Description
The concept of strategic culture has received an increasing attention after the constructivist turn in IR as both have emphasized non-material and ideational factors in making sense of foreign and security policies of states. However, the literature has mostly focused on the impact of strategic culture on state behaviour paying much less attention on the construction of strategic culture itself, and even lesser on the relationship between the construction of strategic culture and the practice of othering. While the concept of othering has been productively applied to explain national identity building, its role in the construction of strategic culture has not been explored despite the fact that the constructivist security studies affirm that there should be a linkage between strategic culture and othering. In an attempt to build a bridge between strategic culture and the concept of othering this paper argues that the practice of othering constantly redefines threat perceptions and security priorities with constitutive influences on strategic culture. Thus, based on the assumption that it is not given or pre-determined but socially constructed, strategic culture is suggested to being constantly reconstructed through othering that takes the form of narratives on matters of security and defence in the present as well as in the past. In so doing othering does not only differentiate the Self from the Other but also portrays (some) Others as a source of threat. As such it does not only define the Self but also sets to defend it through constructing a particular strategic culture.
