world, the universality of the theorem must be

questioned and new variables or a better device must be discovered to explain the

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variance in the Cold War that was not explained by simple power politics. It lacks the

ability to account for the nuances explained by ideas including culture. Structural realism

is not wrong, but incomplete. By attempting to understand the variation explained by

culture, one sacrifices the simplicity and parsimony of Waltz, but can fill this apparent

gap in realisms explanatory capability.

Structural realism downplays the key variable of culture in both the creation of

military doctrine and strategy, and more importantly, in the perception of threats. Cultural

theorists concede that international structures matter but that culture filters the materiel

environment. In studies of intelligence estimates from both Cold War adversaries, there

were misperceptions that actually caused each side to underestimate the military power or

threat from the adversary (Bathurst 1993). These underestimations cannot be explained

by structural realist theory alone. This study will demonstrate the value of culture in

security studies.

This study will not attempt to add to those factors that other scholars have

attributed to the strategic cultures of both the United States, the Soviet Union and its

Russian forbears. The work of many scholars has defined the elements of these strategic

cultures in great detail. The aim of this discourse is to show how those elements of

culture have influenced the construction of both the defense policies of the two

adversaries and the perceptions of their military forces.

Hypothesis: If Realism cannot explain both underestimations and overvaluations

of threat, Strategic Culture will explain more of Cold War misperceptions than structural

realism.

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Two comprehensive cultural case studies to include the American perception of

the Soviet Cold War naval arms buildup and the Soviet response to the Revolution in

Military Affairs (RMA) will illustrate that Strategic culture can explain misperceptions of

threat that lead to underestimation, where realism can only explain the overestimation.

Cultural Theory

T. S. Elliot eloquently pointed out culture cannot altogether be brought to

consciousness; and the culture of which we are wholly conscious is never the whole of

culture (Elliot 1948, p. 93). Concentrating on the cultural dimension of any social

phenomenon presents special difficulties, all which are present in the international

security arena. Culture, it has been said by positivist scholars, is used in a casual manner

to explain all residual variation that do not seem at first glance to have a rational

explanation (Mazarr 1996). The notion of culture is hardly new as an explanatory

variable for human behavior, but it appears there is resurgence in its use accompanying

the increased examination of constructivism and ideational variable in international

relations. In modern times, Max Weber (1958 [1904]) studied the relative economic

benefits of Protestant and Catholic Cultures. Adda Bozeman (1960) focused on cultures

role in national decision-making. Pye and Verba (1965) and more recently Harrison and

Huntington (2000) connected culture to development; and Robert Putnam studied the

relationship between culture and democracy (1993). Robert Cox (1981), while

articulating the cultural forces that can underpin international interaction, coined the term

critical security studies to explain how they impact the study of national security.

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Classic French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1982 [1895]) defined culture as the

conscience collective. The collective state then reflects this collective mind. Each

individual is socialized into a common schema or framework that structures the way

individuals in societies perceive the facts of the world. Culture shapes organizations in

both cognitive and material ways. Cognitively, culture acts as a heuristic for collective

perception and calculations; in much the same way a theoretical paradigm can shape

intellectual thought or a schema individual thinking (Khong 1992). Culturally shaped

agents tend to discount the data and facts from the environment that can contradict the

existing orthodoxy. Cultural biases tend to produce conclusions that reinforce, but do not

critically assess, existing beliefs.

Culture as it affects things military and strategic has been termed Strategic

Culture by those who practice security studies. Strategic culture has long been

postulated to influence military doctrine and strategy (Weigley 1973, Snyder 1977, Gray

1986, Booth 1990, Klein 1991, Johnston 1991, Legro 1993, Kier 1995). Strategic culture

is thus a direct descendent of political culture for a na tion and reflects the experiences of

that nation. Although not specifically using the term, noted anthropologist Margaret

Mead (1951) in post-World War II studies of the Soviet military, cited culture as a key

variable in understanding military strategy and intelligence prediction. Strategic culture

refers to prominent patterns in military behavior, which are indicative of the collective

ways a society responds to a perceived reality in the security environment.

