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Progressive divergence? The development of Croatian and Slovenian strategic cultures since independence
Vogrinec, Matevž ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Beneš, Jan (referee)
This thesis focuses on the development of strategic culture in Slovenia and Croatia since independence. Croatia and Slovenia are small countries in the Western Balkans. Both countries became independent in 1991 and since then they became important regional actors in the Western Balkans. This thesis traces Slovenia and Croatia's historical position within the former SFR Yugoslavia's defence system. The empirical analysis in the thesis examines official documents of both countries to find basic notions of the strategic culture of Croatia and Slovenia. The thesis' research focuses on finding how both countries' goal of Euro-Atlantic integration influenced the development of their strategic culture. Keywords: Strategic Culture, Slovenia, Croatia
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The Czech-German Military-Security Cooperation vs. the Arising Strategic Culture of the Czech Republic
Stojanovová, Kamila ; Handl, Vladimír (advisor) ; Dvořák, Pavel (referee)
This bachelor thesis depicts the Czech-German military-security cooperation in context of the security cultures of both countries. It focuses on the specific German strategic culture, however, the process of emerging strategic culture in the case of Czech Republic as a possible limiting factor for the military cooperation with Germany has also been pointed out. The theoretical base of this work are the concepts of political- military culture from Thomas U. Berger and strategic culture from Kerry Longhurst. The key criteria for the compatibility-analysis of both strategic cultures are the historical experience with the use of military force, the attitudes to army and use of force across the political elite, in the public opinion and in strategic papers, and the legitimation process of military missions. According to this, the aim of the work is to find the reason why in the period prior to the accession of Czech Republic to NATO the cooperation in the political and practical spheres didn't take place in the same intensity. At the same time, it tries to find the reason why the participation of the Czech Army in PRT Faizabad has been the only significant moment in the military cooperation with Germany after the NATO-accession in 1999. However, this work doesn't leave out the recent development, which...
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Military Strategy of the Russian Federation in Early 21st Century
Konopásek, Štěpán ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (referee)
Diploma thesis tracks a process of transformation of the military strategy of the Russian Federation since its establishment (end of 1991) up to now (May 2016). The author observes, using longitudinal method of Process Tracing and with help of strategic theory and concept of strategic culture, the author observes in which areas of the Russian strategic culture and military strategy occurred changes throughout the surveyed period of time and how the changes influenced strategy implemented in armed conflicts in which Russian Federation was involved. Another observed phenomenon is a formalisation of ideological anchoring of revisionist foreign and security policy in the key strategic documents. Following factors are identified as critical in formation and implementation of final strategy: Presidential administration, strategic culture, strategic documents, armed forces, and military operations. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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United States of America and counterinsurgency: Afghanistan
Petráš, Vojtěch ; Střítecký, Vít (advisor) ; Karásek, Tomáš (referee)
Counterinsurgency warfare has had an ambiguous position in the American military tradition. After the Vietnam experience, the population-control-oriented doctrine of David Galula was almost forgotten. Current war of the United States of America in Afghanistan turned out to be a conflict where application of the doctrine comes in question. It is codified in the 2006 FM 3-24 counterinsurgency manual. The author of the thesis Spojené státy americké a protipovstalecký boj: Afghánistán asks a question whether the behavior of American armed forces in Afghanistan was in compliance with the COIN doctrine of David Galula. The author looks at the conflict through lens of Galula's eight counterinsurgency steps, as defined in his book Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. The author of the thesis looks for factors that could influence fulfilment of the steps and he gives the factors in perspective with American strategic culture, as defined in the thesis. The analysis shows that the fulfilment of Galula's eight steps has never occurred. Traditional military thinking partially locked successful adaptation of American armed forces to the environment of Afghanistan. However, the author comes to the discovery that in terms of strategic culture, there were some shifts in Afghanistan.
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The causes of continuing existence of the French Foreign Legion
Dolejší, Daniel ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Kučera, Tomáš (referee)
Daniel Dolejší The causes of continuing existence of the French Foreign Legion 2015 Abstract The core theme of this diploma thesis is the French Foreign Legion that is examined from the point of view of national interests and strategic culture of France. It is very unusual in developed countries to have foreigners as a part of national army. Goal of the thesis is to discover and describe the causes of continuing existence of the French Foreign Legion. First of all, the author defines national interests and strategic culture of France for certain periods, and then he assesses the contribution of the Legion to fulfillment of goals connected to the national interests and the strategic culture. To the main conclusions of this work belongs that the first hypothesis was confirmed, the French Foreign Legion helped to reach goals based on national interests in certain periods. On the other hand, the second hypothesis was not completely confirmed. The author expected that the strategic culture always stabilizes and supports the role of the Legion, but he found out the opposite for the interwar period. The author supposes higher importance of the Legion in the area of peacekeeping operations under a mandate of the UN or NATO because the EU currently lacks troops prepared to be deployed abroad.
