make inferences about the compatibility of transatlantic normative predispositions over the past decade. Specifically, being informed by recent constructivist work on strategic cultures (Meyer 2005; Norheim-Martinsen 2011, 2013), the paper offers a qualitative analysis of elite security discourses found in primary strategic documents, such as security strategies, and disaggregates them into their normative and ideational components (strategic culture), which forms the basis for the empirical comparison. Building on this theoretical framework, four types of deep-seated strategic norms, beliefs and ideas about the means and ends of national security policy are pre-identified: ontological assumptions about the international system and the security actor’s role within that system; the meanings assigned to future challenges and threats; behavioural predispositions of how to respond to those threats; and preferred modes of international cooperation. To be sure, compatibility of deep-seated shared norms, beliefs, and ideas does not necessarily suggest similarity or things being identical but rather a condition of complementarity—that is a status where few adaptations or modifications are necessary for collective action(s) in an alliance situation. This definition provides analytical space and allows for the possibility that the strength of an actor in one particular area could substitute the weakness of the other, or that normative predispositions of actors could be similar but incompatible. Against this backdrop, this study helps to understand how strategic cultures can affect the behaviour of states in an alliance, and to gain access to and states’ reasons motivations for certain strategic choices (Duffield 1998; Finnemore 2003). Put differently, security strategies guide foreign policy decisions, reveal state intentions, can
make inferences about the compatibility of transatlantic normative predispositions over the past decade. Specifically, being informed by recent constructivist work on strategic cultures (Meyer 2005; Norheim-Martinsen 2011, 2013), the paper offers a qualitative analysis of elite security discourses found in primary strategic documents, such as security strategies, and disaggregates them into their normative and ideational components (strategic culture), which forms the basis for the empirical comparison. Building on this theoretical framework, four types of deep-seated strategic norms, beliefs and ideas about the means and ends of national security policy are pre-identified: ontological assumptions about the international system and the security actor’s role within that system; the meanings assigned to future challenges and threats; behavioural predispositions of how to respond to those threats; and preferred modes of international cooperation. To be sure, compatibility of deep-seated shared norms, beliefs, and ideas does not necessarily suggest similarity or things being identical but rather a condition of complementarity—that is a status where few adaptations or modifications are necessary for collective action(s) in an alliance situation. This definition provides analytical space and allows for the possibility that the strength of an actor in one particular area could substitute the weakness of the other, or that normative predispositions of actors could be similar but incompatible. Against this backdrop, this study helps to understand how strategic cultures can affect the behaviour of states in an alliance, and to gain access to states’ reasons and motivations for certain strategic choices (Duffield 1998; Finnemore 2003). Put differently, security strategies can guide foreign policy decisions, reveal state intentions,