Therefore, military doctrine and strategy are not just a product of materiel factors

and national interest, but are subject to a number of unique geopolitical, economic and

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historical influences that lead to collective understandings among decision makers on

how to respond to the material and structural environment. Strategic culture has also been

termed or related to strategic orientation, or how a country views its place in the

international system. Strategic culture can be thought of as individual decision-making

theories writ large, that societies have widely held beliefs, cognitive maps or common

bounds of rationality to guide a security decision (Jervis 1976, Khong 1992).

It is the key contention of this study that strategic culture is also a significant

factor in threat perception as well. Threats are perceived as a combination of capabilities

(power) and intentions. Both capabilities and intentions are not perceived in a vacuum but

also through a cultural filter. This filter can most often serve to increase the danger of the

perceived threat as realists would believe, and can in fact also decrease the perceived

threat. An examination of responses guided by the lens of strategic culture can explain

more of the variance of threat perception than can realism. If structural realists

predictions were correct, one should see American decision makers or the public calling

for increased defense spending in response to perceived increases in Soviet power or

threat. On the contrary, a lack of response may indicate the underestimation or total lack

of a perceived threat.

Conventional wisdom would believe that culture can influence misperceptions of

intentions, but strategic culture also influences how leaders perceive the capabilities,

including military hardware of potential adversaries, which runs counter to Realpolitik

thinking. When estimating enemy forces, for example, one can compare the numbers of

divisions, usually assuming that their divisions are roughly comparable in numbers with

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ones own divisions. In the case of Soviet divisions (dramatically different in size and

weaponry), this kind of assessment was in fact mirror- imaging and was a substitution,

which those without specific intelligence training often made. We must therefore codify

the characteristics of the lens through which a threat is perceived. To understand this

lens of strategic culture enormously increases our chances of successful prediction and

greatly reduces the mistakes that arise from mirror- imaging. Arms races are not just a

product of misperception of a potential adversary perceiving defensive weapons to be

offensive, but also weapons deemed unnecessary to the perceived legitimate defensive

needs of ones foes.

US Strategic Culture

Americans think about the use of force in a unique way. The use of force to

Americans is an aberration, not a part of the national existence, despite the fact that the

US has used force more often than most of the nation states in the last century.

Americans believe that peace is the normal state of the world. Breaches of that peace are

forced upon them and the US must intervene to return to normalcy. Certainly force is

needed some of the time, but not always. The sudden outbreak of the Korean War in

1950, where the US, caught off guard and largely unprepared, moderated the traditional

American aversion to keeping large numbers under arms. Americans still cling to the

false myth that the United States can still be defended by a militia of citizen soldiers

who, armed with the musket from over the fireplace, form on the village commons and

march off to defeat the invading foe. The Cold War was not a change in this notion

however, it can be shown that the American people were persuaded that the Cold War

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was actually a war rather than an armed standoff, and therefore justified keeping large

numbers of men under arms.

It has been called a Napoleonic corollary that the use of force for the United

States is only justifiable only in the service of noble, lofty purposes, like those of the

French Revolution. American fear of and aversion to godless communism certainly met

that standard and added heat to the conflict (Kincaide 1990, Snow 2000). The US has

always had to demonize enemies to rally public support or to justify the US of force and

the Cold War was no different.

For most of American history, threats to the United States were blunted by wide

oceans and friendly, compliant neighbors on our borders; until the need for exotic or

strategic materials and cheap energy forced us to look overseas, the United States was

basically self-sufficient and, for many purposes, aloof from the power politics of the

world. Only when the US ventured outward, as in the acquisition of a Pacific empire

from Spain, was it exposed to the vagaries of potential predators. Our isolation was

luxury that few other countries throughout history have enjoyed. These two oceans have

necessitated or justified the need for a large naval force initially to protect commerce and

more recently to protect our allies (Gray 1981).

In the Cold War, as before, the American military (especially the Air Force) has a

peculiar fascination with airpower and technology. Very often technology drives strategy

rather than the expected converse. American Generals are often derided in the media for

this fascination with their war toys. The faith in the superiority of US technology and

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the ability of US industry to mobilize are factors that have affected as Russell Weigley

had put it, The US Way of War (Weigley 1973, Bathurst 1981, 1993, Snyder 1990).