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UAVs as a tool in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the context of the U.S. strategic culture: Discourse analysis
Koleják, Martin ; Ludvík, Jan (advisor) ; Hynek, Nikola (referee)
The phenomenon of strategic culture and its influence on the state behaviour has penetrated the theories of international relations only recently. The same stands for unmanned aerial vehicles. The aim of this thesis is to examine how does the United States deploy their UAVs to fight Al-Qaeda in its save heavens located in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. To be specific my intention is to determine what does in this sense the behavior of Obama's administration mean in the context of the U.S. strategic culture. The main research tools utilized in this thesis are discourse analysis and Colin Gray's model of strategic culture. In the public discourse consisting of speeches and comments made by political and military representatives I have identified all the four strategic culture variables set out in the theoretical part of the work. Moreover, the public discourse around drone deployment contains several intriguing metaphors and symbols. Furthermore, the contribution of this work is that it deals with the issue of UAV deployment within the scope of strategic culture. Keywords UAV; drones; strategic culture; Colin Gray; Alastair Johnston; Barack Obama; Al- Qaeda
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Comparative analysis of Czechoslovak and Finnish strategic cultures before World War II
Jílek, Tomáš ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Soukup, Jaromír (referee)
Aim of the thesis is to examine the influence of strategic culture on states and their most substantial decisions. The concept of strategic culture introduced first by Jack Snyder in the 1970s is today generally accepted, there are even warnings that culturalism may become too fashionable, indeed some authors say this is already happening. Most works however focus on strategic cultures of countries with long and rich history, historical experience and a great amount of various doctrinal documents - such as USA, Russia, China or India. My aim is to identify the influence of strategic culture in small countries, with a rather short period of independence - Finland and Czechoslovakia before World War II. They differ in one crucial decision: Czechoslovakia had decided to yield to German territorial demands, while Finland had decided not to do so and as a result faced a war against the Soviet Union. Hypothesis of this work is that this crucial difference is caused by different strategic cultures in the two contexts.
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U. S. Safety and Strategic Culture during Barack Obama's 2nd Term
Kafková, Markéta ; Dubský, Zbyněk (advisor) ; Eichler, Jan (referee)
This bachleor thesis is about U. S. safety and strategic culture during the 2nd term of presidency of Barack Obama. It works with the hypothesis that U. S. safety and strategic culture between the years of 2012 and 2016 has signs of multilateralism, prefers political solutions and prefers use of soft power over hard power. This hypothesis might be confirmed based on discourse analysis of speeches and treaties. It is based on theory of safety and strategic culture and using criteria such as unilateralism besides multilateralism, preventive action besides preemptive strikes and militarism besides political solutions, this thesis evaluates the 2nd term of presidency of Barack Obama.
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Assessment of the Foreign and Security Policy of the 43rd American President
Pospíšil, Tomáš ; Eichler, Jan (advisor) ; Veselý, Zdeněk (referee) ; Lacina, Karel (referee) ; Krč, Miroslav (referee)
The main aim of the final thesis is to assess American foreign and security policy during 2001 -- 2008 using concepts of security and strategic culture. Security and strategic culture (SSC) are rather new concepts in IR, but always more attention is paid to them. Poststructuralist conception was chosen as to be the main approach towards these concepts, since it enables to work with discursive actions of strategic and security elites. On the theoretical plane, concepts of SSC are elaborated and theoretically separated. The practical level scrutinizes how the SSC influenced the key decisions within examined period and what impact strategic and security elites had on changes of SSC. The last, assessing level, analyzes how the changes of the SSC identified on practical level, influenced American foreign and security policy and also main doctrinal documents. The main focus is on the attacks of 9/11 which had a great impact on such turbulent times, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were fought in response to the above mentioned attacks, and changes of the foreign and security policy of the USA in the light of the unsuccessful Global War on Terror.
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The attitude of France towards the US security policy
Čmakalová, Kateřina ; Eichler, Jan (advisor) ; Veselý, Zdeněk (referee) ; Novák, Jaromír (referee) ; Adamec, Vilém (referee)
One of the most surprising aspects of the renaissance of scholarly interest in culture has been the emerging consensus in national security policy studies that culture effects significantly grand strategy and state behaviour. Therefore, the paper tries to advance rigorous procedures for testing for the existence and influence of security and strategic culture of different national states. It builds mainly on the definition of Alastair I. Johnston (1995) and Jeffrey S. Lantis (2002), who relate security and strategic culture with the definition of main goals/objectives of the state in security affairs and with ways of achieving them. As a case study, the paper will evaluate the approaches of the United States and France towards security threats in the early 21st century, especially towards the threat of global terrorism. It will assess whether and why when achieving security objectives, defined at the highest political level, persuasive or coercive strategy and military or non-military tools were preferred; whether negotiations, diplomacy and political pressure were favoured, or whether it was rather opted for deployment of armed forces and warfare. The text attempts to show how the differences in security and strategic culture, American and French particular identities, values, norms and perceptive lens might lead to different understandings of terrorism as global security threat and to distinct measures taken in the fight against it.
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