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This article details the changes in Norwegian strategic culture, comprising grand strategy and practice, following the end of the Cold War. Throughout the Cold War, Norwegian security and defence policy was characterized by broad, non-politicized consensus. Basic elements of this grand strategic perspective were the smallness of Norway, the people defence and allegiance to the UN. Doctrines focused on sur- vival, with the army as the lead service. Close ties were maintained between the military and societal elites, and the military was seen just as much in societal terms, namely as an employer in scarcely populated areas, as it was in defensive terms. The changes in strategic culture over the past 10-45 years have been uneven, partly driven by internal and external changes in discourse, but over recent years probably as much by changes in practice. The first post-Cold War years witnessed the emergence of an alternative grand strategic representation, focusing on international operations rather than on invasion defence. Mindful of the impact on local communities of a reduced military presence, politicians long resisted any change, but after years of resistance the alternative grand strategy was embraced by the armed forces, leading to the creation of a rapid reaction force and increased emphasis on special task forces. International experience is now considered positive, even necessary, for a military career. Furthermore, whereas general conscription was gradually undermined because of the way in which it is practised, new civil-military ties were forged through the practice of providing military personnel training that was interchangeable with regular education. It now seems that military practice, as well as the specialized military discourse, has outpaced the broader Norwegian discourse on the use of military means. Nevertheless, the tension between global and local concerns remains unresolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article amines the evolution of Swedish strategic culture during the twentieth century and up to the present. Although Sweden is the only Scandinavian country that has stayed out of war since the age of Napoleon, it still has proud military traditions stemming from Sweden's age of empire (1561-1721) and from the Cold War period, when this non-aligned country became partly self-sufficient in modern military technology, producing its own fighter-jets, tanks and submarines, even planning to acquire nuclear weapons in the 1950s. On paper, Sweden maintained an impressive number of armed forces (850,000 men after mobilization), although at the end of the Cold War their equipment and training left much to be desired. Only around the year 2000 did this huge Cold War defence complex begin to be dismantled. In line with the Swedish administrative-political culture (which is often traced back to the seventeenth-century statesman Axel Oxenstiema), the military enjoyed a high degree of autonomy compared with most other Western countries. This made it possible for the Army, the most influential of the services, to preserve its size rather than modernize gradually. Also, like other sectors of Swedish society, national defence was adopted by well- organized popular movements with corporatist traits, movements such as voluntary defence organizations with hundreds of thousands of members and by defence industry. Sweden was the first country in the world to abolish the system of professional NCOs in the 1980s, creating a unified corps of enlisted officers. The tension between the ideals of popular defence and broad democratic participation - hailed in Swedish society at large - and the demands of military professionalism, and Sweden's national self-image as an advanced industrial country, increased towards the end of the Cold War. Only after the end of the Cold War did academization of officers' training, the adoption of an official military doctrine and advanced thinking about network-centric warfare bring about much-needed modernization of the Swedish armed forces. Today, however, the mental gap is wide between the military elite on the one hand - which sees international operations as the primary mission in the future - and public opinion and large segments of the officers' corps, on the other, which still consider defence as defending national territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finnish post-Cold War foreign policy has usually been approached as a change from a policy of cautious neutrality to one of enthusiastic integration within the core of Europe. This article suggests that instead of looking at Finnish post-Cold War grand strategy as evidence of a change, we could think about it as a sign of continuity. By tracing the evolution of Finnish strategic culture over the centuries, the article shows that there is a powerful element of continuity in Finnish strategic thinking. This continuity is interpreted through a revised version of Martin Wight's vocabulary, and suggests that Finnish strategic culture has always been based on a republican understanding of Finland's role in defending an anti-hegemonic security order in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses theories of strategic culture to show why Denmark has come to regard the use of armed force in new ways following the end of the Cold War. It is argued that Danish strategic culture is constituted by a debate between `cosmopolitans' and `defencists' about the utility of armed force. The debate shows that a minor power possesses a certain ability to choose how to act on the world stage, and what means to use in doing so, and illustrates that the prevalent structural explanations of why Danish foreign policy has been `militarized' since the end of the Cold War are insufficient. In Denmark, a new focus on European integration and globalization has meant that military power is being understood in a new way. A practice of `activism' has transcended the cosmopolitan-defencist debate that paralysed Danish security discourse in the late 1970s and 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article produces a model for empirical study of the security and defence policies of states, with a starting point in the literature on strategic culture (e.g. Gray, Klein, Johnston) and grand strategy (e.g. Kennedy, Posen, Kier). We identify two key problems with the literature. First, it only superficially touches base with the social sciences grouped around the concept of culture for a century, namely cultural anthropology and, to a lesser degree, sociology. The literature on strategic culture consequently operates with a reified concept of culture that is outdated elsewhere in the social sciences. Second, in sticking to a reified concept of culture, the literature has not (yet) come up with the kind of dynamic and specific framework for empirical analysis that we are looking for. Instead, it is bogged down in the debate begun in the 1950s on whether behaviour should or should not be treated as part of culture. In order to rectify this, we refashion the concept of strategic culture as a dynamic interplay of potential grand strategy, on the one hand, and specific practices such as doctrines, civil-military relations and procurement on the other. The key source of inspiration for this reconceptualization is the so-called `practice turn' in anthropology and sociology (e.g. Bourdieu, Swidler, Schatzki). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]