Soviet Strategic Culture

Without totally embracing Mackinder or some sort of Mahanian geographical

determinism, one must accept that there are various permanently operating factors, to

use Stalins term, in describing the elements of war, that have guided Soviet/Russian

strategy throughout history. The most often cited in the Russian case is the real or

imagined paranoia that resulted from being surrounded by enemies without suitable

natural frontiers and adequate resources (military and human) for its own defense. Russia

has suffered repeatedly from hostile invasions, and that the nature of its wars has been

largely, if not entirely, defensive. Many Western commentators would disagree, but the

perception, not the reality is the imperative component. The most important fact is that

the Russians believe they have been constantly threatened and their military traditions

and policies reflect that fact.1

Soviet security policy was frequently viewed as aggressive, militant and

seemingly unyielding. People became familiar with the tough pronouncements and

slogans that proclaimed we will bury you, and that forecast the inevitable collapse of

decadent imperialism. This tough policy style had often been reinforced by rude and

1 Given the facts of the past, this myth is not without merit. Russian historians remind their readers that Imperial Russia

was attacked 245 times between 1055 and 1465. More recently Soviet scholars cite the foreign interventions of 1917-1925, and

Hitlers incursion, Operation Barbarossa, when Leningrad alone suffered 1,650,000 casualties (contrasted with 292,100 military

dead for the US from the entirety of World War II) to confirm this belief (Jones 1990, p. 38). The creation of the East European buffer

and the desire for central Asian client states would corroborate this concept.

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unyielding behavior by Soviet political leaders and diplomats at international conferences

or bilateral meetings. And yet, the substance of Soviet foreign and security policy is

curiously dissonant with this aggressive style. The USSR never committed its own forces

formally and massively to an area outside its direct contiguous sphere of influence. Soviet

leaders invariably relented under direct pressure or confrontation with the West (Cuba,

Berlin) or under strong resistance by indigenous leaders in opposition to Soviet influence

or interference in their countries (Indonesia, Egypt). This is not to say that Soviet leaders

were Jeffersonian democrats, but rather to suggest that in areas outside of their direct

control, Soviet leaders favored non-confrontation, rejecting the possibility of massive

commitments to uncertain outcomes. This need to pronounce aggressively has been

attributed to the need to justify the ideological dogma or due to the need to compel

respect on the international stage (Ermath 1981).

The apparent Soviet disregard for the lives of its soldiers, or a seemingly lower

value placed on human life than American society is well known, yet this has caused

gross miscalculations in military tactics. The same kinds of projections of mortality

tolerances were made during the Cold War with respect to the nuclear doctrine of

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Starting with McNamaras whiz kids in the

sixties, the US assumed effective deterrence based upon projections of inflicting

unacceptable damage upon the Soviet population and industry that were similar to their

own. The Russian acceptance of sacrifice and hardship in war is unique in world history.

One does not have to go very far to assume that McNamara and his successors estimates

would not have been sufficient to actually deter. The value western culture places on

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human life has always influenced its military strategy. The images of US military

personnel being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu caused an immediate

withdrawal of US troops. Those images outweighed the images of the starving Somali

children that brought about the initial deployment of US Marines.

Traditionally, Soviet strategic culture had valued mass and quantity over

technology and quality. For example, Former Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov, who

guided Soviet naval development for nearly 30 years, had a parable on his desk, which

stated: dangerous is the enemy of good enough. The Soviets have always believed that

their sheer numbers of men and equipment could overcome an enemy of superior quality.

Throughout history, despite the fact that technology has been imported or imitated, as

was the case under Peter the Great or Alexander II in the middle 1800s, there has been

only periodic recognition of the dangers of technological lags. Russian strategy has still

been marked by conservatism to incorporate new technologies (Klein 1989). The massive

Stalinist purges decimated the scientific elite from which a recovery was not evident for a

generation. The faith that quantity will overcome the lags in technology, conditioned the

Soviet response through most of the Cold War and was only recognized as lacking after

the Gulf War.

