Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History

This is an in-depth study of premodern Chinese strategic thought that has implications for contemporary international relations theory. The book sets out to answer two empirical questions: is there a substantive consistent and temporally persistent Chinese strategic culture? If so, to what extent has it influenced China's approaches to security? The focus of the study is the Ming dynasty's grand strategy against the Mongols (1368-1644). The book first examines ancient military texts as sources of Chinese strategic culture, using cognitive mapping, symbolic analysis and congruence tests to determine whether there is a consistent grand strategic preference ranking across texts that consitutes a single strategtic culture. Then, similar techniques are applied to determine the effect on the strategic preferences of the Ming decision-makers. Finally, the book assesses the effect of these preferences on Ming policies towards the Mongol threat.