The Impact of Strategic Culture and Cognition on U.S. Outcomes

Abstract

"The United States' national government does not perform as well as it should." The outcomes that result from many national security policy decisions have been less than stellar. With each poor outcome the United States begins to realize an erosion of its national powers. At the conclusion of the analysis we will determine that the strategic leader's decision making and U.S. outcomes are impacted by strategic culture and cognition. In each U.S. policy decision analyzed, we will illustrate that the optimal outcome was not achieved. To help future leaders gain awareness we have developed an illustrative term for the combined impact of strategic culture and cognition on the decision making process entitled the ?drowning effect?. The drowning effect is the unintentional pushing of new concepts, approaches, acknowledgement of risk, and processes below the surface or casting them out to sea by national security professionals due to their cultural and cognitive biases

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA519858

Entities

People

  • Mark N. Brown

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Civil War
  • Cognition
  • Education
  • Geography
  • Governments
  • International Organizations
  • National Security
  • Perception
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychology
  • Security
  • Societies
  • Students
  • United States
  • Universities
  • War
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Aviation Safety Risk Assessment.
  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.