Balancing culture and strategy: challenges in Brazilian conventional deterrence

The relationship between strategic culture and conventional deterrence has been predominantly examined through cases in which cultural factors reinforce deterrent effectiveness. This article argues that strategic culture can also constrain and fragment deterrence, producing suboptimal outcomes even when material capabilities and formal doctrines are in place. Drawing on Ken Booth’s definition of strategic culture and engaging deterrence theory as developed by Colin Gray and Lawrence Freedman, it examines how Brazil’s fragmented strategic culture – characterized by inter-service autonomy, weak civilian oversight, and low perceived external threat – has inhibited the consolidation of an integrated conventional deterrent posture. The argument is developed through systematic content analysis of Brazilian military journals, doctrinal manuals, defense policies, and white papers from 1950 to 2024. The findings demonstrate that institutional fragmentation operates as a mechanism linking cultural predispositions to deterrence underperformance, contributing to debates on the limits of state coherence assumptions in conventional deterrence theory.