Cases to be studied

Two case studies will demonstrate the value of strategic culture in misperceptions

of threat estimations. Although, the maritime threat from the Soviet Navy was often

perceived as increasing, it can be shown that much of this increase and some

misperceptions that underestimated the threat can be attributed to cultural factors. To test

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the how strategic culture has affected the American perception of particular Soviet

hardware, the American response to the Soviet naval buildup of the seventies and eighties

will be examined. More specifically, the Soviet construction of their first aircraft carrier

and follow-on platforms presents an ideal case for how the US Navys intelligence and

operational planners misperceived both intended use and capability of these complex

weapon systems. From the first hybrid helicopter carriers of the Moskva class launched in

1964, through the VSTOL equipped Kiev class of 1972, and finally the first conventional

aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetzov (formerly Tbilisi and Leonid Brezhnev) of 1985,

American experts, framed by their own views of aircraft carriers, both underestimated

and overestimated the war fighting and gunboat diplomacy capability of these

platforms.

This mirror imaging by American navalists presumed a power projection role

for the new carriers, a role for which they were grossly inadequate. However in the sea

control role to counter U.S. ASW (Ant iSubmarine Warfare) superiority, they were in

fact more than adequate and were, I contend, underestimated in that capability. The

Soviets referred to these ships as Bolshoi Protivolodochnoi Korabl or large anti-

submarine warfare ship rather than aircraft carrier. A misnomer that U.S. strategists

contended was a guise to circumvent the Montreaux Convention of 1936. A ruse required

since this treaty prevents passage of aircraft carriers through the Turkish Straits. The

name however, more accurately reflects the intended use than to escape treaty

restrictions. A power projection role distant from the Soviet/Russian homeland does not

square with Soviet strategic culture, a fact ignored by US analysts.

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The mirror Soviet case for cultural misperception is the US development of high

technology or smart weapons. These weapons combined with accompanying

information systems have been termed the Second Revolution in Military Affairs

(RMA). General-Major I.N. Vorobyev summarized the central lessons for the Russian

military about the RMA from the Gulf War. He begins with a statement unprecedented

for both the Soviet and Russian leadership: the Iraqis lost the Gulf War because they

fought with Soviet doctrine and Soviet weaponry. Indeed the thrust of this article consists

in a call for a new military thinking on the part of our generals and officers who are

still locked in to the inertial thinking of the World War II generation (quoted in

Fitzgerald 1993b). The clear implication is that the Soviets underestimated US

technological superiority and the supposed military parity of the eighties was a fallacy.

Soviet confidence with the balance of power, particularly after the Vietnam War,

encouraged Soviet adventurism without fear of US reprisal.

According to numerous Russian writers, Desert Storm represented one of those

turning points in the military art, akin to the Franco-Prussian War. It has ended the era of

million-man armies and begun the new era of high- tech wars fought in the air, space and

electronic ether (Fitzgerald 1993b). Russian military journals advocate a radical re-

examination of the structure of the armed forces. The emphasis, they say, has shifted

from quantity to quality because the technology of the RMA nullified superiority in

divisions and conventional arms. These calls for a new smaller, all-volunteer, and high-

tech military force have largely been ignored in the Russian Duma, largely due to the

abysmal state of the Russian economy. However, the culture that places faith in the

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ability of a large conscript army to trade territory for time in the harsh Russian

environment and emerge victorious continues to prevail in many areas.

Methodology

Military planners, by the nature of their business, must protect against the

worst case scenario. This further supports the realist notion of the security

dilemma that leads to arms races. But, if in the perception of the capability of a

particular piece of military hardware or misperception of its intended use caused a

threat to be underestimated, we have more important evidence that the arms races

are not automatic by products of adversarial relationships. Hardware presents the

toughest case for strategic culture. It is assumed that there is very little room for

the misperception of things that can be counted, measured, and observed in cold

steel. It would be difficult to point the causal arrow solely or directly to strategic

culture explain the underestimation, but the new archival evidence can allow

research to compare actual capability with that which was perceived. Using these

archives, plus interviews with former cold warriors and finally analysis of the

military responses to opponents hardware, the source of the underestimation and

misperception will be attributed to a common national and organizational

framework about defense.

