Using strategic culture to understand participation in expeditionary operations: Australia, Poland, and the coalition against the Islamic State

Doeser, Fredrik; Eidenfalk, Joakim

doi:10.1080/13523260.2018.1469709

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The second strand of literature examines the motivations for states to join a multinational military operation. We know much about coalition formation and the incentives for junior partners to join a US-led intervention and their subsequent degrees of commitment (Tago, 2007;Davidson, 2011;Von Hlatky, 2013;Mello, 2014;Mattox and Grenier, 2015;Saideman, 2016;Doeser and Eidenfalk, 2018) or for the United States to operate within a multilateral framework (Kreps, 2011;Tierney, 2011;Recchia, 2015). These explanations can come from systemic arguments (such as the balance of power), neo-classical realism or constructivist arguments drawing on the notion of strategic culture, conceptualized as an enabler or a constraint on the use of military force.…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

More allies, weaker missions? How junior partners contribute to multinational military operations

Schmitt

2018

Contemporary Security Policy

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There is a growing consensus that multinational military operations are often less militarily effective than the theoretical sum of their constitutive parts. At the strategic level, multiple chains of command and demands of consensus can undermine both integration and responsiveness. At the tactical and operational levels, problems such as sector assignments and liaison teams, restriction on intelligence sharing and capability aggregation problems can reduce integration and fighting skills. However, partners may be necessary to provide legitimacy to an intervention. As such, most studies assume that the most powerful state leading a coalition (usually the United States) has to accept a degree of operational ineffectiveness in order to gain political benefits from the participation of junior partners to a multinational military operation. However, such analysis encompasses all « junior partners » under the same broad category, without taking into account the differentiated contributions those junior partners can bring based on their relative military power and international status. This article explores such variations between the junior partners' contributions to multinational military operations and their impact on coalition political and military dynamics, and teases out the theoretical and policy implications of adopting a fine-grained analysis of junior partners.

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Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

More allies, weaker missions? How junior partners contribute to multinational military operations

Schmitt

2018

Contemporary Security Policy

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“…Individual decision-makers are all encultured and act based on their culture (Gray 1999). Thus, if "decision-makers behave according to realist predictions, it is because of their culture, rather than of any external objective force" (Doeser and Eidenfalk 2018). As demonstrated below, Polish strategic culture is mainly the product of historical experiences, a condition not recognized at all by neorealists, nor fully considered by most realists and neoclassical realists.…”

Section: Strategic Culture and Historical Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The author applies a similar definition of strategic culture in previous works (Doeser 2016b, Doeser and Eidenfalk 2018. 2.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical experiences, strategic culture, and strategic behavior: Poland in the anti-ISIS coalition

Doeser

2018

Defence Studies

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This article contributes to an explanation of why Poland, after a period of almost two years' hesitation, decided to dispatch military forces to the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State in June 2016. The Polish case is examined by applying the concept of strategic culture, taking into account a state's core military strategic beliefs and the historical experiences on which these beliefs are based. The case study shows that strategic culture shaped the Polish decision-making on the coalition, by predisposing the decision-makers toward a typical Polish behavior in international military operations, namely to exchange security benefits with important allies. The article also has implications for the general study of strategic culture, by specifying the relationship between historical experiences and strategic culture. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…How to explain this variation among EU member states' contributions to the anti-Daesh coalition? Several studies have documented the early phases of the US-led coalition and explored potential explanations for the observed variance in deployment policies across countries (McInnis, 2016;Saideman, 2016;Haesebrouck, 2018), whereas others have focused on individual countries' contributions (Doeser and Eidenfalk, 2019;Massie, 2019;Pedersen and Reykers, 2020), but there has not been a systematic comparison of EU member state involvement in the fight against Daesh. 3 Since the 2015 incident was the first invocation of the Lisbon Treaty's mutual defense clause, it is of particular policy relevance to conduct such a comparison across EU members and their foreign and security policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incentives and constraints: a configurational account of European involvement in the anti-Daesh coalition

Mello

2022

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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In 2014, the USA initiated the formation of a multilateral military operation against Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Eventually, more than 70 states joined the anti-Daesh coalition. However, contributions to the military effort have been characterized by great variance, especially among EU member states. While some states took leading roles in the airstrikes, others provided training for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and still others did not get involved beyond voicing their support for the policy. Against this backdrop, this article makes a two-fold contribution to the literature on military coalitions and security policy. Empirically, the article provides a mapping of the then 28 EU member states’ military engagement in the fight against Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Analytically, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) is applied to account for the observed pattern of military involvement, using an integrative framework that combines international and domestic factors. The results demonstrate that multiple paths led towards EU military involvement in the anti-Daesh coalition. At the same time, international-level incentives, such as external threat and/or alliance value feature prominently in all three identified paths. The analysis further underscores the value of a configurational perspective, because neither an external threat nor alliance value are sufficient on their own to bring about the outcome. Across the set-theoretic configurations, these conditions either combine with other ‘push’ factors or with the absence of constraints against military involvement. In line with the latter, the article highlights the policy relevance of institutional constraints, especially legislative veto rights, since most of those countries that were involved in the airstrikes of the anti-Daesh coalition did not have formal parliamentary involvement on matters of military deployment policy.

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Using strategic culture to understand participation in expeditionary operations: Australia, Poland, and the coalition against the Islamic State

Cited by 15 publications

References 40 publications

More allies, weaker missions? How junior partners contribute to multinational military operations

More allies, weaker missions? How junior partners contribute to multinational military operations

Historical experiences, strategic culture, and strategic behavior: Poland in the anti-ISIS coalition

Incentives and constraints: a configurational account of European involvement in the anti-Daesh coalition

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