摘要: This study examines the transatlantic security divide through the social constructivist's lens of strategic culture. The study will use Christopher Meyer's definition of strategic culture: 'the socially-transmitted, identity-deriv... 展开 This study examines the transatlantic security divide through the social constructivist's lens of strategic culture. The study will use Christopher Meyer's definition of strategic culture: 'the socially-transmitted, identity-derived norms, ideas, and patterns of behavior that are shared among the most influential actors and social groups within a given political community, which help to shape a ranked set of options for a community's pursuit of security and defense goals.' In his work assessing the convergence of national European strategic cultures, Meyer found a measurable degree of convergence among four countries' strategic cultures. This study will build on his findings, but concentrate on a different level of analysis. It will compare the collectively shared corpus of norms, ideas, and behaviors of the emerging European Union strategic culture as reflected in European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) activities to the United States' national strategic culture as reflected in the invasion of Iraq using a case study approach. The author analyzes the European Security Strategy, European security elite speeches, and ESDP operations. He examines comparable evidence in American strategic culture during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The greatest divide between the two cultures was found in the ideational foundation of operations, particularly concerning perceptions of legitimacy. In the area of multilateralism, there was greater similarity regarding ad hoc coalitions of the willing: the EU forms coalitions with non-EU partners, allows individual members to decide whether or not to contribute troops, and opens up the possibility for 'structured enhanced cooperation' in ESDP. The use of force as a last resort is upheld by both cultures in public diplomacy; however, in reality, both cultures tend to keep all options open. Still, the EU puts more emphasis on crisis prevention and nonmilitary actions than the United States. 收起