Comprehensive cultural sociology (Edles 2002) is a collection of

methodologically multifaceted techniques to explore the impact of culture. These are to

assess in a positivistic way the impact of culture on both structure and agency. Three

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separate elements, which include interviews, participant observation and textual analysis,

comprise this comprehensive method.

Interviews

First, using both interviews in Washington and Moscow of former Cold War

generals, admirals and defense planners, this study will compare threat responses to

specific weapons systems by the former adversaries to specific cited elements of strategic

culture. In the aftermath of the demise of the Communist regime, aged Russian cold

warriors may be more inclined to honestly assess their perceptions of threat without fear

of repercussions from not following the party line. By the same token, American admirals

now a few years retired are not restrained by the military culture that prevents public

challenges to the presidents defense plans.

Interviews have been coordinated through the Institute for the Study of the US

and Canada (Russian acronym ISKAN) with numerous Soviet Generals, Admirals,

security scholars and Defense Ministry officials from the Cold War.2 Discussions have

been coordinated for meetings in Russia the second week of October 2002. Similar

participants on the American side will be interviewed in the Washington DC area in the

following month. 3 Each participant will be asked about the significant military advances

(more than just the systems that are the objects of this study) of the US/USSR during

their tenure in positions to make/advise military decisions. They will be asked to assess

the impact on each military move on the overall military capability. Why was a particular 2 Currently scheduled: Generals Gareev, Lobov, Valentin Larionov and Kirshin, Admirals Pirumov and Slipchenko, Defense strategists, Andrei Kokoshin and Vitaly Shlykov. 3 Currently scheduled: Former CJCS William Crowe, Former CNOs James L. Holloway III, Carlisle H. Trost, former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman and former Naval Intelligence expert William J. Manthorpe.

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system more or less threatening? In hindsight, do they believe that the capabilities of

particular weapons platforms were underestimated or overestimated? The interviewees

will be asked to comment on the adequacy and nature of their defense establishments

responses to technological developments by the other side. Participants will be queried as

to their perceptions of the enemys specific strategy and doctrine, whether it was thought

to be aggressive or defensive in nature. Did the ir threat perceptions ever differ greatly

from others leaders in the defense hierarchy? Soviet leaders will be asked if they believed

that Marxist/Leninist doctrine was influential in their perceptions of American military

moves. American military will be asked contrarily if the closed nature of the Soviet

system influenced their estimations of Soviet naval platforms.

Text Analysis

Secondly, using new techniques Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) (Cole 2001)

of the language of general discourse, military journals and public statements, further

study will attempt to measure the trends of threat perceptions of particular pieces of

military hardware by both the Soviet and US leadership during 45 years of the Cold War.

This will be contrasted against more traditional measures of threat perception or what

responses structural realists would expect. Numerous Soviet archives from the Cold War

era have been opened and translated. Some of the Soviet archives, which remain closed,

are the defense discussions from the Brezhnev era. Yet the foreign ministry has opened

their policy archives that can also provide more accurate assessments of perceptions of

US foreign and defense policies, but probably not assessments of all US developments in

smart weapons.

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For the United States, numerous recently declassified documents including the

CIAs annual National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) will be studied for evidence that

elements of strategic culture influenced the level of threat. The Soviet Estimate section

of the National Security Archive at George Washington University has provided 62

documents declassified in the last two years of Soviet naval capability. In addition, the

Department of Defenses glossy publication Soviet Military Power, despite its

propaganda-like nature, will contribute to how DOD wished the threat to be perceived by

the American public. The US Navy Department published a similar annual journal

entitled Understanding Soviet Naval Developments provided more in depth assessments

of the Soviet carriers. The CIA has now published all of its Cold War estimates, which

have been opened through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). These documents are

available online.

For the Soviet Union, the military journal Voyenna Mysl (Military Thought) will

be analyzed. Since translations present problems in looking for specific words, study will

be limited to content analysis. Translations from the archives of the Foreign Ministry and

from the Stalin-era Defense Ministry are now available. Also translations of the Soviet

Military newspaper Krasnaya Zvesda (Red Star) had a regular column that assessed

specific Western military developments, including post-Glasnost discussions of the US

Gulf War.

