Rethinking Cultural Influences on Warfare

This monograph presents a method for military planners to operationalize an adversary's culture during conceptual planning. To present this methodology, the monograph asks the question, is a Western way of war distinctly different from a non-Western way of war. Victor Davis Hanson's description of a Western way of war is examined to develop an ordinal scaling methodology that allows cultural variables to be operationalized by a planning team prior to the onset of war. The four variables used by Hanson to describe a distinctive way of war are discipline, infantry, technology, and individualism. Through examination of participants in the Russo-Japanese War, the Korean War, and the Sino-Vietnam War, ordinal scaling reveals there is a distinctive Western way of war, but highlights the nuances of cultural influences on warfare. At best, Western and non-Western warfare are only rough categories with vague boundaries, not clear dichotomies. Western warfare may be distinctive, but a state's approach to warfare can adopt characteristics from both Western and non-Western warfare, creating nuances not recognized by Hanson.