Military Operations and Responses

Finally, realists would predict that major advances in military capability by one

side would cause analogous military response by the other. One could measure the scale

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of threat perceived based upon the response in terms of training or exercises that

specifically counter the new or increased threat. For example, in response to US

deployment of Pershing II and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles in Europe, the Soviet Navy

moved cruise missile carrying submarines close to US coasts to reduce their time to target

(Watson 1986). Does the US Navy train to increase its anti-air capability or alter its

operating patterns to counteract the new Soviet Carriers? Does the USSR increase

research in information systems and precision munitions to respond to US developments

in the RMA? The US Navys annual operation plans are very specific in the emphasis for

the training year. The yearly doctrinal summary From the Sea listed the war fighting

priorities for the navy in response to the VMF (Voenno Morskoi Flot or Soviet Navy)

challenge.

Implications

The security dilemma that in many respects is seen as the quintessential

dilemma of international politics, reinforcing realist notions, because a pervasive

Hobbesian fear is seen as resulting in insecurity, even when no malevolence is

intended. Perhaps, rather than seeing this as the quintessential dilemma, a cultural

perspective might regard it as a sometimes important phenomenon in relations between

states, but fundamentally as an occurrence of fatalistic and hegemonic reasoning. Just as

Alexander Wendt (1992) believes that Anarchy is what states make of it. Wendts

alternate versions of anarchy lead to different less threatening visions of the security

dilemma. But even in the anarchy that parallels the structural realists unique version,

there are visions in which not only might the threat perception not be increased, but in

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fact, where the threat from a particular defense posture or weapon system may actually

decrease as a result of strategic culture. Previous confidence-building measures or

transparent defense exchanges, or more importantly a posture that is perceived to be non-

provocative, may ameliorate threat perceptions among adversaries. Defense and military

strategists must understand their own cultural misperceptions and what actions other

states perceive to be within the realm of acceptable or sufficient defense.

This study could also have importance in the policy realm. If strategic culture

proves to be a significant variable in the both the construction of military doctrine and the

perception of threat for ones adversaries, what implications does this have for today or

tomorrows potential conflicts? If the misperception causes the threat to be increased

most of the time anyway, what value does this hold for defense planners? The value

added is two fold. First, if we had better understood the culture of the USSR and its

Russian sources, the US would have less often responded to Soviet moves with counter

moves. It would have allowed US defense planners to better assess intentions to go along

with assessments of capabilities. Given a rational choice decision-making model, given

two options that would be equal in providing security, leaders could choose the options

which was perceived to be less threatening to an adversary. Derek Laeberts (2002)

recent book The Fifty Year Wound has cited the incredible cost of victory for the US in

the Cold War. One could assume containment at a much lower cost if the effects of

strategic culture were understood.

In the theoretical realm, scholars who are less convinced of realisms

shortcomings and believe that states do balance against threats, might be more inclined to

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admit that the decision over when balancing is complete or what are and what are not

threats is guided by cultural perceptions. Misperceptions arising from identities that are

already designated as adversaries are certainly more likely to increase the threat. Neutral

actions by enemies are oft perceived as threats. There is enough evidence however to

show that strategic culture will occasionally cause a weapon or military doctrine to be

underestimated because of how culture changes the shape of our perceptions of the world.

Anais Nin wrote, we see things not as they are, but as we are. Our own identity and

culture influence perceptions of others. This mirror-imaging causes us to perceive

others actions in light of our own cognitive map, influenced by our history, culture,

ethnicity and important life events. If one can understand these cultural elements, we can

greatly enhance our chances of predicting the actual intentions of adversaries.

Prospective Outline

I. Introduction and delineation of the puzzle

II. Cultural theory and International Relations including literature review

III. Definition of Strategic Culture and its impact on perception. Included here is review of the perception/misperception literature. IV. Shortcomings of realism, Did either side balance during the Cold War?

V. US strategic culture and it origins

VI. Soviet/Russian strategic culture and its origins

VII. Description of methodology and model

VIII. US perceptions of Soviet aircraft carrier development

IX. Soviet perceptions of US smart weapons developments

X. Conclusions, implications and further study

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